Markham farmers may soon be selling stingless bee honey to a growing niche market

Morobe’s Markham District is known for its clay pots and the creamed marafri that are cooked in these traditional pots – but they are certainly not known for honey.

Honey production in the Morobe Province is more common in the Bulolo District (Buang). But bee keeping is slowly gaining popularity amongst villagers in Mutzing.

During a recent visit to Atzu in the Wampua Village, more than 10 ten bee keepers came out to display honey that was harvested from their bee hives.

Up to 27 bottles of honey were lined up on the table, and I noticed it wasn’t the thick and gooey honey that I was used to seeing.  A small cup was poured out for me, and it had quite a strong unusual yet delicious scent.

As soon as I  tasted it, a bitter sweet aftertaste lingered seconds after I dunked down the honey.

The honey that was on display and put up for tasting however, doesn’t come from Honey bees – it is from the small black native stingless bees commonly known as the Kundu bees.

Until three years ago, the locals did not know that these native bees could be farmed to produce honey.  They were trained on bee keeping as one of the community projects under the PNG Biomass Project.

One of the locals, Frank Godfrey grasped the concepts of bee keeping and continued to research the types of bees that they have in the village. Upon seeing the progress that he had, harvesting honey for his family for food security as well as an income, others sought this knowledge as well.

Frank began to train others in his family, and soon extended beyond his family to other interested farmers as well.  They now have a network of up to 50 bee farmers within their area in Markham.

They’ve built their bee hive boxes from locally sourced materials but these will soon be replaced with clay pots, to identify with the Markham people.

Frank says with the help of PNG Biomass, he was able to register his small business, and train other farmers.  He is now looking forward to bottling, and labeling the honey product.

While he has a few customers, and has supplied the Markham Valley High School with honey –  the challenge Frank and the 50 plus Markham Bee Keepers now have, is finding a consistent market for their honey.