{"id":1028,"date":"2016-07-12T18:47:58","date_gmt":"2016-07-12T15:47:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/?p=1028"},"modified":"2017-11-12T18:49:17","modified_gmt":"2017-11-12T15:49:17","slug":"how-this-yemeni-american-keeps-up-the-family-business-thousands-of-miles-from-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/how-this-yemeni-american-keeps-up-the-family-business-thousands-of-miles-from-home\/","title":{"rendered":"How this Yemeni American keeps up the family business thousands of miles from home"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Ali Budner – PRI<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Inside a small bedroom of a palatial home in Oakland, California, Khaled Almaghafi climbs a ladder and draws a rectangle on the ceiling where it meets the wall. His assistant takes a saw to a chunk of plaster, a flap of ceiling drops and thousands of honeybees escape \u2014 flying through the room, clinging to the curtains in clumps.<\/p>\n

Almaghafi, who calls himself the \u00abbee rescuer,\u00bb remains calm, admiring the perfectly engineered wax comb now hanging from the rafter. He hoists a vacuum nozzle directly into the hive and softly suctions the bees into a plastic bucket.<\/p>\n

Live bee removals is Almaghafi\u203as work, at least during swarm season in the spring and early summer. And judging by the number of phone calls he gets, he\u2019s in demand.<\/p>\n

But he doesn\u2019t look like your typical beekeeper. No mask, big white suit, or gloves. This 52-year-old father of four looks like he\u203as heading to an office job, wearing pleated pants and a button-down shirt. \u00abIf they attack me badly in the face, I will wear a suit. I don\u2019t mind getting stung once or twice, it gives me the energy!\u00bb he says.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s one way of looking at it. But also consider that Almaghafi has worked with bees since he was a kid, growing up in Sana\u203aa, the capital of Yemen. \u00abMost of my childhood was with my dad, watching him raising the bees,\u00bb he says.<\/p>\n

In Yemen, beekeeping is respected and often family-run work. Almaghafi\u2019s relatives raised bees the traditional way, in hollow trees and with hives made from bamboo. \u00abBut my dad, he was the first one to bring the modern style hive from Egypt to Yemen with the tin frame box. The American style hive,\u00bb he says.<\/p>\n

But as a young man, he wanted to travel and learn more about his trade.<\/p>\n

\u00abI heard a lot about the agriculture in California, beekeeping, farming and all that stuff,\u00bb he says. So, in 1986, at age 22, Almaghafi flew to San Francisco. He wanted to study bees at the University of California, Davis, but he didn\u2019t have the money or legal documents needed to enroll. He took a job at a gas station instead, looked up beekeeping in the phone book and found an elderly man doing live bee removals. The man became his friend and mentor and, before he passed away, \u00abhe give me his extractor, his vacuum, for free,\u00bb Almaghafi says.<\/p>\n

With the bees Almaghafi gathered from roofs, ceilings and backyards around the Bay Area, he was able to rent out his hives to big farms in California\u203as Central Valley to pollinate nut trees and row crops. But in the late 2000s, a sudden die-off decimated his hives. As he slowly recovered his business, his father in Yemen offered some advice.<\/p>\n

\u00abMy dad kept telling me, \u2039You know, you can open a store there. People respect bees and honey,\u203a\u00bb Almaghafi remembers.<\/p>\n

And so he did, opening the popular Bee Healthy Honey Shop in Oakland, where Almaghafi sells products like wax candles and honey \u2014 all displayed on hexagonal shelves, like a giant honeycomb. He got the idea from back home.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you go to the honey shop in Yemen, it\u203as just like you\u203are going to the museum,\u00bb he says. \u00abThe floor, the walls, everything, like you are inside a beehive. Imagine you go there and you smell the honey from all over the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s one special Yemeni honey that\u2019s coveted worldwide. It comes from Yemen\u203as Do\u203aan Valley, in the country\u203as south, where the beekeeping tradition dates back thousands of years. There, the jujube or sidr tree flowers once a year. When it does, beekeepers from all over Yemen move their bees to that region.<\/p>\n

\u00abYou can smell the honey from a distance,\u00bb Almaghafi says. \u00abIt tastes different, smells different.\u00bb Like perfume, he explains. People add herbs to it and use it as an aphrodisiac and a cure for various illnesses.<\/p>\n

Honey shops in Yemen are also abundant. \u00abEvery corner has a honey shop, like here every corner has a liquor store. A lot of competition,\u00bb Almaghafi says.<\/p>\n

But now these businesses are struggling. Yemen\u2019s civil war is tearing the country apart, with thousands killed, and millions displaced. \u00abPeople are struggling, trying to make it. God with them, you know?\u00bb he says.<\/p>\n

Yemen\u2019s honey industry has also tanked. Almaghafi\u2019s brother has scaled his bee business way back. But it\u2019s what happened to his father a decade ago that hurts Almaghafi most. His dad had left the military because of the corruption he saw and raised bees instead. But then a tribal leader wanted his land and, Almagahfi says, killed his father to get it.<\/p>\n

\u00abHe lived a simple life, bees and trees, until they shot him … over his small garden, believe it or not. That\u203as what hurts a lot,\u00bb says Almaghafi.<\/p>\n

He thinks about this in California, as he puts buzzing bees into a bucket, like coaxing a genie back into the bottle.<\/p>\n

He also thinks about faith.<\/p>\n

Almaghafi\u2019s work is spiritual. He\u2019s Muslim and the Quran says God told bees how to make honey. For Almaghafi, they\u2019re proof of a higher being. \u00abYou see how they dance, how they collect the honey, how they work,\u00bb says Almaghafi. \u00abYou feel deep inside there is a creator, created all those things and created us and the whole globe.\u00bb<\/p>\n

It troubles him that some can see bees, like Islam, as dangerous. \u00abThey benefit us for pollination, for medicine, for the environment. If it wasn\u2019t for them, we\u2019d be stuck,\u00bb he says. \u00abThey do all this for nothing!\u00bb<\/p>\n

And when he thinks about the war in Yemen, he remembers his father and how he took an old box from his military days, once filled with bullets, and converted it into a beehive. Almaghafi hopes that, soon, more people in Yemen will do that too.<\/p>\n

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