MONROE, La. – Some area beekeepers spent an unusual two weeks in Guyana, South America recently.
Through the sponsorship of Partners of the Americas and the Farmer to Farmer Program, the group was involved in Project Beehive Management and Queen Bee Raising, in which they provided beekeeping training to the members of Trafalgar Union, a women’s agricultural cooperative looking to expand their beekeeping operation.
MONROE, La. – Some area beekeepers spent an unusual two weeks in Guyana, South America recently.
Through the sponsorship of Partners of the Americas and the Farmer to Farmer Program, the group was involved in Project Beehive Management and Queen Bee Raising, in which they provided beekeeping training to the members of Trafalgar Union, a women’s agricultural cooperative looking to expand their beekeeping operation.
Workshop sessions focused on several beehive management practices, including splitting hives, trapping wild swarms, and rearing queens. The group also conducted sessions with the Inter-American Association for Cooperation on Agriculture’s (IICA) beekeeping group which included working with two Amer-Indian villages.
The Farmer to Farmer Program improves economic opportunities in rural areas of Latin America and the Caribbean by increasing food production and distribution, promoting better farm and marketing operations and conserving natural resources. The program is supported by Congress and the Agency for International Development (USAID) as part of the United States foreign assistance program. Farmer to Farmer brings together agricultural professionals and practitioners from the U.S. and the Caribbean. Volunteers from the U.S. work with farmers and agribusiness owners in Guyana, Haiti, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic to identify local needs and design projects to address them.
Founded in 1964, Partners of the Americas links U.S. states with Latin American and Caribbean countries in partnerships that use the energy and skills of citizen volunteers, their institutions and communities to address shared concerns of social, economic and cultural development. Its work covers areas as diverse as emergency preparedness, agriculture, cultural and educational exchange, domestic violence and local government strengthening. Partners is a private, nonprofit, non-partisan organization with international offices in Washington, D.C.
