Impact Assessment of Beekeeping in sustainable rural livelihood

Beekeeping or apiculture is the preservation of honey bee colonies to get pure honey and helps in pollination. Beekeeping is a useful mean of strengthening livelihoods because it creates a variety of assets. The main focus of the study was to assess the impact of beekeeping training given by Society of facilitator and Trainer (SOFT) to females in Sargodha and Chakwal district. Capacity building of rural women in beekeeping was the focus and fifteen trainees’ beekeepers were selected randomly from each district for survey to assess the impact of beekeeping in their livelihood. The analysis suggests that there are some social and cultural barriers which restrict women to go out in the fields for the management practices of beekeeping. For future selection criteria of participants have to be focused and without the involvement of male member they can’t manage this whole activity in a better way. For young females it was very difficult to handle bees, proper colonies management, their supplement feeding, honey extraction, movement of hives etc. Economically, beekeeping increased keepers’ income but this ratio was very low in the targeted area. Training had to be gender based for sustaining livelihood. There are some problems identified by the beekeepers. Finally the authors have drawn some recommendations for future beekeeping trainings. In not shell there was no positive impact of beekeeping training of rural women.