Celebrating the Right to Life, Food and Shelter for Women and Bees in Adversity
The World Bee Project launched two significant 3-year projects in January 2022 offering advanced beekeeping education and skills trainings to 80 disadvantaged tribal women from villages in the Ayyalur forest and Pandiyar mangrove wetlands in Tamil Nadu.
The two projects enable 80 women to establish sustainable thriving livelihoods as beekeepers through the sale of honey and bee products. The 80 women also help to restore biodiversity by planting declining plant species, and learn to protect and increase populations of the native Apis Cerana Indica honeybee species, by rearing Apis Cerana queen bees in managed hives.
The projects will also offer ongoing support throughout 2023-2024 to grow the 80 women’s honey business and help them gain additional income as Beekeeping Trainers in their communities, enabling other women in their communities to acquire financial independence by pursuing livelihoods as beekeepers.
For details of progress, click here
To celebrate the Right to Life, Food, and Shelter for Women and Bees in Adversity, please
The World Bee Project programmes for women are endorsed by Human Rights lawyer,
Professor Philippe Sands, QC.
A reservoir of biodiversity, although in decline the 8,000-acre Ayyalur forest area remains home to around
- 2,500 flowering plant species,
- nearly 4,000 insect species,
- 290 bird species,
- larger animals such as elephants, panthers, bison, bears,
- and little creatures such as the Grey Slender Loris which is now an endangered species.
Mangroves help reduce global warming by locking away 50 times more greenhouse gases per hectare than tropical rainforests, and have potential to deliver ecosystem services, and store water to prevent flooding.
