News around the World

ETHIOPIA

Students at the Agricultural Technical & Vocational College learn how to construct top-bar hives using locally available materials. We cultivate sunflowers as a major honey plant to increase yield. Students are instructed to monitor and record honey yield per hectare.

Selman Nigusu, Head of Beekeeping Training Centre, Alage

GUINEA BISSAU

Two hundred beekeepers in the east of Guinea Bissau are benefitting from a project which in its first year produced three tonnes of honey. The project ended in May with the inauguration of a photography exhibition and debate on Beekeeping in the context of rural development in Bissau. The project received €620,000 (US$812,000) (comprising 75% EU, 17% Portuguese Government and 8% Guinean Government funding). It was promoted by the Union of Portuguese-Language Capitals, the National Federation of Portuguese Beekeepers, the Bragança Polytechnic Institute and Agrarian School and Guinean NGO Aprodel.

Source: www.macauhub.com.mo/en/

ROMANIA

Beekeepers asked authorities to adopt a firm position in forbidding the use of pesticides on melliferous crops including corn, oilseed rape and sunflower. President of APIMONDIA, Gilles Ratia, visited Romania in April and accompanied by Ioan Fetea, President of the Romanian Beekeeping Association, requested the Minister of Agriculture & Rural Development, Daniel Constantin, to ban the use of neonicotinoids because they are dangerous not only for bees, but also the environment and biodiversity.

Source: Romanian Business News

TAIWAN

Wu Chao-Sheng still recalls his shock when inspecting his bees on a cold April day in 2007 he opened his hives to find only 60% of the bees alive. For 30 years he has run the family business and is currently President of the Taiwan Beekeepers Association. He acknowledges he was not among those hardest hit: other bee farmers saw their annual honey production cut in half. Worries were rekindled by reports of diminishing bee populations in the USA with nearly half of bee colonies wiped out in 2012 and neonicotinoid pesticides (commonly used in Taiwan) as possibly the main culprit. Taiwan’s bee situation appears more stable than the USA, but local scientists are worried about the potential threat to the country’s agriculture and eco-systems because of the lack of systematic data, research, and general knowledge related to bees in the country.

Taiwan has over NT$50 billion (US$1.7; €1.3 billion) of bee-pollinated produce including apple, Brassica sp, longan, melon and orange. The Council of Agriculture (COA) statistics quote the number of bee colonies in Taiwan in 2011 at 103,870 and honey production rising by 85% to 15,089 tonnes. Trials have begun in co-operation with the COA to help beekeepers apply organic pesticides made of oxalic acid and thymol to improve bees’ living environment.

Chien Wu-yen, owner of the Move-Bee farm in New Taipei said his bee populations have been relatively stable in the past few years, although a third of his bees ‘disappear’ on farms that have been sprayed with pesticides. Wu Chao-Sheng concluded that the beekeeping industry has had to rely largely on traditional wisdom but hopefully now beekeepers, scientists and government officials can establish a stronger partnership to address issues more effectively.

Source: Focus Taiwan

NIGERIA

Photo © Gerhard Pape

We used materials from the Resource Box sponsored by BfD Trust to compile a teaching manual and 30 people (men, women and school children) attended our Poverty reduction through beekeeping event in Akpodim.

Rev Emmanuel Abe, Rural People Self-help Committee, Mbaise, Imo State