Welcome to our 2018 Annual Report Thank you for your interest in Bees Abroad. We hope you enjoy reading about our project work and find this publication engaging and informative. We strive to improve the way we communicate with our supporters; we would value your feedback about this publication.
Our Mission Our focus is the relief of poverty through beekeeping. We promote locally appropriate methods to generate income, enhance livelihoods, alleviate poverty and improve the quality of life of our project participants.
Our team of volunteer experienced beekeepers develop and support local partners who deliver our projects in the most deprived rural communities worldwide.
Bees Abroad Projects Win 1st, 2nd and 3rd Prizes in New Charity Class at National Honey Show
Bees Abroad are world leaders in the practical relief of poverty through beekeeping. As soon as we knew the National Honey Show was to have a new class for charities working with beekeepers we realised we could showcase the gorgeous honey produced by the beekeepers we are working with overseas. Honey from twelve projects entered for judging at the UK National Honey Show in October 2018. The winning entry was from Liberia, where we partnered with the Universal Outreach Foundation which trains communities as beekeepers “so more Liberians can have the dignity that comes with being able to provide for their families’ needs.” The 2nd prize was awarded to our entry from Kenya. This UK government funded project given an A+ evaluation by the UK assessors benefits over 1200 households. The 3rd prize was won by the entry from our local project delivery partner in Western Uganda the Liberty Development Foundation. The lead judge explained that the criteria used were aroma, taste and viscosity; he was delighted that there were so many excellent entries. Richard Ridler, Bees Abroad Chairman, said ‘these wins are a huge endorsement for the very practical help our volunteers give to people in low-income communities around the world to learn hands-on beekeeping, high-quality honey production and business skills to generate income and improve their lives’. Bees Abroad are world leaders in the practical relief of poverty through beekeeping.
INTO Giving Funds Bees Abroad’s School Beekeeping Project in Nigeria
INTO Giving is an exemplary charity that supports humanitarian and community projects in the developing world. Charities/projects are nominated by INTO employees who also raise the funds used to support development activities. Each year the charity selects 1-2 new charities/projects for support. Nominations are assessed by the INTO Board, who act as administrators / trustees.
Whether it’s girls’ or refugee education (two of the big and important themes that emerged in 2016), or helping to build or refurbish a school, support teachers, or other educational projects INTO Giving is active in Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas. With
projects in Bangladesh, Ghana, Malawi, Thailand and Lebanon support from INTO Giving improves the lives of disadvantaged and impoverished children and their teachers. In the last year, INTO Giving donated more than £75,000 to education projects in the developing world – TWICE AS MUCH AS IN 2016!
Okun Owa’s Beekeeping trainees
In 2017, 28 projects were nominated by staff for consideration, including Bees Abroad’s Multilateral Grammar School Beekeeping Project. 6 projects were selected for support and we were delighted to learn that the Bees Abroad proposal came out joint top in the assessment process.
Over three years, Bees Abroad will train two beekeeping trainers within the rural government run school. The trainers will establish a school beekeeping club to include beekeeping as a topic in the curriculum, in addition to established agriculture and animal husbandry courses. The teaching apiary with 30 top bar hives will be established in the first year (2018). The project will also train 10 pupils as beekeepers, who will build their own hives (two hives per trainee), make their own bee suits and manage their colonies on their own account. Trainees come from farming families on very low incomes which in turn leads to poor nutrition, high mortality at all ages and inadequate access to healthcare and education.
INTO Giving is funding 100% of the project cost. Funding will cover the cost of delivery of beekeeping training, including training the teachers, materials needed for hive construction and personal protection equipment, provision of instructional training materials and manuals, costs of apiary establishment and harvesting equipment.
From 2020 onwards, the sale of honey and secondary products should provide an income stream for the school beekeeping club to be self-sufficient.
At the school selection day, the need for income generation was evidenced when 85 students from the junior and senior school turned up to bid for ten trainee places!
Some had previous exposure to the craft, for example through honey hunting. All were aged between 14 and 18 years old. They showed great enthusiasm which is important as training will have to fit around school and family responsibilities.
Over 98% of these students contributed financially to their households. Some run their own skilled micro enterprises such as tailoring or carpentry; others have various paid seasonal farm jobs like peeling of cassava. In the longer term, the aims and objectives of the project will go a long way to extending the capacity of trainees to contribute to financial obligations at home.
Typically, good beekeepers are naturally observant and inquisitive. We look for trainees who are aware of the environment and interested in trees, insects and plants. Those who already have some work ethic are more likely to be systematic in checking hives regularly and notice details that provide clues to what is happening in their hives, to their bees and to the local conditions. They are also more likely to be innovative – natural researchers experimenting with their own ideas and testing out ideas they have learnt or new solutions to problems.
The Bees Abroad intervention is not based on handouts – trainees will be required to build or make inputs from scratch as appropriate, from local resources, to they experience the options for differentiating roles and interests within beekeeping. Roles range from carpenters building hives, to tailors making bee suits or specialisations such as producing secondary bee products or providing pollination services, or as has happened with past projects, trainees become beekeeping trainers themselves!
Our focus is to train the students to be active beekeepers and manage their bee hives and not their bees. We emphasise producing more honey from each hive to increase productivity over having more hives to increase production. Our strategy requires better capacity building for the beekeepers and less investment in equipment.
Training is in modern beekeeping management techniques in line with the British Beekeepers Association (BBKA) Tropical Syllabus. Bees Abroad will apply sustainable and ecological methods, for example hives and bee suits are made from local materials and there will be an emphasis on pollination, ecology and conservation. Trainees will be provided with Bees Abroad Basic and Advance beekeeping manuals for reference as well as practical hands on training in the field during the local bee season. The theoretical and practical training modules will be delivered by a certified (Nigerian) Bees Abroad trainer locally, whom we have worked with successfully for a number of years.
After training, students will practice beekeeping on their own account in their communities, thus creating a second income which will help to pay their school fees and support their extended families.
It is with deep regret that we have received the sad news of the recent death of David Njuguna in a road accident.
David was a wonderful friend and colleague without whose support, commitment, knowledge and enthusiasm we would never have achieved so much for Bees Abroad in Kenya.
David worked in beekeeping development in various African Countries before he approached Bees Abroad, having learnt of the charity’s work through someone in Cameroon. When in Kenya we met with him and realised his enthusiasm for beekeeping, how this would make a difference to the rural people we were working with, and how similar his approach was to ours. We had a mutual understanding and this bonded us together. That was the joy of working closely with David for the past 10 years; bringing benefits through honey bees and their management to the people he cared so much about In Kenya.
We always appreciated David’s care of us on our visits to Kenya. He was a very special person and we looked on him as part of our extended family in whom we had complete trust. He was an example to all for his energy and dedication and willingness to help anyone who called on him.
David was highly respected by the beekeeping community; so much so that we have received many messages of how greatly David will be missed. We wish to share a few of these:
“David will be greatly missed. He was a rare and very special person, his life has brought his immense skills, hope and opportunities to so many, as well as friendship and kindness to all who knew him”
“We’ll always cherish the contribution he personally made to the beekeeping industry in the country. His legacy will live on. For those still in the service, strive for excellent performance. That is the honour we can bestow to our departed colleague.”
“David was a well-focused and active member of Apiculture Platform of Kenya and had a wealth of knowledgeand experience, particularly on practical beekeeping. His desire to help communities to harness the potential in beekeeping for their livelihoods was exemplary.”
His earthly life may have ended, but his contribution to so many who remain is in the memory of all of us.
As a tribute to him I’m sure he would wish us to continue his dream of being Bees Abroad Kenya .
John and Mary Home, David and Roz Evans, September 2017
We visited 2 community groups in the west of Rwanda to assess projects for future support from Bees Abroad. Both have in the past received funding from other organisations to establish beekeeping however no on-the-ground training was offered.
During our short visit we found that despite both being dynamic and committed community groups the lack of training has meant that neither have been successful in developing beekeeping. This is even more disappointing given that the area has a strong beekeeping tradition and newly established beekeeping groups would certainly benefit from local beekeepers willing to share their knowledge and from non-beekeepers who know the value of beekeeping and are keen to be involved.
During our week-long visit we provided basic training and support to try and enable the communities to make the most of the equipment and local knowledge that they already have. We also identified a future Bees Abroad project to provide further training in beekeeping, harvesting and marketing and believe that sharing these skills would allow both communities to benefit as much as possible from beekeeping.
Bumba
The community in Bumba is still recovering from the genocide of 1994 to 1997 with many damaged people and families struggling to move forward in life. The Community Education Programme (CEP) sees its role to develop more projects, to improve local people’s lives and to prepare them for the 21st century.
Our contact was Father Patrick, a very enthusiastic and committed advisor to the CEP. He was previously parish priest in Bumba and has continued his involvement, working to source funding, develop new ideas and keep the community inspired. He is rightly proud of the CEP; a cooperative with a clear constitution and decisions making process whereby the management committee and cooperative members determine how to spend money, what projects to pursue and who gets paid what proportion of proceeds.
The CEP has a bakery with modern European bread oven producing bread and cakes daily. There is also a community nursery school, meeting rooms from which it runs classes, and accommodation for volunteers and/or paying guests.
There is great potential for the CEP’s beekeeping activities however this has not been successfully developed. The CEP secured funding from the German embassy to buy 70 Kenyan Top-Bar hives, 2 bee suits and a smoker but they were not confident in their knowledge and hence when we arrived all 70 hives were still in storage, waiting to be prepared and installed in apiaries.
During our visit we:
cut and modified the hives as not all the roofs and top bars fitted properly and taught the team to do this work so that they are now confident with the KTBs.
provided classroom training in bee biology, hive management and apiary management.
provided practical training in cleaning, baiting, checking and managing local and KTB hives.
thought the group how to make Catcher hives and discussed their use.
helped the bee keeping group set up 3 apiaries with well-located stands and hives.
visited a potential site for a 4th apiary and met the farmer who rents the land from CEP and who is keen to be part of the project.
developed good relationships with number of skilled local beekeepers, in particular Martin Ungarare who is competent to repair and modify damaged hives, clean and bait hives and assemble hives into an apiary. He is prepared to routinely check hives and to work with others to develop their skills.
There is considerable beekeeping in the local area, mostly cylindrical local hives but also a few Kenyan Top-Bar hives. Father Patrick was once again our contact: he moved to Ngororera last year and has organised for the Catholic church to support the Ngororera Womens’ group, a co-operative in which about 40 women are involved.
Some of the women have beekeeping experience and the co-operative’s President, an elected member of the local council, has worked hard to organise the use of council land for the main apiary.
The US embassy funded 60 hives however once again no beekeeping training was offered. This has meant that only one of 60 hives has bees. We found that none of the hives in the main apiary (40 hives) had been set up correctly nor baited, some were not clean and most did not have a full set of bars.
During our visit we:
worked to help develop a beekeeping group (6 women, 5 men). Some of the group have bee keeping knowledge and have traditional hives. They will be of great help to the group
provided practical training was provided at the main apiary with the group in how to set up a hive correctly and how to clean and bait. At the end of the session 10 hives were in good working order
discussed basic bee biology and harvesting.
helped plan the development of the apiaries and agreed that 10 hives will be moved from the main apiary to one of the smaller sites, after they have been cleaned and set up properly.
developed a good working relationship with Grace, a member of the beekeeping group who is very keen to see the project thrive and who works for the local council that owns the land on which the main apiary is sited.
The launch of Michael Badger’s book, Heather Honey: A Comprehensive Guide is a great success and proving very popular with beekeepers and we are delighted to have received over £300 in Royalities so far. You can order your copy from www.bee-craft.com. If you are looking for a special gift, a limited edition of 100, signed hard cover copies are available too. A big thank you to Michael Badger for donating proceeds from his book to Bees Abroad and the Worshipful Company of Wax Chandlers.
The Forward is written by Graeme de Bracey Marrs, MBE, Past Master of The Worshipful Company of Wax Chandlers of London (2010)
Heather Honey: A Comprehensive Guide
A wide range of beekeeping gems is offered. Detailed information, supported by many photographs and illustrations, makes this book a pleasure to read. The history, knowledge and instruction captured in this book will aid those who participate in the highly respected British Beekeepers’ Association (BBKA) examinations, for which The Worshipful Company of Wax Chandlers of London presents the annual Wax Chandlers’ Prize.
The information included about the origins of the landscape of the heather moors portrays a fascinating history. The painstaking reference to all heather areas of the British Isles is exemplary. Examples of man’s most recent misdemeanours to the environment are enlightening.
In conclusion, I believe that all beekeepers and others with an interest in this subject and beekeeping as a whole will find this work a fine adjunct to their libraries of books.
Michael Badger, MBE, has been a beekeeper man and boy, with experience extending over 65 years. In his time, he has been fortunate to meet many of the great keepers of honey bees. He was devoted to the late Colin Weightman, MBE, and Brother Adam, OBE, OSB, of Buckfast Abbey fame, spending many of his formative beekeeping years with them.
Bees Abroad Annual Report 2018
