Help women increase their income with beekeeping

The rainy season stopped beginning of October. During the rainy season, grass grows around the hives. It needs to be cleaned to avoid that wild fire burn them and to avoid easier access to the hives for termites.

Our beekeeping specialist visits all the village to check on this cleaning and to give advice regarding the coming harvest. In general, we see that women are taking good care of their hives, better than men.

The main comments which our specialist brought back were regarding the fact that they want more hives and they would like to see an increase in the price the raw honey is bought.Ther will be an increase to the purchase price of 10%. For additional hives, we are counting on you to help.

The volume of honey bought by our association is increasing each year. To be able to process the raw honey we have a brand new honey processing unit. It has temperature and humidity control. It will also allow to have a better traceability of the honey between the beekeeper and the conditionned pots.

Thank you again for your support.

We have a lot of women who wants additional hives, thanks to communicate this project to your friends and family.

Between June and end of September it is rainy season in Burkina Faso. 

Not many flowers for the bees to bring polen to the hives. 

Some beekeepers are planning to take honey from the beehives end of October. We beleive that it is not good for the swarm which might have difficulties to feed the pups. If it is the case, the swarm will leave the hives to look elsewhere for more food.

End of October, beginning of October, beekeepers do look at their hives, but only to clean the bars if needed and to also cut the grass around the hives. Hives are placed in the bush and they are often bush fires which would destroy the hives if their surrounding is not clean.

The women takes good care of their hives in contrary to the men. They understand that hives will bring income only if well taken care of.

We have still many women in the villages who are asking us for beehives. Thank you to communicate to your network about their need.

ASAP is 25 years in 2022. We have made a short video about our economical projects, one of them being beekeeping. The link for the video is attached to this report.

Thank you,

Links:

• Economical projects of ASAP in Burkina Faso

The honey harvest 2022 took place in April and May. The volume harvested was lower than expected. 

Some of the new hives distributed to the women were installed only at the beginning of the year. Swarms in those hives will be in full production next year.

Another reason is the strong wind at tthe time of flowering of the fruit trees (mango, cashew nuts, shea nuts). Flowers fell and could not be visited by the bees.

The average income per women from the beekeeping activity has increased of 20% despite the lower volume harvested.

The feedback we get from the women is still very positive and they are asking us for more hives. 

This project has many positive points: most of the work for beekeeping is made by the bees, women work is minimum, bees are good for polination, good revenue from the honey sales for the women.

Thank you from your previos help. We count on you to promote this project in your network.

Thanks to a project called PADEL Burkina funded by the World Bank, we have been able to secure 1.200 new beehives, from which 600 are for women. Each participant received 15 new hives.

The funding is part cash from the recipients (15%), credit from a local bank (15%) over 3 years and subsidy (70%) from the World bank.

It has not been easy for the women to gather the needed cash to be part of the project.

The hives have altready been distributed and installed in the different villages in January and begiining of February 2022. About 75% have already been occupied by swarm of bees.

Even so the women who have received those new hives have already been trained, the beekeeping technician has provided them with additional training and supervision.

A large part of the sale of this additional honey will used to pay back the loans. But after those 3 years each woman beekeeperwill have a additioanl revenu of close to 200 US$!!!

The women beekeepers are still asking for more hives and new women want to be part of this project.

Thank you if you can help them.

Thanks to you and other donors we have been able to equip and train 10 women in 2 villages. 

This additional income from the sales of honey produced by the bees is very important for the women. It is mainly used to pay for health care expenses and school fees.

This activity is not hard in comparaison with the other income generating activities made by the women: spending time on the market to sell some items they have produced, transforming shea nuts in shea butter, preparing cashew nuts, .... Bees are doing most of the work.

With the 5 hives each woman will get an income of around US$ 60. May be it does not look very much to you, but this is a lot for the woman.

We have noticed that, like for many things, women are taking better care of their hives than men. They are making sure that the dry grass around them is taken away to avoid that the hive burns via wild fires. They also make sure that termites cannot destroy the wood of the hive. 

There are still many women who have asked us for hives. 

We thank you for your support and hope that you are motivated to communicate around you about this project.

Links:

• Training and equipment for women beekeepers