Bees for Development

Good Gifts

Bees for Development Trust has been selected to feature in the Good Gifts Catalogue. You can buy a hive of bees and other bee gifts. The price of the gift is pased on to Bees for Development Trust in full. So, it is an excellent way of solving your gift problems, and supporting our work. 

 

 

The Good Gifts you can buy include:

  • a hive of bees: £25
  • two hives plus tools and training: £65
  • establish a beekeeping co-operative: £250

The Good Gifts Catalogue has a wedding list and wish list service, particularly suitable for special occasions like anniversaries or significant birthdays. You can use Good Gifts as In Memoriam presents and keep a few in stock for unexpected birthdays or Christmas gifts.


To buy a Good Gift please go to the Good Gifts Catalogue. The Good Gifts Catalogue is an initiative of the Charities Advisory Trust.

 

How Good Gifts help

 

The delivery of Good Gifts in India  

Keystone Foundation based in the Nilgiri Hills, South India, is a BfD partner organisation with beliefs and principles firmly rooted in the concept of eco-development. Their beekeeping programme meets the needs of the local people by helping them earn income and respect the environment at the same time. With enterprise and marketing expertise provided by Keystone, hundreds of families are able to sell honey in order to earn enough income to meet their household needs. This would not be possible without the help provided by Good Gifts who are supporting this process with beehives and training.

 

Members of the local community in the Nilgiri Hills receive box hives paid for by Good Gifts. These hives boost their beekeeping businesses and increase their income. Income earned in one year from a household beekeeping enterprise can support a family's needs for food and medicines.

 

Keystone also works to facilitate the establishment of marketing groups, which is the key to gaining access to markets on a fair and equitable basis.

  

 

 

 

Bantan is a beekeeper in Siriyur area of the Nilgiris district. He has been involved in the beekeeping project for the last two years. This year he started harvesting and selling honey from hives given to him by Good Gifts.

 

This has encouraged him to now actively engage in promoting beekeeping with other villagers. He has received training with Keystone staff on various topics and holds small training programmes in his own village. The species of bees that he keeps are Apis cerana.

The delivery of Good Gifts in Tanzania

Njiro Wildlife Research Centre (NWRC) is our partner organisation in Tanzania and is dedicated to delivering sustainable development solutions using bees. Part of NWRC's programme includes the delivery of training and appropriate beekeeping equipment to local communities. Good Gifts received by NWRC are passed on to members of the community who are most in need and who are part of a programme of support provided by NWRC. The gift of one hive can help build a beekeeping business and lead to increased incomes for some of Tanzania’s poorest families.

 

© Robert Spencer

Njiro Wildlife Research Centre has an established training apiary where recipients of hives can learn beekeeping skills over the full cycle of a beekeeping year.

© Robert Spencer

Njiro Wildlife Research Centre has a long experience of working with different hive designs and their carpenters produce top quality workmanship.

 

The delivery of Good Gifts in Cameroon

Bushmeat is an African term for the meat of wild animals. Hunting for bushmeat generates vital income for rural communities in west and central Africa, but the trade in bushmeat is unsustainable. Species extinctions, food shortages and additional financial difficulties in forest-adjacent communities are almost inevitable outcomes of this trade. A BfD partner organisation in Cameroon called the Lebialem Hunters' Beekeeping Initiative aims to reduce financial dependence on bushmeat and the volume of species harvested by providing hunters with an alternative income through beekeeping. Good Gifts funding has enabled the project to train more than 120 hunters in beekeeping and purchase the materials and equipment necessary for the trainees to construct their own top-bar hives. Hunters' Beekeeping Common Initiative Groups have been established in seven villages to encourage the newly trained beekeepers to work together. By working as a group they can advise one another, ensure their honey is processed to a high standard and gain a better price for their products by benefiting from economies of scale.

 

Hunters in Lebialem with their top-bar hives © Juliet Wright

 

Recipients of Good Bee Gifts are never disappointed.