Today, April 22, we celebrate Earth Day. The 2019 Earth Day campaign centers on the protection of animal species. The Earth Day network notes that “All living things have an intrinsic value, and each plays a unique role in the complex web of life. We must work together to protect endangered and threatened species.”

Among those species are bees.

Bees provide economic opportunity for farmers. Beekeepers can sell the honey and use the beeswax to make value-added products like candles or lotions. Bees are not only important for their honey production, but they are also critical for the environment in their role as pollinators. Farmers benefit from bees’ pollinator role in the ecosystem, as bees pollinate 70% of crop species that feed 90% of the world’s population.[1] Many plants—including food crops—would not survive without bees’ pollination role in the ecosystem[2].  Bees are vital for healthy agricultural systems.

Verifying final honey product

Winrock, via the USAID Farmer-to-Farmer (F2F) program, has fielded over 120 volunteer assignments to support beekeepers in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. As Winrock dives into the implementation of the West Africa Farmer-to-Farmer program, below are some recent impacts of beekeeping assignments in the region:

• In Guinea, F2F trained the Beekeepers Federation’s trainers, who replicated the training to 32 groups (827 producers). Techniques widely shared include natural methods to keep ants away, making beeswax products and better hive management. With these technical improvements, in addition to organizational development support, the Federation was able to negotiate a new contract with pre-payment. Sales doubled in just two years.
• In Senegal, the International Center for Practical Training in Mboro-Beekeeping Division replicated training in improved beekeeping among 8,427 beekeeping community members. The training included specific modules on parasite and disease management and harvesting and processing of by-products. The Center’s successful application of improved beekeeping has led to a partnership with Grande Cote Operation-Zircon, whereby the Center will train GCOZ’s staff.
• F2F trained the Honey Producers Microenterprise of Ley Miro, Guinea, in topics related to governance and technical subjects related to the quality of honey and production of byproducts from beeswax. The organization was able to roll out five new or improved products, including soaps and clean honey, to the market. The members were also able to replicate the training to two additional organizations.

Girls testing lotion made during training

All these activities support bee populations and amplify the importance of a bee’s role in our ecosystem.

As a volunteer, what can you do to support bee populations and Mother Earth? Whether you are providing technical assistance to farmers in the field or designing an agricultural curriculum with a university, discourage the use of pesticides. The widespread use of pesticides destroys bee habitats and kills bees. Instead, encourage natural integrated pest management practice and multi-cropping practices that diversify and increase bee habitats.

Making Soap with Honey

[1] http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140502-what-if-bees-went-extinct

[2] National Resources Defense Council. “Bee Facts.” 2011.

Bangladesh Field Team reflects on the successful impacts F2F has had on the Bangladesh Association for Social Advancement (BASA).  

“F2F assistance helped with specialty knowledge related to beekeeping including honey, pollen and royal jelly production. It has been immensely beneficial. The benefits continue as the trained people have trained others.” – AKM Shirajul Islam, Executive Director

Pollen production can be an excellent opportunity for the beekeepers of Bangladesh to maximize profitability and obtain sustainability, however, given the lack of knowledge and skills to produce high-value bee-products including, high-quality honey, the potential benefit of beekeeping as a business has not realized.  

Currently, Bangladeshi beekeepers are extracting only honey and wax from their beehives, whereas they can easily collect other high-value bee-products, like pollen. Pollen is an important high-value bee-product for its nutritional and medicinal benefit to human health and more importantly, for its use as nutritious bee feed. Bees feed on honey and pollen during the flowering seasons of nectar-bearing plants, usually eight months out of the year in Bangladesh.  The beekeepers suffer high costs to feed their bees in the flowering offseason. In that period, they use sugar syrup and pollen substitute, which do not provide good nourishment for their bees. As a result, the beekeepers lose a significant number of bees, ultimately affecting their honey production and profitability. When the bees collect nectar from flowers, they bring along pollen trapped on their legs which they use inside the hives to make their food. Pollen can be collected easily using traps at the entrance of beehives. Collection of these pollen grains using a pollen trap can help the beekeepers gain additional benefits from beekeeping which will lead to better sustainability for their business. Beekeepers can use a portion of the collected pollen to feed the bees in the offseason and sell the rest to earn additional income.   

Having worked a long time to improve beekeeping and organize beekeepers in order to develop a strong apiary industry, the NGO, Bangladesh Association for Social Advancement (BASA), realized the potential of collecting and processing pollen to help strengthen beekeeping as a profitable business. As part of this initiative, and with the funding support of Palli Karma-Sahayak Foundation (PKSF), BASA worked with the Farmer-to-Farmer (F2F) volunteer, Michael Embrey, to train 64 BASA staff and their beneficiary beekeepers on the potential, collection and processing of pollen, making pollen traps, and the different uses of pollen. The volunteer brought three different types of pollen trap as samples from the US for demonstration and helped design and build pollen traps applicable for local beehives utilizing local materials and expertise. During the training, the volunteer demonstrated how to collect pollen using a locally made trap and how to process the collected pollen. In addition, the volunteer conducted training on the improved beekeeping, marketing and partnership development for enhancing beekeeping in Bangladesh. 

After the F2F training, BASA built 118 pollen traps and distributed them among 118 beekeepers. BASA staff helped the beekeepers install the traps in their beehives and demonstrated the techniques of collection and processing pollen using F2F training information. Because of the endeavor, the beekeepers were able to collect 98 Kg pollen in the recent mustard flowering season from December 2017 to February 2018. The production level ranged from 0.65 to 1.5 Kg per beekeeper. This type of pollen production success is a first for the beekeepers in Bangladesh.  With this success, the beekeepers are relieved from having to pay to feed their bees in the offseason and they are planning to expand their facility of pollen collection as well as explore access to local and export markets with the assistance of BASA in the next season. Mr. Jagadish Chandra Saha, an experienced Beekeeping Expert in the country and Consultant at BASA stated, “Based on F2F training we provided pollen traps and technical support to our beneficiary beekeepers and have had tremendous results from them in producing pollen. We hope to disseminate these techniques to a wider section of beekeepers. We’re confident that this will add a new dimension and help flourish the beekeeping industry in Bangladesh.”  

According to Mr. Rezaul Karim, Value Chain Facilitator, BASA, the beekeepers who observed or heard about this success are very excited to install pollen traps in their beehives to collect pollen. BASA is planning to disseminate F2F volunteer techniques of pollen production to their 314 beneficiary beekeepers with special emphasis on young men and women in collaboration with PKSF, two other beekeepers welfare associations: Bangladesh Beekeepers Foundation and Mouchashi Kallyan Samities. Meanwhile, the Government of Bangladesh has emphasized to the Department of Agriculture Extension the desire to introduce beekeeping all over the country in order to increase oilseed production through bee pollination, as well as increase honey production to help increase food security. In this current context, the noble initiative of BASA is expected to expand beekeeping as a profitable and sustainable business and help create entrepreneurial opportunities for young, unemployed, rural men and women.  

Osun State in southwestern Nigeria is lush, its rolling hills clad in low forests, cacao stands, and fields of corn, yam, pepper and cassava. Oil palms dot the landscape, and the bright reddish oil extracted from the palm’s pulp can be bought at any roadside stand. It also happens to be a great area for raising bees, which is why I was there.

For 10 days in late June, I worked with faculty from Osun State Polytechnic (OSPoly) and community members from the nearby town of Iree as a volunteer for the USAID John Ogonowski and Doug Bereuter Farmer-to-Farmer Program. OSPoly is in the opening stages of establishing an agriculture program, so I came to teach a short beekeeping course, establish an apiary and help the staff develop a curriculum.

We learned about bee behavior and hive management, practiced rendering wax and making secondary hive products, built a smoker, stalked bees and talked honey.

It was wonderful to share my passion for bees and beekeeping with such an interested and excited group of staff, students and community members. And the assistance and friendship of Winrock International’s Nigeria staff made the trip a true pleasure. I look forward to keeping in touch with the staff at OSPoly as they continue to get their beekeeping program up and running.

Our May volunteer of the month is apiculture expert Ed Levi, who has volunteered with Winrock’s Farmer-to-Farmer (F2F) program since 1995. Twenty years and 10 countries later, Ed continues to show his dedication to helping those in need around the world.

Over the years, Ed has introduced improved beekeeping technologies and techniques to farmers in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Ethiopia, and Guinea; provided training on honey processing and marketing in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan; and demonstrated ways to produce new products from hive by-products in Nigeria, in addition to numerous other volunteer assignments.

Ed (right) and trainees in Nigeria

Ed is sure that he gains just as much from each assignment as his beneficiaries do. “It has been fun learning how to adapt to different challenges. Even though I am going over there to teach, I always learn,” he asserts.

On his latest volunteer assignment in Senegal, Ed conducted training of trainers on all aspects of beekeeping, to help the International Center for Practical Training improve their support to beekeepers. Ed describes this volunteer trip as being particularly memorable, in part because he was able to lodge at a remote school/compound, where he witnessed a strong sense of community and commitment to collective action. “It was really, really special; it was a neat place,” he explains. “There were hugs and tears when I left.”

Inspecting beekeeping practices in Senegal

Ed is humble about his contributions, noting, “When I started beekeeping I never thought it would lead to one of my passions, travelling. I feel so very privileged to do what I do, meet the people that I meet, and hopefully make a difference. As a volunteer with Farmer-to-Farmer, the most important thing for me is to hear that my hosts have made progress.”

He has, indeed, made a difference. In Nepal, for example, individuals that attended Ed’s training more than a decade ago still speak fondly of their training. One beekeeper recently noted,

“The training opened my eyes to beekeeping as a business, and as a result, I increased my business from two to 60 hives. Everything I have gained in my honeybee business is due to the contributions of Ed Levi!“

Another former trainee asserts, “Now we are producing antibiotic free honey, and all the credit goes to volunteer Ed Levi’s training!”

In his 20 years of volunteer service with Winrock and Farmer-to-Farmer, Ed has directly assisted over 1,400 individuals. Not many people can say they have done that!

[Thank you, Ed, for all that you have done for your Farmer-to-Farmer hosts and beneficiaries!]

Thank you to volunteer Stephen Peterson for his blog entry from his recent assignment in Ethiopia! (Read below):

August 2013

Ethiopia, and specifically the Kaffe district in the SW, is the genetic home to Coffea arabica colloquially known, at home, as a “cuppa joe”. I learned a bit about beekeeping (local bees are VERY aggressive), a little about coffee and saw some incredible scenery. It’s the rainy season now and, other than lots of mud, no problem at all – except there are few flowers and honey stores are low; both of which increase the aggressive nature of the bees. I brought a full bee suit but nobody here had one and nobody would, or let me, open a beehive. Regardless I got stung twice, much to the amusement of the flock of kids that accompanied us to the apiary, once on the end of the nose (instant sinus decongestion) and another atop the head.

I gave five lecture/seminars while in Bonga, based on my observations on their weak points or, on what they mentioned the day before they’d like to learn more about. I had 47 participants (4 women 43 men).

I asked the group, “How many of you have actually seen bee eggs?” Two hands were raised; so bee biology was put on the list of subjects to be covered. This is where the coffee comes in –

The local “forest coffee” is picked wild in the surrounding forest off of trees; yes, I too was surprised, but they grow 4-5 meters tall (12-15 feet for you non-metrics). It is sun dried; then the pulp washed off leaving “green” beans which store longer than roasted. The coffee is roasted as demand warrants; culture dictates three demitasse-sized cups should be taken – believe me each one is the caffeine equivalent of a triple espresso.

Making coffee, the traditional way

[Later], as we meandered along the well-paved road SW to Jimma and Bonga, Endeshaw, my excellent colleague and translator was able to answer every question I had (and I was full of them).“What are they selling?”, I asked as we passed young boys along the road holding the arms apart as if to indicate, “I caught a fish this big!” “Charcoal”, Endeshaw replied, I guess just the gesture was better than holding up a bunch of carbonized sticks. Almost everybody (91 million people) cooks on wood! We did see wildlife– some roadside Olive baboons (Papio anubus – named after the Egyptian god Anubis) who looked like furry gangsters, some beautiful white-tail and mane colobus monkeys (Colobus guereza) who seem to be well adapted to disturbed environments, and the real scary looking hyenas (Crocuta crocuta). Evidently they are not commonly seen in daylight hours as it was the first time any of the 3 locals with me had seen them during daylight. They quickly scattered back into the bushes when we stopped for photos.

In Ethiopia, with about a 2.5% population growth annually, there is tremendous pressure on the remaining virgin forests (I had a mental picture of Ethiopia as a marginal desert environment – wrong!) through clearing for agriculture, charcoal production and logging – in about that order. I have a mantra I picked up in Cambodia: “No forest no bees (a concept, which everybody seems to grasp)” but the corollary “No bees no forest” is a bit more difficult to swallow (even educated Westerners struggle with the concept of bees beneficiating the environment). Bees, being a keystone species, are vital to the health of the forest; Ethiopia claims to have on the order of 5.15 million colonies wild and “managed,” and over one million households have bees.

Fellow Farmer-to-Farmer volunteer Jerry and I went out to a cultural restaurant for his last night here and shared a bottle of tej [local honey wine]. My souvenir tej is coming home in a recycled water bottle- if it makes it in the luggage. Also on the souvenir list is 2 kg of local honey (finely crystallized), some beeswax, 2 kg of forest coffee and a cool knit cap for my granddaughter.