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FEATURE: Bee keeping: resilient livelihood strategy for sustainable agriculture and job creation

• By EDMOND GYEBI
• January 22, 2019
• 30

Rural people’s livelihoods rely upon their accessibility to natural resources such as land, water and biotic resources while the improvement of people’s lives and meeting their needs has been the most crucial and priority task by most developing countries all over the world.

     With the prevalence of extensification and annual food crop farming system used as a source of income, it is important that farmers have the opportunity to diversify in order to reduce risk, increase income and promote a more sustainable form of agriculture.

  Bee keeping

     In practice, beekeeping is adapted as a resilient livelihood strategy, however, it tends to be perceived by the general population as ‘a hobby’, or as ‘a sideline activity’ and this perception may often be true, but if actively observed, it is a resilient livelihood.

     Beekeeping is a lucrative trade even using simple management techniques, but needs to consider local culture and economy for it to be successful, and as an enterprise fits in very well with small scale farmers’ livelihoods.

Opportunities

    It is not invasive; bees work along the natural patterns of local agro-ecological zones and provide positive impacts to the fauna and flora found within.

     Bee keeping is an enterprise that can provide for employment, income and economic security for the farm family and others in rural areas and requires little startup investments - does not require complex technologies and techniques to start with.

    Naturally, bees usually look after themselves, with little need for tendering and they provide for a plethora of products - honey, wax, pollen, royal jelly, propolis, venom, among others, and are well known in many local markets.

    This provides a portfolio of products that a small-scale farmer can sell from a single farm enterprise and these products can also, with minimal processing, be ‘transformed’ into value added products.

  Capital expenditure

     Natural capital includes bees, a place to keep them, water, sunshine, biodiversity and environmental resources while human capital entails skills, knowledge, good health and strength, and marketing expertise.

    Physical capital in bee production also comprises of tools, equipment, transport, roads, clean water, energy and buildings while social capital includes help from families, friends and networks, membership of groups and access to a wider society, market information and research findings.

    Financial capital includes cash, savings and access to credit or grants and an appreciation of this requires one to think about his or her livelihood and all the diverse assets needed that include one’s skills, physical resources and social integration.

Benefits

     Beekeeping reinforces human life through a variety of assets and its livelihoods are built upon natural resources stocks - bees, flowering plants and water.

     It offers a unique opportunity for increasing incomes of large numbers of smallholders and landless farmers.

Problem in Brong-Ahafo Region

     Local and international non-governmental agencies have played a significant role in its development in the country.

     Efforts by these agencies have contributed to the springing up of bee clubs and cooperatives, which are harnessing the potential of this business.

     With the positive trends in beekeeping, one may be easily beguiled into assuming that beekeeping is a possible panacea for solving the financial woes of farmers.

     Unfortunately, nothing has been done in the area of establishing the financial profitability of this seemingly lucrative business.

     Bush fires have become very rampant and excessive in the Techiman, Kintampo South, Atebubu, Sene, Wenchi and Tain Districts/Municipalities in Brong Ahafo.

     The annual bush burning "ritual" in the area is so serious that it does a lot of harm to the apicultural industry.

     The fires are killing apicultural businesses; burning not only hives but also the vegetation needed for the surviving bees to live on.

     This contributes to extinction of bee species, low productivity and low quality of honey, low incomes, low living standards of bee farmers and low tax returns.

     Bye laws meant to control the fires are purportedly not enforced, and this issue requires urgent attention for redress.

     In fact bushfires are a very serious threat to beekeeping as in the Savanna Zone, vegetation is always burnt completely every year during the five month dry periods between; November and March.

     These annual bush burnings caused bee colonies to migrate to distant lands and the colonies hardly come down to occupy hives baited with attractants.

    Such baited hives normally remain fallow, unoccupied by bees for a long period.

    Bush fires also destroy all plants including melliferous trees and consequently, bees are unable to find enough nectar or pollen.

UBA/BUSAC Advocacy Intervention  

    Notwithstanding these challenges, there is still hope for the bee keeping industry in the Brong-Ahafo Region, following a quick intervention and support from the Business Sector Advocacy Challenge (BUSAC) Fund.

    With support from the Center for Posterity Interest Organisation (COPIO), a Non-governmental Organisation and service providers, the Techiman Unity Bee keepers Association (UBA), a group made up of bee famers has secured grant from the BUSAC to undertake advocacy project to enhance bee keeping business.

    The seven-month project titles “restoring hopes in the apiculture business by reducing bush burning in the Brong-Ahafo Region” aimed at helping to identify and address key bottlenecks impeding and affecting the economic activities of the bee keepers in the region.

   Bee Keeping Sustainability

     Generally, sustainability in the bee keeping industry is very essential, as the economic activity remains a useful means of strengthening socio-economic livelihoods of rural people.

 Environment

Environmental sustainability demands that ecosystems are not damaged beyond their capability to maintain their own biological processes, functions, biodiversity and natural productivity such as supporting and sustaining its own bees.

People

    The people within the beekeeping environment must have a positive attitude towards bees and not seeing them as enemies and should not come closer to human beings.

    For beekeeping to be sustainable, the people must accept bees with good mind and see them as a means of improving their livelihood and sustaining their own lives.

Beekeeping Techniques

    Honeybees being natural creatures need natural methods for effective management and sustainable natural method for managing bees must be determined by ways the bees want to live.

    Consequently, there may be conflict between what the bees require and what the beekeepers require or the human’s state of mind towards the bees.

    Interest

    In this context, interest is one’s willingness to accept something and it is on individual access to avoid one saying that he was forced into it at the long run (personal).

    Sustainable beekeeping adopts the method of involving people that want to know more on how to handle bees, thereby looking at the positive aspects of beekeeping and pay less attention to its negativity knowing that human beings are worse than the innocent gentle honeybees.

     Interest in beekeeping is different from need for bees, products such as honey.

Raw materials availability

    Sustainable beekeeping ensures that the beekeeping environment is naturally rich in terms of the basic raw materials - nectar, pollen and water sources.

     Where these raw materials are lacking or inadequate, more should be provided and deforestation discouraged for the good of the people and trees. For sustainability of beekeeping, natural raw materials should be provided instead of artificial ones.

Honeybees housing (hive)

    Sustainable beekeeping advocates the use of cheap locally available materials accepted by the bees in a particular area to construct bee hives.

Bee hives colonization (stocking)

    This is the process of bringing honeybees into artificial hive made for them and is done by attracting a swarm, colony division or queen bee breeding.

    Beekeepers construct the simple hives themselves to reduce cost and the bee hives are installed where the beekeeping raw materials abound and where the bees like to live to guarantee high colonization.

    Unlike the traditional beekeeping technique which is plundering the wild nest of honeybees for their honey, sustainable beekeeping encourages bees to live in a man-made hives for easy manipulation.

Beekeeping equipment

    Sustainable beekeeping integrates the rural micro industries in producing some beekeeping equipment in case they cannot be produced by beekeepers themselves.

    Locally available materials and modern materials liked by bees as well as the people are used for producing beekeeping equipment.

    For instance, using White-Colored cotton material for bee suits shows neatness and the bees perch on it instead of stinging people.

    Therefore, training of carpenters, blacksmiths, tailors and potters is necessary.

Recommendation and way forward  

    To sustain and improve on the been keeping industry, Dr John Yaw Akparep, a lecturer at the University of Development Studies and a researcher called for re-introduction of anti-bushfire sub committees at the various Municipal and District Assemblies in the Brong-Ahafo Region.

    Formation of such committees is recommended by the PNDC law

229 of 1990 and according to him, would be task to work out realistic modalities at fighting bushfires.

    Dr Akparep underscored the need for the Municipal and District Assemblies to also enact comprehensive and culture-friendly anti-bushfire bye-laws that would deter prospective fire starters.

    This, he explained was necessary based on the belief that bushfire menace is embedded with the cultural practices of the people believing that enactment of such bye-laws would provide the necessary complementary support for existing bushfire-related legal provisions to respond positively to peculiar challenges.

     There should be also practical policy actions to prevent and control bushfires and to do this effectively, District Assemblies, communities, chiefs and all major stakeholders must be involved in issues pertaining to bushfire management in the Region.

    Mr Mustapha Maison Yeboah, the Executive Director of COPIO, said called on law enforcement agencies to intensify patrol in bushfire prone communities and facilitate speedy prosecution of fire setters.

     He called for the introduction of the Community Resources Management Areas (CREMA) concept in the Region, as a new way of dealing with negative environmental practices such as bushfires and thus, conserving the environment and its resources, particularly, vegetaion for apiculture development.

     Sensitization programmes should be organized for the people to help them understand the effects of bushfires on agricultural production especially apiculture business and to see fighting the menace as a collective responsibility, he added.

Source: By COPIO Team, Techiman