Safeguard Bees and Beekeepers in Madagascar

At the end of August, Project Renitantely’s first phase officially came to an end. To celebrate the successful completion of project activities, we decided to profile one of our most successful beekeepers and look at how his time participating in the project has made a difference to his life.

When Perosy joined the project in 2016, he had just one year of beekeeping experience under his belt. He mostly relied on rice and cassava farming to support his two young children and beekeeping only represented a small portion of his income. Fast-forward to 2019 and now the majority of Perosy’s income comes from selling honey – so much so that he now pays other people to work in his rice fields!

When we first made contact with Perosy in 2016, he told us that his biggest problem was a lack of hives which limited his ability to make more money from beekeeping. Thanks to comprehensive hive-building training workshops, Perosy can now build his own hives instead of having to invest large amounts of money into purchasing them from elsewhere. This has enabled Perosy to quadruple the number of hives in his Apiary which means more bees, more honey, and more money!

Perosy has been wise with his honey-induced increase in income and has taken steps to diversify his livelihood. In addition to the money made through farming and beekeeping, Perosy has invested some of his earnings into opening up a shop next to his home. With this diversified livelihood, Perosy has made his family’s future more secure. He has also drastically improved his quality of life, spending less of his time performing hard manual labour in his fields.

While Perosy is certainly one of the most successful beekeepers on the project, he is by no means alone in having achieved a great deal. Across the project, hive numbers have been growing steadily as more and more beekeepers have started to use their newly-acquired skills to build their own hives. Just in the last year of the project, the number of hives owned by project beekeepers has grown by an amazing 129%, meaning beekeepers have been producing more honey (and earning more money) than ever!