It’s not even midday yet and San Lorenzo is baking. Three cows walk slowly down a dirt, almost sandy, path in this village in southern Bolivia, before settling under the flowering branches of a white carob tree, which we call here cupesi, to avoid a layer of lead. In the late morning at the end of September, when the air temperature had reached 36°C, the shade of the large trees invited rest.
“Living here, you get used to it, although wearing a beekeeper’s suit in this hot weather is never fun.” slipped Rosa Miguelina Camacho, towards her nest. In the distance you can see the Aguaragüe cordillera, the eastern foothills of the Andes. The dry bush surrounding Rosa’s nest and home is unmistakable: this is where the Gran Chaco begins, an ecoregion of more than a million square kilometers stretching between Bolivia, Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil.
“The first time we had to harvest honey with my husband, eight years ago, we didn’t know how to do it so we all got stung,” the beekeeper recalled with a laugh. Like dozens of residents in the region, Rosa started her business when the local government gave her several nests with a simple idea: finding a balance between preserving the environment.
