Rwanda
Rwandan community starts beekeeping!
In 2018 I talked to a Pastor from a poor community in Rwanda
– near Kigali, the capital – and he found that Claude from his community was
keen to learn bee-farming.
Soon after this we sent our first donation with which they were able to
purchase some equipment and 8 hives – as you can see in the pictures below.
You will notice that there is one so-called “traditional
hive” among the so-called “modern hives.”
Claude made a lot of progress learning beekeeping and by the
time I arrived to visit the project, some 18 months later they had literally
branched out into placing many traditional hives in tress.
Unfortunately, the 8 hives you see in the picture were burnt out by some local malcontents.
It appears that the safest and indeed best and most sustainable way to keep the bees is in the traditional hives.
By the time of my visit (my first time outside of Europe!), in December 2019, they had 19 traditional hives and 9 modern hives (well hidden in a eucalyptus grove – see video).
I helped them make some traditional hives and, quite
literally, got my hands dirty.
We formed a team and had Business Planning Meetings. As well chairing the meetings, visiting the bees, mapping out the area for their detailed records, watching as of their skilled guys got hives up into the trees and collecting small trees for planting, I was able to encourage a teenager to come on board. It was an exhilarating experience. See vlogs and video / photo archives for more
1 Year Later
Encouragingly, less than a year after my visit I received a report that they had 85 hives with bees and 57 without, which is normal as the bees regularly abscond, only to enter another nearby hive, in that part of the world.
At that point they had stocks of 120 Kg honey the profits from which represented 7 months’ average Rwandan wage! Not bad but much less than we had forecast. However, they had certainly exceeded the target of 100 hives that we had set. They are pressing on to their 5 year target of having 500 hives, I believe.