Western Kenya farmers taste sweet honey

Bee farmer Diana Lubira at her workshop in Kakamega  [PHOTOS: BENJAMIN SAKWA/STANDARD]

Bee keeping is gaining popularity in Western Kenya which has a range of flowers that make better quality honey. The market is also readily available.

Many farmers are now leaving traditional maize and sugarcane farming for honey.

One such farmer is Diana Lubira who discovered the sweetness of honey early in 2002 and has since morphed into a renowned hive maker, honey harvester and candle maker.

A report on livestock farming in Kakamega County released early this year notes that there are about 6,600 Kenya top bar hives (KTBH), 7,600 Langstroth hives and 5,900 traditional hives in the county.

“I started off as a maize farmer but with time I realised maize has poor profits despite being labour intensive. I had gone into maize farming after I quit my job as a secretary at a parastatal that collapsed in 1996. Then I attended a seminar in 2002 where I was initiated into bee farming and liked the idea,” says Lubira.

She later learnt how to make Langstroth bee hives renowned for producing clean honey due to their improvised honey traps.

She opened a workshop at Kenya Industrial Estates in Kakamega and started the business and to date she is on her 6,089th hive which she makes besides keeping bees in 30 hives on her three-quarter of an acre farm in Ikonyero, Kakamega.

“I make an average of five bee hives a day and sell them at Sh6,000. Those who buy in bulk get a discount. Not every carpenter can design Langstroth hives as they have specifications especially in designing the inner frames that hold the wax. We do the job with two of my carpenters in an astute manner else you tamper with honey harvesting.”

Lubira, 52, harvests an average of 14-20kgs of honey from each of her 30 hives. Seven hives are due for harvest every month.

She harvests honey at night and charges a flat rate of Sh1,500 when called on by farmers irrespective of the number of bee hives she mines.

The rate she says is to encourage bee farmers to engage in large scale bee farming and it has proved productive because people are turning to it. The market is huge.

Raw honey retails at Sh200 per kilo. The price doubles after processing to refined honey.

She has her own processing firm, EarthLink Beekeepers, and traps bees across the county in innovative ways; she for instance places trap-hives on top of residential houses and moves the bees after 14 days to the apiary to make honey.

But bee farming has its constraints especially for women. “It’s common in our patriarchal society to wonder how a woman relates with bees. Some don’t believe me when I say I harvest honey. But I prove them wrong and they appreciate my work after I have harvested their honey.”

The other constraint in bee keeping according to a task force report on livestock farming in Kakamega, apart from traditional beliefs that hold a condescending view on apiculture, is inadequate facilities for honey processing, high price of improved hives, exploitation of bee farmers by middle men, fear of bee stings and lack of technical knowledge on apiary management business.