adminSamuel Kadungure Senior Farming Reporter
HONEY is the sweetest and most nutritious natural food for man.
Honey is money. It is delicious and nutritious and an aspirin to combat malnutrition. It is made from nectar and pollen by golden insects called bees.
Honey is a food that contains fructose, glucose, sucrose, mineral water and other undetermined substances and is an ingredient in making medicines, clear soap, wineries and a very reliable cough syrup.
Bakers also use honey in their different processes.
The answer is in bee farming.
Bee farming is a sustainable means of livelihood. It is also a natural way to discourage local communities from cutting down of trees and burning.
Bee farming has a very long tradition in Africa dating back over 5 000 years when beehives were first used for producing honey in ancient Egypt. Bee-keeping promotes economic self- reliance and for some of the poorest people it has become a life sustaining source of income and livelihoods.
It is an ecologically and technically appropriate form of income generation for communities in some of the poorest areas of Zimbabwe.
Bee farming is a venture that requires very small pieces of land unlike farming of other crops. You do not have to be financially sound in order to be a successful bee-keeper. You also don’t need to be an expert as may be expected of you in other agricultural sectors.
Bee farming does not require a lot of labour. One can be a bee-keeper and be a farmer producing other crops at the same time.
Farmers can harvest voluminous quantities of honey and raw beeswax for home consumption and for export, if approached scientifically and as a business.
The return on investment is quick and bountiful.
Bee farming is a lucrative source of livelihood for many rural households in Zimbabwe, Egypt, Kenya and Tanzania.
In the past honey harvesting was barbaric as the harsh method in which harvesting was done using fire burnt millions of the golden insects to death.
Naturally, bees collect nectar from flowers and then process it in the hive and pack it in comb cells and in return man would wait till summer when the insect has the largest quantity of the sweet product, take his machete, axe and mallet, hacks down the tree where the hive is built and sets fire to most of the bees before removing the combs.
The queen bee, which is essential to the colony, is killed in the process. A colony of bees treated this way is overwhelmed. Those few left alive had to seek a new abode elsewhere.
This kind of honey hunting is like the farmer who kills his cow in order to milk it. It had legions of disadvantages which include the melting of the both honey and beeswax into a container. The honey cools down while the wax hardened on top of it. At the end the farmer will be forced to remove and thrown away the wax, thereby losing additional income.
The cost of ignorance was that after harvesting, usually done during the night, the honey-tapper would ignite huge wild veld fire, thereby destroying vegetation, life and property and leaving the soil bare and prone to desertification. The practice should be shunned, discouraged and regarded as out-of-date.
Zimbabwe has adopted a paradigm shift from such detrimental past traditional bee farming practices.
The Ministry of Agriculture, Mechanisation and Irrigation Development, in conjunction Makoni Bee-keepers Association, Nyahari Producers Association, Environmental Africa, EMA and other NGOs have teamed up to sensitise farmers to approach bee-keeping scientifically and use new methods of hunting and harvesting honey.
Nyahari Producers Association chairperson, Mr Jacob Kubari, believes bee farming has potential to overtake crop farming if done professionally.
“I have 74 beehives that I have inserted in the apiary. In order to invite the bees I use wax that is an unwanted honey product. We melt the wax on beehive top bars. Four days after inserting it I then start counting my days as the bees start mounting, from day one up to three months I then start harvesting.
“Just as how pets know their master, the same applies to bees. Each time I visit the apiary, I make sure I wear the white overall bee hood and knock the beehive to see if it is ready for harvest. If there is no sound that comes out then its harvest time.
“Having the produce now, it is fortunate that in Honde Valley we already have a market for our honey. One beehive produces an average of 15kg of honey, approximately 12kg once processed, selling at $2 per kg. This makes bee-keeping a thriving business that can contribute invaluably to a household income,” he said.
“As the chairman of the Nyahari Producers Association, the honey that we sell to local markets is approved by the Standard Association Zimbabwe (SAZ) with 100 percent pure honey going for $2,50 per bottle,” he added.
This project has transformed lives. Of the 34 members, 20 of them are females.
Farmers are being encouraged to use correct equipment and modern techniques and make it a dependable source of livelihood s and employment as well as taking a market driven approach to increasing the local honey economy.
Honey production is on its own a way of broadening food production for the rural population. It also leads to increased food production in agriculture through pollination of crops. It is a source of income through selling beeswax and honey.
Among other things, bee-keeping has been found to be one of the most environments friendly because it promotes the planting and maintenance of trees — it therefore increases the demand for conservation of remaining woodlands in catchment areas as well as promoting of rural afforestation programmes to provide honeybees with forage.
FACTS AND FIGURES
Zimbabwe has the potential to producing more than 500 000 litres of honey per year. The current honey production levels is estimated at 70 000 from the nearly 16 000 bee farmers across the country.
On average each bee keeper produces five kilograms. This low production figure translates into potential bee keeping business among Zimbabwe farmers.
Forage for Zimbabwe compare very well with that of Australia.
One beehive produces an average of 15kg of honey, approximately 12kg once processed.
Decanted into bottles of 500g this equates to 24 bottles, sold at a market price of $4 a bottle realising an income of $96 from this one beehive.
The input costs are relatively low being less than 50 percent of the income generated, making bee-keeping a thriving business that can contribute invaluably to a household income.
Other benefits of bee-keeping are as follows:
1. The apiculture is cheap. It does not involve mass feeding of bees, because the insects can provide their own food all year round, and there is no over-wintering bee management.
2. All the necessary inputs required for bee-keeping are available locally. Some may be wasted if bees are not kept, e.g. pollen and nectar from flowering plants.
3. Individuals and private organisations such as churches, women’s groups, youth associations and cooperative societies can initiate it with only limited funds.
4. Bee farming is self-reliant. It does not depend on importation of foreign equipment or inputs.
5. In many rural localities, the technology is available.
6. It improves the ecology. It helps plant reproduction. Bees do not over-graze as other animals do.
7. The honeybee produces honey, beeswax and propolis. These are non-perishable commodities that can be marketed locally or abroad.
8. The honeybee provides pollination service. This is an indispensable activity in the food production process.
9. The honeybee is the only insect that can be transported from crop to crop.
10. Honey and beeswax can be produced in semi-arid areas that are unsuitable for any other agricultural use.
11. The bee-keeper does not need to own land in order to keep bees.
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