Bee-keeping at Kinangop

Bee-keeping is a successful alternative income for farmers and members of 'Friends of Kinangop Plateau' and is an important activity for helping to remove pressure on Kinangop's important and endangered tussock grasslands.

'Friends of Kinangop Plateau' (FoKP) have a collection centre for their honey at Engineer township in North Kinangop. The collection centre also has two machines (an extractor and processor) for refining the honey.

The refinery processes pure honey (no additives). The honey is collected, graded, processed and packaged by 'FoKP members themselves.

Workers at the Honey Refinery
FoKP have 3 people involved with the processing of honey, plus 1 person for selling and also the branch Secretary.

FoKP beekeepers have been trained in honey harvesting methods.

1 farmer may have up to 50 hives (modern Langstrom), while farmers living adjacent to the forest may have up to 200 traditional log hives. There are approximately 3,000 beehives between FoKP 50 farmers.

200 jars of honey are processed each week by the refinery. It takes 2 weeks to sell 200 jars.

By products are bees wax and a Skin Care Salve which is used for milking and also for softening skin.

The harvesting season for honey at Kinangop is October to January. Between January and October there is usually no honey being produced by the bees.
An average of 300kg of raw honey is harvested between November and January.
Farmers are paid 150/= per kilo for raw honey. Payment is made to them when the honey is collected so that they do not have to wait for payment until after the honey is process and sold.

Processed honey is then sold for between 150/= to 200/= per 500g jar.

Funding received:
- FoKP received funding from Kenya's Community Development Trust Fund (CDTF) for modern Langstrom hives whislt SWEDBIO company funded the refinery machines.
-FoKP have also developed some proposals in collaboration with Kenya's Ministry of Agriculture.

Transport for collecting honey is by bicycles and public transport. 1 bicycle (funded by CDTF) is owned by FoKP whilst other bicycles belong to FoKP members themselves. FoKP collect raw honey from the farmers and grade it before processing.

Distance travelled to collect honey is around 15km from Engineer town to the 1st farmer, then another 15km to the next farmer and so on. 100km is the maximum distance travelled to collect honey. Public transport (matatu) is used when 5 bucket's worth of honey and above needs to be collected over a long distance. The matatu charges 30/= Kenyan shillings.

Honey Processing . The extractor machine takes 5 frames of honey from the bee hives. The extraction process takes 2 minutes and then the honey is placed into the processing machine. The processing machine takes 56kg of extracted honey (37 frames) and takes one day to process from 8am till 5pm.

28kg of raw honey produces 20kg of pure honey.
8kg of residue gives 1/2 kg of wax and skin care salve.

Outlets
FoKP honey & Skin Care Salve are sold to 2 local supermarkets plus 2 others elsewhere and also to a chemist. The products are also sold at Naivasha, the Nature Kenya shop in Nairobi and at fairs and exhibitions such as Safaricom.

You'll be able to find all this information plus more photo's, etc of 'Friends of Kinangop Plateau' activities on the main CCi-Kenya website from April onwards. You can now also find them across at 'Sema Kenya'.