Bees/or Development Journal 85
CABESI PROJECT
Beeswax and propolis Until Cabesi started in 2004, beeswax was not used by Pokot people and was discarded. This has now changed with the project yielding enough wax for the production of foundation for the frame hives and
candles of different shapes and sizes. This is another product which is highly requested and gives women urgently needed income. Propolis cream, which helps in many skin irritations, is produced on a in the local communities.
small-scale and enjoys a high demand
Outlook To date the Cabesi programme has been a success. 400 beekeepers have benefited from training and good honey prices, 150 group
members have benefited through education and work in the centres, about 40 came! owners have benefited through training, and many more through improved camel health. In addition 10 malaria scouts and 10 staff in the market place benefited through salaries, as well as four schools from extra curricula activities. The numbers are equally impressive: 10 tonnes of honey, 50 kg of sun dried mango, 200 kg of
propolis and several thousand candles have been sold. Value addition is the idea, in which Cabesi wants to set an example. Every single step up to the final product is carried out within the district. This is the first ycessing and production plant in the whole district, bringing jobs and
income to the area.
While quite a few things have been achieved, much is left to be done. Besides the practical work, other abilities and skills are needed. Business-orientated thinking and management of money, book-keeping and recording are not easy tasks in the community, where 7 out of 10 people are illiterate. Beekeeping itself has to improve in order to produce more quality honey. All this is done towards the two major goals: improvement of the life situation of the neglected Pokot
Community through a sustainable use of the natural resources, and the conservation of the delicate environment.
BioVision is an independent, non-profit Swiss foundation which is politically and denominationally neutral. BioVision is active in the dissemination and implementation of scientific methods for sustainable improvement of living conditions in Africa. BioVision was founded in 1998 by Hans Rudolf Herren, with the aim to sustainably improve the living conditions of people in Africa and conserving nature as the basis of all life.
For further information see
www.biovision.ch/E
@SREAT BEE LADIES Claire Chavasse The Irish beekeeping community lost one of their leading beekeepers with the death of Claire Chavasse in August 2007. Many of those who participated in the Apimondia Congress in Dublin in 2005 will remember Claire, who ensured that the Workshops on Beekeeping for Rural Development were so smoothly run, enabling experts to give perfect demonstrations of candle making, carpentry and many other practical aspects of beekeeping. Claire Chavasse was both expert practitioner and expert lecturer in beekeeping, always providing meticulously prepared, scientifically correct information, yet delivered in a style that encouraged learning. Claire would always question rather than take statements and traditional teachings as absolute, and had no
time for poor standards.
Claire was laid to rest in the graveyard where the tree had grown that provided the timber for the top-bar hives made at the Workshops mentioned above. Claire was a marvellous lady: a kind and generous friend and mentor to many people.
Eva Crane Eva Crane died in early September 2007: the following week, at the opening ceremony of the Apimondia Congress in Melbourne, participants observed a minute in silent remembrance of this lady. Amongst the audience of apicultural scientists and beekeepers there would have been few who had not at some stage consulted ner work, now published in many languages. Eva Crane was an erudite lady who made the field of documentation of apicultural science her own. Well into her eighties, Eva Crane continued to work, writing major texts such as The world history of beekeeping and honey hunting, and gaining
respect beyond the ‘bee world’ as her studies took her into the fields of anthropology and archaeology.The great feature of Eva Crane's work is that every statement, every reference, can be relied upon to be
scientifically correct. Her aim was to procure information about bees, to present it in a rigorously scientific way, and so that people could subsequently gain access. Organising information took the form of creating a library, databases, identifying and cataloguing museum items, and any other route necessary for collating information such that it
became accessible. |
feel fortunate to have known Eva Crane
—
without her and the existence
Association (IBRA), our own organisation, Bees for Development, would not exist today. of the International Bee Research
Nicola Bradbear
