Information from ICIMOD - bees and rural support programmes

Faroog Ahmad, Uma Partap, Surendra Joshi and Min Gurung

Here we bring you another article with news about the work of the Austrian Government funded beekeeping project at ICIMOD in Kathmandu, Nepal. In BfDJ 69 we discussed the value of Apis cerana beekeeping for mountain farmers of Alital village in the far western region of Nepal. Here we describe some ongoing initiatives for scaling up programme activities in the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) region.

Recently members of ICIMOD's International Support Group and Board of Governors met with beekeepers and marketing entrepreneurs and were able to see for themselves some of the significant achievements of our beekeeping programme. They were using the opportunity provided by the Annual Board Meeting, held in December 2003 in Pokhara (Nepal) to assess ICIMOD's overall performance and discuss new plans. The interested participants visited expanding farmer-owned apiaries and talked with newly emerging entrepreneurs who are setting up businesses to fulfil the whole range of needs of new and established beekeepers, from supply of beekeeping equipment, colonies, and even high quality, specially bred queens, through to marketing of honey. Local knowledge has been joined with new technologies to exploit the indigenous bee resources, and has proven successful both for conserving biodiversity and in generating income.

The striking achievements of the bee programme convinced Mr Shoaib Sultan Khan, one of the leading proponents of rural support networks in South Asia, to promote the idea of expanding this model of beekeeping as a development intervention through the existing networks of community organisations. ICIMOD is now working with partners to look at different ways of scaling up the use of beekeeping as a component in rural support programmes throughout the region. As a first step, the indigenous honeybee programme has joined with the IFAD-supported programme at ICIMOD to support the 'North Eastern Region Community Resource Management

Project' of India in Manipur to assist them in developing indigenous honeybee programmes on a large-scale. Three other IFAD supported projects, two in Pakistan and one in Nepal, have also expressed interest in carrying forward the achievements of the ICIMOD bee programme. We are now looking at ways to ensure that this trend of up scaling continues in other parts of the HKH.

Brazilian experience to benefit HKH farmers

Two professionals from ICIMOD's bee programme were invited to present the achievements of ICIMOD's pollinators and pollination programme at 'Sdo Paulo Plus 5' - a large gathering of bee scientists and pollination experts hosted by the University of SGo Paulo and the Brazilian Pollinator Initiative in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in October 2003, with FAO as the major sponsor. They took the opportunity to visit the University campus at Ribeirao Preto, a world-recognised centre for research into Africanised bees, led by Professor David De Jong. The ICIMOD delegation was able to learn from some of the enormous experience of Brazilian scientists and technologists in the field of Africanised bees and stingless bee management, and we very much hope that some of this experience can be replicated in the HKH region and brought to local communities during the forthcoming cycles of the bee programme. Professor De Jong also co-ordinated a visit of the delegation to the factory of Apis Flora - a Brazilian company involved in producing a variety of value-added bee products. This company is ISO 9000 certified and is one of the major bee product formulation and export companies in Brazil. The team is reviewing the lessons learned from the visit and is considering changes in the present strategy for product upgrading and marketing in the light of the knowledge gained.