Bees for Babar: Peacekeeping through beekeeping: reducing wildlife conflicts and increasing incomes with guardian hives

Bees for Babar is currently partnering with a small number of corporate donors to manage consolidated funds to implement project activities to benefit women's cooperatives that produce shea butter and bee products for the production of cosmetics in what has been dubbed the SheKeeper Project.
About the SheKeeper Project
The SheKeeper project empowers women shea collectors in Northern Ghana to engage in beekeeping as an additional source of income, while also promoting smallholder beekeeping across the region. By supporting beekeeping alongside shea collection, the project strengthens livelihoods, diversifies income opportunities, and enhances shea yields through pollination.


Field Activities & Communities
Field experts Mohammed Ali Ibrahim and Abdulai Abdul Rashid are conducting intensive training and monitoring visits across multiple communities in Northern Ghana. The project supports women beekeepers through hands-on training, equipment maintenance, and addressing challenges as they arise.

Communities Receiving Support: Langa, Jakpahi, Kpulinyin, Dunyokpaligu, Bogu, Sorigu, and Gizaa Gundaa

Field Challenges Encountered Development organizations rarely share the full complexity of fieldwork challenges with donors and the public, but transparency about obstacles is essential for realistic expectations and meaningful support. Rural development initiatives are fraught with challenges even in ideal circumstances, and beekeeping—once considered a straightforward livelihood intervention—is becoming increasingly difficult in any context due to climate change, habitat loss, and shifting agricultural practices. In field visits recently conducted at project sites numerous difficulties were documented:


Community Conflicts & Land Access: The community context of the project requires the engagement of chiefs and elders as essential for addressing land access and harassment/vandalism issues


Timing & Seasonal Conflicts: The harsh reality is that rural women farmers in Ghana are very busy and beekeeping activities compete with their many other duties overlapping with groundnut (peanut) harvest season or market days. Women are often too busy with farming to attend training or to maintain hives.


Participant Disengagement & Neglect: Abandoned and neglected hives, some severely decomposed from termite damage and weather exposure from inadequate maintenance, highlight that participant disengagement remains the most serious challenge across communities


Equipment Management Issues: Dismantled equipment left abandoned or hives repurposed for other uses, such as for feeding troughs, indicate that some participants are no longer interested in beekeeping, requiring ownership transfer of salvaged equipment to committed members


Environmental & Natural Damage: A dormouse nesting in an abandoned hive and a wasp comb on topbars are reminders that unoccupied hives that are not regularly visited/cleaned may become occupied by natural enemies, preventing successful colonization by honeybees.


Equipment Theft & Vandalism: Hives burned during honey theft/vandalism or during brush clearing operations lead to equipment destruction and bee forage and habitat loss that pose significant challenges to project success.

In addition to the largely cultural/development issues above, beekeeping in Ghana also suffers from problems affecting bees worldwide: habitat loss, parasitic disease-vectoring mites, and the effects of agrochemicals

Habitat Loss: Changing land use patterns in northern Ghana—especially deforestation, agricultural expansion, and mining—are degrading bee habitats and reducing forage availability, indirectly threatening honeybee populations and honey production.


Varroa mite: Varroa destructor, an undesirable invader in Ghana since about 2010, now infests nearly 90% of colonies, with high brood cell infestation but, so far as is known, no visible disease symptoms—suggesting African honeybees may tolerate the mite better than European subspecies. Despite widespread presence, there is little information available on population-level impacts of Varroa or the viruses they can vector on honeybees in Ghana.


Pesticides: Beekeepers in Ghana are usually small-scale farmers, too. Pesticides are increasingly used in maize, cocoa, or vegetable farming-- often with inadequate personal protective equipment and minimal training. The use of such compounds-- including those used by beekeepers to control mites parasitic on honeybees underscores the delicate balance that farmers and beekeepers must strike between managing harmful pests and safeguarding honeybee health.

Progress & Successes Field experts are employing these key strategies to move forward by implementing strong accountability measures: community chiefs and elders are being engaged to support women beekeepers and address harassment; neglected hives are being redistributed to committed participants within the same communities; strategic relocation to better nectar sources is proving highly successful; and intensive six-day field work periods are planned to provide hands-on support, monitoring, and supervision. The project emphasizes that participation is voluntary - those not committed to beekeeping are asked to return equipment so it can benefit others waiting for the opportunity.

Apiary maintainance: Committed beekeepers clearing brush for better airflow to maintain proper apiary conditions contributes to active, well-maintained hives with strong colonies and demonstrates the potential for successful project participation


Apiary renovation: Team members work together to refurbish apiary sites in a collaborative effort to improve colonization and honey production


Hive baiting: Careful cleaning and maintenance of equipment, including regularly rubbing hive parts with beeswax and fevergrass (which produces odor compounds very attractive to swarming bees) are essential for successful colonization


Improved bait hive placement: Ideal bait hive locations are about 3 m above the ground and in shady locations, such placement leads to higher colonization rates-- after colonization hives can be lowered to hive stands and grouped in apiaries.

Good colonized hive placement: Well-organized apiary with proper spacing and placement exemplify best practices allowing easy hive maintenance and harvesting

Major Success: In Kpulinyin community, teams that relocated hives to better sites achieved 100% colonization - all 20 relocated hives were occupied by swarms within just one week of installation!

The SheKeeper project continues to demonstrate that with proper support, training, and community engagement, women in Northern Ghana can successfully develop beekeeping as a sustainable income source alongside their traditional shea collection activities.


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About the SheKeeper Project

Field Activities & Communities

Field Challenges Encountered

Progress & Successes