I count myself as being lucky to have attended a bee keeping workshop at the SCOPE Demonstration Centre on behalf of the Nyamakari Youth Project under the GEF funded Youth promoting Agro-ecology through Integrated Land Use Management for Nutrition enhancement and Income diversity Programme. At the workshop we received training in making bee hives, trapping bees, harvesting and processing honey and wax as well as marketing the products.
Straight from the workshop, with the assistance of the then Nyamakari secondary school head we sourced planks which I used to make some bee hives. I placed my bee hives in the nearby mountain and in some big trees in the school food forest area. So far two of my bee hives have bees which I have harvested once and processed both the honey and wax.
From the processed honey, I managed to sell some and realized US$17 and sold the wax for RTGS$280. We also had some for our home consumption thus benefiting from the many medicinal values of honey. I am also planning to start preparing cough syrup from mixing one part honey and one part lemon juice as we have a lot of lemons at our place and we have also planted many lemon trees at Nyamakari Secondary School.
At the moment I am currently working alone with a few people that I am teaching. After being capacitated I have been doing most of these things alone, there are very few people working with me among my peers but I try to teach them. They are lazy to do this with me otherwise it is the older people in the community that are showing interest in the bee keeping that I am doing.
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