The chronic effects of capitalism and colonialism manifest in a myriad of ways in how people approach life and work. Their influence puts communities in a Stockholm syndrome-like hold making them unable to imagine other possibilities and skeptical of new ideas. A bit of skepticism is healthy and useful in critiquing new ideas but

too much can stifle imagination, it’s also how I ended up with the final design of one the two beehives developed for, by, and with the Colombian coffee co-operative, APRENAT. One hive was inspired by indigenous beehives from Mayan and Tanzanian cultures, and the other is a modified Kenyan top bar hive.

These two beehives are part of a larger project that included an overhaul and expansion of APRENAT’s agricultural, tourist, and commerce activities. After many community meetings and discussions, we determined project constraints, timeline, and needs. I utilized several designs and research activities to better understand their specific honey harvesting and processing procedures. The community had a few requests for the design— one person should easily be able to carry it as the hives need to be moved around the coffee farms, it needed to be affordable, and it needed to make use of easily accessible materials. My goals for the project were to get the community to imagine new possibilities and support the Angelita bee, an at-risk native pollinator.

This collaborative effort consisted of undergraduate and graduate students from MIT and universities in Guatemala, Peru, and Colombia, and community partner C-Innova.