WHAT IS BEEKEEPING?
“Beekeeping (or apiculture) is the maintenance of honey bee colonies, commonly in man-made hives, by humans. A beekeeper (or apiarist) keeps bees in order to collect their honey and other products that the hive produces (including beeswax, propolis, flower pollen, bee pollen, and royal jelly), to pollinate crops, or to produce bees for sale to other beekeepers. A location where bees are kept is called an apiary or “bee yard.” Wikipedia
So, Why Beekeeping in Nigeria in particular?
There are many reasons why people keeping Bees apart from the economic value of Beekeeping. But in Nigeria, with our population, beekeeping knowledge is still very poor when compare with other countries.
To narrow this down to Nigeria in particular. Most youths and 70% of working class Nigerians are unemployed. Many who want to start business of their own could not because of high cost of capital, no electricity, multiple government taxation and many others to mention.
Read BEEKEEPING, THE ABANDONED OIL WELL.
Honey is a great reason, as there is nothing that beats your own homemade honey, but there are other things the bees also produce. For example, they produce beeswax, which you can use to make your own candles and beauty products.
Pollination is also a good reason to have bees, as if you have a small garden it can produce lots of products due to the large amount of bees that will pollinate it.
A final reason to do some beekeeping is that bees are very independent, and do not require a lot of maintenance.
However, there are a few cons to look into as well. The first, and most major one is probably the fact that bees can sting. Another issue is the cost of supplies, and sometimes when beekeeping, the right time to set up your hives.
Nigeria has a vast land that youths can utilized for Beekeeping for little or no fee to pay to use the lands. With experience, many are ready to allow you to use their land for Beekeeping in Nigeria as you don’t cut bush or destroy anything the land while beekeeping.
Original honey is of high demand in Nigeria for domestic use. The domestic demand for original natural is so much that Nigeria has not meet it and so, no body is talking about the export the great potentials that lies in the export of honey.
The featured image in this blog is our presentation with the current Nigerian minister of Agriculture in Abuja. He was happy with what we are doing, yet no support. But with or without government support, there are so much Beekeeping can give you in Nigeria.
Beekeeping in Nigeria requires little start up capital to start as you can manually develop all the materials/ resources you will need to run beekeeping.
I will not end this without telling you that beekeeping is a business that requires you to work hard to get best out of it. Risk like bee stink is also involve when you did not wear appropriate protective equipment.
There is so much more one could say, but sometimes it is good to be brief. After all, attention spans of humans are getting shorter.
Innocent Chidi
