Beekeeping is only a part-time activity, and it can be carried out at the convenience of the women in between other household and agricultural tasks. It requires less labour and fewer inputs than other agricultural tasks. Beekeeping does not require a sophisticated understanding of bee biology, nor literacy. Practical training and experience are sufficient to become a good beekeeper. Since most mountain women are illiterate, this makes beekeeping more appropriate for them.
Women are usually nimble fingered, gentle, and used to withstanding more pain than men.
Hence women are very well suited for handling bees and withstanding a few stings. The medicinal and nutritional values of honey are among its key benefits in mountain societies where access to medicines and first aid is severely limited. Women need to be trained in how to use pure honey for colds, coughs, cuts, grazes, burns, eye and ear infections, ulcers, stomach complaints, and so on and also to make skin preparations for dry skin, feet, lips, and faces with beeswax. If encouraged to save the pollen combs, which are traditionally discarded during honey harvesting, women can supply their children, or other family members who are sick or weak, with the richest vitamin source known, at no cost. In beekeeping households, beeswax candles can now provide alternative lighting to soot-producing resinous pinewood.