TİKA Provides Beekeeping Support to Albania

Within the scope of the "Project on the Development of Beekeeping" in Albania, Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TİKA) supplied 40 family businesses with 400 hives with bees along with apiculture equipment and honey extractor machines.

As part of the "Food and Life Safety Support Program in the Balkans and Eastern European Countries", which is run by TİKA, support was provided to 40 small family business that are members of the Diber Beekeepers Association and make a living off of the production of bee/honey products in 14 different rural regions of the city of Diber, Albania.

Following the trainings given within the scope of the project, 400 beehives, beekeeping equipment, and honey extractor machines procured by TİKA were delivered to the beneficiaries at a ceremony.

TİKA's Tirana Coordinator Necip Özay Özütok spoke at the ceremony and expressed that the projects implemented by TİKA supported Albania's growth and development and that the aim of the project was to encourage the low-cost, high added-value, easily marketable production of bee and honey products appropriate for the region's soil and climate characteristics.

Özütok expressed that the project aimed to increase the income of farmers, improve employment opportunities, increase the export of bee products, and reverse the process of migration from rural to urban areas, and added the following: "TİKA's contribution will continue after the evaluation of the results to be achieved thanks to the sustainability of the project.”

In the first stage of the project, support was provided to 40 members of the Diber Beekeepers Association. The association will maintain the activities by making use of the environment created and the technology provided through the project. The aim is to export products to domestic and foreign markets, create employment opportunities, and implement the project in other regions with suitable conditions in the country.