Raising mint honey bees to earn billions on the rocky plateau

Beekeeping for honey from mint flowers has existed for a long time in Dong Van as well as in the mountainous districts of Ha Giang province. However, the beekeepers are mainly spontaneous, small-scale, and do not follow a reasonable process, so the output and quality of the products are very low.

4,000 bee colonies... earn 3.5 billion VND

Every Mong family in the Dong Van plateau, for many generations, has had a few bee colonies raised to produce honey for medicine and to make cakes for Tet, festivals, and worshiping occasions...

The bees here mainly collect honey from the mountain mint plant, which lives in the wild (a plant that only grows in the highland rocky mountains, blooming from September to the end of the lunar year), so the honey and pollen from the pistil give it a very unique flavor). This type of honey is extracted purely, so Dong Van mint honey has long become a precious specialty.

In recent years, Dong Van has increasingly developed, attracting many tourists from everywhere and mint honey is often a unique and attractive gift from the highlands, with the current price of about 300,000/liter, bringing a significant source of income to the people here.

Lecturers from the Vietnam Bee Research and Development Center are instructing people on honey bee care techniques in Dong Van.

Mr. Nguyen Duc Tinh - Vice Chairman of Dong Van District People's Committee - said: "Currently, the whole district has about 4,000 bee colonies, each colony produces an average of 3 liters of honey/year, the total output of the whole district reaches 12,000 liters (equivalent to 18 tons of honey) with a value of about more than 3.5 billion VND per year".

Despite favorable natural conditions, beekeeping in Dong Van has not yet developed to its potential and has lost development opportunities for many years.

Realizing this limitation, since September 2013 (the time to prepare for the 2013-2014 honey harvest), Dong Van District People's Committee has directed the District Vocational Training Center to coordinate with the Vietnam Bee Research and Development Center to open 17 beekeeping training classes with 462 students in communes and towns in the district, aiming to provide vocational training, helping beekeepers grasp scientific advances in this model.

The lecturers are all experienced in beekeeping, directly conveying the main and important contents such as techniques for selecting breeding bees, techniques for creating queen bees, dividing bee colonies, common diseases in beekeeping...

Opportunity to escape poverty

Earlier this year, Dong Van district supported trained students with 200,000 VND/hive, so that people could expand and prepare for the 2014 harvest season.

Dr. Le Quang Trung - Deputy Director of the Vietnam Bee Research and Development Center - said: "With the project to expand and develop honey bee colonies in 2013, Dong Van district believes that it will increase the output of each colony to 6 liters/year. This will certainly be an opportunity for the number of bee colonies in the district to increase rapidly, and at the same time, people can escape poverty thanks to this traditional profession."

Mr. Hoang Thanh Do's family (group 4, Dong Van town) came to beekeeping from family tradition and a special passion for this thin-winged insect.

Taking advantage of the favorable hilly and spacious area around his house, Mr. Do regularly develops bee colonies at 60 colonies, and by the time of this year's honey harvest, he has multiplied them to 120 colonies. Thanks to his experience in raising bees, each box has 8 to 10 beehives, and each box of his bees can collect up to 10 liters of honey. With a selling price of 300,000 VND/liter of honey right at home, Mr. Do's family earned over 200 million VND after deducting all investment costs.

According to Kinhtenongthon