Bees for Life!

     Migdad is our newest beekeeper and he has just started his own apiary two months ago with five beehives and has a plan to establish Twenty-five (25) Beehives within the next year. Migdad is now learning the art of beekeeping from our trainers and his mentor is our youngest beekeeper, Michelle!        

  Migdad owns less than one acre of land, as his family property and he is  a very enterprising farmer, who otherwise is a poultry breeder and also owns a small fish farm.  Previously, Migdad was employed with an IT Company. The nationwide lockdown imposed following the COVID-19 pandemic, transformed Migdad into a farmer and now, he is a full-time farmer and adopting Beekeeping is something he always wanted to pursue. In earlier instances, Migdad used to collect honey from wild colonies which were found among the plantations and he wanted to become a Professional Beekeeper. However, there was no proper guidance or help in this direction, until Migdad met with a TIES Team Member few months ago. 

TIES initiated their organization’s support through the “Bees for Life” programme and provided the first set of Five Beehives to Migdad in the month of January 2021. Ever since, he is undergoing the systematic training programme that will help him to take care of the Bees.

Beekeeping is like an art that is both simple and complicated at the same time, where the beekeeper must understand his bees, learn finer techniques to manage the beehive and ensure good growth and production of honey. 

TIES has assigned Michelle who is a teenage beekeeper to mentor Migdad, and they are collaborating amazingly well in this task!

              Michelle is a Fifth Generation Beekeeper, who believes that being a Beek is engraved into her DNA. She owns a dozen beehives and was being trained by her Father since the last three years to become a qualified “Beek”.  She has accomplished two cycles of colony management which includes monsoon care and feeding, colony division and rearing of new queen bees, establishing new colonies with introduced queens, honey collection and management. In the very recent past, Michelle passed the final test of capturing a wild colony and transferring it into a box successfully and now, she has officially graduated as a “Beek“.

• January 2021: Migdad received Five Colonies from TIES and established the colonies in the vicinity of his house. All the colonies were nursery colonies with three brood chamber frames filled and active queen bees present.

• February 2021: Colonies are faring good and the best colony was divided into two in a 4:2 manner with the motive to increase the number of colonies. We expect to collect some honey from all these Beehives this year. The colony growth is excellent, and the honey collection season is about to begin.