Growing trees and opportunities in Zimbabwe

In 2024 we began a new project called Bees and Trees in the Makoni district of Zimbabwe. This project aims to support people living in poverty and improve the biodiversity of the area.

The central theme of the Bees and Trees project is to set up a tree nursery with the capacity to grow and plant 20,000 indigenous seedlings every year. Working with 100 women beekeepers, we are recovering the degraded lands where they keep their bees. The aim is to return these areas to their natural states and making them more productive beekeeping areas.

Robert, Chris and the Yorkshire Beekeepers

Our Partner in Zimbabwe is the wonderful Working for Bees led by Dr. Robert Mutisi who has spent years helping to recover the forests of Makoni district and rejuvenate the landscape for beekeepers. The Working for Bees team is comprised of experienced beekeepers and trained foresters who have intricate knowledge of what the bees and the forests require.

We are only five months into the three-year project and already great progress has been made. The new nursery has been competed with seedlings already being grown in it. Next to the nursery we have built a honey processing centre where beekeepers can come to sell their honeycomb without having to travel large distances. The honeycomb is processed and bottled at this location and sold in honey shops throughout Makoni district.

The new nursery site with power and running water

Seedlings at the old nursery site ready to be transferred

The new honey processing centre

One of the biggest challenges these women faced in their beekeeping was access to land they could use. Most of the women do not own any land and finding suitable areas to use is challenging to do on your own. Through the Bees and Trees project this barrier has been removed. Agreements have been reached with private farms, community leaders and local government to give access to land to these beekeepers, allowing them to keep their bees as well as giving them permission to help restore the land and make it more productive for the beekeepers. The beekeepers have already placed their hives in these areas with the majority having been filled with swarms during the spring. The beekeepers are already busy constructing more new hives to be placed in these areas.

The other big challenge for beekeepers in Makoni district is the prevalence of wild fires. During the dry windy months at the end of winter the land becomes a tinderbox with small sparks able to create runaway fires. While these fires can be beneficial to the land, they are devastating to the people and bees. All of the beekeepers are trained in how to manage fires, how to create fire breaks around their apiary sites to protect both their hives and the newly planted seedlings and how to fight fires that are heading towards their homes or apiaries.

Having had a great start to the project and accomplishing many of our goals already we can now focus our attention on the beekeepers and beekeeping. The coming harvests will test our logistics, our new honey processing centre and getting the honey to market. We will also be trialling our honey traceability and quality assurance system in Zimbabwe for the first time. This harvest period will help us find what areas of beekeeping the beekeepers need support in so we can focus our efforts more effectively.

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An occupied log hive in the training apiary