Mamun Matubber is fully committed to his role as an expert beekeeper—a passion that has evolved into a profession. This represents the present and future of a young man—now an adult—who arrived in Calabria from Bangladesh in 2018.
He spent a year in Settingiano, in the heart of the Catanzaro isthmus, before moving to Lamezia Terme. There, his beekeeping training began at the Luna Rossa Community—first through the national *BeeMyJob* project and later with Aprocal.
At the *Erbaio* (herb garden) of the Progetto Sud Community—land cultivated through the efforts of the “Le Agricole” cooperative and tended by individuals undergoing social rehabilitation as part of the Community’s social programs—Mamun looks after his hives alongside Foysal, who has become his trusted collaborator.
“I’ve learned to understand what they are doing and what they want to do.” – “It took some time,” says Mamun, “but experiencing nature and observing the life of bees brings me peace.”
As he speaks, Mamun seems to embody Confucius’s famous quote: “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”“It is part of the educational and ecological mission of the Comunità Progetto Sud and Le Agricole,” says Nicola Emanuele, head of Luna Rossa and this beekeeping project, “to establish a close relationship with the land and nature—to be farmers grounded in values and social initiatives—while also creating employment opportunities within social agriculture.”
This is how the pathways were created—starting with an introduction to agriculture in general, before moving on to beekeeping. The training and subsequent work opportunities were aimed at individuals facing social disadvantages due to their backgrounds, such as those with histories of migration or other experiences of marginalization. The industriousness and fascinating social structure of hive life teach us that bees are not only the first link in the natural chain—upon whose health the lives of all living beings depend—but also that, like everything in nature, they live according to precise rules aimed at achieving social and productive balance.
“I like the queen bee—the way she establishes order and acts as a leader who knows the worker bees,” says Foysal Matubber shyly.
Today, we can report that while the *Comunità Progetto Sud* continues its cultural and ecological work—using its ten-hive apiary for training, education, and awareness-raising—the social cooperative “Le Agricole” is simultaneously expanding its production of organic honey and other bee-derived products (such as propolis and pollen), all while facilitating the employment of individuals facing social disadvantages. Mamun—who has since become a member of the “Le Agricole” cooperative—manages an apiary comprising 77 hives at the herb garden site and another 70 hives on the land at S. Pietro Lametino.
