Two brothers in Tuojiang Town, Hunan, get rich by keeping bees in the deep mountains
“Our area has many mountains and dense forests, a typical mountainous region, which is very suitable for keeping 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 checking how the bees were making honey.
Liang Runhua is 26 this year, and together with his 24-year-old younger brother Liang Xiaohua, he started Liang Brothers Bee Industry. At his beekeeping base, rows of neat beehives are set out, with bees flying all over the sky. It is currently 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 finished junior high school, because my family was poor, I took over more than 30 hives from my 80-year-old grandfather, who had kept bees for more than 20 years, and began my road of starting a business in beekeeping. In 2010, my older brother Liang Runhua, after finishing the second year of senior high school, also joined the beekeeping business.” Liang Xiaohua told the author when asked why they chose beekeeping to start a business. Liang Xiaohua also explained that the Chinese bee is a bee species native to China's mountain areas, good at gathering from a hundred flowers, and with strong individual cold and heat resistance, making it a rare and good bee species for beekeeping in mountainous areas.
Whenever it is time to gather honey, the bees fly up to the mountain tops and gather nectar from wild flowers in the mountains. Liang Runhua said with a smile: “Wherever there are many wild flowers on the mountains, we move the bee farm there. This ensures a nectar source and lets the bees gather 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 kg, and winter honey can sell for 160 yuan per kg. The Liang brothers' more than 400 hives can gather more than 5,000 kg of honey a year, bringing in more than 500,000 yuan in income.
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: “Being rich alone does not count as being rich; only when everyone gets rich together is it truly being rich.” They often provide free technical guidance to beekeepers, help them sell honey, and relieve beekeepers of their worries. In the future, they will also lead more villagers to keep bees, making beekeeping a good way for people in mountainous areas to get rich.