Beekeeping for landless young people

Worknesh Abe is a 32-year-old beekeeper in Amhara, Ethiopia. She and her husband have no land for crop cultivation and must find ways other than farming to survive and support their family. “We send our children to school, pay school fees and lead our life with beekeeping. If we did not have bees, I would have sent my son to work as a shepherd, not to school”.

Worknesh is one of a growing number of landless people who risk falling into chronic poverty in Amhara, a vast rural region in the north of Ethiopia where people’s livelihoods are directly linked to access to land. Yet here agricultural land is becoming scarce and fragmented. Almost all arable land was allocated to families during the land certification process of the 1990 and early 2000s. Young people who were not old enough to get land at that time are unable to acquire it and a whole generation of rural landless people are growing up depending on casual labouring, charcoal selling and share-cropping to survive. The rural landless spend much of their income to rent land and buy food. Food insecurity amongst this group of people is a growing problem. As explained by 20-year-old Fekadu Mengaw, “I have no mother and father and no land for crop cultivation. I have no opportunity of getting money from any other activity”. One study showed that rural landless households face food shortages during the ‘hunger months’ each year. Poverty, hunger, exploitation, insecurity and migration are the major consequences of landlessness.

Bees for Development Ethiopia has been working to help landless youth find a different future – with the help of bees. Beekeeping is suitable for landless or land-limited people because the beekeeper need only find a site to place a few bee colonies near the house, whilst the bees forage and feed on land belonging to other people. “The thing that inspired and makes us happy to continue on the sector is, there is no space limitation to expand our beekeeping and the honey market price is increasing”, notes 26 year-old Emeye Melaku. Bees for Development Ethiopia is enabling landless people to build stronger, more resilient and economically successful livelihoods through beekeeping.

In a recent pioneering initiative Bees for Development Ethiopia selected 48 people who had already started beekeeping and had shown passion and determination to develop to a more advanced level. These 48 men and women were given the role of Lead Beekeepers, on the understanding that they would agree to mentor two new beekeepers each, and help them get started with beekeeping. The Lead Beekeepers, or mentors, provided training to the new beekeepers, and showed them how to make beehives and set-up simple, productive apiaries at their homes. The Lead Beekeepers also helped the beginners get bees – either by showing them how to catch swarms or by giving them bees from their own apiaries. The Lead Beekeepers received a remuneration package, comprising access to advanced beekeeping training delivered by Bees for Development Ethiopia, and tools and equipment, to compensate them for bees provided and for the time they invested. Half of the 96 new beekeepers were women, and ten of the Lead Beekeepers were women. 20 year-old Atakilt Desalegn was assisted by her mentor Ayana, “He showed me everything about beekeeping, how to make hives, take care of the bees and harvest honey. I know he trained me well because I can keep bees by myself now – although sometimes I may ask him for a little assistance. The one thing I worry about is the application of chemical pesticides and this is putting bees in danger”.

Together with their mentors, the beginners – called ‘Followers’ – went through two years of the full beekeeping cycle, taking care of their bees, expanding their apiaries and selling their valuable honey in the Bahir Dar market. These new beekeepers, on average, were selling £100 worth of honey by the end of two years, representing an increase of between 50% and 70% of annual cash income, compared to what they were earning before they started beekeeping. The Lead Beekeepers also achieved increases in honey sales – but lower relative increases compared to the beginners – partly because they were starting from a higher baseline. Whilst beekeeping is not a land-demanding activity, space does eventually become a limiting factor and the Lead Beekeepers were finding it hard to increase their apiary sizes beyond 15-20 colonies – for lack of additional space. Thereafter people must diversify their sources of income from beekeeping, to earn more, and we approached this challenge by encouraging the Lead Beekeepers to think of other ways they could benefit from beekeeping – in addition to producing honey. The diversification strategies included making and selling face veils and top-bars, refining honey and beeswax and colony multiplication and sale. This latter source of income, colony selling, proved the most successful, and by the end of the project many of the Lead Beekeepers were earning as much money from selling bees to other farmers, as they were from selling honey. One of those who diversified into selling colonies is 27-year old Anduamlak Adane “This year I have sold 20 bee colonies to the beekeepers found in our kebele and earned 20,000.00 birr which I couldn’t found if I was doing other farming activity. Therefore the income earned from beekeeping makes me approach beekeeping full of love”.

Beneficiaries reported that they used their beekeeping income to buy more bees, buy food, clothes, fertiliser, livestock and improving their houses. All beneficiaries stated that they had learned valuable skills and knowledge in beekeeping and would continue beekeeping even after the end of the project. Some of the new beekeepers felt they still had some gaps in their knowledge and expertise but they knew they could ask their mentors, the Lead Beekeepers, for help, as needed, even after the end of the project.

Fentahun Abe (right) sums up why he has chosen to invest more effort in beekeeping, “Beekeeping is the best of agricultural activities. Honey bees can be managed in smaller plots of land compared to other farming activities. They do not need much of your time, daily food, water and management. It is not tiresome. It is very interesting! For example, I sometimes sell honey from a single hive and get 3000 birr [£60]. Yet the bees have taken little of my time – I sometimes remove spider webs, ants, and things like that. They don’t need medications like large animals, although perhaps water may be required at dry season. Worknesh Abe, however, advises against taking your bees for granted and tells her followers they must visit their bees every day to check everything is well, saying, “Bees need a ‘good morning’ and a ‘good afternoon’ greeting every day”.