Bees for Development

Supporting beekeepers in Sudan

 

Beekeepers in Southern Sudan need help to re-build their livelihoods. Keeping bees and selling honey can help the poorest make ends meet and support their families.

 

Communities in Southern Sudan are reeling from the effects of civil war but a fragile peace now prevails, and they now have a new chance to build their lives and their communities. 

 

These communities have always kept bees - honey is used for for food, has a social value and is bartered for goods and labour. However, there are new and growing market opportunities for honey in Uganda and Kenya and beekeepers in Sudan might now have the chance to develop their subsistence beekeeping into income-generating enterprises. 

 

But there are difficulties. Poorly developed supply chains, lack of information about different markets, lack of inputs (e.g. storage containers) and poor harvesting practices mean that the full income potential of beekeeping and honey trade is not being realised. 

 

Bees for Development Trust is now aiming to raise £50,000 for a three year project to help beekeepers access these new and more rewarding market opportunities in a more direct way.

 

 

 

 

This beekeepers uses different local styles of beehive and harvests significant volumes of honey each year. He sells to traders who are unreliable and pay low prices.

 

 

 

This honey was filtered to remove the beeswax and was tested at Quality Services International GmbH (QSI)  in Germany. The analysis showed this was pure honey, uncontaminated with any residues and was of the highest quality.  

 

The activities for which we are raising money

  • to run training courses on proper methods for honey harvesting and handling, to ensure good quality
  • to facilitate beekeepers to form groups for collective marketing, to help them do better business
  • to train beekeepers to think about keeping bees in a business-like way, thus helping them make decisions and changes which will build their enterprises
  • to build a honey collection centre and honey store, a central place for buyers to find reliable supplies
  • to design a marketing strategy and form links with reliable buyers from Kenya, Uganda and elsewhere in Sudan

Bees for Development will provide professional expertise and will manage this project together with reliable, well established local partners in Southern Sudan.

 

If you would like to donate to this Project click here.