The Kitui county government will start queen bee rearing and offering pollination services in areas where farmers have formed beekeeping cooperatives.
When a colony gets crowded, the bees create a new queen bee who is larger than the other bees.
The queen who is the leader of the colony is usually fed on special royal jelly and stays up to two years while other bees stay only up to 35 days.
The queen bee lays more than 10,000 eggs in a day.
Temi Mutia, the Kitui value chain addition specialist, said queen bee rearing would enable bee farmers to sell bee hives with colonies.
“We intend to add value to our honey and through queen rearing cooperatives will be able to sell bee hives together with colonies instead of selling empty hives,” Mutia said.
The specialist said Kitui has five bee farmers cooperatives with over 10,000 members and over 100,000 bee hives, 70 per cent of them are colonised.
“The county government has supported the cooperatives with bee suits, harvesting buckets, smokers among other relevant equipment," he said.
From the cooperatives, 80 members were trained at the National Bee Keeping Society and 10 agricultural officers will offer training to other members of the cooperatives on how to improve their bee farming.
In addition, the cooperatives will be offering pollination services to farmers.
“After rearing queen bees, the cooperatives will embark on offering pollination services to interested farmers and through the exercise the cooperatives would have added value to their mode of farming,” Mutia stated.
He added that farmers in need of pollination services will be hiring the hives together with bees to go pollinate their plants and return the colonies after the flowering season or an agreed period.
Kitui is among the 21 counties which through its five value chain - green grams, honey, chickens and mangoes - is sponsored by National Agricultural and Rural Inclusive Growth Project, a World Bank project.
He spoke at Kiomo market where he had met Kiomo Kyethani beekeepers cooperative.
Edited by Henry Makori
