Honey Bee Educational Center

The Honey Bee Educational Center

The aim of the Honey Bee Educational Center is to professionalize a hygienic, professional honey processing and developing beekeeping in Africa. The honey processing will further expand on studying which flowers are harvested by the bees to identify different honeys and their medicinal qualities.   and is investing in educating and training female beekeepers. This will create employment, self-reliance, further dissemination of knowledge and increased honey production that will benefit a healthy food supply. In addition and at least as important: bees have an important role in the conservation of nature and in the production of food.

Respect for the bees
There are presently (2021) 68 bee hives on the project site at Mariamakunda. 23 of the hives are colonised, 5 catcher boxes have new colonies and our aim is to have 75 hives colonised in March 2023.CFN has a variety of bee hives: concrete beehives (9 frames), Kenian Top Bars hives (between 24 and 27 top bars), Belgium Dadant hives and Dutch Double Dadant Blatt hives (2×9 frames). Africanised bees are, considering the potential honey thieves in their habitat, understandably very defensive. CFN promotes respectful beekeeping. 

The construction of the Honey Bee Educational Centre aims to achieve several goals.

Clean honey
Processing high quality honey in a  hygienic and save processing area, following a strict production protocol. When processing our honey we are applying different techniques depending on if we are harvesting from Kenian Top Bar hives or from frame hives. African beekeepers removes the entire comb which has advantages and disadvantages. The advantages are that any pest virusses or diseases are removed from the hive with removal of the entire comb. Disadvantages are that the bees have to consume a lot of honey and spent a lot of energy and time to rebuild a new comb. Therefore the honey harvest will be less, but likely healthier. CFN believes that the strength of the Africanised bees may well have to do with the fact that the combs are never re-used unlike Western frame hives. 

Job opportunities

The honey processing unit can be utilised for other beekeepers or their honey harvest as well. CFN would like to be a channel for other like minded respectful beekeepers to sell their honey. We have, in the many years of food processing, gained the publics trust and could help others benefit from that. Beekeepers can upgrade their honey quality and earn a better income from it. Be it directly by supplying to us or indirectly by having their honey processed by us.

CFN trains beekeepers, honey-processors and provides jobs and income through this activity.

Honey is used for its medicinal properties but not all honey is healthy. Processing healthy honey provides opportunities to healers to help their patients with confidence of medicinal honey. 

Our organic farm could impossibly financially survive from  only its harvest of beans, aloes, moringa etc. if it were not for the beekeeping income. So our entire staff jobs depend on honey production.

Knowledge centre for everybody

Many African beekeepers are following the method as “we know it”. It is time we question what are facts and what is fiction in beekeeping, what is important and what it harmful. We, CFN, are beekeeping by daylight, like western beekeepers are doing, in Africa we believe that beekeeping shall only be done by night. When working in the dark, you can not see what you need to see or learn what you could learn. We have proven beyond any doubt that beekeeping, around 4.30 to 5.00 pm is a very good time.

We have developed methods to keep lizards and squirls from attacking our hives, they are now monkey proof. In the process we have learnt a lot we’d like to share and we would like to learn what others wish to share.

The HBEC has a collection of very practical and useful copyright-free learning material for beekeepers, we can make our own concrete beehives as we had the mould developed by professional friends. The various hive types, how to work with them, the practical experience, etc., is worthy of sharing. New beekeepers are having the opportunity to gain practical experience when we are in the field and gain theoretical experience when spending time in our HBEC. When selling our honey and products in the HBEC-shop, we have a story to tell with it…

Our deepest wish is to share our admiration for bees with the schoolchildren, tourists and population of the Gambia and beyond.