By Correspondent
Kebati shows elephant tusks recovered from arrested poachers. The bee keeping project is meant to ensure the community around forests gain income and support KWS in it’s fight against poaching, encroachment and to promote conservation of ecosystem
A beekeeping project is being introduced around Mount Kenya Forest Conservation Area as a way of conserving the forests, a senior government official revealed recently.
The introduction of bees as a strategy to restore and conserve forests is a partnership between Kenya Wildlife Services and other conservation bodies.
The beehive fence project is meant to provide protection for farms against elephants and provide more income for people living along the forests and thus reducing the burden on forests.
Mount Kenya Ecosystem Senior Warden Gideon Kebati said they were holding discussions with United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), with a view to supporting beekeeping projects for communities around the forested areas.
Kebati said by economically empowering the community and the bees being pollination agents, the beekeeping project was viable in conservation efforts.
The forests, which teem with elephants and other big and small game, including endangered species like the Mountain Bongo, have been depleted but ongoing fencing and other strategies are meant to restore it.
“We are in talks with UNESCO who are about to come and start a beekeeping program,” Kebati said.
By harvesting the honey and selling it to enhance their purchasing power, the idea is to ensure locals do not encroach on forests for fuel and other needs.
Kebati said that will be in addition to other projects of conserving the Mount Kenya Forest which straddles several counties including Meru, Nyeri, and Tharaka Nithi, they had formed community teams led by fire marshalls to curb fire incidents in the vast forest.
Meru County Environment Chief Officer Kinoti Mwebia said the department was keen to partner with conservation agencies and communities in a bid to save the forest, for the benefit of residents and wildlife protection.
“Beekeeping is an effective means of forest conservation by the virtue that it provides an indirect benefit to trees. It provides people with livelihoods by acting as an income-generating activity. This makes it useless to cut down trees since people can already enjoy that benefit from trees,” said Mwebia.
The Chief Officer added that his department is aiming at partnering with the community, especially those living near bare hills in the county and which form part of the extension forest.
Former Governor Peter Munya in 2015 distributed hundreds of modern beehives as part of warding off elephants from Imenti Forest from farms, and as a way of conservation.
“Apart from warding off Elephants, we want small-scale farmers to be assured of income from honey. Land is becoming scarce, so beekeeping is the way to go in empowering rural families,” Munya had said.
A single hive can hold as much as 80,000 bees according to John Mutuma, a farmer at Naari.
In addition to the honey, bee venom is used to make medicine for arthritis, while another by-product propolis, is valued for its properties in fighting infections.
Honey and the combs have other medical benefits apart from fighting infections.
