Last summer, dreams finally came true for beekeeper Nazakat Jamalova, a beneficiary of two EU-funded projects and a resident of Hanifa rural settlement in Balakan, an administrative district in the north-western edge of Azerbaijan. She got a dolly trailer to carry beehives – an opportunity to travel long distances with her bees. If beekeeping is not your trade, you would question a need for the dolly trailer, for bees can – and do – fly. However, her fellow honey farmers are envious of her happiness. In a nutshell, the dolly trailer will pay off since it will help the family with beehive transportation without assistance from outside and at no extra cost.
Four years ago, when Nazakat had to make one of the most challenging decisions in her life, her family possessed less than 25 beehives…
Everything changed overnight. Adalat, her spouse and the family’s only breadwinner, fell sick suddenly and had to undergo surgery. The doctors warned him not to work for some time, even after his successful recovery. Nazakat thought about what to do next. She took on the role as the family’s new breadwinner to raise their children, Emil, who attended a secondary school, and Gumru, a tertiary student.
The bees in their yard turned out to be the answer in her moment of need. Mahammad, her father-in-law, was a beekeeper. Although she assisted him on rare occasions and always watched how he was taking care of the bees out of the corner of her eye, she never kept bees independently. When Nazakat approached Mahammad about her will to earn money from beekeeping, he was reluctant since he was not in good physical condition to carry heavy beehives. But Nazakat persevered and decided to embark upon a new business.
– Financial constraints made me think differently. I rented and ran a small village shop for some time. In the meantime, I was thinking of a job that would generate income and allow me to stay home and do household chores. That’s how I ended up in apiculture. I did believe that bees would not fall short of my expectations.
Four years have gone past ever since. Adalat has recovered from his illness; Emil has completed secondary school and his (compulsory) military service; and Gumru has graduated from a higher education institution. As for Nazakat, she wears a new hat – the custodian of a bee colony involving multiple beehives. Nazakat treats them as if they were her children. She puts them to sleep, takes them for a walk, trickles water-based medication onto them to protect them, and tolerates their stings. Briefly, Nazakat cannot get enough of them. She works relentlessly like a honeybee herself! Whenever there is any break available, she engages herself in seasonal work. Being a member of the Asil women’s cooperative, she teams up with Malahat, her close neighbor, to help her dry persimmon fruit in autumn. Engulfed by work, she does not have free time to receive phone calls…
I kept calling her for a whole day. She could answer after dusk had fallen.
– Bees seem to keep you busy.
Oh, no! They are sleeping now…
– Sleeping? Oh yes, after all it is evening.
Nope. They have been sleeping since more than a month ago. Once the temperature goes below 14 degrees (Celsius), they enter a form of hibernation but become active again in February, pumping their flight muscles.
– Fantastic! Then you will have much less work to do.
Well, we take care of them all year round, even staying on guard when they are busy keeping the hive warm during the cold season. We feed them sherbet, a sugar syrup. Every hive must be supplied with 10 kilos of sherbet to provide bees with something to eat. The entire colony rallies together to survive the cold season. We feed bees again in February to provoke them into working harder, thereby sipping nectar themselves.
– Hold on! Nectar in February?
Exactly. In February, hazel shrubs bloom, and the entire orchard is covered by yellow pollen. It is high time to keep female worker bees busy supplying the beehive with sufficient bee pollen to foster a colony and make it grow.
– How big can a bee colony be?
It might contain countless bees. When an apiary is big enough to qualify for an ‘army of bees,’ we put the beehives on to a dolly trailer and move to the mountains. In the past, such movements were backbreaking work. We had to rent both a truck and a dolly trailer. Last year we had a meeting with staff members of the European Union (EU) Delegation to Azerbaijan, and they asked about our needs. I said that if I had a dolly trailer, my business would be less cumbersome and cost-consuming. The solution was not far away – we were granted a dolly trailer under the project “Promoting local food production and agri-business owners through advisory services, the creation of new value chain models and agri-tourism development”. With this vital asset, we need three rides to relocate all of our beehives up to the mountains to stay there for six to eight weeks before driving back home.
– Is it easy for you to stay in the mountains?
We have a hut there. We carry water from here. Summer is the hardest time – bees are busy, and we work round the clock. Despite being in the mountains, sunny days exhaust us. Imagine a sunny day in which you work wearing gloves and a head covering consisting of a hat with a wide brim and a veil to protect your face and neck from stings. Inside that uniform, the air temperature is 10 degrees (Celsius) higher than the outside environment. I do not spend much time in the mountains since I have to return home frequently, so my husband and father-in-law have to bear the brunt of beekeeping during summer. Once the blooming period ends, we move from the mountains down home to harvest honey.
– It seems to be the most enjoyable part of beekeeping.
It is pleasant but challenging at the same time. After harvesting honey, we gradually prepare our bees for autumn and give them some medication against mites so that mites cannot eat their wings. We prepare placebo liquid and trickle it onto bees in the hive. This procedure is done twice, with a week-long break in between. It takes half an hour to make all bees in a single hive trickled properly. Then autumn sets in, with the weather getting colder, and bees need to be fed but remain active inside the hive. They remind me of children. However, you must be careful not to disquiet them; otherwise, you will be left with stings since they become aggressive at that time.
– Did they sting you a lot?
Many, many times. But for me bees are sweeter than their stings. You cannot become a beekeeper if you do not love bees.
– In your opinion, what is beekeeping?
Personally, beekeeping calms my nerves. Secondly, it is a feeling of infinite pleasure. Thirdly, it is an income-generating business. Last but not least, it is a source of personal development and accomplishment of new skills, including the certificates that I have received by completing the EU-sponsored training courses. Beekeeping is a job that is as sweet as honey itself.