Living hive supports for bee hives in the tropics by Trevor Chandler*, Landscope Consulting Corporation, PO Box 198, Lillooet, BC VOK 1V0, Canada. A challenge to all beekeepers in the tropics is to find suitable supports for beehives. Traditional hives in many tropical areas are hung in trees and lowered down only for harvesting. As beekeeping is modernized, hive densities increase and intensive management requires more frequent hive inspections. A good hive support needs to: be high enough to keep the hive above the weeds and ground dwelling pests 2. be low enough to allow hive inspection and harvesting without climbing trees be strong enough to hold a hive full of honey in a level position be resistant to termites and rot be inexpensive and easy to obtain be able to form a barrier to crawling bee pests such as ants when necesWw
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sary. In my years of working with African bees and beekeepers, have seen many clever designs, but no perfect ones. Recently while working in Uganda, however, saw some excellent examples of traditional beekeepers using their considerable knowledge of the resources in their environments to develop effective, inexpensive and permanent hive supports for both traditional and top-bar type hives. They were using living posts as hive supports. Living hive supports are an example of agroforestry and apiculture coming together. Agroforestry refers to land use systems and practises in which woody perennials are deliberately grown on the same land management unit as crops or animals. The multiple use of trees is important in agroforestry. Trees are valuable to beekeepers not only because their flowers produce nectar, but trees also provide shade for the hives, materials to construct hives, living fences to protect hives from large animals and living hive supports to hoid hives off the ground. In Uganda, at least two of the species of trees used for living fences are used for living hive supports: 1. Ficus natalensis, the bark cloth fig tree, grows well throughout the moist highland areas of East Africa. It is used for living fences because it will grow from a large cutting or stake
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Newly established traditional hive on Ficus support. Note: support has not yet started to grow.
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Traditional hives on Ficus supports.
inserted into the ground at the beginning of the rain season. It is also used as a shade tree in coffee plantations and grazing areas. Its leaves make an excellent soil building mulch and, as its common name implies, its bark is used to make cloth.
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Erythrina abyssinica, one of over 110 species of coral trees in the world, is a member of the legume family well known for its ability to improve soils by fixing atmospheric nitrogen. Large sections of stem take root readily and, being thorny, it is commonly used as a living fence post. It
