CAD empowers farmers to produce more honey

Some 30 farmers in Kupe Muanenguba Division have taken a firm commitment to produce more honey andthus make more money for themselves.

The commitment was taken recently, at the Divisional headquarters in Bangem,during a two-day training workshop on the techniques and modern methods of bee-farming,organised by the Community Action For Development, CAD.

CAD’s Coordinator, Martin Etone, told The Post that it was thanks to financial support from their US-based partners and sponsors, the Vibrant Village Foundation, that the training workshop was organised.

He said Kupe Muanenguba, which is rich in forest and savannah vegetation, was a very fertile area where bee-farming and its by-products can thrive very well.

But, he said, for the past years, most farmers, owing to the lack of knowledge on modern methods of bee-keeping, have indulged in traditional methods whose practice tends to be destructive to the forest environment and lead to less yields and little financial returns.

“It is for this reason that we decided to seek the assistance from our partners and sponsors, Vibrant Village Foundation in the US, to train these farmers on modern methods of bee-keeping, improve yields and income,” Etone said.

Hans Ngole Ebong, Manager of the Tombel Conservation and Development Cooperative and a trained bee-farmer with several years of experience drilled the farmers in the modern methods of farming.

Talking about traditional methods, Idrissou Adamu from the Mbororo Derkejo (Youths from the Muanenguba Mountain top) said; “I have been trying to keep bee in a local way.”

He said they have been used to the traditional methods where they carve a log of wood like a canoe to serve as a bee hive. They, then, take it to their bee farm, cover it and then“the bees will, in the event of colonising the hive, come in and hang on the sides.”

He said another method is by carving a mortar shaped-hive, bore a hole in the mortar, dig a sizable hole in the ground and bury the hive.

Other participants talked of the methods where they hunt for honey from colonised tree trunks. They either fell the trees to harvest the honey or use fire to burn off the bees before getting the honey.

In a bid to get the farmers from these methods that lead to the destruction of the environment, the farmers were drilled on how to produce and use the Kenyan Top Bar, KTB, hive for “clean and better quality honey that is free from dirt or other impurities.”

The farmers were also treated to the health, economic and food value benefits that honey possesses.

The training workshop was presided at by the Kupe Muanenguba Divisional Delegate for Fishery, Livestock and Animal Industry, Dr. Edwin Oben Oben.

“Because honey has both therapeutic and nutritional values, it has an unlimited market. Even at the village level, people know that it is good for cough and other respiratory tract infections,” Dr. Oben explained.