Nature Based Beekeeping for Sustainable Livelihoods and Ecosystem Service in Ibnat, Amhara

Blog by Janet Lowore

Posted: 1 November 2023

Ethiopia has favourable conditions for beekeeping and excellent natural resources which underpin honey and beeswax production. Nevertheless, this nature–friendly business is not supporting people’s livelihoods as much as it could and there remains huge potential for more people to benefit more. Bees for Development Ethiopia is working to develop this potential.

A view of Ibnat district.

One of the constraints is the high cost of beehives and associated beekeeping equipment – especially the so-called ‘modern’ hives which are much promoted by government agencies and some NGOs in Ethiopia. These precision-carpentry timber hives are just too expensive for most rural farmers, and this creates a ‘beehive barrier’ to beekeeping adoption. There are other constraints too, such as pesticide use, deforestation causing reduced forage availability, lack of access to credit and a mindset which regards beekeeping as a sideline and not a business. These issues, together with the ‘beehive barrier’ mean that the country, including the Amhara Region, are not earning the full economic and environmental benefits from the beekeeping sector that they could.

Ethiopia is experiencing significant demographic pressure as every year more than 2 million youth enter the labour market, leading to a projected rise in the labour force of more than 30% between 2019 and 2030. Currently, youth unemployment is a critical challenge in Ethiopia and Amhara Region as well. Lack of quality education and training, working capital and land are the major constraints for self-employment.

Conscious of the rural youth and women unemployment challenge and aware of the latent potential in beekeeping, Bees for Development and Bees for Development Ethiopia designed a project called Nature-based Beekeeping to Support Youth Employment in Ibnat district, Amhara Region. The project aims to create employment opportunities and income-earning possibilities for 120 resource poor rural youth and women (60 men and 60 women) in Amstya Kebele of Ibnat district by the end of March 2026. The key project activities include:

Skill development in entrepreneurship
How to get started with Nature Based Beekeeping
Forest restoration, biodiversity conservation and protection of degraded watersheds
Creating access to financial services

Project participants in North Mecha receiving basic beekeeping training.

Project participants in North Mecha learned how to make top-bar hives with locally-available materials.

This new initiative began in May 2023 and much has been achieved in the first six months. 44 women and 44 men without jobs and without land have been trained on the basic concepts of beekeeping including the how to keep bees, how to make a beekeeping business, the link between beekeeping, pollination, and biodiversity conservation, the comparative advantages of the different beekeeping systems and top-bar hive making. Learning how to make their own top-bar hives using locally available, natural materials means that all new beekeepers can gradually scale up their beekeeping enterprise as they wish. They have the means, the skills and the knowledge. Bees multiply by themselves – by swarming or splitting, and how to do this forms part of the training also. All 90 project participants have been given further support such as a basic beekeeping start-up kit.

Project participants in Ibnat (left) and Fogera (middle and right) districts received training in building top-bar hives from locally-available materials.

Setting aside bees and beehives – probably the most important pre-requisite for successful beekeeping is forage availability. It is for this reason that the community have also embarked on ambitious initiative to re-plant and re-forest an area of degraded watershed near the village. In July 191 members of the community planted 21,450 forest tree seedlings in the watershed, having first carried every seedling from the roadside to the planting site. More trees means more bees! More honey means more money!