Bees for Development Journal 112
Action plan
7. Farmers and growers of bee-pollinated crops should be encouraged to protect pollinators from pesticides and to plant diverse flowering plants that bloom at various times throughout the season to attract a diversity of bees and provide suitable nesting habitat. 8. East African governments create a regional board to co-ordinate bee product standards, research results, and trade and policy frameworks across East Africa. 9. Recommendations resulting from this forum to be shared with all Kenyan counties and other stakeholders by the National Beekeeping Station.
This plan is specific to Kenya. Other East African participants will share this document with the stakeholders in their countries and modify it accordingly. The group requests that the following actions be taken: 1. The National Beekeeping Station strengthens beekeeping education and extension services at the county level by promoting networks and forums to share beekeeping information. 2. KARI and other agriculture research institutions invest in applied research to improve science-based practices and decision-making by beekeepers. 3. Promoting top-bar and frame hives as the ONLY way for beekeepers to make forward progress to be discontinued. There is now strong evidence that a range of hives including local-style log, basket or clay hives, top-bar hives and frame hives can be used to house honey bees and can be made profitable for the production of honey, wax and other products in East Africa. Choice of hive type should be based on the knowledge, skills and financial resources of the beekeeper and the environmental conditions where the bees are kept. Beekeepers should be made aware of all pros and cons and the full cost/benefit of each system. 4. The National Beekeeping Station co-ordinate and make available, to all interested stakeholders, documentation on all NGOs, companies, international organisations, government agencies working in the beekeeping sub-sector. 5. Kenyan Bureau of Standards effectively share with beekeepers and other stakeholders, all information related to honey and hive product standards. 6. The Ministry of Environment & Natural Resources, the Kenya Wildlife Service and the Ministry of Agriculture, include and protect bees as a key natural resource and integrate beekeepers into their training and other programmes.
PHOTO © MARYANN FRAZIER
This vision, barriers and actions plan will be shared as broadly as possible with East African stakeholders.
Participants at the South Eastern Kenya University Forum, March 2014 For references see www.beesfordevelopment.org/resources-for-beekeepers
HONEY BEES IN EAST AFRICA RESIST PATHOGENS
“Finding Nosema at all was a big surprise, and finding out that Varroa was already so widespread was unexpected” said Christina Grozinger, Penn State. When we did the analyses on how the pests were impacting colony health, we did not see any significant effect.” What explains the resilience of the East African bees? One source may lie somewhere in their genes, the researchers believe much of the explanation for the Kenyan bees’ resilience lies in different farm practices. African bees live relatively free of human input. The study found very low levels of only a few pesticides in hives, when there were any at all.
Scientists have discovered that bees in Kenya have strong resistance to the same pathogens responsible for the deaths of billions of bees elsewhere in the world. Entomologist Elliud Muli, (ICIPE) with researchers at Penn State University, USA surveyed hives in all of Kenya’s major ecosystems: savanna, mountains, tropical coast, and desert. They measured the size of colonies and the numbers of bees and tested them for parasites and pesticide contaminants.
Beekeepers in Kenya should copy Western practices as little as possible, the study authors say, if they want to keep their bees healthy—and in particular refrain from treating them with pesticides even though Varroa and Nosema are present. For now, at least, “the wild Kenya bees have their own resistance,” Grozinger says. “It would be a mistake to interfere with that.”
In a paper published in the online journal PLOS ONE, the researchers report that honey bees in Kenya are infested with the same pests and diseases that wipe out colonies elsewhere but do not succumb. Colonies remain healthy even where a combination of pathogens are present. “That resilience - I was amazed by the lack of manifestation of ill health in the bees,” said Muli.
Muli says: “The way beekeeping is done in the West has eroded the genetic pool through commercial breeding of queens and propping up sick colonies through use of medication - colonies which would otherwise be long dead. For us, instead, it is survival for the fittest, and Mother Nature seems to be getting it right. She is giving us a broad genetic pool of honey bees capable of dealing with any environmental shock.”
Muli and Penn State co-author Maryann Frazier first detected Varroa in Kenyan honey bees in 2009. Nosema had not been seen there before, but in the recent study both pests proved prevalent in all but the most remote study areas surveyed.
Source: Jennifer S Holland, www.news.nationalgeographic.com 7
