In the arid north of Kenya, Trinnie Cartland is preparing to scale up her organic acacia honey business. She tells me that local communities have been keen to work with her: many young people are looking for alternatives to livestock farming. There’s high demand for honey in Kenya, where prices are similar to those in Europe and beekeepers can make good money.

But Cartland’s ambitions are not only profit-based. She aims to use her business to reforest land that has been degraded by pastoralism.

More trees mean more forage, or food, for the bees. This results in richer honey harvests, providing a financial incentive for maintaining an ecosystem. When beekeeping is done properly, Cartland explains, “you end up restoring the environment”.

She is not alone in the belief that bee farming could be a successful conservation industry in sub-Saharan Africa – yet she’s one of the few exploring its full potential.

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Our need for bees is practical: bees and other pollinators support the food chain. “Some 80% of indigenous flowering plants in Africa benefit from honey bee pollination, and approximately one-third of all food produced is the result of commercial honey bee pollination,” says Mike Allsopp, a honey bee specialist at South Africa’s Agricultural Research Council.