Indra Kumari Shrestha
From Fields to Hives: A Woman Leading Change
Indra Kumari Shrestha, 55, was born in Bhojpur and later moved to Jhapa. Once a farmer, she spent most of her days managing household chores and working in the fields whenever she could spare the time. Despite living in a society where women are often treated as secondary citizens and men are placed at the forefront, Shrestha refused to accept this norm.She firmly believes that true gender equality is possible only when women earn their own money and reduce their financial dependence on men. For her, women deserve to stand on equal footing with men, and this can happen when they step beyond traditional homemaker roles and actively participate in economic life.
She wanted to step beyond and further and after years of experience as a farmer, she had developed interest in something completely new. While she worked in her farm, she saw bee keepers would bring their bees for grazing in her mustard field.There ,she learned about the benefits of bees on farms and the nutritional significance of honey. She saw bee-keeping as a great opportunity and profitable business platform. Hence began the journey of Shrestha as a bee-keeper.
Shrestha had a supportive husband who started working along with her in bee-keeping.Together they joined Namuna Samuha where everyone worked collectively for their enterprise and had divided roles and responsibilities. She came to know about this Samuha from other women in her community and she wanted to connect her honey business there. There was division of labour which made running an enterprise much easier; one department would be accountable for bee-keeping while the other would sell the produced honey in the market. Shrestha and her husband led the beekeeping department where they had employed 3 other people. They have 42-45 hives at present and they want to expand it further in days to come.
One of the positive sides of bee-keeping is that it requires very small space; one can keep multiple beehives even on a rental space, making it a very doable and convenient enterprise. Shrestha got interested in bee-keeping because of the unseen benefits of honey, it makes you stronger and helps you fight diseases. Along with honey, Royal jelly ( a milky secretion produced by honey bees to feed their larvae and queen bees) has high market value. One of the challenges she faces while running her enterprise is protecting the hives from hornets. However, the Bee-keeping business has been of great value for herself and her family and community.
She came across Daayitwa’s GEEP program through her municipality where they published a notice to request everyone to participate in the employment promotion program. She was hopeful that this program will be a platform for her to improve her enterprise. She was able to learn how to enhance the profitability in bee-keeping and make annual planning for better management of her business. Shrestha and her husband think a training program like GEEP holds so much more significance than just getting financial aid because it enables one to lead their enterprise for a long term growth. To bring those learnings into action, Shrestha plans on increasing the number of hives to 200 hives in next two years through support of Daayitwa and Gauradha municipality.
Shrestha is hopeful that the work she is doing has high growth potential. Honey has high health benefits; the honey produced in Nepal is of premium quality and she is contributing to meet the demand of high quality honey. Bee has several other uses and importance other than honey production.Hence, she envisions a great future of bee-keeping.