News around the World

CAMEROON

About 1,000 farmers are beekeeping in Oku. Honey is produced in great quantities and is good quality. Our apiaries are placed in areas with many bee trees and flowers. Two sorts of honey are harvested: white honey produced at altitudes of 2800-3011 m above sea level, and brown honey from the foot of Mount Kilum at altitudes below 2800 m.

Before our workshop in February, we organised an outreach educational programme to 14 villages of Western Bakossi to introduce beekeeping as a profitable alternative to hunting and farming in the rainforest. The workshop helped our bee famers with information on good management, honey harvesting, use of beeswax and income generation, and its role in the conservation of virgin rainforest. All the workshop participants were happy with materials supplied by Bf D Trust and we will organise other workshops to educate bee farmers with the aid of the Bf D training modules.

Honey bees in Oku produce two kinds of honey: brown and white

PHOTOS © WONTSERDEV CIG

Oku valleys are covered in raffia used for making hives

We make local-style hives from grasses and raffia palm and they cost little or nothing to produce. This means that many people can become involved. Top-bar hives are gradually being introduced, and production of these hives will also be cheap.

Chiateh Kingkoh Godlove, WONTSERDEV CIG, Oku, Cameroon

DR CONGO

Participants in the beekeeping seminar organised by CEBAC-GIRDC held in Budjala in December 2010

PHOTOS © CEBAC

Pasteur Sungu Abiangala, CEBAC, Budjala, DR Congo

KENYA

I started beekeeping in 1994 and have been determined to improve activities in the rural areas around my village. I needed to continue learning the latest information to apply it to our situation and realised that I must take courses and share my knowledge: the lack of correct information, unfounded beliefs, fear of the unknown and few resources can lead to bad decision making in the apiary. I would like to share my experiences and our achievements and setbacks in Kesogon Village. I heard an interview by the BfDJ Editor, on the BBC World Service Farming World programme and my desire to start beekeeping was sparked. I enquired about obtaining more information and was given contact details for Bf D. When I contacted them I was given a sponsored subscription to the Journal - which came in very handy for a beginner beekeeper in rural Kenya without professional extension assistance or material resources.

Armed with information from BfDJ, I made my first top-bar hive from a discarded plastic water jerry can. This was an instant success - even before I could hang it in the apiary the bees started to use it as a hive. From there on we have been using and improvising with what is at hand to make homes for bees, who in turn pay back with the best products.

Jerry can top-bar hive

PHOTOS © PETER U OTENGO

Jerry can hive with top-bars. This was my first experience with bees and hives and the logic was simple. I cut one side of the can and made some simple top-bars without any definite width measurement. The bars had been rubbed with beeswax as a starter strip. I attached a sack inside the jerry can for better movement of the bees. I smeared the hive with cow dung, and when this dried, I smoked it inside and made a top iron sheet cover.

Clay pot hive

This idea came to me when bees colonised a broken clay pot put upside down in the backyard. Borrowing from this idea and thinking of better management and more sustainable ways of keeping bees in clay pots, I incorporated the idea of the double chamber of the frame hive. I drilled a hole in one of the pots to create a brood chamber. On the top, I placed a smaller pot as the ‘super’ or honey chamber. This made it easier and more efficient to harvest honey without destroying the brood. (See BfDJ 65 Clay pot hives - income for potters by Peter Otengo)

A claypot hive with honey chamber and behind frame hives with top-bars

Local-style log

Local-style log hives are cut from a tree trunk and traditionally have one hole in the centre used for the bee entrance and honey harvesting. This process tended to destroy the brood and many bees were crushed and burned with the fire torch. This weakens the colony. After studying the organisation of the bees in a hive I made a log hive with both ends open but with the bee entrance at one end. I used removable covers on both ends. This is because the queen will lay eggs near the entrance and the bees store honey at the other end. This makes for better management - it is easier to remove the honey and you stop when you reach the brood area, leaving it unharmed. This is also exciting because you spend less than ten minutes working on one hive (bearing in mind how our bees are defensive) and killing no bees. Log hives have been in use in Africa for centuries and bees like them. The honey is of high quality equal to that from other hives, wax is produced and if placed in the forest, the hives act as forest protectors.

Cement hive with top-bars

Cement hive with top-bars I have endeavoured to make a cement hive with top-bars. Wood is usually used for making hives, but it wears out, rots and is eaten by termites. A cement hive lasts forever and saves trees from being cut down for hive making. A challenge with cement hives is that they are very heavy so you have to place them on, or near the ground.

Frame hive with top-bars

Frame hive with top-bars I learned this idea from my friend Peter Paterson. Top-bar hives with sloping sides have been used because of concern that African bees tend to attach their combs to the vertical sides of a hive. However, since I started using frame hives with top-bars I have not experienced bees attaching combs on the side. Also, in some hives I restricted the queen to one chamber and in other hives I did not. The result was that hives with no queen excluder gave more honey than the others. I do not use a specific size for the top honey chamber. However the length of the top-bars is the same, to enable interchange.

Frame hive

Frame hive I have one frame hive with two supers. To my disappointment there is no time when one super has been filled with honey. I was using a queen excluder and have decided to remove it and see if there is any improvement. This type of hive is very expensive for anyone wanting to start beekeeping. It is a disadvantage and inappropriate for beekeeping enterprises because you also need extraction equipment.

While honey is often considered the most important reason to start beekeeping for someone in a rural area, there are other products that bring great value to village life when well utilised. Beeswax is often thrown away whenever nests have been plundered for honey from a hive or natural site. Wax can be used to make many other products (see page 3) and if well utilised a vibrant rural based income-creating micro industry can be created. I enjoy making beeswax soap. I harvest propolis because of its medicinal value. I process it using alcohol and vegetable oils. It is useful also for adding to soap products and skin creams made from wax.

Peter Ukiru Otengo, Kitale, Kenya

MADAGASCAR

FENAM (Malagasy National Beekeepers’ Federation) was founded in 2009. We are lobbying for lifting the embargo so that we can export honey to Europe. The process may end this year - we are waiting for the EU to respond concerning the monitoring plan developed by Madagascar. The second aspect that concerns us is the fight against Varroa mite. This was recognised in Madagascar in February 2010 and has led to change in beekeeping in infested areas. The introduction of chemicals has not been approved and the only advice from the authorities is destruction of infested colonies*. Research to cope with the problem is underway. We are conducting two tests: strengthening the natural defences of the bees through research, and selecting resistant colonies. Also we are investigating the use of medicinal and aromatic plants as treatment. It is not only the negative effect of the loss of bees for farmers whose main source of income is beekeeping, there is also the risk of extinction of endemic plants for which bees provide pollination.

FENAM, Antananarivo, Madagascar

* It is a good approach to manage Varroa without chemicals, however it is completely unnecessary and undesirable to destroy colonies that have

Varroa. As long as chemicals are not used, natural evolution of the bees will take place and bee populations will increasingly survive in the presence of the mite. [Ed]

Information about EU regulations regarding honey are on our website at www.beesfordevelopment.org. More about Varroa in Africa, see Letter (page 14).

NIGERIA

PHOTO © AKANDE AYOADE

We want to thank Bf D for support for beekeepers in Nigeria. We have empowered people on the use of beeswax to produce creams, shoe polish, candles and mascara in our seminar topic entitled Apicosmetology. The picture was taken during the seminar attended by over 200 people and supported by resource materials sponsored by Bf D Trust.

Akande Ayoade, Jorafarm Consultants, Ife, Nigeria