Sweet Success

In Africa, bees do it—that is, they provide crucial income to impoverished families

Weldon Korir tells the story of Joseph Lesingo with a certain distinctive pride. Just a few years ago, Lesingo was chosen to attend a beekeeping course at Baraka Agricultural College in Kenya, after Korir convinced a British charity to underwrite the costs. “Within six months of leaving the college he was harvesting honey,” Korir says about Lesingo, who like himself hails from Njoro, Kenya. “From there, he started getting money from sales, investing in more beehives, and today he is a proud beekeeper making a good earning.”

That’s no small feat for a small farmer from Njoro, a timber-ravished region two hours north of Nairobi, where resettled peasant farmers struggle to eke out a living on land given to them by the government. Since adding beehives to his farm, however, not only can Lesingo better support his family, but he’s also become a local idol: people come almost every weekend to see how he makes his hives thrive, and orders for his honey pile up.

Yet Korir deserves much credit for Lesingo’s success—it was his idea, after graduating from a sustainable development program, to try to turn Njoro into a robust honey harvesting region. But Korir knew he needed help, and money, to make it happen—for beekeeper training, start-up costs and supplies, and the community infrastructure to support the initiative. It took almost two years to find Bees Abroad, a small British charity that helps implement grassroots beekeeping projects in undeveloped countries, primarily in Africa. Now, four years later, the Nessuit Beekeeping Project (named after a central village in the region) has spawned a community of beekeepers—about 70 local families have since become honey and beeswax harvesters, and about 120 new top-bar beehives dot the landscape.

Photos: John Home, Bees Abroad

Beekeeping may just be an ideal solution for this part of a starving continent, says John Home, a retired commercial beekeeper who oversees the project for Bees Abroad. It’s relatively easy to introduce to the type of small-scale, subsistence farms found in Njoro and “it doesn’t demand large investments, massive amounts of time, or big land to keep the hives on.” Bees are also largely free in Africa—farmers don’t have to buy them to stock hives—and they really do all the work: gather nectar from plants; transform it into honey in one of their stomachs (they have two); and deposit it in honeycombs they build in hives.

In Njoro, specifically, some locals already practised traditional log-hive beekeeping (where decayed or hollow logs are used for hives), so interest and talent for beekeeping already existed. Log-hives, however, are not very efficient and the Nessuit project helps to bring the more modern practice of top-bar beekeeping to the region. Top-bar beehives are crafted into long, trough-like structures with removable bars or slats placed on top where bees hang the honeycomb. At Baraka College, Lesingo and 19 other men from the region were not only taught how to colonize and manage a top-bar hive, but also how to build one out of readily available material— bamboo and dried sunflower stock, for example, work just as well as wood.

In fact, hives are amazingly easy to construct. A key goal of the Nessuit project is to teach people how to make their own equipment and supplies, so they can expand their operation with little money when the time is ripe. Protective beesuits can also be made simply—from old clothes, or recycled food-aid sacks, which work particularly well since they’re often long enough to cut into overalls. Sticks and worn-out bed nets suffice as face masks.

Apart from training, Bees Abroad helps source supplies like jars for the honey, and provides some funds for micro-loans. It has also covered the cost of several smokers (smoke is used to calm and manipulate bees when harvesting). To harvest, the farmers have been taught simple techniques: combs are taken from the hives, then crushed and strained through a cloth, filter or sieve, which separates it from the honey. The beeswax from the comb can be used for candles, or sold for cosmetics like hand creams and balms.

So how much honey is now being produced by the Nessuit project? Home admits it’s difficult to give an exact measure, since some farmers consume their own stock, use it for barter or sell it cheaply by the road. A bigger question, for farmers and humanitarians alike, is this: just how viable is beekeeping as a tool for poverty alleviation? Actually, it’s very viable, says Dr. Nicola Bradbear of the larger British non-profit, Bees for Development (BFD),because regions like Africa often have the natural resources and bee populations that lend themselves to the business. It’s also a “very resilient” venture, since poor or displaced people can easily keep hives even when they don’t own property. And because bees both require plants (to feed from) and pollinate them, beekeeping encourages the protection of environments.

The Nessuit project, for example, includes a community nursery where trees are being grown for future planting. Nessuit can’t lay claim to a steady trajectory of success: while some of the men sent to Baraka became enthusiastic beekeepers, others decided not to pursue it. Continuous support is needed to keep the farmers focused and help them combat challenges they inherently face in Kenya. Last year’s contested national elections led to much instability, and this year’s drought is wreaking havoc. No rain can mean no flowers, no crops, no bees.

Still, demand for honey is growing in Africa as middle classes slowly form, says Bradbear, and three years ago BFD launched ApiTrade Africa to hook producers up with buyers. Bees Abroad has also hired a Kenyan beekeeping expert, David Njuguna, who is now working directly with Korir to develop a distribution channel for the local honey through NEBLEM—Nessuit, Beekeeping, Livestock and Environmental Management—a kind of agricultural cooperative that Korir founded. Korir and Njuguna are trying to convince the beekeepers to sell and market their honey exclusively through NEBLEM, which they believe can net them a better price per kilogram. And a collective like NEBLEM can help bring customers to the table: at least one supermarket in the region is now asking to stock the NEBLEM product.

Of course, Njuguna’s main job is to help keep the Njoro beekeepers motivated—which he does through community workshops, and by visiting each bee farm to help troubleshoot problems. Bees Abroad would like to see about 100 more top-bar hives abuzz in the region in the next two years, with a best-case scenario of six to 10 hives per beekeeper. One fully operational hive, says Home, should be able to produce about 15 to 20 kilograms of honey a year—potentially a good source of income for the people of Njoro.

And the future looks sweet. Last winter, Home took a self-financed trip to Kenya to see firsthand what progress was being made—and admits he had to contain his delight for fear of misleading people about the work yet to be done. But overall, the sense of accomplishment is overwhelming. “Everybody likes to see what they’ve achieved—for some of these people just making the beehive is quite an achievement.” When the honey starts appearing it’s like Christmas morning.

For more information, visit Tom Carroll’s website at apiconsult.com

This entry was posted on Monday, September 13th, 2010 at 10:40 am and is filed under Travel Cares. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site. Add to del.icio.us.