VietNamNet Bridge – Vietnam’s woodlands face a new foe.  It’s not illegal deforestation, the expansion of hydro-power projects, or the establishment of coffee or rubber farms – it’s bee keeping.

Chuong and a bee house made of waste materials.

But one man is trying to save the woods and boost beekeepers and he has an incredible new, environmentally friendly product that both bees and their keepers love.

It’s been nearly 50 years since apiculture, or bee keeping, appeared in Vietnam, it has developed most in Bao Loc in the central highlands province of Lam Dong and the southern province of Dong Nai.

The hives are all made of wood taken from forests like peck wood, sao, ca chit and cam xe. It had been claimed that only by making the hives from this rare wood can it be made durable and long lasting.

Each cubic meter of rare wood is enough to make 30-40 hives. Each bee colony lives in a hive and each bee farm often has up to 2,000 beehives. That’s a lot of rare wood.

While using the wood has often been made illegal it hasn’t slowed the growth. In 1996, Vietnam had around 7000 bee colonies, yielding several hundred tonnes of honey. At present, Vietnam has up to a million bee flocks and more than 20,000 tonnes of honey a year, ranking second in Asia in honey production, behind only China.

Despite the economic crisis, the price for Vietnam’s export honey has risen from $1.6-1.8/kg to $2.1-2.3/kg. From just a handful of apiculture firms, the country presently has over 20 honey exporting companies, which own hundreds of bee farms. In the past, only farmers in Lam Dong and Dong Nai bred bees now beekeeping is developing across the entire Central Highlands, the southwestern region and the north.

A senior beekeeper in the Central Highlands told Tuoi Tre newspaper: “To have rare wood to build hives, beekeepers must have good relations with forest farms and forest rangers”. He said he also had close relations with illegal loggers. It means beekeepers have to seek out new methods of finding the rare timber to build hives.

Beekeepers believe apiculture will continue to develop strongly in Vietnam in the next few years along with the wider development of agriculture. They forecast up to15 million bee colonies in the near future, equivalent of up to 3500,000 cu.m of wood.

Bee houses made of waste

One summer day in 2005, two men met at a café in HCM City. The elder is a senior beekeeper in Bao Loc, Lam Dong province and the younger is Dang Ngoc Chuong, 28, a Bao Loc man who works in HCM City.

Though he is still young, Chuong had worked as a porter, truck driver, English interpreter, maintenance supervisor and an equipment purchasing consultant for hydro-power and large-scale construction projects. During their chat, the beekeeper complained he could not find enough timber to build hives.

Chuong became obsessed by the story. Several months after the meeting, he returned to Bao Loc to look at new ways to make hives. He thought of hives made of plastic bags, rice husks, coffee husks and other abundant and usually wasted materials,

When he made a prototype Chuong presented the hive to beekeepers to try but they refused, saying hives must be made of timber.

The young man had to pursue a beekeeper for a month to use his products on a trial basis. Luckily, the bees were more appreciate of their new home made of plastic bags and rice husks. Chuong only needed to adjust the volume of rice husks to make the houses cooler. In fact, the honey output from the new hives is even higher than the wood hives.

Chuong decided to mass-produce this product. New additions to the designs meant that when it rains or when beekeepers want to move their bee houses, they only need to close its windows and lock them. Beekeepers in Bao Loc are now highly appreciative of the new product.

The only current business building new-style bee houses in Vietnam is located in Bao Loc Town, Lam Dong province. Bags are washed, dried, ground and mixed with rice husks and pressed into pieces to build bee homes.

Chuong’s enterprise uses around 20 tonnes of waste plastic bags. He had to collect waste bags in Dak Nong and Dong Nai provinces. “Farmers in many regions often gather waste plastic bags and call me.” Chuong said.

At a cost price of only 190,000 dong/house, Chuong’s products, which can be used for many years outdoors, is saving forests in Vietnam. It is believe that millions of bee colonies in Vietnam will soon be living in these ground breaking hives.

VietNamNet/Tuoi Tre