Beekeeping in Remote Mountains Sets Two Brothers on the Road to Prosperity
"Our area has many mountains and dense forests, a typical mountainous region, very suitable for raising Chinese bees." On August 28, Liang Runhua of Liang's Bee Industry in Shanhaoyun Village, Tuojiang Town, Jianghua Yao Autonomous County, chatted with the author who came to interview him while inspecting how the bees were making honey.
Liang Runhua is 26 years old this year, and together with his 24-year-old younger brother Liang Xiaohua, he started the business Liang Brothers Bee Industry. At his beekeeping base, rows of neat beehives are laid out, and bees fly everywhere in the air. Right now is the good season when goldenrod is blooming, and the mountain flowers covering the hills and fields make this the best period for a honey harvest for them.
"In 2008, after I graduated from junior high school, because my family was struggling financially, I took over more than 30 boxes of bees from my 80-year-old grandfather, who had kept bees for more than 20 years, and began my road of beekeeping entrepreneurship. In 2010, my older brother Liang Runhua, after finishing the second year of senior high school, also joined the beekeeping business." When asked why they chose beekeeping as their entrepreneurial path, Liang Xiaohua told the author. Liang Xiaohua also explained that the Chinese bee is a bee species native to China's mountainous areas, good at gathering nectar from hundreds of flowers, and with strong individual resistance to cold and heat, making it a rare good bee species for beekeeping in mountainous areas.
Whenever it is time to gather honey, the bees fly up to the hilltops and collect nectar from wildflowers in the mountains. Liang Runhua said with a smile: "Wherever there are many wildflowers on the mountains, we move the bee farm there. This ensures a nectar source and lets the bees collect authentic honey."
Honey has edible and health-care value, and because of its good quality it is increasingly favored by the general public. During the interview, the author learned that the honey from Liang's Bee Industry generally sells for 100 yuan per kilogram, while winter honey can sell for 160 yuan per kilogram. The Liang brothers' more than 400 boxes of bees can collect more than 5,000 kilograms of honey a year, generating income of more than 500,000 yuan.
Led by the Liang brothers, 6 households in Dalupu Town and Tuojiang Town also took the road out of poverty to prosperity through beekeeping.
The Liang brothers say: "One person being rich does not count as being rich; only when everyone gets rich together is that truly being rich." They often provide free technical guidance to beekeepers and help them sell honey, relieving beekeepers of their worries. In the future, they will also encourage more villagers to keep bees, making beekeeping a good path to prosperity for people in mountainous areas.