Ensuring women benefit from bees

Isaac Mbroh, Apiculture Development Coordinator, Bees for Development Ghana

Organisations are increasingly advocating for gender mainstreaming to ensure that they respond effectively to the needs of all citizens. Until recently, the involvement of women in beekeeping in Ghana was not common, and Bees for Development Ghana (BfD Ghana) has been championing this cause. Since 2015 we have been working very hard to encourage women’s involvement in our work.

Gender gap

Women in rural areas of Ghana have high illiteracy compared with men, and more limited capacity to access and adopt improved technologies – and most are very poor. Women own less land, have fewer assets and have low access to cash and credit, adding to their food insecurity. World-wide, only 15% of Agricultural Extension Agents are women, yet women are crucial for achieving food security, sustainable agriculture and rural livelihoods. Of seventy extension advisors in Ghana, only ten are female.

The beekeeping sector is highly skewed against womens’ participation, with less than 1% of beekeeper trainers being women (Bees for Development).

BfD Ghana is rolling out a new project in February 2023 to address this gap. We will train women who are unemployed to become professional beekeepers and trainers and ‘Bee the voice’ for the vulnerable in the society.

BfD Ghana’s experience

BfD Ghana has tried hard to address the gender imbalance – concerning both those practising beekeeping, and those who are trainers, leaders and change agents. Whilst trying to understand the reasons for low participation of women in beekeeping, we found that women were afraid of bees and of working at night. They could not climb trees, and keeping bees was considered a ‘man’s occupation’. Traditional ways of restricting women to domestic activities close to the homestead also serve as a hindrance to engaging in beekeeping.

Our experience suggests that these reasons mirror those given for limited access of women who keep bees in other parts of the world. However, women commonly make value-added products from honey and beeswax, and these products offer unique opportunities for womens’ traditional skills. Where work and childcare commitments constrain women to remain within or near their homes, value-added products can be an ideal opportunity for income generation. Male beekeepers are often not interested in this field, so it is not challenging to the cultural status quo.

Top-bar hive beekeeping offers advantages for female beekeepers because it moves away from traditional methods that may be seen as more ‘male orientated’. In West Africa, beekeepers do not have to climb trees to install hives. They make hive stands or use fork-like tree branches to hold hives in position in an apiary. Fixed comb hives such as Borassus log hives and basket hives which are low-cost and affordable, are promoted by BfD Ghana and are well accepted by both men and women.

Training workshops and womens’ participation

We closely monitor and evaluate our project work, and this enables us to make alterations when needed. Interactions with women in the Afram Plains reveal that, especially those in the Muslim communities, they find it difficult (or uncomfortable) to participate in our usual mixed training sessions, and that sourcing materials for hive-making was also a major challenge for these vulnerable women as it involves the cutting and lifting of materials like Borassus logs.

As a result, we revised our approach to accommodate these concerns by holding separate training workshops for women. The first all-women-workshops welcomed thirty-three women participants who were provided with sixty wooden fixed comb hives – which are cheaper than top-bar hives. We intend to extend this to other communities in the Afram Plains.

Even where women received materials and training in basic beekeeping, some said they sometimes depend on assistance from men for colony management, especially at night.

Training for women beekeepers at Bondaso, Afram Plains. © Gideon Zegeh/BfD Ghana.

Gender mainstreaming success stories

Since 2019, BfD Ghana has been training honey-hunting communities – with a considerable number of women, living on the fringes of Digya National Park, keeping bees using local style, fixed-comb hives.

The results are amazing: Hawa Issah, a fifty-two-year-old woman who lives in Kojorbator, a small village on the fringe of Digya National Park, was named Best Beekeeper in the Kwahu Afram Plains North Awards in December 2021 during the National Farmers’ Day celebration. Hawa sometimes works in her husband’s apiaries – doing colony management, harvesting and processing of honeycombs for honey and beeswax.

“Hawa is our star beekeeper” says BfD Ghana’s Director, Kwame Aidoo. We like her commitment and passion towards beekeeping.

Hawa Issah with her beautiful beeswax. © Isaac Mbroh/BfD Ghana.

Another success story is Lucy Benewaa, one of the many women supported to keep bees in their cashew orchards under BfD Ghana’s Cashew, Bees and Livelihoods Project. This leads to double benefits; farmers like

Lucy Benewaa and her husband with their beeswax.

Lucy with one of her fifty hives. © Isaac Mbroh/BfD Ghana.

Lucy benefit from the pollinating activities of honey bees leading to increased cashew nut yields and from bee products - honey and beeswax.

Lucy is a sixty-four-year-old woman with five children who lives at Offuman in the Bono East Region. She started with two hives in 2017 and now has fifty. Lucy can select and prepare an apiary; make and bait hives, set them up in the apiary; manage colonies; harvest, process and sell honey and beeswax. She earned about GH₵8500 (US$800; €760) in 2021 and over GH₵10000 (US$943; €895) in 2022.

Lucy has benefited from keeping bees in the last five years — harvesting and selling more cashew nuts in addition to honey and the beeswax she gets from keeping bees from the same piece of land.

Sarah Fosua is doing well in the beekeeping industry. She started as an apprentice to one of BfD Ghana’s master beekeepers Stephen Adu. Currently, Sarah and her younger brother own fifteen hives, and all are occupied by bees. Sarah manages these fifteen colonies herself and has much passion for what she does.

Sarah Fosua installing a new hive for another beekeeper. © Stephen Adu/BfD Ghana.

Sarah does not see any barriers to beekeeping for women. She said, “To me, there are no barriers. Beekeeping is like any kind of work - once you make up your mind to do it you can. This is a normal, money-making venture and nothing can prevent me from keeping bees”. This is Sarah demonstrating her resilience to succeed in the beekeeping industry.

Naomi Ankomah, a forty-threeyear-old single mother with four children who lives in Bono Manso in the Bono East region, is another beneficiary of BfD Ghana’s Cashew, Bees and Livelihood project. Naomi manages five colonies. She harvests, processes, packages and sells her honey in 4.5 litre containers on the Techiman-Tamale highway, and also processes and sells beeswax. Naomi is a beekeeper in addition to her regular small-scale business of selling assorted food items by the roadside.

Naomi bottling honey into 4.5L containers for sale. © Kwame Aidoo/BfD Ghana.

Although beekeeping is a ‘male dominated’ activity, men also face many management challenges, especially those who are beginner beekeepers. Both men and women can be equally afraid of bees.

Equal opportunity

BfD Ghana believes gender equality is necessary to ensure that women and men, and girls and boys have equal rights, opportunities, and respect.

We have gender-specific and disaggregated indicators for only women or only men that help them to measure differences between women and men in relation to each metric. This would not have been possible without efficient monitoring systems and dedicated staff who go to the field to measure these important indicators. The frequent evaluation of our programmes ensures that we are able to modify our work by closely monitoring their gender equality indicators that measure this directly or as a proxy for gender equality or equity.

BfD Ghana believes that by ensuring all the above, development organisations could be far more successful.

Women reached by BfD Ghana’s projects

Within the last six years, about one thousand people have benefited from BfD Ghana’s projects. Of this number, women who directly benefited are about 15%, from over forty communities across Ghana. According to the women who have participated, people have certain perceptions. People think that beekeeping is for men so why are women engaging in such a dangerous and difficult livelihood activity? Despite the glaring challenges, we are resilient in championing this course and are resolved to make a huge impact.

Conclusion

We believe that there is much to be done to ensure gender and social inclusion, and in coming years we will be striving to increase the percentage of women who benefit directly from our work.

References

ADEBAYO,J.A.; WORTH,S.H. (2022). Women as Extension Advisors. Research in Globalization. 5. 100100. 10.1016/j. resglo.2022.100100; FAO (2008). International assessment of agricultural science and technology for development. https://www.grida.no/resources/6343; MANFRE,C.

RUBIN,D.;ALLEN,A.; SUMMERFIELD,G: COLVERSON,K.; AKEREDOLU,M. (2013). Reducing the gender gap in agricultural extension and advisory services: How to find the best fit for men and women farmers. Meas Brief, 2, 1-10; WORLD BANK. (2010). Gender and Governance in Rural Services. The World Bank.