Description
Earthly Produce is an organisation focused on increasing the awareness of beekeeping as a sustainable venture for our society. We are a young startup company with a growing apiary in Iwo, Osun State, South West Nigeria. Our ethos focuses on creating sustainable environments that can support beekeeping and create wealth especially in rural communities. We encourage the use of Kenyan Top Bar Hives and are also introducing our first Langstroth hive over the next few weeks. We encourage the planting of indigenous trees to demonstrate the importance of forests as a source of livelihood and we encourage the planting of fruit crops such as mangoes, cashews, oranges, passion fruit and pawpaw. We are also experimenting with a few herbs and vegetables such as bitterleaf, mint, moringa oleifera and some varieties of shrubs such as moraya, duranta, thevetia and a whole lot more. Our objective is to create a garden/mini forest where we can observe the bees and share our findings with the rest of the beekeeping community. We also provide training on beekeeping especially to school children to create an interest and in so doing ensuring that beekeeping will be around for generations to come.
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RECENT FACEBOOK POSTS
facebook.comBees with Backpacks: Keeping the Hive Alive - iQ by Intel
The National Forest 25 Years of Transformation
It would be good if the areas of the Niger Delta (and other places blighted by industry) can be transformed like this. Similar story of the extractive industry decimating the landscape and we (plus the government) pulling together to regenerate the land and give it back to the people.
A day in the life of a beekeeper
A day at the Earthly Produce Limited apiary.
India state aims to plant a record 50 million trees in a day
This is what we should be doing in Nigeria....
7 Honey Bees
Some facts about our honey, 7 Honey Bees https://slate.adobe.com/cp/SkFWK/
Baobab Trees Attacked By Giant Mammal
The majestic Baobab. One of my favourite. We planted 2 on the farm in 2013.
Nigeria: Groups Reject Planned Introduction of GM Maize, Cotton
We should all be concerned about this issue in Nigeria.
Timeline Photos
FROM THE HIVE TO THE TABLE …WITH NO ADDITIVES Finally, the wait is over! The first set of harvests from our small apiary has been pressed and filtered (this is the extent of our processing) and is now ready. I must say it has been an interesting 3 months getting to this point. The nail biting wait to see how the unpredictable weather of the past year affected the flowers, pollen and nectar was nerve racking to say the least. I spoke with a friend of mine at the end of 2015 and he said he wasn’t expecting much from his hives since the weather was so unpredictable. But I must say it didn't turn out too bad. So on to the harvest. We always sort our honeycombs into colours as much as our limited stock would permit. We do this to ensure the main colours of honey produced by the bees are retained (as much as possible), some apiaries choose to mix everything in one batch. This year we had the usual, the unusual and the downright surprise in terms of colour and texture. The usual honey typically comes with the first harvest around late December/ early January; a very light coloured honey, it looks like sunflower oil. Then we have the unusual, in the form of crystallised honey, which we haven’t harvested since the early days in 2011. This honey is set in the comb and is quite a tough one to process. We put this down to the cooler harmattan temperatures experienced at the start of the year. And also, some types of honey do crystalise. Last but not least, the surprise - reddish coloured honey which we have never harvested in the apiary (we decided not to sell this because the pollen content was too high and gave the honey a funny taste). I have two theories on this, which I would discuss on our upcoming blog, God willing. All this takes me back to my first year on the farm, I wanted to have as many plants as possible on the farm to provide forage for my bees all year round, I believe we just might be making some small progress towards that goal. This year we will look at increasing the number of Tamarind trees, which is an excellent bee plant. The one important lesson for me in all of this is to keep planting our indigenous trees to ensure we don’t (further) lose our rich biodiversity. The honey is assured (God willing), all we have to do is take care of the environment. Don’t forget, plant a tree and save the bees. #plantatreesavethebees #fromthehivetothetable #JoinTheBuzz
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