Ghana’s liquid Gold; Sweet rewards for Ghana’s Bee Farmers

What’s worse than a Honey Badger? Ghana’s bee keepers will tell you they work with some of the most challenging honeybees yet take it in their stride. Under the Animal Health Systems Strengthening project of the International Development Department, the National Bee Unit has leant its expertise to network within Ghanaian academia, industry, and charitable organisations. Underpinned by husbandry training, in-field research, and exploration of honey production both through indigenous practices and those more familiar in the West Jack will recant project highs and lows to date, and an outlook to keeping Ghana’s beekeeping industry sweet into 2025.

Seven years ago, Jack Silberrad hung up his suit and put on his boots to become a bee farmer. Qualified under the Worshipful Guild of Wax
Chandlers, bees are in his blood. It’s what his grandfather did in the Seychelles, Zambia, and Long Mynd of Shropshire. Today Jack is in his fifth year working as a Regional Inspector for the National Bee Unit, under the Animal and Plant Health Agency; he currently manages the Western Team of inspectors and look after a territory in Cambridgeshire and West Suffolk. As well as managing colonies throughout Cambridge and villages to the North/North East, Jack runs Bee Health projects spanning England, Ghana, and Northern Ireland; he currently heads a team of bee health experts operating in the West of England.