BEES at the Bamyan agriculture fair

On the 22nd of Spetember Bamyan held its first Agriculture fair organisaed by Bamyans Minestry of Agriculture (DAIL). COAM is working in partnership with DAIL to promote sustainable beekeeping business using the native Afghan Honey Bee and helping to establish beekeeping cooperatives across the district. The project is called BEES (Beekeeping Education Empowerment Sustainability).

The Bamyan agriculture fair gave us an exciting opportunity to showcase some locally produced beekeeping equipment and also to provide information on beekeeping, the importance of pollinators and nutritional benifits of honey. There was great interest in our stall and we had the opportunity to field some interesting questions  about bees and beekeeping and also hear some stories from local established beekeepers.

[quote align=”center” color=”#999999″]”I have a big apple orchard, three years ago I got beehives and now I get at least one third more fruit and they are also bigger, I thank the bees for this”. – Mustfa, a farmer from Saidabad village, Bamayan.[/quote]

As this project is aimed at promoting particularly women beekeepers we emphasised to farmers we met  the economic benefits that beekeeping brings and that it is a easy and safe job for women to do at the home.

Below is a sample of the brochure we distributed over 27 communities across Bamyan, to advertise and promote the BEES project. So far there has been great feed back and interest from both women and men.