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Inspecting
beehives ensures that bees are safe from predators, diseases and hostile weather
conditions
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The
sun has just set, and as darkness emanates from all directions, a cool breeze
emerges contrasting the warm diurnal temperatures. Clad in white protective
clothing, Ekisa Ojole, a resident of Teso district in Western Kenya, leads a group of four other young men in their mission of harvesting honey.
Armed with smokers, they blow cool smoke near the entrances of the bee hives,
sending the bees scampering for safety deep inside the hives. They then remove
the honey-laden combs that are carefully placed in a bucket to be transported to
the collection center for filtering.
Ekisa,
a school drop-out like his three colleagues, acquired his bee-keeping skills
courtesy of Akukuranut Development Trust (ADT), an umbrella organization of
community-based operations in the district. “We earn our living by offering
honey-harvesting services to farmers and by helping them manage their bee
hives,” says Ekisa, who together with his colleagues also practices bee
keeping.
Services
Sought After
Their
group is invited by the various self-help community groups affiliated to
Akukuranut Development Trust to offer services ranging from harvesting honey to
supervision of beehives. One of such of groups is Mwendapole self-help group.
The group has 20 members comprising of women, men and youth. Its chairman,
Charles Okanda, says that with ten hives, which they acquired on a loan at a
cost of US$53, (4,200 Kenyan shillings [kshs]) per hive, they are able to make
approximately US$430 (Kshs 34,400) per harvest. Harvesting, he says, is done
three to four times a year.
“The
project has provided an additional source of income to our members,” says
Okanda, who adds that it has encouraged their group to venture into
afforestation activities (establishing a forest especially on land not
previously forested) since bees need nectar from flowers to produce honey. He
discloses that bee keeping has consequently increased crop yields in the area
through pollination. Okanda states that members of the group have found managing
bees to be an easier task than rearing other livestock.
Old
Practice
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Movable
frames facilitate harvesting and prevent damage to honeycombs
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Bee
farming or apiculture is a traditional practice in Kenya. However, it has always been a subsistence occupation and various
communities in the country have had traditional beehives made from locally
available materials such as hollowed-out logs and clay pots.
Approximately
80 percent of Kenya’s land is suitable for apiculture. It was after realizing the great potential
of this activity in Teso district that Akukuranut Development Trust embarked on
an ambitious project to develop it.
The
organization, which seeks to empower community-based groups, smallholder
farmers, the business community and vulnerable groups through activities that
contribute to food security, poverty alleviation, improved health and
environmental conservation, works with self-help groups and communities at the
grassroots level in collaboration with other stakeholders like non-governmental
organizations, donors and the government. According to ADT’s manager,
Consolata Papai, the Trust, which started humbly as an umbrella organization for
women and youth groups in 1991 as a response to countering the burgeoning
problem of food security, later grew in leaps and bounds by advocating modern
methods of farming, prompting several non-governmental organizations to come
aboard.
Surmounting
Obstacles
The
high prevalence of poverty in Kenya formed an obstacle to efforts of ensuring food security and thus Akukuranut
Development Trust, which boasts of over a thousand members and whose name
Akukuranut means ‘determination’, sought to diversify its activities by
engaging in income generating programs.
After
consultation with other stakeholders, they started a beekeeping project, a
micro-finance program to enable farmers to acquire credit, and a
sunflower-growing project that incorporates oil extraction. They also acquired
food processing machinery including a centrifuge for honey extraction.
“Most
of our programs are interlinked,” says the manager. “The micro-finance
project for instance enables bee farmers to acquire hives on credit.” She says
that 10 percent of the farmers’ income from honey sales is deducted to service
the loans.
Likewise,
the sunflower project ensures that there are enough flowers for bees to obtain
nectar. Farmers also gain earnings from selling sunflower seeds delivered to the
centre for oil extraction.
Bee
farmers are also encouraged to plant more trees to provide shade for hives, and
to plant flowers for bees to obtain nectar and pollen, thus conserving the
environment.
Superior
Hives
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The
centrifugal honey extractor makes it possible to remove the honey without
damaging the combs
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The
type of hive provided by the program is the Langstroth (also known as the frame
hive due to its movable frames).
Maurice
Aluku Omogo, the officer in-charge of the bee-keeping project, explains that
this type of hive has many advantages as opposed to traditional ones. With this
kind of hive, the honeycombs, which are bought alongside the hives, are fixed
firmly on the four sides of the movable frame. This facilitates harvesting, as
the combs cannot be damaged during the process.
Moreover,
the hive is designed in such a way that the supers (the part which contains
honey) and the brood chamber (the part where the queen bee resides) are
separated and thus the queen and the brood are not disturbed during the
harvesting of honey.
In
addition, the hives’ boxes can easily be stacked. This, Omogo says, makes it
easier for farmers to expand and contract the hive, to meet the needs of the bee
colony.
Omogo
stresses that one major advantage of the hive is that honey can be extracted by
means of the centrifugal honey extractor, which makes it possible to remove it
without damaging the combs. Empty combs are returned to the hive for bees to
refill with new honey.
Also,
migrating swarms of bees can easily be lured to enter the hives due to the
presence of numerous spaces between the frames and at their top.
A
Shield Against Poverty
Omogo
says that the beekeeping project is a boon to residents of Teso district. He
says that although the residents are mixed farmers who grow crops and practice
animal husbandry, livestock usually sustain them when crop failure occurs.
Unfortunately, the area was hit seven years ago by an outbreak of nagana
(sleeping sickness for humans), a disease that is transmitted by tsetse flies
and which wiped out much of their livestock. As a result, they were
deprived of an alternative source of income causing poverty to bite hard.
Beekeeping thus formed a worthwhile alternative.
The
situation, he emphasizes, was compounded by the high rate of HIV/AIDS prevalence
in the area, which has affected productivity given that many people in the
active age bracket are sickly. Beekeeping, being less labor-intensive, was taken
up by self-help groups with large numbers of members living with the disease.
Moreover, a community health program has been integrated into the project and
hence members receive information on nutrition, childcare and how to fight the
HIV/AIDS pandemic.
He
explains that another important aspect of the project is the promotion of a
saving culture. Like most people in rural Kenya, residents of the area had never cultivated a culture of saving part of their
incomes. However, now part of the proceeds from their honey harvests are
deducted to service the loans used to acquire the hives and a portion is
deposited in the members’ personal account. This unique arrangement has
enabled the Trust to run a viable community bank under its micro-finance
project.
High
population growth rates in the district coupled with a culture where the father
must subdivide the family’s ancestral land and bequeath it to his sons, has
resulted in a situation where most households have less land available for
cultivation.
Thus,
beekeeping ensures maximum utilization of available land as it requires less
space. Similarly, due to over-cultivation of the available land, the soils had
grown poor resulting in declining crop yields, and since most farmers can not
afford fertilizers to rejuvenate their land, bee keeping has become a better
alternative.
Over
600 hives been acquired by community groups affiliated to the Trust and many
more are in the hands of people residing outside the area covered by it.
Roseline Otieno, an employee of the Trust, says that farmers from the
neighboring Republic
of Uganda are trooping to their center in order to purchase hives.
If
fully developed, bee farming can generate approximately Kshs 40 billion, (around
US$5 million) for Kenya, but currently the sector pumps only Kshs 5.17 billion
(US$6 million) into the economy.
Stunted
Growth
According
to the Kenyan ministry of agriculture, the country produces an estimated 25,700
tons of honey and 3,1000 tons of bees wax annually while its true potential is
100,000 tons of honey and 10,000 tons of beeswax.
Recently,
while addressing a national workshop on beekeeping organized by the Kenyan
government, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and
the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Kenya’s minister for
Livestock and Fisheries Development, Joseph Munyao, said that the government’s
policy is to develop a modern beekeeping industry in order to ensure self
sufficiency in honey and hive products for domestic and export markets.
The
Trust’s head of the beekeeping project, who is also a nutritionist, says that
honey has various uses. It is used in cooking and preserving food. It is
also used as a treatment for various ailments such as sore throat, and herbal
medicine practitioners blend it with their medicine. Apart from that, it is
consumed as an energy boost. Honey, he says, is also an ingredient in the
manufacture of beauty products. Bees’ wax, which is another hive
product, is used in the manufacture of candles and as a waterproofing agent for
strengthening leather and textiles.
Akukuranut
Development Trust produces an average of three tons of honey a year and there is
a possibility of realizing more honey as many community groups and individuals
take to apiculture.
Nothing
better sums up the resolve of the organization in empowering the rural folk than
the words of Consolata Papai, the Trusts Manager: “Our goal is to create more
opportunities so that our people can improve their lives.”
References:
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Akukurunaut Development Trust.
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Apiconsult:
www.apiconsult.com
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United Nations Development Programme –
Kenya.
**
Wanzala Bahati Justus is a freelance journalist based in
Nairobi, Kenya . Your emails will be forwarded to him by contacting the editor at: ScienceTech@islam-online.net.
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