Monday twenty fourth February, 2025 09:40 AM|
As demand for honey within the nation continues to rise because of its vast utilization as meals, drugs and the manufacture of magnificence merchandise, Kenyans have been urged to undertake beekeeping for extra revenue to assist their households. With the crippling of Kenya’s economic system, consultants instructed farmers to embrace bee farming in its place supply of revenue to maintain their livelihoods.
Speaking in Gathaiti village, Gatundu North throughout a farmers’ commencement ceremony, the consultants said that honey has nice demand each regionally and internationally and farming bees can eradicate poverty within the villages
Beekeeping coaching
The farmers underwent a four-day beekeeping coaching organised by the Rosemary Kirika Foundation, a family-oriented organisation that has been empowering and supporting rural households out of poverty.
Led by Trizah Okecha, an agronomist from the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development, they said that bees not solely produce honey however are additionally pollinators which play a essential position in sustaining a wholesome, genetically numerous ecosystem of crops, including that beekeeping may also assist mitigate local weather change by pollinating crops and defending property.
“Bees are important to the environment and to humans because they pollinate plants, produce food, and provide other products. There is a high demand for honey against what we produce and this makes beekeeping a significant opportunity that farmers can leverage on to make a fortune,” she said.
Recent statistics present that demand for honey has been rising yearly. Kenyans have been producing round 20,000 tonnes yearly towards the present yearly demand of about 100,000 tonnes. Kiambu Deputy Governor Rosemary Kirika attributed low manufacturing within the nation to make use of of conventional manufacturing strategies comparable to utilizing log hives alongside insufficient infrastructure
While insisting that beekeeping may very well be a recreation changer for farmers who undertake the farming significantly, Kirika added that farmers additionally want steady sensitization to observe bee farming in a modernised manner for maximised earnings.
“Kenyans have been conserving bees however in a standard manner and that’s the reason we’re coaching them to observe this kind of farming professionally.
The demand for honey and hive merchandise is presently very excessive and that is merely to say that the market is able to eat all the pieces produced,” she said.
On their half, farmers instructed journalists that beekeeping has change into a gold mine that they hope will flip round their financial standing. They vowed to enterprise into industrial farming of bees, saying that the 4 day coaching has opened a brand new chapter of their wealth creation journey.