A Young Girl Actively Involved in Beekeeping

In the former times, the Rwandan culture prohibited the young girls from getting involved in beekeeping activities. This was due to the fact that the girl was not allowed to climb up trees to hang the hives.

Now, due to the bad events of wars that have characterized our country Rwanda, whereby many young girls were left orphans and therefore responsible for their households, they are obliged to know and practice various types of development activities. Among those, the beekeeping sector is one of their important income sources.

One example is Lea IRADUKUNDA a young girl made orphan by the war. She lives with her mother Therese NYIRAMANA by names a widow. They live on beekeeping activities and a small kitchen garden full of a variety of vegetables. The young girl taught how to make traditional beehives, climbing up trees and hang the bee hives, as well as harvesting.

Lea and her mother have got their own apiary of 18 (4 top bars,1 langstroth and 13 traditional beehives .One uniqueness that they have is a edilis CANA plantation from which they make flour used to make cakes, biscuits mixed with honey harvested from their own apiary.

Lea feels proud of this product and is eager to teach other girls of her age how to grow this plant.

Now Lea doesn’t depend on anyone like boys. She is able to satisfy herself the basic needs of a girl and has improved the socio-economic situation of the family.

Therese and her daughter are planning to organize other young girls into cooperatives and teach them about modern beekeeping and how to make flour from CANA EDILIS plant.