The bees are saving the village 06/10/2018 admin By: Susanne Sayers Translation: Søren engberg In Vietnam they talk about how to keep the rural areas in development. In a small village in the Coastal they have found a sweet solution: honey. The beehives only require a small investment and the bees are almost taking care of them selves. This is neat if you have a busy day. The bees are saving the village (Bijobbet redder landsbyen) When Metro Express paid Ninh Phu village a visit last week, the women of the village showed us how to keep bees and produce honey. Not many people can boast about having 1500 employees. But Bui Thi Nhu can. She has been the first-lady of the village for more than a year, when it comes to creating a new and better future. And she is now showing her five beehives, where thousands of small bees a humming on the board while they create the honey that is already so famous as a delicacy in the area. Mrs. Bui Thi Nhan actively participated in planting mangrove forest with other local people in her community. This has provided the village with new possibilities. Many rural areas in Vietnam are fighting with problems that are also known in Denmark: Jobs and money are missing, why the city attracts people. In Vietnam are the challenges exacerbated because of widespread poverty among the villages and many people need the opportunity to create new income. But in the village Ninh Phu has beekeeping become a new opportunity. “Our honey is better then the industrial honey because our bees are nourishing from wild flowers in our forests,” tells Bui Thi Nhu. Sharing experience with other households. “This means that we can get a high price for our honey – people are driving to our village to buy the honey and other villages wants to know how we do. We are therefore considering to create a cooperative, so we can work together in selling at a bigger scale”, she adds. Mangroves bring the sustainable sources of flowers for bees of community. The idea of making honey did actually come from the development organisation CARE. In the beginning were the village sceptic, tells Thi Thuy, who is now working with bees herself, which a swollen, left eye clearly prove. “We have actually tried before on our own. The Government suggested it. But at that time we didn’t get enough information of how to do it. The bees disappeared and we were then left back with our lost investment”, she tells. Production of project beneficiaries. Today do the honey production function so well, that the women of the village generously are able to hand out samples of the almost explosively, tropical, sweet dark-golden honey. MetroXpress was in Vietnam with CARE Denmark. 90 million people are living in Vietnam, which is one of the countries that receive development aid from Denmark. The Vietnamese economy is growing rapidly and the citizens are becoming wealthier. But the country still face huge poverty problems, especially in the rural areas. Hum, hum, hum Beekeeping holds many advantages and it does not require a lot of time to take care of the bees. This is important for the women of the village because they are already hard working. Honey gives a good, additional income in the poor villages. The outcome of several crops in the areas is improved because of the bees’ pollination. Beehives only require a small investment, which many villages can afford. But having beehives requires the right techniques. E.g. how you feat the bees to keep them in the area in periods of fewer flowers. And how it is possible to “create” a new queen if the old one disappears.