World Bee Day acknowledges pollinators who keep the world alive

Today is World Bee Day, a day to acknowledge the role that bees and other pollinators play in keeping the ecosystem humming and to focus on the importance of preserving honey bees and all other pollinators. It was on May 20 that pioneering beekeeper Anton Janša was born in Slovenia in 1734. Beekeeping is taken so seriously in the tiny Balkan republic that the country’s unofficial motto is “Land of the Good Beekeepers”. Slovenia produces...

FAO programme helps beekeepers in Rwanda, Vietnam double output, income

Patrick Uwingabire started learning about beekeeping when he was just 11. In his village in Huye, in Rwanda’s Southern Province, his uncle and grandfather taught him all they knew about making beehives and tending to the bees. Beekeeping offered the young Patrick a way forward when his family could not pay his school fees. “It was not possible for me to go to school,” said Uwingabire, now 39. “That wasn’t within reach. So, bees and...