Swaziland: Swazi Top Bee Hive offers an affordable way of bee keeping which eliminates the need of expensive harvesting equipment and offers a simple and affordable technique.The Swazi Top Bee Hive, under the leadership of a young woman Ms Kholiwe Msibi, promotes bee keeping as a way to counter climate change as well as an income generating method. Apart from teaching people how to farm and harvest honey, it also teaches them how to use wax to create other by products of the honey. Most importantly, the project also equips participants with enough knowledge to run businesses thus marketing and branding are also learnt through the project.The main aim of this project was to eradicate poverty through small stock farming and to increase the number of homes that are resilient to poverty through Climate Smart Agriculture in 37 chiefdoms at Siphofaneni in the Lubombo region. It also aims to promote water and soil conservation which now come as a benefit of beekeeping with less people tampering with the soil and more people being more involved in water harvesting. The project, as informed by Technoserve, also promotes market led production of 5 value; beekeeping, indigenous chicken production, goat production, fruit and vegetables and legumes.The main activities of the project come in several stages which include:
- Introduction of partnering companies to the communities
- Data collection, conducted by the companies, to find out what resources were available and what projects already exists in the communities.
- Selection and identifying of areas where beekeeping would be most ideal in relation to flora available there
- Training of the community members who showed interest in beekeeping, regardless of their gender.
- Provision of bees to the participants to kick-start their ventures, business management strategies to ensure that they ran their businesses smoothly and marketing strategies for when they started selling the honey to customers.
The project has benefited a total of 4055 people of various genders and ages; 4000 direct beneficiaries and 50 indirect beneficiaries. There are also 5 online beneficiaries.The Swazi Top Bee Hive allocated $24 500 000 to this project. In kind contributions amounted to $500 000 and the total budget for this project is $25 000 000.For monitoring and evaluation purposes, farmers fill up an attendance register at meetings to ensure that gender and youth demographics are easily spotted. The farmers are also encouraged to form groups which they work in and these groups meet monthly. Their leader then take feedback to the office. The office also does field visits to verify the information that they get from the farmers. Equipment lent to the farmers is also monitored and audited on a regular basis. Eswatini Kitchen assists the farmers with branding and observing health hazards as well as mapping to show their exact locations.Climate change is the biggest challenge that the project faces because it has become more difficult to observe bee patterns with the unclear seasons of the year. The dry spells have dried up vegetation thus decreased the amount of nectar available for bees to produce honey thus the yield is drastically falling. The heat has also contributed to the melting of honeycombs because the wax cannot stand the extreme temperatures. There is also an issue of theft of the equipment needed for beekeeping therefore constituencies are now given a limited supply which they are expected to share in groups. These groups have leaders assigned to them and this position is open to persons of all genders and these groups also operate on a constitution that they formulated together. These groups work together and this makes monitoring and auditing of the whole process much easierSince the implementation of the project, mainly through education of people on beekeeping by allowing bees to go through the beekeeping process without disturbance, there has also been a lower number of trees being cut down. People have developed an appreciation for wildlife and indigenous tree conservation which also play a huge role in maintaining the ecosystems. People have also grown an understanding of flowering seasons, the availability of nectar and an understanding of the nectar to pollen ratio among trees which are all essential pieces of knowledge for beekeeping. The project is targeted at both genders because it is not labour intensive but it tends to attract more women because they do not only harvest and sell the honey but they also use the wax to make byproducts such as candles and floor polish. This has also improved family relations because different members have different roles in this business. Families have moved from selling firewood to beekeeping which is beneficial to the environment because ecosystems are restored when people focus on beekeeping for income rather than cutting down trees. Relationships have been formed in different communities as well because bees hibernate so farmers have to move their hives to new areas of the country in order to ensure that honey production does not cease with changing seasons.To ensure sustainability, lead farmers are continuously teaching and mentoring new and upcoming beekeepers to ensure that there’s more of them in communities. The Ministry of Agriculture has also appointed officers to be in charge of beekeeping in different regions therefore when this project strops, there will still be consultants available for beekeepers.
