Championing traceability at the Honey and Beeswax Trade Centre in Ghana

Nestled in the heart of the Kwahu Afram Plains, Bees for Development Ghana’s Honey and Beeswax Trade Centre has become a game-changer for local beekeepers, providing them with a reliable market, fair prices, and essential support services.

Since its establishment in 2022, the centre has not only improved income for beekeepers but has also strengthened the local honey value-chain, ensuring that high-quality Ghanaian honey reaches consumers.

Godwin – the village beekeeping coordinator at Abomasalifo, just recieved his reciept for selling his honeycomb to Bees for Development Ghana.

One of the many success stories is that of Issaka Abubakar, a beekeeper from Apesika near Donkorkrom. For years, Issaka struggled to sell his honey at a fair-price, often forced to accept whatever local traders offered or sold on credit. Transporting his honey to urban markets was expensive and unreliable. But since the establishment of the Honey and Beeswax Trade Centre, Isaaka’s fortunes have changed. Now, he has a consistent and guaranteed market. His honeycombs are purchased at fair-price, eliminating the uncertainty and exploitation he once faced.

Beyond buying honey, Honey and Beeswax Trade Centre provides Issaka and other beekeepers with training on hive making and management and sustainable beekeeping practices. With better techniques and a stable income, Issaka has expanded from 50 to 250 hives.

“Before, I could barely sell enough to take care of my family because I did not have the required beekeeping knowledge and skill. Again, due the level of poverty and ignorance many buyers took advantage of our situation bought our honey any price they so wish leaving us with generational poverty. There was no stable price for our product. Now, the story has changed, there is reliable market and stable price, I am saving money and planning to build a better house because I earn good money from selling honeycombs.”

– Issaka Abubakar

Issaka Abubakar with some newly built hives

Processing honey at the Honey and Beeswax Trade Centre

The Mobile Honey System

A key innovation at the Honey and Beeswax Trade Centre is the Mobile Honey System, a traceability system designed to track every step of the honey and beeswax trade, from the beekeeper to the final buyer. The Mobile Honey System enables beekeepers to register with the Honey and Beeswax Trade Centre, receive empty buckets and sell their honeycombs every season. The Honey and Beeswax Trade Centre will then distribute buckets, record honey extraction and bottling batches, make payment to beekeepers and keep records of honey and beeswax sales.

Once a beekeeper intends to sell their honey to Honey and Beeswax Trade Centre, Honey Collection Coordinator uses KoboCollect to fill out a Beekeeper Registration form. The beekeeper needs to have a valid mobile phone number with an active Mobile Money account. This is required to proceed with registration since the centre only makes payments through Mobile Money accounts. After filling the form, a unique ID code (needed to complete Bucket Release and Honey Buying forms and to label buckets of honey ready for collection) is generated and Beekeeper ID Card is filled and given to the beekeeper.

When honey is ready for harvest, a beekeeper contacts their local Honey Collection Coordinator for buckets, goes to harvest and return buckets with honeycombs to the Honey Collection Coordinator’s warehouse. The Honey Collection Coordinator then takes them through quality control checklist, proceed to weigh and record their weights and label the buckets, and issues a receipt to the beekeeper. Bees for Development Ghana staff go to collect the honeycomb buckets later. Each batch of honey received at the centre is pre-recorded digitally by Honey Collection Coordinators, capturing details such as the beekeeper’s ID, location, quantity supplied, and quality assessment notes.

This system ensures transparency, accountability, and fair pricing, allowing both beekeepers and buyers to trust the integrity of the supply chain. For beekeepers like Issaka, this means their honey is not only sold at a fair price but is also recognised for its quality and origin. “With the Mobile Honey System, I know my honey is accounted for, and I can see the value of my work within a couple of hours after harvest,” Issaka says.

Impact

Since its launch, the Honey and Beeswax Trade Centre has increased incomes for over 200 beekeepers, provided market access and fair prices for honey and beeswax, improved quality control, ensuring Ghanaian honey meets national and international standards, created job opportunities and enhanced traceability and transparency.

The future looks bright. Plans are underway to expand the centre’s capacity, introduce more value-added products, and strengthen market linkages. The success of the centre proves that with the right support, beekeeping can be a powerful tool for economic empowerment. As Hawa Ibrahim puts it, “Beekeeping has changed my life, and the honey centre has made it all possible.”

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Hawa lives in Kojabator – a very remote village across the Volta River on edges of Digya National Park. She is a very experienced beekeeper and has been so successful that her husband stopped hunting to also become beekeeper and help support the family. The whole family now joins the harvest honey and they send their honey across the lake by canoe to sell to Bees for Development Ghana.