Kingston, 16 July 2025 (IICA). At thirty-eight, Duhaje Jennings is the owner of Dada B’s, Jamaica’s main supplier of colonies of these hard-working insects. Yet, his success story began many years ago, when as a small boy Duhaje would visit his grandfather, a beekeeper in St. James, one of the island’s fourteen parishes. There he would explore the beehives and despite the occasional sting, he fell in love with these “critters”, as he likes to call them.
Duhaje confesses with amusement that he still receives the occasional jab, but bees are now his livelihood and the basis for his personal and entrepreneurial goals. They are also the platform that enables him to create jobs in his community and to help other Jamaicans to enter the world of beekeeping and agricultural production.
For his work as a promotor of beekeeping for the benefit of small farmer communities in Jamaica and youth interested in rural life, Jennings has been recognized by the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) as a “Leader of Rurality of the Americas”. As such, he will receive the “Soul of Rurality” award – a distinction created by the multilateral organization to turn the spotlight on men and women in the hemisphere who are leaving their mark and making a difference in the various fields involving the land.
During his interview, Jennings told us that when he began his beekeeping career his parents “thought he was crazy to place all my hopes on beekeeping, which was not very profitable at the time. They wanted their son to study medicine and instead I devoted my efforts to the hives”.
However, his decision paid off and today he is one of the most recognized businessmen in this sector, both locally and in the region. The Caribbean producer speculates that if he had a time machine that would allow him to come face to face with the “young Duhaje” at that moment when he was making that life-changing decision, he would tell him, “Do it, don’t look back! Ignore the naysayers” and the dream busters who devote their energy to crushing other people’s ambitions. “Thanks to beekeeping—he continues—I have become the man I am today”.
Strictly speaking, the moment of decision came when Jennings was eighteen and studying Molecular Biology and Botany at the University of the West Indies. “One day I asked myself ‘what am I going to do when I complete these studies?’”. The answer combined several factors, beginning with the fact that science was one of his passions. At the time, he explains, “there were not a lot of people with a scientific background in this field, and I thought I could fill that gap”.
Given his familiarity with the rearing and business aspects of beekeeping from the times when he used to visit his grandfather in St. James, it was a straightforward transition, but it also required a great deal of effort. He started with only five bee colonies – a figure that pales in comparison to the nearly one thousand colonies that he currently sets up each year for his own business and for his clients.
To expand the toolbox that he uses to grow the business of Dada B’s, Jenning enrolled in a post-graduate program, receiving first his MBA and then a Doctorate in Education and Training, “because I am passionate about sharing the knowledge I gained throughout the years and my perspective” on beekeeping”, he notes.
As if that were not enough, Duhaje studied law and is working to become certified as a lawyer, “to provided legal assistance to farmers and to assist in policy making” for the sector. All his titles are somehow connected to beekeeping.
Jennings uses advanced technology to produce queen bees, that can now be bred artificially in plastic receptacles and incubators.
“Listening” to the bees
Jennings assures us that “working with the bees is fantastic”, because “you feel very close to nature”, but it is also a practice that can help anyone to find their own place in life. “These small critters are capable of teaching us a great deal, for example by watching the way they work or how they make complex tasks seem so simple
“I have learned from them”, he confesses. “My approach to beekeeping is to let the bees ‘tell me’ what’s happening” in the hives. It is a very useful attitude, for example, when it comes to the various seasons, which in Jamaica are not very different from each other. The behavior of the insects is an indicator of what must be done to care for them during each phase of the year.
Obviously, an important business is not built solely on intuition and “listening” to the bees. Jennings stresses that, “Science and technology are extremely important, not only for beekeeping but for agricultural production in general”. Producing in the field, whether it is honey, vegetables or fruits, “is not what it was” decades ago and “that is why you need as much assistance as possible”.
“For example, instead of traveling up to the hills” where the hives are located, “I can use a drone to observe the condition of the bees from a distance”. Innovative repellants can also be used, causing the bees to scatter, thus providing easy access to the honey, without fear of stings and dramatically reducing the time needed for this task.
Today, technology offers very attractive solutions for one of the main activities of Jennings’ business, the production of queen bees, which can now be bred artificially in plastic receptacles and incubators. “Instead of having to wait for nature to breed them, I can obtain hundreds of bees from a queen that I identify as viable for specific areas in particular”, he explains.
Duhaje also reveals that new communication systems have also become invaluable partners in his work. Thanks to video calls, “I can now help producers in remote areas. I can be in another place and simply tell them ‘do this or do that’, as I observe and supervise”.
For his work as a promotor of beekeeping for the benefit of small farmer communities in Jamaica and youth interested in rural life, IICA has recognized Jennings as a “Leader of Rurality of the Americas”.
Drones, computers and the Internet
Duhaje reflects on a particularly important milestone in his career, when he received an IICA award during an agricultural fair in Jamaica in 2015. The distinction proved to be a launching pad for Jennings, opening the door “to many people and institutions”, which “set the wheels in motion” for his business. “If it wasn’t for IICA—he insists—I wouldn’t be where I am now”.
That “now” refers to his beekeeping business, through which he supplies honey, bees, equipment and training for both newcomers and seasoned producers in the business. In Jamaica, Duhaje notes, “beekeeping had just started” when I decided to enter the agrifood industry. “Generally, it was only being done on a small scale, at the subsistence level, with only a handful of colonies on some farms”.
However, the sector “has grown tremendously since then, with more people now rearing hundreds of colonies. You could say that it is becoming one of the economic avenues that is changing lives in Jamaica”, stresses Jennings. “I know many people who were unemployed, and beekeeping provided them with a new income stream to feed their families” and to escape unemployment.
One helpful feature of beekeeping is that unlike fresh agricultural produce, honey does not spoil, which enables beekeepers to store it and to wait until they can fetch a better selling price for it.
As a good scientist, he notes that economic earnings are only one of the important elements of agricultural production. Technology is another. Thus, he confesses that he is “very enthusiastic” about the rise in artificial intelligence. He is even developing a program in collaboration with local programmers, which will “be able to advise me of any problem occurring in a hive and to suggest the possible solutions”.
The doors of beekeeping and agricultural production in general “are opening up the opportunity for countless computer applications”, according to Duhaje, who speaks to a future scenario in which “computers will be able to devise” solutions to problems “and machines will be the ones to apply the solutions”.
Jennings also argues that “Technology can help us to produce more and better food for people, bearing in mind the pace of global population growth”. The Jamaican producer stresses that scientific and technical innovation “are in reach of more and more people; internet access is growing, slowly but surely; and people are learning new practices”.
In any case, for Jennings, the future will not be based solely on more machines and businesses. “As an agricultural producer, you have a reason to get up in the morning and to see things growing. Things continue to grow and reproduce while we sleep”, says the beekeeper, as he explains the satisfaction of “having an apple, pear or a spoon of honey in your hand, knowing that I produced this”.
There is also the joy of knowing that the process will continue for many years more. “I have a two-year old daughter, Khailie, and some days ago I took her to look at the hives for the first time”, says Duhaje. She was in awe and that moved me, because it is my hope that when she grows up, she will take over the business that I plan to leave behind for her”.
More information:
Institutional Communication Division.
comunicacion.institucional@iica.int
