Beekeeping projects are helping people in developing countries to survive.
Honeybees pollinate a third of the food we eat. According to the University of Loyola, urban beekeeping contributes to local food systems, brings into focus the need for primary pollinators, and unites communities as individuals collectively learn about their environment. Beekeeping projects such as 4-H in the United States help to instill in young people a desire to take protective care of their environment. Charitable beekeeping projects abroad help to relieve poverty, add to food supplies and create jobs.
Urban Beekeeping at Loyola University
Loyola University in Chicago is a leader in awakening urban interest in beekeeping. As part of its Solutions to Environmental Problems program, it offers classes and hands-on training in urban beekeeping to sensitize the public to the benefits of cultivating this ecological resource on a small, urban scale. In the summer of 2010 Loyola University purchased property in Woodstock, Illinois, to be used to extend this training to larger segments of the community.
Loyola University also promotes beekeeping workshops throughout Illinois to inform and train small farmers and is encouraging other campuses to follow its lead and do the same. The university is even asking Chicago restaurants to have rooftop gardens where beehives can be maintained and publicized.
Small-scale beekeeping projects are valuable to small farmers even though they cannot engage in high-tech beekeeping. With little investment, beekeeping results in the sale of honey and beeswax, providing some income for farmers when they are not involved in planting staple crops. The projects have also helped farmers with their peanut and citrus crops because the bees forage on the flowers longer than most insects, pollinating them more effectively with the pollen they pick up from neighboring blossoms.
4-H
Agricultural training centers such as rural teacher training institutes and the 4-H are good places to initiate beekeeping projects. Six million American youths in every part of the nation participate in urban neighborhoods and rural farming communities in the youth development organization called 4-H and in its hands-on, research-based programs.
Because more than a half million adults, most of them parents, volunteer to mentor 4-H youth, these programs not only convey new ideas to youth about starting the projects, the mentors themselves are informed and trained.
Demonstration apiaries at schools help to educate children in raise bees, and also help them get over their fear of bees. By selling the honey and beeswax, the apiaries provide revenue for other school projects or for extending the beekeeping exhibits to regional fairs and meetings, where further interest can be aroused among those in attendance.
Beekeeping Projects in Sudan
Aktion Afrika Hilfe, a German NGO, along with Mr. Nsubuga Nvule, a bee expert, has initiated a beekeeping project in the Palorinya Sudanese Refugee Camp along the Uganda-Sudan border. They have supplied starter colonies of bees and hives to improve the income of the refugees.
Aiming at larger portions of the Sudan, another beekeeping project under the auspices of HOPE OFIRIHA is under development in Onura, Sudan, in 2010, and donations are being collected to finance the training of 50 local women in beekeeping. The hope is to establish 500 working beehives, not only to encourage beekeeping there, but to provide the training for people from all over Sudan.
Providing an example for other developing nations, these beekeeping projects are one means of helping to alleviate poverty and create jobs. Two organizations are busying themselves with initiating these projects, Bees Abroad and Bees for Development. Dedicated workers have even developed an African Standard Basic Beekeeping Examination equivalent to the examination in developed countries.
