A bee keeping expert has revealed that Rwanda has the potential to increase its honey production.

This was revealed by  Desire Mushumba, a bee keeping expert with Rwanda Association for Development Promotion (ARDI), during a three-day training of representatives of bee keeping cooperatives in Nyagatare District, Eastern Province, where he was a facilitator of the training.

"It has been discovered that Rwanda has very good quality of honey that can really compete on any available market, and there is a huge potential to produce much more honey and its subsidiary products if bee keepers begun to be business oriented,”

He however added that honey production in Rwanda is still low to satisfy the local demand due to traditional ways of honey extraction used by many bee keepers.

Fortunately, the government through the Ministry of Agriculture has pushed for the promotion of honey production and several other institutions are also gearing up for the improvement of bee keeping.

Reports have shown that between 60 to 80 tons of honey are harvested from Nyungwe zone due to modern way of bee keeping and extraction of honey after introducing modern beehives from Germany.

"Much as it can fight poverty, bee keeping can also help in fighting an estimated 450 diseases,” "Diseases like asthma and other sicknesses that affect breathing circulation system, reproductive health and nutritional deficiencies.

There even other products like soaps, candles, shoe polish, and cosmetic products from honey wax and pro-polis,” Mushumba explained.

He added that the trained bee keepers have attained skills that can improve their bee keeping activities and cn increase honey production from 3.5kg per beehive to 45kg in a year.

The training was sponsored by Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) through its office in Nyagatare concluded yesterday aiming at improving bee keeping and honey production.

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