Beekeeping Business Is Booming In South Africa

Beekeeping Business Is Booming In South Africa – Here’s How to Begin: Beekeeping is a business opportunity with social, financial, and natural advantages that requires min­imal time, work, and asset.
For its enormous pertinence to human wellbeing and development, rear­ing of honey bees and creation of honey has become flourishing busi­ness both in Nigeria and abroad. Apiculture, the review and keeping of honey bees, in certain regions of the planet, frequently starts as a hob­by which can later be ventured into a major business.

The most regularly found bumble bee in Nigeria is the Apis mellifera adansonii which lives in the provinces consistently. Different types of bumble bees incorporate Apis dorsata, labonoser, mellifere, larnica and mellifera Linquistica.

The two results of commer­cial volume made by the honey bees are honey bee wax and honey. The honey bees utilize the wax for building their brushes and it is one of the most remark­able peculiarities in the organ­isation of the bumble bee. Bumble bee toxin, honey bee dust, crude hon­ey, illustrious jam and propolis are the items for the most part considered to make restorative impacts.

As a result of its significance to individuals, honey has gotten need consideration from entrepre­neurs. By and large, this is a result of its productivity, it is a reasonable integral movement for in­vestors requires next to no invest­ment and creates speedy returns.

Despite the fact that, there has been in­crease in neighborhood creation of honey in Nigeria, the interest for honey still far surpasses the stock.

Accordingly, independent of this high creation of honey to fulfill with the rising need, they scarcely produce to the point of meeting with the appearing mission for honey inside and outside Nigeria. It is being offered fundamentally important consideration as a result of its situation in food esteem, restorative worth, indus­trial use and pay age.

A beekeeping enterprise can provide a good platform for mar­ketable honey. The honey market at present is very strong, espe­cially for locally produced honey and specialty honey.

Production of honey is a busi­ness that is associated with risks owning to the nature of bees. Honey is good for the body, it helps the body to grow in good health and good for mental alert­ness; in other words, it helps the brain to function well, and it’s also good for freshness of skin.

In honey production, the first thing is determining an envi­ronment or a location that bees are not far from. This is because bees are not everywhere. After this is determined, one can get some rectangular boxes built for this purpose. Not just any box, because only boxes that are made for this purpose can work,” af­ter getting the number of boxes thing is baiting the boxes with a view to attracting bees, bees don’t just come into these boxes, there are some things that are mixed together as bait, serving as at­traction measure.

Most of the times make use of honey wax got from honey comb. There are other things that can also the used as bait.

There is particular specie of banana that is used as bait in at­tracting bees to the boxes as the boxes are placed in different stra­tegic locations. Experience need­ed for this business is between three and six months, which, inci­dentally, is the number of months needed to rear bees and get honey.

Start-up Capital

An intending honey production entrepreneurs can start with any amount depending on their finan­cial capacity after getting a good location for the bee, you need to get the rectangular boxes made for the purpose of the business.

The number of boxes you can start with depends on the avail­able capital.

Location

Ideally, the location for bee rearing should be away from dwelling places, and some shade should be provided for the boxes, especially during sunny period.

How to get bees

Bees can be captured from a swarm, obtained from an estab­lished beekeeper, or purchased from a commercial bee supply company, you can get a location where bees can be found, you need to take an environmental survey. This will help you not to waste time in waiting for bees where there are no bees.

A survey has to be carried out on the intending location to be sure there are bees around the area or not,

Management

A beekeeper will need to regu­larly check on the boxes to exam­ine the condition of the brood, check food stores, look for signs of disease and pests, and to perform various maintenance necessary for the hygiene of the honey.

Challenges

The major challenge is the risk involved vis-a-vis the stinging na­ture of the bee.

Innocent passers-by can be at­tacked by these bees. Another chal­lenge is the possibility of the bee farm to be burnt by fire by those engaged in bush burning.

“Since the bee farm is most times located in the bush, the bee farmer might incur the loss of his boxes with the honey if fire is thrown into the location of the farm.

Precaution

There are some precautions that must be taken while running the business; when going to visit the bee farm, the beekeeper should not go in a dress with multi-colour. Multi-colour dresses naturally at­tract the rage of the bee

Honey Farm Essentials

If you have decided to pursue the project, be sure you have the farm, vehicles and the equipment needed to start the business.

For a small farm, you would need bees with queen, brood chamber, honey containers, honey boxes, at­tire (hat, veil, and overalls), hive tool, scratcher for unsealing the honey, manual or motorized extractor, and freezer for storing honey.

Alternatively, you can operate a large honey farm by buying honey from small farmers and distrib­uting it to schools, restaurants, households, pharmacies and ho­tels under your own label.

Usually, small farmers do not alot time and energy on marketing their produce. As a bigger outfit, with per­haps between 10 and 20 employees, you can do extensive marketing.

Profitability

The profitability of the busi­ness, honey production business is a very lucrative one. After six months of rearing the bees, the production of the honey, and the packaging, one can make millions depending on the number of boxes used for the business af­ter the deduction of the overhead cost, what will be left can make one smile because of the demand for both domestic and industrial use. Good honey is like gold as far as your honey is good or what they call original your stream of income will be endless.