Long before beekeeping became a livelihood for his community, Sabiiti Mbabazi had already planted the seeds of a different life.
At 73, the retired civil servant looks back on 37 years of government service and a lifetime spent close to the soil. Farming was never simply a way to make money. It was a passion that began in childhood and followed him into retirement.
His family remembers that when Mbabazi was just four years old, he planted an orange tree.
He watched it grow.
That early fascination with trees stayed with him.
In 1978, he settled on his farm in Kamanya Village, Rwentumba Parish, Masindi District, where he began combining crop farming with tree planting. Even while working for government, he spent his spare time developing the farm, determined to build something productive while protecting the environment around him.
But farming, he soon discovered, was also a school.
He planted so many trees that some crops eventually struggled under their shade. Among them were mango trees, which would later introduce him to another world — bees.
As the mango orchard matured, bees began visiting the flowers. Mbabazi became curious about the relationship between trees, bees and food production. That curiosity gradually turned into an interest in beekeeping.
It was also around this period that another important relationship began — his partnership with the Environmental Conservation Trust of Uganda (ECOTRUST).
Mbabazi has a simple way of describing how it started:
“ECOTRUST didn’t look for me. I looked for ECOTRUST.”
After hearing about an organisation supporting farmers to plant trees, Mbabazi travelled to its office in Masindi to find out more.
His initiative caught the attention of one of the forestry officers, who later visited his farm. That visit marked the beginning of a partnership that would continue for years.
At the time, ECOTRUST’s support was centred largely on technical knowledge rather than handing out free seedlings. Farmers were encouraged to invest in tree planting themselves while receiving guidance on forestry practices, tree management and sustainable land use.
For Mbabazi, the knowledge mattered.
Over the years, his farm became a mixture of indigenous and fruit trees. The trees improved the farm environment, supported soil health and provided firewood.
Today, his family rarely needs to venture into natural forests to collect fuelwood because the trees on the farm provide much of what they need.
But the forest would eventually give Mbabazi something else: an apiary.
Before ECOTRUST introduced community beekeeping initiatives, he had already begun experimenting with a few traditional hives made from locally available materials. As his interest deepened, he sought additional knowledge and adopted Kenya Top Bar hives to improve honey production.
Then, in 2019, ECOTRUST introduced a community beekeeping initiative through the Rwentumba Community Forest Association.
Mbabazi embraced it.
Through training, farmers learnt about hive management, modern beekeeping practices and safe honey harvesting. For Mbabazi, the project fitted naturally into what he had already spent decades building: trees, crops and bees working together on the same piece of land.
The benefits soon became visible beyond the apiary.
Mbabazi observed improved yields from his mangoes, coffee and other crops, which he attributes partly to increased pollination. Even neighbours who did not keep bees began noticing better harvests around their farms.
Honey also became a source of income.
Mbabazi’s premium natural honey has found buyers in different parts of Uganda and, according to his account, has reached customers in South Sudan and Kenya.
But the value of his relationship with ECOTRUST, he says, cannot be measured only in honey sales.
Through the partnership, his farm became a meeting point for farmers, researchers, government officials and development partners. The interactions exposed him to new ideas about conservation, enterprise and sustainable agriculture.
His farm also became a practical classroom.
Farmers from the Rwentumba community visited to learn about tree growing and beekeeping, while ECOTRUST used the farm as a demonstration site before the community apiary was established.
That experience eventually earned Mbabazi recognition as a model farmer in his area, with organisations and government programmes using his farm as an example of community-led conservation.
Age has now slowed him down. Health challenges have also reduced the amount of time he can spend managing his apiary.
But the principle behind his work remains unchanged.
Mbabazi continues to promote the combination of forestry and beekeeping as a way of protecting the environment while creating opportunities for rural households.
His story began not with an organisation coming to find him, but with a farmer deciding to go looking for knowledge.
He planted trees. The trees attracted bees. The bees improved pollination. Beekeeping created another source of income. And the farm, in turn, became a place where others could come and learn.
“ECOTRUST didn’t look for me. I looked for ECOTRUST.”
For Mbabazi, the sentence captures more than how a partnership began. It captures a philosophy: sometimes conservation starts when one person decides to knock on the right door.