A beekeeper's transformation from an ascetic to a honey-making big brother
As soon as the beehive was opened, thousands of plump, fuzzy little bees buzzed around their owner. Looking at the honey made in the hive, the owner smiled: "See, they're not afraid at all. They even want to ask me for food."
His name is Nie Shuning. Born in Puling Village, Yong'an City, he is 42 this year, a national leader in rural youth entrepreneurship and wealth creation, and president of the Yong'an City Beekeeping Association.
"Changes in temperature and humidity directly affect the individual development of bees, colony activity, colony reproduction, and so on. If the temperature inside the nest colony is higher or lower than the suitable temperature for the brood comb, the bees will adopt various solutions to 'regulate' it..." At the Puling apiary, Nie Shuning talked fluently about the "scripture of beekeeping."
"Bees" lend a hand on the entrepreneurial path
Nie Shuning graduated in 1995 from the technical school of the Fujian Automobile Factory. He worked as a lathe operator and a pastry chef, grew flowers, and sold pesticides. After seven years of working for others, he resolved to return to his hometown to start a business. In 2002, guided by a retired leader who loved beekeeping, he fell in love with beekeeping. In 2003, he said goodbye to his years of working for others and, with 11 bee colonies given to him by his mentor, set out on his beekeeping journey.
Starting a business is easier said than done. Over 13 years of beekeeping, Nie Shuning, like Tang Monk and his disciples on their pilgrimage to the West to obtain the scriptures, went through eighty-one great trials.
At the beginning, he lacked funds and could not develop his bee colonies. That June, he found a swarm of bees at the Xiyang Xiayang wood processing factory and wanted to "collect" them to raise, but ended up being stung all over by this swarm. Later, it was still his mentor who brought bee frames and hives to teach him "hiving," and only then did he learn to train wild bees into domesticated bees. Nie Shuning raised money to develop while learning techniques. He participated in the Haixi entrepreneurship training class organized by the Yong'an Municipal Committee of the Communist Youth League, and obtained a 50,000 yuan interest-free loan, as well as one-on-one entrepreneurial guidance. The door to entrepreneurship slowly opened: 20 colonies in 2004, 30 in 2005... by 2009 it reached 100 tall hives, and he also founded Yong'an City's first beekeeping cooperative and registered the "Jialu" trademark.
Tasting sweetness and bitterness along the "migration" route
At that time, Nie Shuning kept Italian bees. Every year from March to December, in order to chase nectar, beekeepers had to move to more than 10 places inside and outside the province, the farthest being Hubei.
Chasing flowers and honey year after year, for three consecutive years from 2008 to 2010 he did not return home until the twelfth lunar month, and after the New Year he went out again to release bees. The hardest year was 2010, when beekeeping made no money and he got home only 7 days before the New Year. To look after the bees, after the whole family finished the New Year's Eve dinner, his wife and children came with him to stay overnight in a tent at the Fuzhuang apiary.
"Since I chose the 'distant place,' I can only press on through wind and rain." In April 2010, after Nie Shuning and his wife left their daughter, not yet 6 years old, in the care of relatives in Xiyang, they hurried off to Zhangpu to collect lychee honey. It was the busy farming season, and when a relative was not paying attention, their daughter, who was playing on the road, was hit by a motorcycle. Nie Shuning and his wife rented a car overnight and rushed home, and had to entrust the apiary to a friend to look after.
Tending bees requires extra care. Once, when transporting bees from Yong'an to Hubei to collect honey, a trip that normally took more than 20 hours took a full 2 days. It turned out that they all traveled at night and rested during the day. During the day, the vehicle left the expressway to let the hardworking bees out for air.
Releasing bees also comes with many "ordeals." In 2008, Nie Shuning went to Anxi to release bees for honey collection, and a few local "honey tyrants" deliberately made things difficult, coming from more than 10 kilometers away, where they had never interfered with each other, to demand money from him. Later, the local village party secretary helped him out: "Nie Shuning is my relative. He pays me 2,000 yuan in rent every year. Otherwise, if you pay it, I'll tell him to go home." When he went to Zhao'an, the "honey tyrants" directly asked him for a "land occupation fee"; when he went to Longhai, his motorcycle was stolen...
With so many hardships, his family felt distressed and all urged him to give it up. His parents-in-law even wanted to let him manage an orchard.
Nie Shuning felt deeply lost. At the end of 2010, he tried to "change careers" and went to Hubei to buy 60 cattle, preparing to resell them. That year there was a snow disaster, the snow blocked the roads, and the business he had his eye on was lost. Not knowing how to do business, in 2011 he went to Xiyang to manage an orchard for a year. This round of setbacks made him realize that the reason beekeeping did not make money was that he only focused on "chasing flowers and honey," was seriously disconnected from the market, and was basically making wedding clothes for others.
Industry promotion sends "bee" waves surging
Changing his way of thinking, Nie Shuning returned to the beekeeping industry and from 2013 switched to keeping Chinese bees, which allowed him both to care for his family and to devote more energy to marketing.
The natural honey, royal jelly, and bee pollen he sold gained fame. In the course of entrepreneurship, he met many entrepreneurial mentors and young entrepreneurial friends. With the help of this business platform, he brought "Jialu" brand bee products into the Fuzhou market, and the cooperative was also rated a "provincial-level farmers' professional cooperative" by the Provincial Department of Agriculture in 2013. The varieties of honey he sold also expanded from loquat honey, lychee honey, and longan honey to seven or eight kinds including kumquat honey, wild osmanthus honey, and locust flower and lotus flower honey, with by-products such as rapeseed pollen, lotus pollen, and tea pollen.
Today, he has also led dozens of nearby farming households to develop the beekeeping industry, cultivating nearly 10 beekeeping bases including Hongtian, Luofang, Puling, and Fuzhuang. Through cooperation with other places in mobile bee releasing, he now has more than 500 tall hives, produces nearly 10 tons of honey annually, and has an output value of more than 800,000 yuan. In 2012 he also established the Yong'an City Entrepreneurship Home, which in that year alone spurred the development of 7 small and micro agricultural product enterprises. Last May, he took the lead in establishing a beekeeping association in Sanming. At present, the association has more than 6,000 hives, annual sales revenue of more than 6 million yuan, and has helped more than 200 members increase their incomes and become better off.
Nie Shuning has not forgotten his original aspiration and gives full play to the advantages of members by providing free beekeeping training for people with disabilities. In the first batch, he helped 26 people with disabilities adopt 260 bee colonies, providing services such as on-site surveys, arrangements for delivering bees, distribution of tools, and follow-up beekeeping technical support, forming a targeted poverty alleviation model of paired assistance through "association + members + poor households" and technical services through "teaching + helping + taking into account," effectively helping poor households achieve common prosperity. He has successively won the titles of "Fujian Youth May Fourth Medal" and "National Rural Youth Wealth-Generation Leader."
"Beekeeping is only part of the business." Nie Shuning said that from collecting honey to producing pollen and royal jelly, and then to honey health products and cosmetics, a three-dimensional farming operation, resource-recycling, comprehensively developed ecological management farm is his dream.