Peng Dong: Helping more people get rich by raising wasps

Peng Dong is a villager of Dingjiayu Village, Ruitapu Town, Sangzhi County, and has been engaged in wasp breeding and sales for four years. Over these four years of continuous exploration and learning, he has mastered a set of methods for raising wasps. Recently, he plans to spread these wasp breeding methods so that more people can learn to raise wasps and be led onto the path to prosperity.

The wasp, also known as the hornet or yellow jacket, is rich in protein and fat, and its pupae have effects such as strengthening the body and benefiting the stomach and intestines. It is hailed as "ginseng from the sky" and is a pure natural premium nutritional product. As a wild delicacy with rich flavor, complete nutritional value and high medicinal efficacy, wasp pupae have become a new fashion in people's consumption.

Before raising wasps, Peng Dong mainly obtained wasp pupae by collecting wasp nests in the wild.

In his first year, Peng Dong collected wasp nests in the wild and sold them for more than 100,000 yuan. Seeing that it was fairly profitable, and as the number of wild wasps was declining, he came up with the idea of raising wasps himself. Peng Dong gained some beekeeping knowledge through television, the internet and other channels, but the road to entrepreneurship is never smooth, and this was no exception for Peng Dong. Because he did not understand wasp breeding methods, Peng Dong failed at beekeeping in his first year.

Peng Dong searched everywhere for methods of wasp reproduction, and combined them with his own experience of failure, finally succeeding in breeding wasps in the second year. Just as the wasps he raised were about to be sold, however, because he had bought fake honey to feed them, more than half of his wasps died overnight.

After this failure, in order to ensure the safety of the wasps' feed, Peng Dong had no choice but to raise bees himself. From then on, he only used honey he produced himself to feed the wasps. After these several failures, combined with the fact that his mother had cancer in the previous few years, which not only used up the family's savings but also required borrowing loans, Peng Dong was already heavily in debt.

Despite financial difficulties, Peng Dong still did not give up raising wasps. With no money to buy equipment, he made it himself. All the bee barrels were made by his own hands, and the bee shed was also built by himself. In order to drill bee holes, he even modified equipment himself, turning a rice milling machine into a hole-drilling machine. His efforts and determination deeply moved his aunt. His aunt not only provided Peng Dong with financial support, but also helped him establish Xinyue Farm, expanding the influence of wasp breeding through the farm model. With his aunt's help, Peng Dong's wasp breeding became increasingly famous, and his wasp breeding finally showed results.

Last year he was still operating at a loss, but this year his net income has already reached 80,000 yuan. According to Peng Dong, Sangzhi County alone can consume more than 5 million yuan worth of wasp pupae, while his own annual output of wasps can only reach about 2,000 jin, so there is still a lot of room in the market. Although his own wasp breeding has only just shown results, in order to lead more people onto the path to prosperity, Peng Dong refuses no one who wants to learn his beekeeping techniques and teaches them everything he knows. He also plans to use a free-range model to help the surrounding people shake off poverty and become prosperous.

Peng Dong said: "I breed the queen bees myself, and after breeding a standard bee, once it has more than twenty worker bees, it can be hung on a tree. I let them hang it in front of or behind their own houses, and they can also get a certain income. At harvest time, one person gets half. Earning more than 10,000 yuan a year is an easy thing."