Economic Growth Madagascar Project #24228

Safeguard Bees and Beekeepers in Madagascar

by SEED Madagascar

Project Report | Jan 29, 2018
Improving incomes from beekeeping

By James Harvey | Project Development Officer

The Gender Ballance of Beneficiaries in Farafara

Project Renitantely has been working to develop beekeeping as a sustainable livelihood across six rural communities in Anosy, Madagascar. The project has increased the value of honey and wax from producer to retailer.

Back in June 2017, Project Renitantely staff visited the six target rural communities in the Anosy region spreading the news of agreements with two Malagasy honey and beeswax suppliers Honey & Soga and Natur’L. The deals secure a market for beekeepers and include a minimum price of 7,000 MGA per litre of honey (about £1.50) and 10,000 MGA per kilogram for beeswax (about £2.20). By establishing these deals, the beekeepers have more than doubled the average price (their average earnings?) since just one year . Beekeepers now also have access to a wider market for their products, reducing the reliance on one-off sales to passers-by and local markets.

The team visited each rural community that Project Renitantely works in, where beekeepers were given training on financial management. Juve and Jevago (SEEDS Community Liason Officer and Local Beekeeping Technician) had conversations with the beekeepers, and came up with ideas of how to best use the increased income they are now receiving from honey. They sought to encourage the beekeepers to use these funds to improve their financial security, discussing ways to build their beekeeping businesses. Jevago explained how investment in hive construction using money from honey and beeswax sales will increase their profits by producing more honey from even more hives.

As the majority of Project Renitantely Beekeepers are farmers, Juve and Jevago spoke about the opportunity to reinvest money from beekeeping into more profitable crops such as fruit trees and coffee. The role bees play in pollinating plants can also increase fruit tree yields by up to 80%, making these investments complimentary with beekeeping. Juve and Jevago highlighted that by branching out from traditional crops and honey, the beekeepers would not only receive higher incomes from farming but also improve their food security.

Six months later, we went back to see how the beekeepers were using their increased income to improve their lives. We found that beekeepers had been growing their hive numbers using the money they were receiving from Honey & Soga and Natur’L. We were delighted to see that 34 new hives had been built by the 18 beekeepers who joined us in the first year of the project! Beekeepers are now using their financial resources combined with the skills in hive building to grow their businesses without further help from SEED, securing their source of income for many years to come.

Beekeepers had also been investing their earnings into more profitable ways of making money. A year earlier, most beekeepers farmed rice, or a local root vegetable called cassava. These aren’t nutritious food sources and are often sold for relatively low prices in local markets. By the end of 2017 most beekeepers had began growing crops such as bananas, pineapples and vanilla. With a little help from the bees, the farmers taking part in Project Renitantely had varied their crops and increased their income even further.

We have had some great success over the last year and want to see that continue. By helping schemes such as financial management training, you can help beekeepers in south east Madagascar expand their farming and beekeeping businesses and see the impact of your contribution go even further!

A Community Meeting in Beandry

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Oct 30, 2017
Training the Trainers

By James Harvey | Project Development Intern

Training beekeepers to pass on their knowledge

The SEED office has been a hive of activity over the last few months. We’ve made some incredible progress over the first year of the project with the help of our beneficiaries, partners, the wider community and of course our donors. The 18 first-year beekeepers have improved their beekeeping knowledge and skills, and have seen their profits increase consistently.

However, during the project’s first year the infamous varroa mite spread across all the communities we’re working in. A varroa mite infestation can render a hive totally unproductive, seriously impacting the financial security of the beekeepers who rely on the sale of honey to supplement their income.

Yet thanks to extensive work in Project Year 1, the first-year beekeepers now have the skills and experience to combat infestations swiftly and appropriately. Not only do they have the means to do this in their own hives, but they are well set to share their experiences with beekeepers joining the project in our second year. Furthermore, the first-year beekeepers are now at the forefront of the regional fight against varroa, continuously monitoring its spread, treating infestations and ensuring hives are strong enough to remain productive despite infestations.

Moving into Project Year 2, we have begun training workshops using the “Train the Trainer” approach. We’ve been supporting first-year beekeepers to pass on their new skills and knowledge and train up 30 second-year beekeepers. This approach is vital to the sustainability of the project and empowers our beneficiaries to be agents of change in their own right, as they pass on best beekeeping practices independently from SEED.

A key aim of the knowledge sharing was to enable beekeepers to construct hives that are of high enough quality to house a healthy colony of bees even when infested with varroa. Designed by Jevago, our national Beekeeping Technician, the hives marry modern technology with the specific needs of the local context and only use sustainable and affordable materials. This ensures hives can be easily maintained and replicated, encouraging long-term self-sufficiency, securing a sustainable income for years to come.

There was a buzz throughout the two days of training with first year beekeepers passing on what they had learnt over the last year with brilliant results. Jevago outlined to the group how to construct a hive and instructed the first-year beekeepers to partner with those new to the project. The sustainably sourced materials provided by SEED for training purposes were distributed to the workshop, as the first-year beekeepers took the new beekeepers through the construction step by step. Each hive constructed by the new beekeepers was sealed from pests and approved by Jevago. The knowledge of the first-year beekeepers was crucial for the new beekeepers members, who left the training session with hives ready to be populated!

Over the course of Project Year 1, everyone involved has done fantastic work in supporting rural communities and vulnerable groups to improve their income through beekeeping. With your backing we can set the beekeepers up to build on the successes of the last year long after SEED’s involvement, keeping the honey flowing for years to come!

Jevago demonstrates hive construction

A beekeeper assembles a new hive

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Aug 9, 2017
A day in the life of our beekeeping team

By Callum Sheehan | Project Development Officer

The team collect vital hive data from beekeepers

As Project Renitantely nears the end of its first year, we wanted to give an insight into the fantastic work that is done by our beekeeping team day to day. Many of the villages in which Renitantely works are extremely remote, often requiring extended travel for bee specialists Juvenal and Jevago. Last month they travelled to all of the project villages in order to see how they’re getting on. During their time in the bush, Juvenal and Jevago were able to deliver modern beekeeping veils, in order that the beekeepers can harvest honey and attend to their hives confidently and safely. During meetings with the beekeepers and wider community, they were also able to pass on the exciting news about a new deal with a local honey distributor. The hard work from the whole team in establishing this deal means that our beekeepers are able to sell their honey at an equitable price, ensuring a reliable route to market for their produce, one of the main goals of Renitantely!

The team were also able to conduct the monthly monitoring and training required to ensure the hives are on track and producing lots of lovely honey. They sat down one-on-one with the primary beekeepers to discuss various topics, including how frequently they were harvesting honey, and the yields that they were collecting. The data gathered is vital for understanding how the project is progressing and if there are any issues that need addressing in order to keep developing beekeeping as a source of income for our beekeepers.

Part of this month’s training included a session on natural varroa remedies. The infamous varroa is a parasitic mite that lives on the backs of honeybees. While tiny to our eyes, it is the equivalent of us walking round with a lemur on our backs! The mites also spread diseases to honeybee colonies and pose a threat to bees worldwide. Learning to control levels of varroa is therefore a hugely important aspect of Project Renitantely, and is an essential part of cultivating healthy, happy hives. The varroa mite is often treated with harsh chemical compounds, which can be effective in reducing varroa populations, but also pose great threats to the surrounding environment. However our beekeeping specialists recently found a natural remedy readily available right here in Fort Dauphin! Simply leave the packet inside the hives and let the fumes from the natural ingredients drive off the varroa.

So it was off to the bush to trial the new treatment in hives across the different villages, testing the effectiveness before rolling them out on a wider scale. If the results from the trial show it to be effective, it could mean a natural remedy, easily accessible to our beekeepers to help in the fight against the varroa mite.

As Project Renitantely approaches the end of its first year, it does so with a sense of pride about what has been achieved so far, and a buzz of excitement about what is still to come!

Signing off on a better deal for our beekeepers!

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