Busy Beekeeping Deep in the Mountains: A Sweet Industry Paves the Road to Prosperity

Inspecting honeycombs, cutting honey, checking for mites... In recent days, beekeepers in Gaonan Township, Chengkou County, Chongqing, have been moving among swarms of flying bees, their faces beaming with the joy of a bumper harvest, and beekeeper Wu Xiancheng stands out in particular.

"Since I started keeping bees, I haven't had a single peaceful night's sleep. Now the taut string can finally relax a little." Wu Xiancheng said that over more than a year, under his careful feeding and management, his Chinese bees (Apis cerana cerana) have grown to nearly 300 hives. This year he can harvest more than 3,000 jin of honey. At a minimum wholesale price of 50 yuan/jin, the annual output value has already reached 150,000 yuan.

Speaking of the "sweet" industry created by the little bees, Wu Xiancheng said that ecological protection, technical support and expanding scale are his "winning formula."

Gaonan Township sits deep in the Daba Mountains, with many hills, a distinct vertical climate and abundant mountain flowers as nectar sources. Leveraging this advantage, in recent years Gaonan Township has, according to its own circumstances, supported the development of the Chinese bee industry by providing technical and financial assistance.

Beekeeping is a non-polluting, land-free "industry in the air" with obvious income gains, and the number of beekeepers in Gaonan has gradually increased.

"We have lived in the Daba Mountains for generations. Apart from farming, beekeeping offers the most obvious advantage." Wu Xiancheng said with a smile that he had learned that because Chinese bees mostly collect nectar from pristine mountain flowers, their products are environmentally friendly and of better quality, and Chinese bee honey has always sold well. He believes that getting rich through beekeeping is not a problem.

In early March last year, Wu Xiancheng scraped together 140,000 yuan and bought more than 200 hives of Chinese bees and beekeeping equipment from Chengdu, becoming a beekeeper.

Beekeeping comes with a bit of "bitterness" amid the "sweetness." "I bought the hives, and within a few days problems appeared." Wu Xiancheng said that within days, the bee larvae in the hives turned pale yellow and brown, and some hives even gave off a sour, foul odor. More than half of the 200 hives were like this.

Wu Xiancheng was a complete layman when it came to beekeeping. He had always thought that beekeeping just meant buying hives, placing them on the mountain, and when harvest season arrived, going up the mountain like other beekeepers to cut honey.

But at that time, the mass death of larvae gave Wu Xiancheng a great fright, and he immediately invited agricultural technicians and experienced beekeepers for a "consultation."

It turned out that this was a common larval disease in beekeeping, locally called "rotten brood disease." After treatment and care, it took a full half month before the bee colonies "came back to life."

Only then did Wu Xiancheng understand that beekeeping is not only physical labor but also skilled work.

After that, Wu Xiancheng actively participated in local Chinese bee breeding training. When he heard that there was a Chinese bee breeding expert in Qijiang, he hired him at a high salary to teach him hands-on.

After a period of accumulation, Wu Xiancheng kept building up his beekeeping experience: beekeeping requires diligent management, cleaning the hives every few days, inspecting the honeycombs, and preventing foreign bees from "invading," and so on.

"If you run into problems keeping bees, go find Wu Xiancheng." Today, Wu Xiancheng has become an expert beekeeper, and when local beekeepers encounter breeding problems, they all consult with Wu Xiancheng.

In the past, most people in Gaonan kept bees on their own, "just dabbling." Yields could not rise, and the products were cheap and hard to sell. Wu Xiancheng well understood that no matter how good the quality of the honey, it needs scale development to improve market competitiveness.

One person's strength is very limited. At the end of last year, Wu Xiancheng allocated 300 hives of Chinese bees proportionally to 3 nearby poor households to manage, while he provided the technology and sales channels. The profits earned were split with the poor households at a ratio of 2:3.

With the participation of his neighbors, the burden of management on Wu Xiancheng became lighter, and he focused on expanding sales channels. At present, in addition to local scattered orders, Wu Xiancheng's honey has already been reserved by a distributor in Wuhan, specifically for supply to supermarkets and hotels.

"When products leave the mountain gate, the world opens wide." Wu Xiancheng said that with the foundation laid and sales channels smooth, he plans to expand on the original 300 hives and get more neighbors involved in beekeeping, strengthening Gaonan Township's "sweet" industry.

Deng Dan, excerpted from Chongqing Daily