Apart from selling hives and other related bee keeping equipment, we also provide basic training in bee keeping using the Langstroth Hives and assist communities and individuals in developing better organisation and management skills, basic record-keeping, and farm economics. These training programmes are often provided free of cost; the main objective is to empower the people in the rural areas to take charge of their lives and learn how to overcome many of the obstacles that they face.
Because we found that most of the farmers did not have a ready and guaranteed market for their honey, we decided to offer the farmers a stable and year-round market for their honey. Therefore, we generally enter into an optional contractual agreement with the beekeepers and agree to buy the honey from them at a guaranteed and mutually acceptable price for a period of two years or more.

As a pre-condition to signing the contract, we insist that all those concerned go through our intensive bee keeper's training and hive management programme. This ensures that they take full ownership of the hives and can ensure that they manage the hives properly to get maximum yields. The price we offer is fair (most of our community partners are satisfied with the price we offer) and the price guarantee allows the farmers to plan ahead and forecast their income. We also ensure that we pay the farmers promptly, directly (no middlemen), and in cash.

Our strict ethical business practices and farmer friendly management approach have ensured that our projects and partnerships are viable and successful. Our hives can now be found in most parts of the country - an emphatic testimony of the success of our efforts. The fact that our previously established projects and partnerships continue to go from strength to strength is an unequivocal indication of the long-term sustainability of our endeavors.

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Honey Care Africa's operations are primarily developed on a model called the Tripartite Model - a synergistic partnership between Honey Care (private sector organization), development sector organizations (NGOs and donor agencies), and rural communities. This Tripartite model is used in Honey Care's current and on-going work with a number of major NGOs and donor agencies, including DANIDA, the European Union, and the UNDP, just to name a few. We also believe that it is this model that contributed to Honey Care winning awards from the World Bank, the Soros Foundation, and at the World Summit on Sustainable Development,

Honey Care has tried to develop and foster partnerships and find synergies whenever and wherever it was strategically important for the company. The network of Community-Based Organizations (CBOs) and Self-Help Groups that Honey Care has developed a working relationship with has significantly reduced the need for Honey Care to employ a large number of Field staff and has allowed Honey Care to expand rapidly across Kenya.

One of the most innovative strategic partnerships that Honey Care has developed to our tremendous advantage is with Africa Now, a British NGO. Given that Honey Care is a private company, Honey Care is not eligible to apply for direct funding from various donor agencies and international development organizations. This, even though the work we are doing has clear and demonstrable social benefits for rural communities and the environment. Therefore, we have forged a partnership with Africa Now, and submit proposals jointly with them. Our first successful joint proposal was to the European Union's Micro Enterprise Support Programme in January 2001 for a pilot study in developing a micro-leasing model for bee keeping. This was then followed by our successful joint proposal to the Embassy of Finland in July 2001, the International Development Marketplace Competition organized by the World Bank in January 2002, and again to the EU's Micro Enterprise Support Programme in February 2002. We also submitted a joint proposal to the Rockerfeller Foundation, which was subsequently turned down because of a change in their operations in Kenya. In all of these projects, Africa Now was the lead implementing organization and the principal applicant, while Honey Care was the secondary implementing organization and secondary applicant. We currently have a proposal to the European Commission office in Brussels along a similar vein, which is still being processed. For all of these projects, we have used the notion of a partnership between an NGO and a private company to our mutual benefit, and have signed agreements to govern the division of responsibilities and the allocation of the funding received.

Similarly, Honey Care Africa signed a distributorship agreement with Premier Food Industries Limited (PFIL), one of East Africa's largest food product manufacturers to distribute Honey Care's products across East Africa. This decision was prompted by the recognition within Honey Care that it did not have the resources to distribute its honey products to the various supermarkets and outlets and collect the payments on its own. The decision to select Premier Foods as the distributor was based on the lower distributor fee (15%) they offered to charge Honey Care. This was because they were impressed by the social component of Honey Care's work. Premier Foods' strong market position (they have over 65 listed processed food products on the market and their products are sold across East Africa), as well as the option of buying jars and other packing materials jointly at the discounted prices Premier Foods enjoyed, was also another reason for deciding to work with them. Further, the opportunity for joint product development like Honey Garlic Barbecue Sauce, Honey and Mustard Sauces - something they had expressed an interest in and have the Food Technicians on their staff to begin product development trials - was another reason to select them as Honey Care's distributors.

With respect to the involvement of Local Government, Honey Care has had to straddle a very fine line between engaging with them and getting them too involved in the bee keeping activities. Honey Care has always made an effort to meet with the District Officers, Chiefs, Sub-Chiefs, as well as other members of the Local Government in the areas where we operate. We have striven to develop a warm and cordial relationship with them, making courtesy calls at their offices, inviting them to any events we may be holding in their area (even inviting them as the Guests-of-Honour, asking them to make speeches, to give out prizes to the farmers, etc), and keeping them in-the-loop about any developments at our end.

As far as the District Bee Keeping Officers (DBOs) and the District Agricultural Livestock Extension Officers (DALEOs) are concerned, here too we have generally been civil and cordial with them, and in our key areas of operation, develop a good rapport with them.

By developing channels of communication with the Local Government Officials (our Operations Manager and Project Officers are on first-name basis with the ones in our main areas), Honey Care has been able to develop a sense of camaraderie and friendship, which has been useful for us in a number of different ways.

It is important to point out that in the Honey Care model it is not the small-scale rural farmers who pay for the training but rather the NGOs and donor agencies (who can afford it) who pay for the farmers to be trained, or wealthier private farmers who can afford to pay for the cost of training.

However, we think it is also important to point out that when poor small-scale farmers approach us directly (not through a donor agency or NGO) or a self-help group (a group of retired teachers for example) contacts us about training, we generally waive the training fee. And sometimes we even pay half their food and accommodation costs at Limuru girls centre. That is the standard procedure at Honey Care, although anybody being trained at no cost might have to wait a few weeks before we can slot them in for training with a group being funded by an NGO.

Honey Care and Africa Now have set up demonstration facilities at RIAT in Nyanza Province, Bukura Agricultural College in western province, Baraka Agricultural College in the Rift Valley, as well as Kwetu Training Centre in the Coast, all of which we hope to then set up as Honey Care-accredited training facilities. Because these facilities are closer to the bee keepers, their travel cost will not be as high as it is when they have to travel to Limuru Girls Centre, and they may not require accommodation and food at these venues as they can commute from their homes to the training centres each day. This would allow us to reduce the cost of the training, thereby making it more affordable for the farmers.

Initially Honey Care didn't have the money or the resources to provide a follow-up extension service to the farmers. This created a problem because if the farmers had any trouble with their hives, they had no one to turn to. The District Bee Keeping Officers (DBOs) had not seen the Langstroth hives before and were therefore not able to assist the farmers. Besides, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development was severely under-funded and their field staff (like DBOs) didn't have the resources (motorbikes, bicycles) or the money (for fuel, allowances) to visit these farmers.

So, we decided to make use of the staff of the NGOs, CBOs and Self-Help Groups instead. We got them trained in bee keeping and provided them with additional technical skills in bee keeping in order to ensure that they would be able to help the farmers if they had any problems. Apart from their other on-going responsibilities with their own organizations, in exchange for a small cash bonus from Honey Care, these staff also informed our office when the honey was ready for collection and the like. Honey Care still uses the staff of its partner organizations for most of its smaller projects - generally anything less than 500 hives in an area. This is because it is not economically viable to place one of own staff on the ground for a small number of hives (his salary will cost more than the value of the small amount of honey he can bring in).

In some cases we have used some of the more skilled beekeepers in an area to help their fellow beekeepers, this also in exchange for small cash bonus incentive scheme.

With respect to the District Bee keeping Officers (DBOs), Honey Care has had to straddle a very fine line between engaging them and getting them too involved in the bee keeping activities. Our approach has been to let them play a more facilitative and non-intrusive role.

However, in some areas like Taita-Taveta and Kwale Districts, the DBOs are hard working and motivated and so we have gotten them to play a more direct role in providing extension services to the farmers.

All the same, regardless of whether we involve them in our work and whether our Project Officers are present in the area, the DBOs in most areas we operate have now received some training in bee keeping from Honey Care. We even convinced the World Bank and European Union that they should foot the bill for training about 40 of the DBOs. Therefore, should farmers have any problems with their hives and Honey Care staffs are not around, they can turn to these DBOs for assistance.

A typical HCA collection centre in Kenya.

Honey Care does not have any Field Offices. Our Project Officers are supplied with Mobile Phones), which our office in Nairobi uses to communicate with them. In addition, due to the good relationship we have built with our NGO and CBO partners, as well as the Local Government offices, our Project Officers can use their offices to send faxes and the like whenever they need to.

At Honey Care we developed a Mobile Extraction Unit - a simple tent made of shade netting, a weighing scale, and a manually operated Centrifuge machine - which could be set up as and when required to collect and extract the honey from the farmers.

A farmer comes in with his super boxes full of honey on a designated day. The super boxes are weighed, the honey is extracted, and the farmers are paid the requisite amount according to the weight of the honey.
The farmers then return to their farms with their empty super boxes and continue with their bee keeping. Meanwhile, Honey Care fills the liquid and semi-processed honey (filtering is done on the spot) in 20-litre plastic containers, folds up the tent, and returns to Nairobi with the honey. If Honey Care had to transport all these boxes to Nairobi, extract them there, and then return them back to the farmers, the cost of this exercise would be extremely high.

The farmers are delighted with this process because Honey Care's extraction unit can be set up close to their homes for a day or two where their honey can be extracted. They don't have to travel long distances to deliver their produce to a fixed location.

For Honey Care, this method of produce collection is far cheaper and more effective; we have a 'mobile factory' that can be set up whenever and wherever required in less than an hour, can extract and collect the honey, then pack everything up, and get going. No need for fixed Collection Centres. We tell all our NGO partners and other donor agencies that Honey Care takes the factory to the farmers rather than the other way around (as is the case with all other agro-production companies in Kenya). We have used this operational requirement to our tremendous advantage to gain publicity and make our approach even more appealing for farmers and their donors.

To be fair, it is important to point out that given that honey production is a very seasonal event, it would have been silly for Honey Care to set up permanent Collection Centres anywhere.

Because of the manner in which Honey Care collects the honey, we make cash on-the-spot payments to the farmers. This is done in a very open and transparent manner so that the farmers can see exactly how much honey they have produced (the difference in weight between the full super and the empty super after extraction).

An additional innovation as a result of the fact that Honey Care works with NGOs and various donor agencies who provide loans to the farmers, is the fact that we have been able to insist that any NGO or donor agency we work with MUST provide hives to these farmers strictly on a loan or a cost-sharing basis (where the farmers must pay at least a portion of the cost of the hive). This is very different from the usual approach that these donors and NGOs use where they give out equipment and materials to the farmers for free and at no cost. We strongly believe that real development cannot take place with handouts.

Again, our insistence that the hives are given out on a loan or cost-sharing basis and our flat refusal to work with any NGO or donor that wants to give out free hives has helped us develop an excellent reputation among the NGOs and donor agencies in Kenya.

But we have gone one step further. At the time of paying the farmers, we make the required loan repayment deductions (generally in the region of 25% of the value of the honey) before paying the farmers. These point-of-payment deductions are far more efficient and it ensures that farmers cannot default on their loan repayments (as opposed to a system where the farmers get paid 100% of the value of their produce and then pay back their loans if they want to).

The money deducted as loan repayments are then remitted to the donor agency or NGO at the end of the month, along with a list of the farmers from whom the loans have been recovered. We have gone even further with some donors and NGOs by recommending that these recovered loan repayments be used to establish a revolving fund, so that the money recovered can then be used for other development projects (or even more hives) in the future.

For Honey Care, making these deductions and keeping the records is a simple and easy accounting step and doesn't add on a cost to our operations. However, this 'full-service' approach has made Honey Care a very attractive partner for donor agencies and NGOs to work with.

Again, because of our mode of payment and the loan deductions we make, we tell all our NGO partners and other donor agencies that Honey Care takes the bank to the farmers rather than the other way around. We tell our farmers that Honey Care has a no-nonsense 'Money for Honey' policy, where they will be paid cash-on-the-spot for their honey. We have used this operational requirement (imagine if we had to collect the honey today and then go back and pay those same farmers a week later) to our tremendous advantage to gain publicity and make our approach even more appealing for farmers and their donors.

Honey Care has been very conscious of developing a very cordial relationship with its farmers. Our Project Officers originate from the areas in which they operate. For example, David, who is Project Officer for Kitui, is from the Akamba tribe (the predominant tribe in the area), while Bryson, who is Project Officer for Taita-Taveta and Kwale Districts is from the Taita tribe (the predominant tribe in the area). There are 42 different tribes in Kenya, and even close to forty years after independence, tribalism is a very strong and powerful factor to consider in Kenya. Therefore, we have made every attempt to consider and make accommodations for tribal sensitivities. That is the reality of working in Kenya.

Our Project Officers know many of their farmers by name, as does our Operations Manager, who frequently spends up to three weeks at a time in the villages when harvesting honey or conducting inspections. Our farmers have often invited our Operations Manager to spend a night in their homes if he has been out in the field until late at night!

The good thing about the Langstroth hive is that they are virtually idiot-proof and therefore it is impossible to produce bad honey, which Honey Care would then have to reject. In addition, in our training, we stress the importance of storing the full supers properly (fully covered and away from where pesticides and chemicals may be stored). Therefore, to date, we have never had to reject any honey because it did not meet our standards.

Honey Care's office has a farmer-friendly feel to it. For the most part, it is an open-concept office, simply furnished (so as to be as non-intimidating as possible), and there's always tea and coffee on the round meeting table for the farmers. All of this has been purposely done to ensure that the small-scale farmers who visit us find it a welcoming and comfortable environment.

We also have annual Farmer Field Days or a Honey Harvesting Celebration to recognize the efforts of the farmers, giving out certificates and trophies to the best farmers, etc.

All of this has gone a very long way in helping us develop and maintain a wonderful rapport with our farmers.

And for this, we have earned the trust and loyalty of these farmers, and they are frequently our best advertisers, convincing their neighbors and friends to start bee keeping with Honey Care as well.

Honey Care has tried to establish projects across the country, in every area that is appropriate for bee keeping. We now have hives set up in 7 out of Kenya's 8 Provinces - we are not in North Eastern Province because it is extremely dry all around the year.

This strategy has spread our risk and allowed us to produce honey around the year. We are the first company in Kenya to make this breakthrough. As a result, Honey Care produces about 27 different flavors of honey that we then blend into the 4 flavors that we take to the market, yet another first in bee keeping history in Kenya. We also have the potential to produce some of the most unique and interesting flavors of honey, which could earn a significant premium on the market.

For the development sector organizations, the Tripartite Model provided the answers to some of the most perplexing issues they had been dealing with: How could they make their development projects more sustainable and make them last beyond their relatively short-term intervention in a particular area?

Ever since Kenya became independent in 1963, numerous NGOs and donor agencies had established a wide range of development projects with communities across the country. However, these projects did not last very long and rarely beyond the involvement of these actors. Hundreds of different approaches, hundreds of thousands of hours of hard work, and millions of dollars later, these development sector organizations cannot point to concrete examples of real sustainable community development.

An argument that has been made for some time is that these development sector organizations lacked the knowledge to effectively link the produce from these projects (be it an agricultural commodity or hand-woven baskets) to real liberal market forces, or simply ignored market reality. Therefore, although the community projects may have made some progress and were able to produce a product, the underlying weak economic sustainability undermined these efforts and led to the ultimate collapse of these projects.
Others have argued that these development sector organizations were not able to get the communities to manage the assets of the project (a generator or a hand-pump) properly after they left, and hence things fell apart. The communities had no sense of ownership of the assets because they were given these assets for free (as hand-outs). Another argument could be that these assets are frequently communally owned and therefore the classic 'Tragedy of the Commons' occurred and nobody took care of those assets. Further, there is the oft-repeated criticism that these development sector organizations create a high level of dependency on them so that when they leave, a vacuum of leadership is created, and with no one to take the lead, the whole project collapses.

First of all, honey Care injected a degree of economic reality into the project and ensured that the projects operated within realistic market conditions. The buying price of honey had to be below the retail market price, and Honey Care had to be able to sell it for a profit. If that was not the case, the project would ultimately collapse, because it was not economically sound. After scoping the selling price for honey in the local market (Honey Care had decided to sell the honey primarily on the local market as much as it could), Honey Care established a buying price for the honey from the farmers, confident that it would make a profit doing so. Fortuitously, as a result of the poor supply of local honey, it just so happened that Honey Care was able to buy the honey from the farmers at a higher price than the international market was offering. That anomaly in pricing is not unusual in Kenya; it is also occurs in Mushrooms (both 'Button' Mushrooms and 'Oyster' Mushrooms) as well as Artichokes, where the price of these products is higher in Kenya than it is on the international market.

Besides, Honey Care reasoned that with each successive year, the farmers would become better and better at producing more honey from their hives as they became more comfortable with the technology and the hives became more established. Therefore, a possible decrease in the buying price of honey in the future (when the local market for honey was saturated and there was a need to sell the honey internationally) would be off-set by a commensurate increase in production, thereby leaving the net income a farmer earned from a hive unchanged.

Further, Honey Care insisted that the hives must be owned individually, and not collectively. This appealed to the farmers because they would now get individual rewards for individual labour. Therefore, each hive has a Serial Number stamped on it, and each hive has an individual owner, regardless of whether the project is a community project or not. Individual bee keepers could still collaborate and even share the bee keeping equipment (suits, smoker, hive tool, gloves, etc), and were frequently encouraged to do so, but the hives had to be individually-owned and managed. This was mandatory.

Another mandatory component was that farmers had to pay for the cost of their hives. This was mainly done through a loan system, where each farmer paid the NGO a deposit of at least 10% of the value of the hives, and then at least 25% of the proceeds of each Kg of honey sale was deducted and remitted to the NGO as a loan repayment, until the entire loan had been repaid. Alternatively, the farmers had to pay for part of the cost of the hives (at least 25% of its value) up-front, with the NGO chipping in with the rest. We at Honey Care, do not like this latter option but have had to accept it due to pressure from the NGOs who have to spend their funds within a stipulated time period. But either way, Honey Care flatly refused to sell any hives to any donor agency or NGO that would then give out the hives to communities for free. This mandatory requirement that farmers who want to start bee keeping must pay for the cost of the hives was initially unpopular (especially in areas where they were used to hand-outs), but Honey Care stuck to its guns, and there has been a real sense of ownership that the farmers have developed over their hives.

Honey Care also ensured that it developed a close working relationship with the farmers directly and not through the NGOs. For example, when Honey Care goes to collect honey from the farmers and pay them, the NGO is not involved in this process at all. In the Tripartite Model and the contract that embodies the working relationship between these three parties, the NGO's role is reduced, as much as possible, to being an arbitrator and mediator in the relationship between Honey Care and the rural communities. Therefore, should the NGO operating in an area leave in the future, it will not affect Honey Care's working relationship with the farmers. It will have no significant detrimental effect on the farmers' ability to produce honey or Honey Care's ability to buy it, and business will go on as usual. Therefore, the Tripartite Model has helped the communities develop a direct relationship with Honey Care (and through us, the market), which is completely independent of the time-lines of development projects or an NGO's short-term intervention in a particular area. Honey Care has paid special attention to this aspect. For example, we are aware that in 2004, DANIDA will close its operations in Kitui District. Therefore, we already have our own Project Officer in place and have phased out DANIDA's day-to-day involvement in the bee keeping project. When DANIDA leaves Kitui District, hopefully, the vacuum this will create will not affect the bee keeping project. DANIDA understand this and are more than happy to co-operate with Honey Care to ensure that this transition is as smooth as possible.

In addition, the revolving fund (described in the previous section above) that Honey Care has helped establish has been a smart and intelligent way for NGOs to invest their funds into a project, and then recover those funds after a few years and re-invest them elsewhere. Prior to this, most NGOs and donor agencies in Kenya invested their funds into projects but never recovered them. This revolving fund allowed them to recoup their funds if they wanted to (some don't or can't), or set it up as an endowment fund for the community to then use for other development projects. All of this was done at no additional cost to the NGO or the community.

As if this wasn't enough, Honey Care also sends these donors reports on how the hives they had funded were performing from time to time, so as to assure them that their investment in a particular community is still going strong.

In the case of development sector organizations whose aim is to help in the conservation of the environment as much (or more than) it is to help reduce poverty, bee keeping (because of its numerous environmental benefits like pollination and others discussed in one of the sections below), through this model, has become an important tool in helping them conserve the environment as well.

The above explanation of how and why the Tripartite Model has been beneficial to development sector organizations, relies heavily on one vital point: that development sector organizations are 'in it' out of a sense of pure altruism and as a service to humanity.

While we have always been slightly skeptical of this notion, the numerous professionals in the development field we have spoken to openly and candidly about our skepticism assure us that that is what it's really all about for them. However a few of them (and they are in the minority), have explained that it is a job they do, and like every other job, you continue to retain your position as long as you can show some tangible results and as long as there is more development work to be done. Over the years, we have had numerous arguments with people about whether development organizations that do their work well will always exist or make themselves obsolete, and the conclusion we have drawn is that they will continue to exist because the work of 'development' is never done. Therefore, from a purely cynical view-point, there is, we believe, a need for self-preservation in the development field.

Playing the Devil's Advocate for the moment, should that be true, Honey Care never completely puts them out of a job. Their role as mediators and arbitrators in the Tripartite Model is there for as long as they want it; it's a never-ending job! However, should they feel the need to wind up their operations in an area, they can explain that Honey Care has an on-going relationship with the farmers and that there will be no major detrimental effect on the communities, and use that as their 'exit'.

Another possible motive for development sector organizations might be demonstrating results to their funders for the work that they have put in and the money they have spent. As we have explained, Honey Care already submits voluntary reports to these development organizations on how their hives are working. But imagine the power of a report that Honey Care can submit to DANIDA in 2014, ten years after they have left Kitui, to show them how much honey the hives they funded had produced and how much income the farmers had earned. DANIDA could then use this as evidence of how they were using the funds of the Danish people to help reduce poverty in Kenya in a sustainable manner.

In addition, another required outcome for development sector organizations from the Tripartite Model is publicity. They are normally shy about saying that explicitly but it is there. That is why Honey Care's tripartite contract explicitly states that it is Honey Care's responsibility: "To jointly recognize and jointly own with (insert name of NGO here) any matters / outcomes directly arising from this Tripartite initiative." And over the years, Honey Care has done just that. In every newspaper article, brochure, press release, radio and television interview Honey Care has paid special attention to ensure that we give these development organizations as much publicity as possible. In particular, for the interviews Honey Care gave at the World Summit, we were openly asked by particular NGOs and donor agencies to mention their names. For example, the UNDP Small Grants Programme who have funded one of the communities we are working with, even had a Media Consultant who prepped me on how to include a mention of the UNDP when talking about Honey Care! Again, this is the reality of working with development sector organizations, and Honey Care has tried to ensure that we give the development sector organizations what they need.

For the small-scale farmers in rural communities across Kenya, the Tripartite Model helped to address many of the issues they faced:

There are few income opportunities for small-scale farmers in the rural areas of Kenya, most of whom simply grow crops for their own subsistence and some who sell surplus production of food crops through the local market. Their small land-size (generally between 0.5 - 2 acres), the lack of access to capital, and the absence of a stable and guaranteed market have all prevented them from being able to climb out of their poverty.

Therefore, the partnership forged between Honey Care and various development sector organizations through the Tripartite Model provided them with a good opportunity to get involved in bee keeping as an income generating opportunity, thereby helping them to reduce their poverty.

What was different about the Tripartite Model was that it wasn't just another free hand-out; it was a system through which they could get the support and assistance they required to get involved in an income generating activity without having to lose their dignity or self-confidence. This wasn't more alms, it was an opportunity for them to help address their problem of poverty by generating an income through their own efforts and their own labour. The Tripartite Model empowered these communities in a manner that few other development projects in Kenya had done in the past.

In addition, bee keeping was the ideal activity for these small-scale farmers in rural communities, because it complemented existing farming systems, was simple and relatively cheap to start, and generated income and required a very low level of inputs (land, labour, capital, and knowledge).

By forging a partnership between the development sector and a private sector organization, the Tripartite Model created an enabling environment for these rural communities to start bee keeping. This was achieved through a combination of adequate training and easy access to loans to acquire beehives and other equipment, easy repayment terms, extension and advisory support, a guaranteed market for their produce at a mutually acceptable price.

And participation in the project wasn't imposed on them or randomly implemented; it was a demand-driven process and they had the option of being involved or not. They were provided with the information and the facts (through the demonstrations that Honey Care conducted in their home area) and it was then up to them to decide. They understood the benefits and the potential pitfalls as well. In many areas, farmers generally take a wait-and-see approach before getting into bee keeping. They see how their neighbors perform, and then only take up bee keeping if they are convinced that it is economically viable.

Further, the involvement of the development sector organizations that these communities knew and trusted also assured them that they would not be exploited by yet another agro-business, as had happened to them frequently in the past. If they had a problem or concern with the way Honey Care was operating, they could turn to the NGO or donor organization who played the role of primary arbitrator and mediator between Honey Care and the farmers.

The Tripartite Model's facilitative and consultative process and price negotiation gave these communities a voice and a seat at the table. The prices of their produce was not just arbitrarily established by the company; the community had a chance to negotiate a better price and demand an explanation of why the price had been decreased or remained the same after one year. And because of the involvement of the NGO or donor organization in the project, Honey Care had to provide a clear and logical reply to these questions. The Tripartite Model acknowledged that the farmers were not just junior partners in this relationship; they were the producers of the honey and were therefore equal partners.

As an example of how the Tripartite Model empowers the communities and allows them to negotiate prices with Honey Care, in May 2001, Honey Care was invited to a meeting by the AKF in Kwale District to negotiate the renewal of the annual contract with the communities in the area. At this meeting, the farmers successfully negotiated a KShs. 15 per Kg price increase for their honey from Honey Care.

In May 2002, these same farmers asked Honey Care to explain why a 500gm jar of their honey was selling at KShs. 210 in the Supermarkets in Nairobi, and yet they were only being paid KShs. 100 per Kg for their honey. Honey Care then had to explain the cost of the glass, jar, the lid, label, packaging, transportation, and the supermarket's 25% profit margin, as well as openly declare our profit margin. After an intense discussion, the farmers agreed with Honey Care that the price should be kept constant for the new contract period, and as a concession, were also able to get a guarantee from us that it wouldn't decrease (it would only go up or remain the same) the following year, no matter what.

Therefore, the Tripartite Model had numerous benefits for the rural communities as well. It is these demonstrable benefits for the communities that has made Honey Care's approach to bee keeping through the Tripartite Model so popular. Every week, we get numerous letters from small-farmers across Kenya and many of them even travel all the way to Nairobi to meet us and learn about how they can get involved in bee keeping with Honey Care.

Some of the preceding sections could easily leave one with the impression that we were not thinking about the economic, environmental and social value of the work that Honey Care was doing. We have always been conscious and aware of what Honey Care was achieving, beyond trying to become a successful business under the harshest economic circumstances. The fact that Honey Care does generate Triple-Bottom Line value is not just a happy coincidence or a pleasant side effect of the company's operations.

Honey Care Africa Director, Farouk Jiwa, lectures to local high school students in Tanzania.

Honey Care has also been able to use bee keeping to generate considerable social value as well. According to the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) published by the Government of Kenya in June 2001, women are more vulnerable to poverty than men. For example the PRSP states that 69% of the active female population work as subsistence farmers compared to 43% of men. Before Honey Care got involved, bee keeping was exclusively an activity for men. This was because the traditional log hives were placed high on trees and therefore women could not do bee keeping. However, the Langstroth hive has a number of benefits over the traditional hives, one being that the hive is placed at the ground level and can be kept relatively close to a home. Another advantage is that harvesting is made much simpler due to the design of the hives, resulting in much less disturbance of bees during harvesting. These factors have opened up the activity to women. For its part, Honey Care has consciously tried to encourage women to take up the activity at demonstrations in the villages and by providing additional incentives and bonuses to women beekeepers. All of this has led to a positive reaction to the activity by women. This is especially important given the important role women play in the household and their general economic marginalisation. Based on Honey Care's existing projects in both Kwale and Kitui Districts, it is now estimated that about 43% of the beekeepers are women. In Kwale District for example, over the last two years, the best beekeeper has been a woman.

In many areas, the youth and recent school-leavers have also been encouraged to get involved in bee keeping. Frequently, the youth from rural areas tend to migrate to urban areas in search of employment, which is very difficult to come by, and some resort to a life of crime instead. In Western Kenya in particular, the uptake of bee keeping by the youth has been considerably high. Therefore, in some small way, Honey Care has helped to reduce the rural-urban migration and provided alternative means of employment for the youth.

Further, although the beehives are all individually owned and there is a clear establishment of individual rewards for individual efforts, the farmers in any particular village are generally brought together and share the bee keeping equipment (like the bee suit, smoker, hive tool). At the village level, this sharing of equipment and the tending of the hives that they have in common acts as an important component to develop a sense of community and enhances social cohesion. This is then further magnified when beekeepers from many villages come together to form their own bee keeping groups and associations. The skills in group dynamics, team building, and other relevant areas that are taught to them as part of their involvement in bee keeping are then transferred and applied to other spheres of their lives.

But perhaps the most important social contribution that Honey Care has been able to make is in empowering small-scale farmers in rural communities to charge of their lives and their destiny. As has been mentioned earlier, the fact that these farmers acquire these hives on a loan or cost-sharing basis rather than as hand-outs gives them an enormous sense of dignity and self-confidence. It is our view that development projects in Kenya that have involved hand-outs or aid have stripped away the dignity, and resourcefulness and eroded the initiative of rural communities. This, more than anything else, is what will take a long time to restore. By providing the proverbial hand-up rather than a hand-out, we hope that Honey Care has gone some way in helping these communities get out of the dependency syndrome that they have developed on external donors. Honey Care doesn't see the farmers in rural areas as charity cases but rather as business partners.

In terms of the environmental value of the work that Honey Care has generated, we think it is much easier to demonstrate that our business is generating positive environmental value than it would be for other businesses. This is because bee keeping is inherently good for the environment because bees pollinate native trees and shrubs and do not harm the environment in any way.

But Honey Care did not just sit back, happy with the fact that bee keeping was environmentally positive. We tried as much as we could, to enhance the environmental benefits of bee keeping and develop a particular approach to bee keeping that Honey Care uses today that was even better for the environment:

Bee keeping is one of the best examples of an economic activity that uses natural resources and the bio diversity in a sustainable manner. By getting more people in Kenya involved in bee keeping, Honey Care has tried to develop an environmentally sustainable economic sector, which had not been properly developed previously.

Further, bee keeping has provided rural communities with an alternative source of income to chopping down trees to sell as charcoal, a very common activity in some of the semi-arid regions of the country like the Eastern Province where Honey Care has now been operating for over two years.

In addition, given that bees are probably the best natural pollinating agents, bee keeping plays a central role in the successful reproduction and conservation of a wide variety of native trees, shrubs and grasses. Their role in preserving and maintaining bio-diversity cannot be over-emphasized. Likewise, all of Honey Care's staff constantly stress the connection between bee keeping and watershed protection, soil conservation, and the preservation of bio diversity. Honey Care strongly emphasizes that this holistic approach to bee keeping is the only way that the good honey yields currently enjoyed will be maintained in the long-term.

Throughout Honey Care's demonstrations, training programmes, and discussions with the community, the need for conserving Kenya's natural flora is underlined. A number of the community-based bee keeping projects that Honey Care has helped to establish also operate parallel community-based tree nurseries and tree planting programmes. A good example is the Mituki Ya Ivetti Women's Group in Mwingi District, who operate their own tree nursery along-side their apiary, and have a programme where the women plant ten trees around each member's household every year.

In addition, Honey Care neither imports bees from other parts of the World (as is common in most other bee keeping operations in the World, including Canada), and nor does it transfer any bees from one region to another within Kenya. Endemic and local sub-species colonize the hives naturally, and it is these bees that are used for honey production. Honey Care believes that this is the best way to proceed even though the yields may not be as high as elsewhere in the World. This is a significant contribution towards the conservation of bio-diversity in this region. Further, Honey Care does a lot of work educating farmers and communities on the importance of bees as bio-indicators and works closely with community groups and other organizations to reduce the use of chemicals and harmful pesticides that harm bees and the environment.

Further, all Honey Care hives are made of Pine timber, a locally grown softwood. The Pine tree species is a fast-growing commercially planted tree species and therefore it does not have any negative bio diversity or environmental impacts, which other hardwood tree species like Ebony, Oak, or Mahogany would. Pine is considered a 'Good Wood' and has been so designated by the Kenya Forestry Working Group and other related organizations.

Honey Care, in conjunction with the Belgian Technical Co-operation and the Kenyan Government's District Forestry Development Programme through the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources, recently established a concept that we are thinking of calling "Bees for Trees". Communities and individuals working to promote agro-forestry and the conservation of forests are given hives as a direct and immediate economic incentive to encourage individuals to plant and protect trees. This project, it is believed, would be especially effective to promote the growing of indigenous tree species that do not have a direct and short-term economic benefit, or require more intensive care and nurturing. As part of its contribution towards this effort to preserve and replenish our natural resources, Honey Care is then buying the honey under this scheme at a higher price and will then market it for an additional premium price.

Honey Care also markets its honey under the name of the plants the honey comes from and this has the added benefit of raising awareness among consumers of the existence and importance of different species of plants and the need to protect the diverse ecosystems and agro-ecological zones that exist in Kenya. For example in the market, honey from Acacia species generally found in low-lying scrub and Savannah ecosystems flowers is marketed as "Acacia" honey.

None of these activities that enhance the environment were accidental; we spent a lot of time and energy in setting them up and operationalising them. The intention was clear: Honey Care didn't just have to operate in an environmentally-positive manner; we had to operate in a highly environmentally-positive manner. Integrating this environmental thinking within Honey Care's activities and getting the staff to think about the environment in their daily activities has taken a lot of time and hard work, two things that are in even shorter supply when you are running a small business. But it's getting there.

And apart from just using the Tripartite partnership between ourselves, NGOs, and rural communities for the purpose of honey production, we decided to developing additional joint activities with these partners to do more for the environment as well.

And this environmental aspect of the way we were doing our bee keeping was part of the reason that Honey Care was asked to get involved in the bee keeping aspect of a massive project spanning 5 Districts with the UNDP's COMPACT programme around Mt. Kenya National Park and Forest Reserve, declared a 'World Heritage Site' by the United Nations.

But there are even other ways in which Honey Care can generate environmental value. One in particular is to give 2 or 3% of the proceeds of our honey sales to an environmental activity. The one we were thinking about is the Kenya Forestry working Group (KFWG) who are fighting a legal battle against the Government of Kenya to reverse its decision to excise 10% of the forests in the country.