Enterprise

Beekeeping services earn former Icipe staff sweet income

beekeeping

Value addition Parecma Enterprises worker Kenneth Agunga processes and packages honey for sale. PHOTO | ELIZABETH OJINA | NMG

Martin Onyango is dressed in a white bee suit, a pair of red gloves and gumboots as he leads us to the apiary farm within the pine trees in Ogongo Mixed Secondary School, Homa Bay County.

Next to the apiary, there are several fruits such as pawpaw, mangoes, oranges and sunflowers.

“The school has eight beehives. This is part of the projects that we have established with schools to enhance beekeeping in the region,” Onyango told Enterprise.

The 39-year-old runs a bee-keeping venture known as Parecma Enterprises which fabricates beehives, trains farmers on modern apiary technology and processing honey for sale, which trades by the brand name Delica.

The entrepreneur, a former employee of the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology for a decade, provides extension beekeeping services to his clients.

One of his tasks is assisting his clients set up apiaries and ensure that the hives are colonised after a maximum of 21 days. He also trains them on how to harvest the honey.

He charges an individual Sh800 and a group Sh1,500. Some of the schools he has worked with include Ogongo Secondary, Mbita High School, Rapura Secondary School, Waware Secondary School and Pe-Hill High School in Migori.

“We get to schools because they are the agents of change. We nurture youth to embrace apiary as a source of income. We train them through their various agricultural clubs and liaise with their teachers,” says Onyango.

He contracts carpenters who make for him the Langstroth hive and the Kenyan Top Bar Hive but he plans to open his own workshop in the future.

The firm makes beehives on orders placed by clients. His biggest supply was 300 beehives to a local NGO in Homa Bay, Siaya and Migori counties. In a good month, he sells between 15 and 20 hives at Sh5,700 each.

“We use clean equipment to calibration honey harvest from the field. It also helps us to keep track of the humidity of the honey.

'We expect the honey to sustain the same calibration it had when it was being extracted from the farm,” he says.

The firm’s main markets are Mbita, Kisumu, Kisii, Nakuru, Nairobi, Migori, Kendu Bay and Homa Bay.

Mr Onyango says the business, which has four staff, makes between Sh40,000 and Sh70,000 a month from selling the honey.