Safeguard Bees and Beekeepers in Madagascar

In early June, the Anosy Ministry of Agriculture held the inaugural rural livelihoods fair, celebrating a range of local businesses, government initiatives and charities that work to improve the financial stability of rural communities in the region. This gave the Renitantely team the chance to create a buzz around the activities we’ve been doing with beekeepers over the last two years!

The fair was held in the town square over four days, with more than 30 different organisations hosting stalls exhibiting their work. SEED Madagascar was invited to attend as part of the Platform de Miel Anosy; a collaborative network of private sector and civil society organisations with the shared aim of utilising beekeeping as a method of generating money in remote communities. We have been working with the Platform to improve beekeepers’ links to formal markets that give them a fair price for their honey and beeswax, as well as developing a regional strategy for combating varroa – a parasitic mite that causes the collapse of bee colonies across the globe!

To celebrate the brilliant progress that so many beekeepers have made whilst being part of Project Renitantely, SEED arranged for exceptional beekeepers from each community to represent the project at the fair. The beekeepers who had showed continuous motivation and had actively improved their knowledge and beekeeping skills while involved in Project Renitantely, were selected. By coming to the fair, these beekeepers gained the experience of selling their honey and beeswax directly to a formal market while also getting the chance to speak with other Platform de Miel Anosy members about the opportunities and pitfalls of beekeeping in the region.

Project Renitantely shared a stall with another of SEED’s sustainable livelihood projects – Stitch Sainte Luce. Stitch operates in one of the same communities as Project Renitantely training women in producing and selling high quality embroidery products while teaching them to independently run the business. The beekeepers and Stitch women ran the stall for the duration of the event, collaborating by selling one another’s products and showcasing their respective projects. To decorate the stall the beekeepers spent the day before the fairs opening displaying the Visual Learning Aids used in project trainings and the beekeeping equipment they had previously invested in.

The fair kicked off with all 32 organisations marching in a parade through the centre of town with colourful costumes, banners and plenty of dancing! Once everyone had arrived at the town square a speech by Anosy Director of Agriculture officially opened the four-day event. During the fair, representatives from each organisation delivered a speech showcasing their work. The beekeepers nominated the President of the Fara Fara Vatambe beekeeping association to speak on behalf of Project Renitantely, which he delivered alongside the President of the Stitch cooperative and the Community Liaison Officer. For both the beekeepers and Stitch women, this was the first experience of presenting their projects, giving them the chance to speak in front of representatives from the European Union, national and regional ministries.

At the Anosy rural livelihoods fair, Project Renitantely beekeepers celebrated their work over the last two years while getting an insight into formal markets for their honey and beeswax. Find out more about how SEED are working with rural beekeepers to increase their income and improve their financial security here!

Project staff have been working with beekeepers in rural Anosy, southeast Madagascar, to build their enterprises resilience to pests and diseases. This has been particularly important in recent years with the arrival of varroa to the region in 2016. Varroa is a parasitic mite that attaches itself to bees, draining them of energy and reducing the amount of pollen they are able to collect. Present in every country in the world, with the expectation of Australia, varroa is widely regarded as one of the main causes for bee colonies to collapse.

The beekeepers of Project Renitantely know about varroa all too well and between June and November 2017 saw 84% of their colonies collapsing, with a strong link found to varroa infestations within their beehives. The effects of varroa are incredibly severe and seriously impact beekeepers ability to generate income from the sale of honey and wax.

SEED has been addressing varroa since its first arrival in Anosy, with a previous project building beekeepers knowledge of prevention and treatments while creating healthy bee colonies that are equipped to cope with varroa. Through a rigorous training programme, Project Renitantely is making sure that the knowledge of varroa treatment stays within communities long after the end of SEED’s involvement.

However, to really protect beekeepers’ livelihoods from further losses to varroa and other pests, the team realised that that beekeepers needed support to repopulate their empty hives…

Juve, our Community Liason Officer, and Jevago, our Local Beekeeping Technician, quickly came up with the idea of setting up community Bee Banks. The plan is that these Bee Banks can provide beekeepers with access to healthy colonies with which beekeepers can begin to repopulate their lost hives. Bee Banks have now been constructed in three central communities, with Juve and Jevago working together with beekeepers to populate and maintain the hives.

Having a bank of healthy bee colonies in remote communities is massively strengthening beekeepers’ businesses in the face of varroa. In the remote communities that Project Renitantely works, beekeepers would otherwise have to rely on collecting colonies from the forest to repopulate their hives. Now, thanks to the ingenuity of Juve and Jevago, they have access to healthy bees!