Bee keeping as a means to save nature and improve farmers’ livelihood

          Photo/ Ato Mesafint Worku in his bee keeping garden

Ato Mesafint Worku, 38, lives in Jibasira kebele, Estie Woreda, South Gondar Zone of Amhara Regional State. He is married and having two children. Ato Mesafint is a subsistence farmer with 1.25 hectare of cultivated land. But he was in difficulty to fulfill his family food consumption. He said that life was difficult for him. 

To expand his income, previously, he used to take loan from other informal lenders with high interest rate to engage in different on farm and off farm activities, but he was not profitable as he had expected. Additionally, he can’t manage his money wisely and lacks business skills to run his work in a profitable manner. As a result, he decided to live with his parents back and consequently, he was under a high depression. Fortunately, his life got a better turn while he joined the ORDA Ethiopia’s Landscape Restoration Using Church Forest Relics project (CFN), which is funded by Cartier for Nature.

In 2023, Ato Mesafint has been selected as a beneficiary by the project after intense recruitment criteria: such as living place in project targeted area, poor youth, positive attitude for forest development. The project gave capacity building training on incentive mechanisms for forest landscape restoration to reduce the negative impacts of forest degradation and deforestation, with integrated alternative means of livelihood improvements to different beneficiary households. It provided full beekeeping protective cloth, beekeeping equipment’s, two honey bee colony and three timber transitional hives for each beneficiary.

Ato Mesafint Worku has been trained on Honey bee production and got necessary beekeeping tools, and he engaged on it. Currently, Ato Mesafint has one modern hive, three transitional hive, one ‘Ethio-ribrab’ hive and 12 traditional hives. In 2024 season, he harvested 140 kg honey from first harvesting and 110 kg in second harvesting season, in total 250 Kg honey per year. He sold more than ETB 92,000.

Now his life shows improvement. From the honey sale income, he purchased one improved breed heifer, 15 Goat, two sheep with lamp. The way forward, he has planned to expand his beekeeping production farm at commercial level, and he has prepared a proposal to request working land for his farm for 2025. Finally he said, “Thank you ORDA Ethiopia and CFN project for their support and improvement of my family livelihood.”