News

BANGLADESH

Angela Gomes runs one of the largest women's rural organisations in Bangladesh. Operating out of a 1.5-hectare training complex in Jessore, Banchte Shekha (Bengali for Learn to Survive}, founded in 1976, offers female-empowerment programmes to more than 25,000 women in 430 villages. Amongst the vast range of income-generating skills taught is beekeeping. Known as the ‘Mother Teresa of Bangladesh’, Angela Gomes won the 1999 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership. In naming her as one of that year's awardees, the Board of Trustees cited her role in "helping Bangladeshi women assert their rights to better livelihoods and gender equality, under the law and in everyday life."

Source; www.ontlinewomeninpolitics.org/

GHANA

A new community project aimed at reducing poverty in communities in Africa is being set up by volunteers of the global charity, Mercy Ships. The 'Busy Bees’ project has the capacity to train 80 women in beekeeping and honey farming to help raise additional income in farming communities through a low cost, low input business.

The Africa Mercy, one of Mercy Ships’ hospital ships, will be heading to Ghana early in 2006 to provide free medical care but its community development department will also be focusing on establishing long-term sustainable businesses. Sharon Biddell, project manager at the Africa Mercy said: "Women in Africa continue to face enormous obstacles and they lack the training and means to prosper. This women-only programme is dedicated to promoting gender equality. Bee products can provide valuable food and medicine and beeswax is an important cash crop. There is great demand for honey and other bee products from two well established production companies in Ghana and at present orders exceed production capacities’.

The beekeeping training programme will target eight selected groups of ten students in rural locations. Each group will be equipped to operate an apiary site of ten hives. Interactive demonstrations will be carried out by local skilled trainers in four stages over a four month period, guiding students through one production cycle of beekeeping. This is just one of the many community development programmes supported by Mercy Ships helping to rid Africa of poverty.

Media House Press Release on behalf of

Mercy Ships, July 2005

MOLDOVA

Honey certification

Moldova will acquire its first honey certification laboratory in the first halt of 2006. "The laboratory is regarded as a lifeline for beekeepers, as certification will allow the resumption of honey exports to the EU, which were stopped in July 2004", states Andrei Zagareanu, Chairman of the Association of Beekeepers. The laboratory worth €500,000 has been provided with funding from the EU Food Security Programme that started in Moldova in April 2005,

Source: FAO NWFP-Digest-L 12/05

NEPAL

Training of Trainers

ICIMOD's Honeybees in the Himalayas project organised a Training of Trainers programme on colony management, queen rearing, and hive making in Kathmandu in March 2005. Participants included farmers from the villages surrounding ICIMOD's Test and Demonstration Site in Godavari, and farmers nominated by partner organisations. The course was targeted at building the capacity of lead beekeepers so that they can train other farmers in managing and multiplying colonies in movable comb hives.

Faroog Ahmad, ICIMOD, Kathmandu

PAKISTAN

I am sending information on some of the

honey crops harvested by professional beekeeper Mr Naveed Qureshi, of Mr Bee Honey Farms, an apiary of over 500 hives. In 2005 Mr Bee Honey Farms planned some non-traditional honey flora in addition to their usual crops. The results from the litchi orchards in Lahore were excellent.

In 1992 Mr Naveed Quershi was one of my students on the practical beekeeping course funded by the Pak-German Beekeeping Promotion Project. The photograph shows us at Lilla Junction on the motorway - beekeepers often move empty hives on donkey carts if other vehicles are not available. In the background you can see the beekeeper's tent and Ziziphus sp plantations where hives were placed in October 2004.

Mr Bee Honey Farms Honey Crops 2005

Brassica (Sarsoon): February (Harvest) 1.5 (Quantity (tonnes))

Citrus (orange blossom): April (Harvest) 1.6 (Quantity (tonnes))

Bhaker: April (Harvest) 1.2 (Quantity (tonnes))

Litchi: April (Harvest) 1.2 ((Quantity (tonnes))

Acacia (Phulai): May (Harvest) 1.8 ((Quantity (tonnes))

Clover (Barseem): May ( Harvest) 2.0 (Quantity (tonnes))

Granda (Carissa): June (Harvest) 0.2 ((Quantity (tonnes))

Rubinia: June (Harvest) 0.2 (Quantity (tonnes))

Olive: June (Harvest) 0.5 (Quantity (tonnes))