Poverty is one of the driving forces of forest degradation as local communities depend on forest resources to meet their basic livelihood requirements. As an integral part of its forest landscape restoration endeavors in Ethiopia, WeForest has been distributing forest friendly livelihood inputs like bee colonies, poultry, sheep, high value crops as well as alternative energy sources for resource poor residents of the Desa’a forest since 2018. The provision of the inputs aims in diversifying sources of income for residents of the project area and limiting pressures on the forestland.
Mrs. Almaz Meles, aged 60, is one of the female beneficiaries of WeForest living in Golgol-naele village taking care of her 3 family members. For years, her livelihood was limited to farming on 0.25 ha of land, which provided below her minimum livelihood needs by far. Her family had great desire to have bee colonies in their home but she was hesitant to buy not only because she did not have money but also management experience. In 2021, she received an improved beekeeping package accompanied with skill and knowledge training from the project, a new experience for her family.
Over the past few years, she managed to get one additional colony through splitting. Currently she owns four colonies of which three are with modern hives. Almaz said “I focused on honey harvest rather than colony multiplication because there is limited availability of accessories like modern beehives and wax in the market”. She also explained, “The amount of honey I collect in previous years varies depending on factors like feed availability, drought, and weather conditions. However from my last harvest I got 11 Kg on average per modern hive with the possibility of harvesting two times per year”.
According to her witness, part of the honey harvest is used for home consumption and medicinal purposes while the remaining is sold at the market and generated direct income. However, one clear role of her beekeeping activity is that Almaz uses honey sale income as starting capital for another business. She said “some of the consumption expenses are covered from the sale of honey. Apart from that, I also bought one heifer for ETB 24,000, where most of its cost was covered from sale of honey. My plan is, yet, to cover part of the diary business expenses from the sale of harvested honey.. I am too eager to see my heifer get pregnant and diversify my income from milk sales as well. Now I’m hopeful I will expand both the beekeeping and diary business and will be self-dependent soon”.

For the next years to come, she plans to multiply her bee colonies too. However, as per her understanding, shortage of accessories, especially modern beehives and wax for offspring colonies will be her challenge while she thinks of expanding the beekeeping business. Almaz confidentially said, “I can buy the accessories but the market is not easily accessible for me”. This is a message that working on market linkage could be one area of support in the future.

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