It
is important to reduce the burden of overwork
WOMEN AND BEEKEEPING IN NEPAL
for village women, and also to improve their nutrition so that work is less of a strain.
by Farooq Ahmad, Uma Partap, Min Bahadur Gurung and Surendra Raj Joshi
Beekeeping can contribute to both of these. {n
This is the fifth article in the series bringing news about the work of the Austrian Government-funded beekeeping project “Indigenous honeybees of the Himalayas: a community-based approach for conserving biodiversity and increasing farm
mountain areas, backyard beekeeping with
Apis cerana can provide sufficient honey for both family consumption and sale. With little extra work, family nutrition is improved and some cash income generated. This additional income can buy
productivity” at ICIMOD in Kathmandu, Nepal. ICIMOD and Austroprojekt GmbH in Vienna, Austria jointly manage the project. In B&D 61 we told you about the problems resulting from the introduction of Apis mellifera in isolated gene-pool areas of Apis cerana. Here we focus on the benefits ‘backyard’ beekeeping can
equipment that reduces drudgery, or means that other more time-consuming income generating activities can be avoided. The wax output of
Apis cerana colonies can be used to support development of small-scale organic cosmetic
offer to mountain women. Women are the single most neglected and underprivileged group in the rural areas of the
common to many activities, is that women often have limited access to beekeeping knowledge,
industries in the villages. Such industries provide cheap beauty products for village women, an otherwise unattainable luxury for most, and also
Hindu-Kush Himalayan (HKH) region, but they are responsible for many of the activities in
and are less likely to be in a position to benefit from outside extension and training. However,
generate some cash income for them. Backyard beekeeping with Apis cerana has the added
although in Nepal women are rarely responsible for the actual beekeeping, they are generally involved in the processing and marketing of honey
important benefit of supporting pollination in the household kitchen gardens, the major source of vegetables in mountain areas, thus increasing
and other bee products.
productivity.
subsistence farming production, particularly animal husbandry. The extent to which women are involved in apicultural activities in the HKH
1
region varies from place to place. It is influenced by many factors including ethnicity, religion, local
The situation
belief system, socio-economic status, and access to information.
Clearly there is much to be gained from helping women to introduce and carry out backyard beekeeping with Apis cerana. The ICIMOD project
agriculture
is changing rapidly. Across the HKH they are increasingly becoming responsible for all the
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day-to-day operations on farms. This is the result of various factors including increased out-migration, increased emphasis on daily wage labour, and changes in cultural attitudes. Women are often those most involved in
Nepal, women have not been involved traditionally in beekeeping. The reasons are In
varied. Some are the result of their already large workload, which leaves little time for extra
activities. Women are responsible for family and child care, which include such diverse and
has charted a strategy to mainstream gender in beekeeping development activities.
The main steps are: @the conceptualisation of gender roles in beekeeping development; @training and capacity building of project staff
income-generating activities as well, both traditional and new. Where women have come
time-consuming tasks as collecting water, cooking, cleaning, and looking after babies,
and partners in gender mainstreaming; @incorporation of gender issues and roles in
into contact with modern benefits, they are concerned to get cash income so they can send
as well as for a range of time-consuming
beekeeping training curricula; @training of women in beekeeping management, and processing and marketing of bee products; @encouragement of equal participation of women
their children to school. Taken together, these changes mean that women’s workload overall is
agricultural operations, including sowing, harvesting, a wide variety of processing activities, and caring for animals. In some areas there are
increasing rather than decreasing, and that the time saved through the introduction of services like water points and electricity is often used
more specific restrictions resulting from the fact that women are not allowed to touch bee colonies
when they are pregnant, and shortly thereafter, or during menstruation. One important constraint,
of women in mountain
to perform new tasks. '
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at all levels of beekeeping development interventions.
So far, 212 women farmers have been trained in the fields of bee management, queen rearing, and pollination, and processing and marketing of bee products. The project encourages women beekeepers to participate at all stages of
beekeeping activities: from planning, through implementation, to monitoring and evaluation.
This strategy has been found to be very fruitful, with a clear impact observed on the attitudes and behaviour of programme staff, partners, and beekeepers. Women’s participation in beekeeping activities has increased at all the project's sites,
indicating a weakening of the impacts of taboos and beliefs. Participation of women beekeepers in the action research-based selection programme is increasing. Trained women beekeepers are confident and proactive in addressing and resolving their local problems and difficulties. In this way beekeeping is becoming a focal point for wider developmental interventions, particularly to remote mountain communities.
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Hands-on training for women in bee management A Bees for Development publication
We hope that a continued focus on women, and on education on gender issues, in our programme will further deepen and extend these positive developments.
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