Beekeeper Zhong Wansheng Leads Impoverished People with Disabilities to Start Beekeeping Businesses and Prosper

"Open the hives for inspection every day and tidy up the combs in time. Prevent colony disease..." In the golden autumn season, Zhong Wansheng, a rural young man from Wan'an Township, Wuping County, came to the apiary of Lin Xiaoguang, a disabled beekeeper in Xianshui Village, Shifang Town, teaching beekeeping techniques hand by hand. The reporter learned yesterday that from an unemployed disabled person to running a bee farm, Lin Xiaoguang now, thanks to Zhong Wansheng's support, has an annual net income of more than 20,000 yuan.

Previously, Lin Xiaoguang, who has disabled legs, lived a very hard life. Last year, his older brother helped him contact Zhong Wansheng, a major beekeeper, and asked to join his beekeeping cooperative. After learning the situation, Zhong Wansheng agreed without hesitation. Seeing the difficulties of Lin Xiaoguang's family, Zhong Wansheng helped him obtain preferential support policies from the Disabled Persons' Federation, enabling him to set up his own apiary, and helped him solve various problems in the beekeeping process.

Zhong Wansheng, now 32 years old, once operated an excavator and ran a stone materials factory 6 years ago. Just when business was booming, in 2008, he made a different decision: return to his hometown and start a bee industry company with his older brother. In order to master beekeeping techniques as quickly as possible, he first signed up for a rural youth entrepreneurship training class, and then learned while exploring, promptly summarizing experience, and continuously improving and domesticating bee breeds.

A few years later, he also led the creation of a beekeeping professional cooperative, leading more than 30 members to pursue prosperity together. In 2010, while getting rich himself through beekeeping, Zhong Wansheng discovered that there were still many people with disabilities around him who, due to physical inconvenience, found it hard to find a job to make a living. In order to help them get rich, in September of that year, Zhong Wansheng took the initiative to sign an agreement with the county Disabled Persons' Federation to jointly assist people with disabilities in beekeeping, providing techniques and bee breeds to people with disabilities interested in developing beekeeping, and purchasing members' honey at guaranteed prices.

Shi Feng, a villager from Zhongbao Village, Zhongbao Town, and his wife both have disabilities of varying degrees, and their family is very poor. After learning of the situation, Zhong Wansheng took the initiative to find them and first arranged for them to work at his own beekeeping base, teaching them apiary management and breeding techniques from time to time. This spring, Zhong Wansheng encouraged Shi Feng to start his own business and helped handle the support project. So Shi Feng purchased 50 boxes of bee colonies according to the preferential policies and set up his own apiary. A few months later, his apiary began producing honey. So far, he has collected more than 600 jin of honey and earned a net income of more than 30,000 yuan.

After establishing the beekeeping cooperative, Zhong Wansheng not only became more diligent in studying beekeeping techniques, but also further supported people with disabilities in beekeeping through the "cooperative + base + beekeepers" management model, providing them with techniques and bee breeds, and helping solve honey sales problems. Today, driven by his "sweet" business, cooperative members have grown from 30 initially to 158, among whom 123 impoverished people with disabilities have joined the bee breeding industry, and more than 520 surrounding farming households have been driven to keep bees, involving 14 townships and more than 60 administrative villages across the county, supporting the development of 128 beekeeping bases for people with disabilities, with more than 6,000 colonies of Chinese honeybees, an annual honey output of more than 65 tons, an output value of more than 5 million yuan, and an average annual income increase of more than 10,000 yuan per household for impoverished beekeeping households of people with disabilities.