Bee Happy in Panglao’s Land of Honey
Maida C. Pineda meets the former nurse behind the phenomenon
Many Filipinos believe that happiness can be found abroad. Eight million of us – one-tenth of the country’s population – are migrant workers and many are nurses. The huge demand for Filipino nurses abroad, particularly in the States, has meant nursing has become the most sought-after university degree. Even doctors are now studying nursing to secure work abroad.
But one Filipina has left a good nursing job in Hawaii to return to her beloved Bohol. Instead of living in the land of milk and honey, Vicky Wallace has chosen to create her own land of honey. She founded the Bohol Bee Farm, a must-see destination on Panglao Island. Though tucked away from Alona Beach – the island’s strip of resorts – tourists are discovering this most unusual destination through word of mouth from friends.
BUSINESS MEETS PLEASURE
The Bee Farm is a sweet celebration of island living. Overlooking the sea as the sun sets, dine on fresh blue marlin with spicy sauce and an organic salad using indigenous flowers such as gumamela, bougainvillea, red katuray and cosmos. After dinner, lounge in a bamboo chair listening to the lullaby of the waves, or curl up in a hammock to take stock of life.
The Bee Farm is a diversified business: an organic vegetable farm with a bee culture, a restaurant serving organic food and honey products, a bed and breakfast with eight rooms and a traditional massage parlor. It also sells handicrafts like place mats, bags and curtains made of raffia.
The food in the restaurant is all made from produce grown on the farm or bought locally in Bohol. Try cabcab, light and crisp cassava chips, wholewheat bread with pesto spread; mango and honey; and fresh herb pasta. Buy a bottle of honey dressing to take home: it’s
refreshingly light, not too tangy or cloyingly sweet. As well as pure honey, Vicky makes numerous honey-based products: honey papaya soap, honeyed bahalina (coconut wine), honeyed salabat (ginger tea) and freshly baked muffins and cookies using honey as sweetener. Local ingredients abundant in Bohol are also available: kape mais (corn coffee), camote pie, ube fries and herb-based products from the farm’s herb garden.
Vicky is keen to educate visitors. Guests can go on a farm tour where Ronel Lofranco, a working agriculture student, passionately imparts his knowledge of plants, animals and bees. Lofranco leads a tour through the organic farm, free from fertilizer and pesticides, while pointing out the herbs, their uses for cooking and even their medicinal benefits. The rabbits, bantam chickens, turkeys, sheep and geese are all shown off, but the bees take center stage. He explains how they mate, how tirelessly they work and their vital role in flower pollination. Guests are even allowed to gently put their fingers into the honeycomb for a sweet taste of the nectar. Lofranco’s passion and enthusiasm is infectious. He credits Vicky, who supported his college education and now his graduate studies, for infecting him with her fascination when they started working together four years ago.
Vicky says that the farm gets up to 300 visitors every day, eating, buying produce or, for the lucky few, spending a couple of days in one of the guest rooms. Seventy per cent of the guests are Filipinos. When visitors arrive at The Bohol Bee Farm, they assume it’s Vicky’s American husband who is responsible for the sanctuary-turned-business. But it was all created by Vicky herself, a humble barrio lass turned resilient, independent woman.
THE EARLY YEARS
After studying accounting for three years at university, Vicky Wallace married her American husband. But sadly, the young bride was to become a young widow, when in 1988 he succumbed to cancer. She was left alone with two young children to raise. While living in the US, this native Boholana marveled at how nurses could easily gain employment abroad, more easily even than for doctors and lawyers. Seeing the potential in nursing, she went back to school and graduated in 1990.
She worked in a Hawaiian nursing home from 1992 until 1996, but the hours took their toll as she regularly worked from 3am till 11am, then spent the afternoon taking care of the children and keeping the house running. Although the money was good, the lifestyle was difficult and after a long day at work she was too tired to give her children enough attention. This prompted her to return to Bohol where she lived for three months in a tree house in her property in Panglao, overlooking the beach. She cemented her decision in 1996 by bringing her children home. Her late husband’s pension would go further at home than it would in America, but to maximize her income she and the property’s caretaker began growing squash and ampalaya to eat at home. She soon found herself growing more than she could eat and started selling them to her children’s classmates. An entrepreneur was born. During her time in upstate New York, Vicky had enjoyed arts and crafts classes and used them as the inspiration to create products from locally available materials. It was also while living in upstate New York that Vicky observed her neighbor’s bee culture business. She watched and learned, eventually gaining inspiration for her own farm.
In 1997, Vicky and her three employees (her caretaker, his wife, and their neighbor) started their own bee farm. Bees were not an obvious choice, as they required lots of flowers which Panglao’s sandy land hardly encouraged. So Vicky decided to lease another property in Inabanga, 80km away, where lush greenery and an abundance of flowering plants were ideal for breeding bees.
DEVELOPING THE DREAM
Here, in Panglao, her vegetable patch flourished. She started selling romaine lettuce, which is unusual in the Philippines – so many Boholenos were unfamiliar with how to eat it. She added a few tables to her farm so she could serve salads and introduce a number of non-native greens. Continuing to innovate, she started selling pies at Christmas made with green mangoes instead of apples. Her small vegetable garden is now a successful business with 72 employees.
Rather like her vegetables, Vicky’s farm grew organically. She didn’t plan to create a big business, but she had always wanted to make a difference. She explains the three important conditions she stuck to: “Firstly, it has to be part our culture.” She uses the bed and breakfast rooms to showcase Philippine history in the form of indigenous decorations. She has old items like an araro, a machine once used by farmers to till the soil, in the function room. This agricultural tool is not just a conversation piece, but also a nostalgic icon for older visitors and piece of history for the younger ones. For Vicky, it is a conscious effort to encourage Filipinos to appreciate the beautiful native culture.
Her second condition for the farm? “It has to produce a livelihood for the community”. Selling local food products achieves this. Thirdly, “the business must provide more income for our women,” she insists. This single mother is committed to empowering women as part of her livelihood program for stay-at-home mothers in the barrio, giving them opportunities to learn traditional massage, weave and make bags and curtains.
A SUNNY FUTURE FOR THE PHILIPPINES
Vicky is driven by a dream and its success sees her filled with optimism. “Hopefully,” she says, “instead of exporting human resources abroad, someday we will be exporting products”. She is a tireless worker, constantly on the go attending to different projects. If she is not improving the rope hammocks, she is overseeing the raffia curtains being stitched, saying hello to a guest, or discussing a new recipe she is concocting. She strives to inspire not just the people working with her, but also the people who visit her farm. While success can be measured in gallons of honey and the number of guests visiting the farm, perhaps the best indicator is the peace and happiness Vicky radiates. “I’m just too content! I have everything I want in this one place. Even three years ago, even without the house, I was content doing the things I wanted to do. I know I have arrived. When people ask, ‘why are you doing this? Don’t you want to travel?’ My God, I’m flying here!” Vicky believes everyone has the capacity to soar.
“Happiness is in us already. It is up to us how we let it come out. Inspiration is inside us. Let it come out. Work from there and it will propel you.”
With the buzz on Bohol Bee Farm getting louder among tourists, Vicky is busy at work. Like a bee pollinating the flowers, she is spreading the sweet inspiration for all to taste.
VICKY’S TIPS FOR ENTREPRENEURS:
● Pursue a business you are passionate about.
● Human resource is your number one asset.
Connect with the people who work for you.
● Use local produce to help your community.
Showcase the best of your culture.
VICKY’S CV:
1988: Vicky is widowed and left with two
young children to support
1988-1990: Returned to Bohol to study
nursing
1992-1996: Worked as a nurse in Hawaii
1996: Returned to Bohol; started growing
vegetables for family consumption
1997: Started Bee Culture
1999: Started selling pies and cakes at her
farm and accepting orders for Christmas
2000: Restaurant opened
2003: Opened bed and breakfast
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