Bees for development
JOURNAL
No 124 September 2017
• TOM SEELEY • LEO SHARASHKIN • BEE RESERVE • APIS MELLIFERA RUTTNERI
The Journal for sustainable beekeeping 1
Bees for Development Journal 124 September 2017
Dear friends Let’s stop talking about traditional beekeeping! Our cover picture of bee hives in Russian woodland was painted in 1894 by Andrei Nikolaevich Schilder (1861-1919). In those days Russian beekeepers kept bee colonies in simple hollowed logs, practising what would nowadays be described as Natural beekeeping. In 1853 Reverend Langstroth wrote about them in his famous book The hive and the honey bee: “The Russian and Polish beekeepers …. are among the largest and most successful cultivators of bees, many of them numbering their colonies by hundreds, and some even by thousands! They have, with great practical sagacity, imitated as closely as possible the conditions under which bees are found to flourish so admirably in a state of nature”. Reverend Langstroth patented the movable frame beehive in 1852, and nowadays frame hives in many countries tend to be named ‘Langstroth’ or ‘modern’ hives.
Issue 124 September 2017 In this issue
page
Natural beekeeping and ideal hives.................................... 3 Bee Conservation Project ............. 9 Bee Reserve for The Gambia.......11 RukaJuu Beekeeping in Tanzania.......................................12 News...................................... 14, 15 Indicators to measure achievements...............................16 International Meeting of Young Beekeepers.......................18 Notice Board................................18 Look Ahead..................................19 Workshop Success.......................20 Bees for Development Journal Produced quarterly and sent to readers in over 130 countries Editor: Nicola Bradbear PhD Co-ordinator: Helen Jackson BSc Subscriptions cost £26 per year - see page 18 for ways to pay Readers in developing countries may apply for a sponsored subscription. Apply online.
In this edition we are delighted to bring you consideration of current concepts of sustainable and natural beekeeping by leading bee scientist Professor Tom Seeley and thoughtful, treatment-free beekeeper Dr Leo Sharashkin (who brought Schilder’s beautiful painting to our attention). What exactly is natural beekeeping? In many beekeeping circles lively debate is underway concerning conventional and natural beekeeping, with renewed interest in keeping bees in hives without frames, and/or without medication, and even in trees – see Look Ahead page 19. Are you a natural beekeeper, or a conventional beekeeper, or maybe a bit of both? Many readers of this Journal are practising near to natural beekeeping, allowing bees to live in simple, low cost hives. At Bees for Development we have always appreciated and sought to explain the advantages of lowcost, sustainable beekeeping, and indeed our logo shows a simple hive hanging in a tree. This style
of beekeeping is being used today by thousands of beekeepers world-wide. We never describe the use of simple hives as ‘traditional beekeeping’ as this term is used in contrast to ‘modern’, and tends to imply something that is outof-date, unchanging, no longer sufficiently effective, or even ‘backward’. In fact the reverse is true - simple hives allow bees to live most naturally or as Langstroth put it ‘in a state of nature’, and modern science is helping us to understand the reasons why this helps them to survive well. So fellow beekeepers, let us talk about simple, natural, economic, ecological, healthy, sustainable and economic beekeeping – whatever you like – just please don’t use the ‘t’ word!
Dr Nicola Bradbear Director, Bees for Development
Bees for Development Works to assist beekeepers in developing countries. Bees for Development Trust gratefully acknowledge: Artemis Charitable Trust, Didymus Trust, E H Thorne (Beehives) Ltd, Ethiopiaid, Eva Crane Trust, Hub Cymru Africa, Neal’s Yard Remedies, Stroud Buzz Club, The Waterloo Foundation, Welsh Government,Yasaeng Beekeeping Supplies. Copyright You are welcome to translate and/or reproduce items appearing in Bees for Development Journal as part of our Information Service. Permission is given on the understanding that the Journal and author(s) are acknowledged, our contact details are provided in full, and you send us a copy of the item or the website address where it is used.
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Cover picture: Bee hives in woodland painted by Andrei Nikolaevich Schilder in 1894. This oil painting is in Nizhny Novgorod State Art Museum in Russia.
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Bees for Development Journal 124 September 2017
Natural beekeeping and ideal hives Professor Tom Seeley interviewed by Dr Leo Sharashkin LS Is there such a thing as natural beekeeping? Some people feel that “keeping” bees is inherently unnatural. TS It depends on how natural it has to be to qualify as natural beekeeping. I do not think there is a set definition. But I can keep bees and simulate bees living in the woods very closely. The one thing I do not simulate is having them 30 feet (10 m) up in a tree. If that disqualifies me from natural beekeeping, that is fine, but except for that, I think you can actually have colonies of bees living very naturally. And probably the more natural, the better. You may have smaller honey crops, but you will probably have healthier bees, so your overall benefits minus costs may come out ahead, and your apiary is a good demonstration of that. LS Thank you and you are right: many beekeepers are amazed to see my colonies going for five years or longer without any treatment.
Wild bees survive TS This reminds me of my experience going back to the Arnot Forest – the research forest at Cornell – in 2002 and finding the wild honey bees were still there. How could that be? We know that if we do not treat a colony for Varroa, it is going to be dead in a few years - usually two years at most, rarely three years. But there they were. I could have just ignored that and said: “Oh, that is weird! That does not make any sense, I am going to forget that.” But no, I saw these treatment-free colonies that persisted and it was such a striking thing I could not ignore it; I realised that could be very important.
Professor Dr Tom Seeley is Professor of Biology at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, USA. A leading researcher of honey bee ecology and behaviour and award-winning author of The Wisdom of the Hive and Honeybee Democracy, and recently Following the Wild Bees. His current research explores how wild honey bees survive Varroa without treatments, and what beekeeping practices could help mimic wild bees’ success. He says: “To develop sustainable beekeeping management practices, we need to first look at how honey bees live in the wild.” Professor Seeley is a Patron of Bees for Development
Photo © Leo Sharashkin
And once we started studying how colonies could survive in the presence of Varroa, the story is interesting1, especially now that we have understood the changes in the bees’ genetics, the possible competitive exclusion between viral strains, the importance of colony swarming, etc.
Left to their own devices, wild honey bees can survive in climates with -40°F (-40°C) winters. Local residents say that this colony living in a rock crevice outside Bozeman, MT (USA), has been there “forever.” The nest is betrayed by the fragrance of propolis and honey, which I could smell from 20 feet (6 m) 3
Dr Leo Sharashkin’s treatmentfree apiary in southern Missouri, USA, is composed entirely of local survivor stock. He catches swarms, uses a variety of easy-tobuild horizontal hives, and leads natural beekeeping workshops. He is editor of Keeping Bees with a Smile, a comprehensive book on natural beekeeping, and a regular contributor to American Bee Journal. Dr Sharashkin says “I love Layens hives with extradeep frames. But, as Layens himself said: ‘You can be a good beekeeper with any hive system, but you cannot be a good beekeeper if you don’t know what you are doing’”.
Bees for Development Journal 124 September 2017
Lifespan of wild colonies
certainly more elsewhere. We may not fully understand which of the traits favour their survival, but the important fact is that they are able to co-exist with the mites. Why not take these genetics and propagate breeding queens from that stock? There is such a focus on helping bees survive and cope with Varroa; researchers are trying to artificially breed a more resistant kind of bee by favouring certain traits, such as hygienic behaviour – in the meantime most beekeepers continue to use chemical treatments. Why? It looks like nature has done the work for us.
LS Do we know how long a treatment-free colony may survive in the wild? What is the longest known lifespan of a wild colony occupying the same bee tree? TS I have just completed a paper on that for Apidologie2. In it, I report a study in which I followed a population of wild colonies (living in bee trees and buildings) at 33 different sites for seven years 2010-2016. I have not followed them all for seven years: year one I started following some sites, then added more in the following years. Therefore, some I have been checking for seven years, some for six, and some for five, etc. This is the only study that I know where there is a human being (in this case me) who has been checking each wild colony nest site three times a year in May, July and September, every year for seven years. I am doing it so I can have good evidence that the bee colony did not die out and the nest did not just get reoccupied. I have colonies that I know have been in continuous existence for six years, and no treatments. I made enough observations to calculate (with statistically significant results) that the average lifespan of established wild colonies in that population is 6.2 years. So that is the best evidence I am aware of. I will keep monitoring these colonies and we will see how long they will go.
TS There are two parts to my answer. First, breeding and maintaining lines that have resistance is harder than using a medicine. So much of medicine is formulated around the “magic bullet” approach. Find one thing you can do, put it in the system to solve the problem. And that is appropriate with human medicine because it is easier to get people to take a drug than it is to have them change their lifestyle.
Photo © Tom Seeley
Photo © Tom Seeley
People have of course tried breeding bees for things like resistance to American foulbrood (AFB) and Varroa. But you probably know that the stocks that have great resistance to AFB also show brood production problems, so as soon as you relax human selection for hygienic behaviour, bees bounce back and move away from it. So that is one of the complications.
The longest-surviving wild colony tracked by Tom Seeley is now in its eighth year
We can easily observe many of our managed colonies struggling, but the robust population of treatment-free honey bees living in the wild escapes our view, hidden in nests deep in the woods
Why treat bees when wild colonies show resistance?
LS Six years! That is fascinating information! And it very much raises the question: why treat bees when we have wild colonies showing resistance to Varroa? You have bees like that in upstate New York, I have them in the Ozark Mountains in Missouri (USA), and there are
Second, I feel that genetics alone is not going to solve the problem completely. There is breeding work being done selecting for Varroa-sensitive hygienic (VSH) behaviour. The USDA lab in Baton Rouge worked hard 4
Bees for Development Journal 124 September 2017
to get the Russian bees precisely because there was the expectation that they would have gone through selection for resistance to Varroa. I have not used Russian bees, but quite a few people do. Dr Marla Spivak tells me regarding the VSH-trait bees that she has promoted, that these bees offer some control of the mites, but you still need other controls as well.
own. For example, if a nectar forager arrives home from the field and she is not finding a receiver bee to take her load of nectar, does she deposit nectar in the cell herself? No! I have watched more than 1,000 foragers arriving with nectar, and only once did I see a bee unload nectar herself after not finding a receiver bee. Rather, she will perform a tremble dance (walking about the nest and shaking) to encourage more of the nest workers to take on nectar processing. It is like if you are not getting service, you ring the bell to call an attendant to help, rather than trying to do everything on your own.
I cannot say for sure whether the bees that are living in the Arnot Forest would show resistance to the Varroa mite without all the features of their lifestyle – it may not be just those genetics that are helping them. Their persistence may be due to their genetics in combination with how they live in small nests and have the freedom to swarm, etc. I can see a lot of reasons why people want to find the magic-bullet treatment. Here is the chemical to use – be it oxalic acid or thymol or formic acid.
LS That is wonderful! I almost feel like performing a dance so we can co-operatively find natural solutions to the issues bees are facing. But I sometimes encounter the following position: Treatment-free beekeeping is possible, but totally impractical. Would you agree?
Photo © Tom Seeley
Is natural beekeeping impractical?
Photo © Tom Seeley
TS I would need to know more what is meant by “impractical.”
Tom Seeley’s apiary in Ellis Hollow near Ithaca, NY, USA LS Impractical in the sense that you have to be isolated from everyone else to be able to breed and maintain your own strain of bees. Besides, you mentioned that when you need to be sure that a colony will have a robust population for a student’s project, you do treat your colonies too, even though you give preference to substances based on essential oils rather than harsh chemicals. TS Yes, but the major reason for doing these treatments is this: those projects are often done in a laboratory, and here we have some projects going where we know some of the colonies will collapse, so other colonies will easily pick up mites. Treating colonies is an “insurance policy” – even if they pick up mites, the mite levels will stay low. There are some experiments where you do not want the mite level to be a variable, so you must keep it low. A lot of what keeps these wild colonies going is to do with them being small colonies with a relatively small amount of brood; but for some of our experiments we need colonies that are not like the wild ones. Then, you are creating a gold mine for Varroa – nothing like what they have in nature. Also, sometimes my students want to make honey, so they want to really push them for honey production. I think that may be the biggest problem for the commercial beekeepers, rendering many natural approaches “impractical” – they want to maximise their production.
The art of locating wild bees’ nests is described in Tom Seeley’s book Following the Wild Bees LS Is not this the overall approach of how we deal with any problem? Instead of finding a way to prevent illness, we start fighting the disease agent or parasite, often making them stronger in the process. “Trouble-shooting” seems to be our preferred method, and it fires back. Do the bees have the same way of dealing with problems? TS It depends on what aspect of honey bee behaviour you are talking about. If their nest is under attack, the bees will strike back. But individual bees also stimulate their nest mates to work co-operatively so the problem is addressed, instead of trying to fix something on their
LS Would not acquiring stock by setting out swarm traps etc, be too unreliable and slow for someone who runs hundreds or thousands of hives? 5
Bees for Development Journal 124 September 2017
TS Oh yes, if we are talking about somebody who is putting so much effort into managing and supervising their hundreds of colonies. I am seeing that the natural approach is highly practical, but I keep at most 80 colonies. I do not keep hundreds or thousands. You are probably better able to address that than I am. What is your sense of that?
was planted crops, and immense fields of them. Things have changed since then. LS You have mentioned that so much in beekeeping is done for the beekeeper’s convenience rather than for the well-being of the bees. If you could change things, what would be the first most important steps towards what Langstroth called “bees’ natural state”? Which aspects of hive design and management approaches compromise bees’ welfare the most?
Other facets of sustainable beekeeping LS I think that the number of colonies you can manage sustainably also depends on the environment the bees find themselves in, and on the model of the hive you are using. The World History of Beekeeping and Honey Hunting by Eva Crane, and other history books, describe that before the ecosystems were converted from their virgin natural state to agriculture, a thousand hives could be put in the same spot and there was enough forage to sustain them. And the same about hive models employed. Langstroth writes in the 1853 edition of The Hive and The Honey Bee: “The Russian and Polish beekeepers, living in a climate whose winters are much more severe than our own, are among the largest and most successful cultivators of bees, many of them numbering their colonies by hundreds, and some even by thousands! They have, with great practical sagacity, imitated as closely as possible the conditions under which bees are found to flourish so admirably in a state of nature.”
Keys to sustainable beekeeping: spacing, hive size, swarming TS I cannot give an answer with complete confidence, but I believe there are three major culprits: First by spacing colonies closely in apiaries we are creating a scenario where we are selecting for the virulence of pathogens and parasites. Second (or perhaps equal importance), is the large size of colonies that we manage. Coupled to this is third: the prevention of the natural cycle of splitting through swarming and having a broodless period. It is hard for me to parse out which of these three is most important, but we now have very good experimental evidence that crowding colonies and putting them in big hives really fosters disease problems for bees. Smaller colonies are healthier: they have smaller nests to take care of, they have less brood, and they swarm regularly. In my upcoming Apidologie article I report the results of my long-term observations: colonies that did not replace their queen during a given season (for example through swarming) have a much lower probability of surviving the following winter than colonies that did change their queen. The difference in mite loads is very pronounced as well as swarming colonies end the summer with far smaller mite loads.
I think part of the reason we feel we cannot go over a hundred hives is because our present hive models put bees beyond their natural limits while the USA ecosystem is so impoverished compared to the linden (basswood) forests of 200-300 years ago and other undisturbed areas.
LS Very interesting! You are finding that smaller and “swarmier” colonies living in smaller nests stay healthier, but surely bees are programmed to seek nectar and store as much honey as they can? Some wild colonies can accumulate stores far exceeding their needs even in the worst year. Occasionally people remove hundreds of kilograms of honey from a bee tree being taken out. Here is a quote from Russian beekeeper Mikhail Lupanov (1974): “The tree hollow was 5 m deep and 0.4 m across, with seven combs, each 5 m deep. We worked at it for two days, filling 12 deep frames with brood and cutting ten buckets of comb honey. Transferred to a frame hive, the colony built 12 medium frames of new comb in 36 hours.” The question: can the accumulation of extra stores that the colony will never ever use – can it somehow be to the colony’s advantage?
Huge natural colonies at disadvantage TS I doubt it. What probably happened here is these bees could not find the proper-size cavity. They moved into something that was the best they could find, and it was huge. It was so big that they never got the feedback loop that they would normally get. So, in a way, either they made a bad judgement or they had bad luck, and they may have done poorly. All this honey may look stunning to us, but the bees may have been paying a big cost in terms of being very attractive to ants, to predators, to wasting their energies storing up all that food that they will never use – instead of investing this energy in reproduction.
Langstroth recognised the value of simple fixed-comb hives: due to their low cost and bee-friendly nest, a single Russian beekeeper could have up to 4,000 colonies. Beeyard by Andrei Nikolaevich Schilder (1894) TS Yes, in American beekeeping literature, A I Root, in central Ohio would have hundreds of hives in one area, but there were various forage crop fields nearby and they were making great amounts of buckwheat and clover honey. It was not linden trees, it was not natural, it 6
Bees for Development Journal 124 September 2017
Photo © Leo Sharashkin
Does honey production come at a cost for the colony? LS Is it then correct to say that when we put bees into our managed hives, the production of surplus honey for the beekeeper always comes at a cost to the colony? TS Probably. You must think about the “cost” in terms of genetic success. Those colonies that put so much effort into storing a huge amount of honey may not have reared as many drones as they could have otherwise. But the big thing is, that they probably did not swarm as much. So, did they pass on their genes as effectively as a smaller and “swarmier” colony? No. If you came back ten years later, which genes are in the environment? Probably not the genes of those huge managed colonies, but of the colonies living out in the wild.
The ideal hive LS Do you know of any research that compares different models of hives, and whether there is such a thing as an ideal hive for a bee colony? Looking down into a Layens Hive, you see the same comb structure as in bees’ natural tree nest: honey on top; empty cells for the winter cluster below – all on the same uninterrupted comb
TS There is a lot of work on that and I must confess I have not explored it well enough. Have you found something good? LS Old literature has many reports of long-term observations of different hive models. They would put them in the same apiary and track their performance over many years. But performance was mostly gauged by the size of honey crop, swarming was discouraged, and bee health was not that big an issue. I do not know how rigorous these studies would be by today’s standards.
trying to parse out the importance of each factor. You can then start working on the combination of these factors. The authors of old were not doing their hive model comparisons in the context of bee health, trying to figure out what creates a healthy colony. They were more interested in hives that can produce the most productive colony. But those things are not necessarily different. When you consider different hive models, you also want to look carefully at what beekeepers were trying to accomplish by comparing different hives — or by inventing their own. Take Emile Warré: he was trying to make a hive that mimicked the dimensions of a natural bee nest, was inexpensive, and simple enough that a peasant could put it together with very simple tools. For him it was important that the system be productive, yet not require comb foundation, or precise carpentry, or an expensive extractor. To address the question of an ideal hive, you must consider what were the criteria of success: was it a healthy colony, was it low cost, or was it honey production? I bet different people sought different things.
Even Langstroth talks about the advantages and limitations of different hive models. The “Langstroth” hive we use today is not the model Langstroth invented and advocated. His was a double-wall hive with ample insulation, and he was very particular about that. In his book Langstroth expresses admiration of the Polish cultivators who built their hives of boards at least 2.5-4.0 cm thick and even provided extra insulation on top of that. He calls them “practical, common-sense men whose heads have not been turned ... by modern theories and fanciful inventions. They cultivate their bees almost in a state of nature, and their experience on what we would term a gigantic scale ought to convince even the most incredulous of the folly of pretending to keep bees in the miserably thin and unprotected hives to which we have been accustomed.”
Langstroth sought ease of management of the colony, and honey production. As you say, health was not a big deal back then. The way the Langstroth hive is set up, it is good for migratory beekeeping, and for having honey supers where you can segregate the honey storage vertically from the brood nest. It is good for setting up extractors. This hive fits well with the technology that was being developed: the frame, movable frame hive, the extractor, foundation, smoker, protective gear, all that stuff.
TS There is a lot of very interesting information on that, we just do not know it. And there is also a lot of room for examining these things afresh: looking at the horizontal hives with very deep frames, assessing the shape of the frames, and importance of having the continuous comb. Or take insulation: you cite Langstroth, how important it was deemed in his day, then the importance of insulation was downplayed for a long time – but now we get indications suggesting the story’s much more interesting than we thought: location of the entrance for example.
It is a rich topic for investigation and really, from the hardcore scientific perspective, is a frontier subject. I would step back with a fresh mind and get ideas from people like yourself — who have good experience with alternatives to current hives. But current hives may really be quite good, it could be that we just need to tweak insulation, play with frame dimensions, etc.
To really address those questions intelligently, we do have to ground ourselves in what is the natural life of the bee colony, and start with that. Then we start changing one thing at a time. The insulation, the position of the entrance, the shape and the continuity of the combs — 7
How to test performance of different hive models?
Professor Seeley says: “Bee research takes a lot of patience, but can be done without expensive equipment”
LS Many of the greatest luminaries of European beekeeping, including Jan Dzierzon and Georges de Layens, believed strongly that a narrow and deep comb (10 inches or 12 inches wide by 16 inches or 18 inches deep) was better for the colony’s development and wintering than comb that is long and relatively shallow (like the Langstroth frame, which is 18 inches long by only 9 inches deep). They based their conviction on the observation of natural bee nests (where comb is elongated vertically rather than horizontally), and extensive beekeeping experience. If we wanted to test the hypothesis whether the narrow and extra-deep frame indeed favours colony health, survival, or honey crop compared to the frame that is long and relatively shallow – how would you structure such an experiment? You would get two groups of colonies that are genetically identical and put them in hives with the two different layouts, but what exactly would you be looking at? TS I would look at a number of things: survivorship, brood production, honey production, disease, honey stores consumption in the winter. You would look at as many variables as you can, at everything possible. You would have to be judicious in deciding priorities: to do these things right, you must use groups of at least 10-12 colonies. They must be set up and matched in as many variables that you do not want changed, and then you have them differ just in one variable you examine – say, the shape. This is the simplest experimental design: everything is the same (the size of the hive, insulation) except the shape of the frame: one is taller and narrower, the other squatter and wider.
1 inch = 2.54 cm References 1 SHARASHKIN,L. (2016) Surviving without treatments: Lessons from wild bees. American Bee Journal 156 (2): 15. 2 SEELEY,T.D. (2017) Life-history traits of wild honey bee colonies living in forests around Ithaca, NY, USA. Apidologie DOI: 10.1007/s13592-017-0519-1.
There are a lot of interesting things to look at here. It is a pity that the needs of honey bee health have lately sucked up the scientific talent and resources that could be used to explore questions about the functioning of healthy, disease-free (or, rather, “disease-OK”) colonies.
We thank American Bee Journal and the authors for their kind permission to reproduce this article first published in American Bee Journal 157, (7), July 2017
TREATMENT FREE BEEKEEPING IN HORIZONTAL HIVES Dr Leo Sharashkin in co-operation with
Bees for Development 11-12 November 2017 A unique Course covering all aspects of a treatment free approach to beekeeping Ragman’s Lane Farm, Forest of Dean, GL17 9PA, UK Limited spaces available – book now to avoid disappointment
www.beesfordevelopment.org 8
Photo © Robin Radcliffe
Bees for Development Journal 124 September 2017
Bees for Development Journal 124 September 2017
Apis mellifera ruttneri Conservation Project Darryl Grech, Co-ordinator for the Ruttneri Conservancy Project, and Thomas Galea, Project Co-ordinator for the Ruttneri Conservancy Project and Member of the Maltese Beekeepers Association Malta’s indigenous honey bee is Apis mellifera ruttneri, named after Professor Friedrich Ruttner. Apis mellifera ruttneri has evolved and adapted superbly to the environment and harsh climatic conditions of the Maltese Islands. It defends itself supremely well against local pests such as wasps and hornets. Furthermore, solely by natural selection, colonies exhibit resistance to Varroa. Despite possessing these beneficial traits, some beekeepers are still opting to import nonindigenous honey bees and are threatening the conservation of our unique bee. Recently a Sicilian apiculturist brought 445 nuclei of exotic bee colonies to our islands to produce queen bees for export. Such intensive beekeeping will ultimately result in the total hybridisation of our already small and critical indigenous bee genetic pool, apart from increasing the risk of diseases and competition for the already limited forage available. Beekeeping in Malta is one of our oldest traditions. The Greeks and Romans called our island Melite which derives from the Greek word for honey, meli. If things do not drastically improve soon, our apicultural heritage will become history as we lose our indigenous bee forever.
Mifsud of the University of Malta. Results confirmed that the Maltese bee Apis mellifera ruttneri is different from that of Sicily and is more related to the North African bee morphologically and genetically. Therefore, confirming the previous studies conducted by W S Sheppard, A McArias, A Grech and M Meixner in 1997. These are very positive results and will be published soon. Therefore, we have established that the population of our indigenous bee species is at its most critical point and requires immediate action for conservation. The visit of SmartBees experts Dr Aleksandar Uzunov and Dr Marina Meixner has provided a morale boost for local beekeepers and further motivated them to unite for this cause. The training for beekeepers willing to take part in this breeding programme included interesting theoretical presentations and practical in-field demonstrations of breeding and selection methods. As recommended by SmartBees, testing stations will be set up across the Maltese islands to conserve the population of local bees. We will develop tools for safeguarding future populations by increasing the frequencies of the valuable traits in the local bee populations. Breeders have also been instructed to follow a performance testing protocol as established by SmartBees: their breeding strategy has already proved successful and adjustment of the testing methods will be allowed to suit our islands’ conditions. These techniques will allow Apis mellifera ruttneri to be adapted to suit the needs of local beekeepers and most importantly enable this bees’ preservation through utilisation.
The Project Despite the uphill struggle, a group of concerned and enthusiastic Maltese beekeepers got in touch with SmartBees (a collaborative research project on bees across Europe) and developed a strategic plan to protect Apis mellifera ruttneri. Thomas Galea is the Project Co-ordinator. Our goal is to safeguard this endangered and unique bee species, and to maintain biodiversity.
Photo © Per Kryger
The next crucial step being evaluated is assessing
Samples of adult honey bees from colonies in apiaries throughout Malta were collected and analysed. Despite skepticism from the majority of local beekeepers that the indigenous bee still exists and is not ‘contaminated’ by imported bees, results have so far revealed the contrary. To our relief and encouragement, analysis of mitochondrial DNA from these samples proves that Apis mellifera ruttneri is still predominant in our islands. Another study was conducted in 2014 by researcher Ms Sheryl Sammut, (MSc graduate) on Determination of the genetic status of the local honey bee Apis mellifera ruttneri, under the supervision of Drs Mangion and
Apis mellifera ruttneri 9
Bees for Development Journal 124 September 2017
Photo © Per Kryger
which Apis mellifera ruttneri queens will be selected to start this breeding programme. The locations for testing stations will be established to ensure that they are evenly spread across the islands. We are working on our list of supporters for this project both locally and worldwide. Their backing is extremely valuable to our initiative. Up until now renowned organisations including Bees for Development, Bee or Not to be, the Bumblebee Conservation Trust and Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity, have expressed their support and joined our cause. Against all odds, with sheer hard work and determination, we will prevail and this project will be a success!
Our Objectives • Providing appropriate training to local beekeepers to improve knowledge on understanding and undertaking and sustainable apiculture. • Encouraging new beekeepers to start with Apis mellifera ruttneri. • Safeguarding existing Apis mellifera ruttneri colonies. • Increasing the number of healthy colonies of the Maltese indigenous bee. • Improving certain traits and characteristics of Apis mellifera ruttneri by selection to enhance its reputation among beekeepers. • Promoting the local bee species among beekeepers. • Having stock of Apis melliferi ruttneri queens to sustain local demand. • Recognising and certifying Apis mellifera ruttneri with scientific evidence. • Developing a policy to control the importation of exotic bee species – to preserve our indigenous species.
Photo © Darryl Grech/Thomas Galea
Close up of Apis mellifera ruttneri
Training in progress arranged by SmartBees
Apis mellifera ruttneri is more than just a bee, it is OUR bee!
Beekeepers of the world invited to Copenhagen The capital of Denmark, Copenhagen is not only home to one of the world’s oldest monarchies and happiest people, the city is also buzzing with bees on rooftops and parks. In Copenhagen bees are not just bees: beekeeping is used for social projects to strengthen local communities, and the importance of bees for the ecosystem is taught in schools. Being a bee city, Copenhagen now invites beekeepers of the world to join the Apimondia International Congress of Beekeeping. The Danish Beekeepers Association, in collaboration with Wonderful Copenhagen Convention Bureau are bidding to host the Apimondia Congress in Denmark in 2021. The Congress is expected to attract over 5,000 international beekeepers and researchers. Apimondia 2021 in Copenhagen would offer delegates an opportunity to participate in many scientific tours and excursions around Denmark. Including visits to queen breeding stations, mead breweries, local apiaries, Jacobsen honey, and the well-known company Swienty. To follow the process and support the work, visit the Danish Beekeepers on Facebook: www.facebook.com/Apimondia2021Copenhagen Members of the International Federation of Beekeepers’ Associations will decide where the 2021 Apimondia Congress will be held during the 2017 Congress in Istanbul this month. 10
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A bee reserve for The Gambia Derek Marin, Director of Programme Development, Sami Beekeeping Association I wanted to say that our beekeeping association (and I) have progressed by leaps and bounds because of your Resource Box these past three years. I want to express how thankful we are that we had it during our developing period. The Sami Beekeeping Trainee Mawdou Kali Ceesay Association has built with Derek Marin (right) Gambia’s first ‘Bee Reserve’ and field station which is a result of our hard work and your education materials.
Value added products in production
Our Education Centre is complete and we are finishing a couple of earth-made guest houses and breaking ground for our freshwater pump well and restroom facilities. We are specialising in Holistic Planned Beekeeping in our training, working on triple bottom-line principles* to guide our operations and programmes. After my service with the US Peace Corps I am now Director of Programmes for the Association (mostly operating from the USA – fundraising and programme building). We are planning a ribbon cutting event next dry season in celebration of Gambia’s new government and the opening of our Bee Reserve Centre. I am also developing an internship programme with the university I attend for Environmental Management and hope to obtain university sponsorships to send interns to the bee reserve.
Recipes in BfD Journal are used as guidance
The Gambia’s first ever Bee Reserve 11
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RukaJuu Beekeeping in Tanzania: Lessons learned in a pilot project Anne H Outwater, Head of Department of Community Health Nursing, Muhimbili University of Health & Allied Sciences, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Stephen Msemo, Senior Beekeeping Officer, Ministry of Natural Resources & Tourism, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania Photo © Anne Outwater unless stated otherwise
In Tanzania people appreciate honey as both a food and a medicine. There is a long history of beekeeping, and a baobab tree hung with several local-style log hives is not an uncommon sight. Honeys from stingless bees and honey bees are produced and sold1,2. Since relatively few pesticides are used in agriculture in Tanzania, the country is still free of genetically modified crops, endemic forests still stand, and the honey is usually of high quality. Very often, the origin of honey for sale can be traced to specific forests, and even to specific tree species. The market for Tanzanian honey is not yet satiated. During his term in office (2008–2015) Prime Minister Mizengo Pinda promoted honey production, especially by young people and women. Beekeeping comes under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Natural Resources & Tourism; within the Ministry, policy issues are co-ordinated through the Division of Forestry & Beekeeping, and all operational aspects are implemented by the Tanzania Forest Services Agency, where there is a beekeeping section, which guides development of the industry.
Mr Liana, retired beekeeping officer and trainer for the RukaJuu Beekeeping Project, gives a thumbs-up to the youth of one of the camps and the hives they have just assembled from pre-cut pieces
Dar es Salaam is the largest city in Tanzania with a port on the Indian Ocean. Its population has grown from less than one million to more than four million in the last two decades. Much of this growth has resulted from the emigration of young men from rural areas. Research shows that many are poorly educated and unskilled, and thus have difficulty finding jobs2. In fact, less than 5% of the population is formally employed, and few of the employed are young men. These young men must have money for food and drinking water. In addition, in Tanzanian culture, men are expected to take care of their extended families; as a consequence of the HIV/ AIDS epidemic, which took the lives of many parents, the majority of these young men are responsible for raising their younger siblings. Young men work as day labourers or in other transitory, low-skilled jobs. Others are self-employed, in tiny ephemeral businesses such as selling tomatoes on the side of the road. When these fail (as they invariably do) to get money for food and to meet their household responsibilities, the young men resort to stealing items that can be quickly resold such as purses, cell phones and meat animals.
inmates involved in beekeeping at Rye Hill Prison in England, was reported in Bees for Development Journal 1174 and has been the source of ideas and inspiration for a similar project in Tanzania. The two projects are related in that the target groups are similar: men who for various reasons are on or near the wrong side of the law. The English and Tanzanian projects also share the objective of general societal well-being. In the project in Tanzania the objectives are to keep young men from ending up as prison inmates or the fatal victims of mob violence, through engagement with beekeeping and the development of entrepreneurial skills. In England, when the Natural Beekeeping Trust was awaiting formal permission to bring hives to Rye Hill Prison, the Trust was asked by the governing committee, “Where is the evidence that caring for bee is of therapeutic value?” In Tanzania, the question is more specific: “Can beekeeping generate enough income to draw young men away from crime?” We began a pilot intervention study to explore this question in measurable ways. This study was funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency and the Jack Josephson Fund. It was called RukaJuu Beekeeping, which translates to “JumpUp Beekeeping”; the “JumpUp” refers to the entrepreneurship and health components of the intervention.
The presence of large numbers of low-skilled young men with onerous family responsibilities has turned Dar es Salaam into one of the most theft-beleaguered cities in Africa3. Because police are few and poor communities must defend themselves, someone caught stealing will in many cases be killed by angry mobs. Addressing the lack of employment is crucial. As most of the unemployed are also uneducated and unskilled the question arises: what can the jobless young men of Dar es Salaam do?
In Dar es Salaam unemployed and underemployed young men gather in hundreds of self-organised groups or camps called vijiweni5. These camps have fixed meeting places, which we mapped in several areas of the city. For our intervention, we chose camps based on
One possible answer is beekeeping. A project to get 12
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Photo © Andrew Kapaya
The young men received instruction in how to make frame hives, but building the hives turned out to be beyond the capacity of the potential beekeepers. To make them, they would need specialised woodworking skills and tools. The materials to make the hives were also too expensive for them to buy. Lesson: It is important to use hives that can be made with inexpensive local materials. To make hive building simpler and less expensive, the young men were taught how to cut down endemic lianas (woody vines) and weave them into a frame. The next step would be to cover them with clay mud, but the lianas dried out and collapsed before that could be done. We realised that it would be easier to cover the liana frames with mud in the rainy season or in a place where there was a lot of clay, water, and dung. Lesson: Season and location are crucial to successfully building low-cost local-style hives.
A local-style hive hangs from a baobab tree: a common sight in rural Tanzania
A long tree trunk was brought in for the young men to try making a local-style log hive.” The log was sliced lengthwise. The next steps would have been to scoop out the soft inner core, then tie the two parts together for hanging in a tree, but we never reached the scoopingout step.
size (about 15 members) and the expression of interest by camp members. The intervention had four arms: (a) health sessions only, (b) entrepreneurship and health, (c) beekeeping and health, and (d) all sessions (beekeeping, entrepreneurship and health). Each camp was randomly assigned to one intervention arm. In total, there were ten intervention sessions: health (2), entrepreneurship (4), and beekeeping (4).
Lesson: Perhaps because the trainer believed that higher profits and greater market control would result from using frame hives, interest in other types of hives may have been reduced. Photo © Andrew Kapaya
Lessons learned from the pilot study The purpose of a pilot study is to learn if an idea merits further exploration, and if so, how to implement it economically and efficiently. The respondents showed enthusiasm about the idea of beekeeping and expressed strong interest in learning more about entrepreneurship. These findings were supported by high attendance rates: all sessions averaged 85-90% attendance. Lesson: Beekeeping and entrepreneurial skills are of interest to at-risk young men. Only one respondent was lost (a man from Group 1 was killed for stealing a handbag). Lesson: The target group we were aiming for are members of the camps. Implementation of the ten-session intervention took one year longer than was planned due to two factors: first a national election occurred the same year as the study and the incumbent government considered it politically unwise to admit the young men into government forests. Second, the bees did not co-operate as planned – the hives had a low occupancy rate. Lesson: The young men remained engaged and bees cannot be told what to do. Hives were placed in the Kongowe Government Forest, about 25 km from where the young men lived. In practice, they did not have easy access to “their” hives in the forest. It was expensive and time consuming for them to get there. Furthermore, because it is a government forest, people cannot enter it freely. Lesson: Beekeeping will be more sustainable for groups that live beside the forest or have their own land.
A group member poses for a photo beneath a hive that has just been hung in the Kongowe Government Forest 13
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Lesson: Tending hives directly is not the only way to be involved with beekeeping and entrepreneurship. Perhaps self-selected rural-urban partnerships can be supported and developed.
Conclusion Much has been learned from this pilot project, and a way forward seems clear: We will focus on rural-urban partnerships. The rural partners will be supported to develop production and the urban members will be supported with entrepreneurship training. Emphasis will be on the quality of the honey, and the affordability and sustainability of the process from flower to market. References 1 HERTZ,O. (2012). Zanzibar beekeeping project. Bees for Development Journal 104, 8–9. LOWORE,J. (2014). An interview with Gladness Mkamba. Bees for Development Journal 110, 5–6. 2
Some of the young men take a break during a classroom session
OUTWATER,A.H.; MGAYA,E.; MSEMO,S.; HELGESSON,L; ABRAHAM,A.G. (2015). Youth unemployment, community violence, creating opportunities in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania: A qualitative study. Tanzania Journal of Health Research, 17(1). http://dx.doi.org/10.4314/thrb.v17i1.6 3
Seven hives were sited in November 2015. By July 2016, they were still empty. In two hives, there were signs that bees had entered and then left. The zonal beekeeper confirmed that this was unusual. It was thought that perhaps the hives had been made with green wood, or wood that had been treated with insecticide. Also, the forest where the hives were placed was more like scrubland, and was being replanted with eucalyptus and pine (which are not endemic to Africa), so possibly the forage was not what the local bees need.
AIKO,R.; KINYONDO,A. (2013). Experience of crime, crime reporting, and readiness to seek police assistance: Tanzania and other African countries in comparative perspective. Dar es Salaam, Tanzania: Research on Poverty Alleviation (REPOA). 4
HERMANN,H. (2015). Telling the bees. Bees for Development Journal 117, 6–9. 5
Lesson: Bees must be tempted to co-operate with proper housing and forage.
YAMANIS,T.J.; MAMAN,S.; MBWAMBO,J.K.; EARP,J.A.; KAJULA,L.J. (2010). Social venues that protect against and promote HIV risk for young men in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Social Science and Medicine, 71(9), 1601–1609. doi: 10.1016/j. socscimed.2010.07.039 6
Group 2, (entrepreneurship group) decided to build a business around importing honey from their home area of Singida.
News
When I am training I translate the material I received in the Bees for Development Resource Box. I am still reading issues of BfDJ Journal and have learnt from other beekeepers’ stories. For example, I am preparing labels for my brand and have learnt about good labelling practices. Also, I had an infestation of small hive beetle (SHB) and was glad to read about its life cycle and tips on how to deal with SHB, and now it is no longer a problem for me.
MALAWI My company (WakiBees) builds the hives that I keep in my forest. I give some to the community of Mzimba District and train them in how to manage and harvest. In the picture, some community members are setting up bait hives during the middle of the swarming season. Photo © Wakisa Davis Ngosi
Can anyone help through Bees for Development? Is there any competition for us to win and get some funding? We have a large forest that is at a risk of deforestation and if I had enough resources I would make plenty of hives to give to these communities as an alternative to charcoal making which threatens the existence of the only remaining natural forest here in the northern part of Malawi. Wakisa Davis Ngosi, Lilongwe
NIGERIA Kano State is in northern Nigeria where agriculture is the main occupation with cereals and groundnuts grown as food and cash crops. Audu Bako College of Agriculture was established in 1978 and since that date has provided training for local beekeepers. 14
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Photo © Dauda Sani Abbas
NIGERIA
Community Development Scheme As part of our community development service, six aspiring beekeepers recently completed their first training course. Subjects included hive construction, location and baiting, management strategies and producing a body cream using beeswax, honey and olive oil Special thanks to Bees for Development Trust for supporting us with materials and BfD Journal.
Photos © Akinrotimi Odedele
Akinrotimi Odedele, Ministry of Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs, Umuahia
In 2016, I constructed a two-storey straw hive with a queen excluder between the two levels which enables our beekeepers to harvest more honey while preventing them from destroying brood and empty combs Beekeeping began at the College in 2005 with five colonies. By 2006, 40 top-bar hives had been installed in the college apiary and all were colonised within three weeks. Today we have 200 colonies of Apis mellifera adansonii with average returns of 1,500 litres of honey each year.
As part of our community development service, six aspiring beekeepers recently completed their first training course.
A one-year beekeeping certificate course began in 2010 and in 2015, and beekeeping courses were included in the National Diploma and Higher National Diploma of the Forestry Department - after much effort by me to convince the College authorities it should be included. I modified the Ugandan box hive to include a sloping wall (taken from the top-bar hive structure) to prevent bees from attaching their combs to the walls of the hive, to allow easy removal and selection of combs during harvest. I developed an observation top-bar hive with glass front and back observation, with wire mesh on the two v shaped ends for ventilation (both glass and mesh are covered to provide the usual darkness of a hive).
Subjects included hive construction, location and baiting, management strategies and producing a body cream using beeswax, honey and olive oil
Dauda Sani Abbas, Audu Bako College of Agriculture, Dambattu
FREE BfD TRAINING POSTERS
TANZANIA This is to say how much I appreciated receiving Bees for Development Journal 123. In addition, I would like to thank you for enclosing the Swahili editions of the two posters 10 Good Reasons and Beekeepers Make Money.
If you are working with a project or association in a developing country you can apply for our posters free of charge, these are in a range of languages. They are also available for purchase through our online store.
These will be of great use to the rural people in Tanzania who cannot comprehend English. We need more of them for community based training. Jumanne Magiri, Mara, Tanzania
See www.beesfordevelopment.org 15
Bees for Development Journal 124 September 2017
Bees for Development Factsheet
Indicators for measuring achievements in beekeeping development Output and outcome indicators in beekeeping
Those of us who work in the field of beekeeping and development are trying to bring about change. Change in community wellbeing, change in the status of our natural resources – or a change in practice or behaviour. As we embark upon our plan to bring about this change we need to set out clear aims and objectives. How do we know we have achieved our objectives? This is where indicators are useful. Indicators help us to measure our progress and achievements.
Below are some of the indicators applicable in many beekeeping projects. This list does not apply to every beekeeping project, and the list is not exhaustive. A manageable project usually has one Outcome and up to 5 Outputs.
Outcome and output indicators in beekeeping Outcomes Percentage change in household income from beekeeping related activities Area of forest planted and managed as bee forage Employment in honey or beeswax value chain Total volumes of honey and/or beeswax produced or traded Proportion of household income from beekeeping Value of pollination services from bees Proportion of local honey brands versus international honey brands on sale Change in rate of soil loss from land under beekeeping use Proportion of land area formally established as bee reserve
What is an indicator? Indicators are ways to measure, a way of saying “how much”, “how many”, “to what extent”, or “what size.”? Measuring is essential to know if we are making progress. Also donors need to know what was achieved with their money. http://sustainablemeasures.com/Training/ Indicators/Indicatr.html
Outputs Number or percentage of farmers who started beekeeping Number or percentage of beekeepers who sell honey and beeswax as differentiated products Number or percentage of farmers, or school children, aware of the importance and services of bees Rate of adoption of beekeeping, or a particular practice Number or percentage of farmers having knowledge of a specific beekeeping technology being disseminated by extension system Number or percentage of beekeepers in contact with a national beekeeping organisation Number and/or percentage of beekeepers expressing satisfaction with service delivery by a national beekeepers’ organisation
Different levels of achievement Our project work involves implementing activities. The consequence of these activities will be project results or outputs. For example, beekeeping training is an activity, and a trained beekeeper is an output. Provided we have planned our project well, and based it on good problem analysis, the cumulative achievement of project outputs should bring about a higher level change – sometimes known as project purpose or outcome. Trained beekeepers can earn income for their families, hence we achieve our project outcome. The Figure below shows the relationship between different levels of achievement. We need to measure our outputs and the overall outcome and we need to set out clear indicators to help us do this. It is also important to measure impact but in this Factsheet we discuss output and outcome indicators.
ACTIVITIES
OUTPUTS
OUTCOMES 16
IMPACT
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Number of new collection centres established Volume of honey collected at village collection centres
Outputs (continued) Number of beekeeping communities involved in sustainable forest management Volumes of hive products exported Number of trade bottlenecks removed Number of apiaries with fire-breaks Volume and/or proportion of certified hive products on the market Existence of apiculture policy Number of students enrolled into apiculture diploma course Number of issues of Bees for Development Journal published Number of seedlings of bee forage trees raised and planted Percentage or number of beekeepers using specialist extension services Percentage of rural beekeepers eligible to obtain a business loan Percentage of rural beekeepers using financial services Percentage of beekeepers satisfied with the banking services Average annual honey and beeswax sold per household Yield of honey and beeswax per household apiary The number of honey traders who specialise in table honey The number and/or percentage of beekeepers selling their products through a co-operative Number and/or percentage of honey hunters who have changed to become beekeepers Number and/or percentage of beekeepers expressing satisfaction with their current marketing channel Tonnage of honey bought by the honey cooperative Number of people trained and reached adequate level of proficiency in beekeeping Number of household or group apiaries established Number of beekeepers trained to become Community Based Beekeeper Mentors Percentage and/or number of beekeepers who report being assisted by a Community Based Beekeeper Mentor Number of enterprises making and selling bee suits and smokers Number of enterprises making and selling value added products using honey and beeswax Number of new trading links established between beekeepers and buyers
This is not a complete list. You may need to develop your own indicators. Remember that indicators are there to help you to measure change. When selecting an indicator you need to ask yourself: “How can I measure this change?”. So, for example, we can easily see that measuring the volume of beeswax traded is possible using quantitative measures. Measuring a change in satisfaction with extension services is going to require a different type of metric.
Targets, and making your indicators specific, by including units and a time-frame A target tells what you intend to achieve. An indicator tells what you are going to measure. Together targets and indicators need to be as specific as possible and must include units, a time-frame and other metrics. To take an example from the table above, number of apiaries with fire-breaks. This is our indicator – but we need to make it specific and add a target. So, for example: Our target is for 80% of new apiaries established in Itengule to have a well-maintained firebreak of not less than 1 m in width by March 2018. Whether targets and indicators are combined, or stated separately, is up to you (or your donor). But remember an indicator without a target is only half the story. One of the advantages of stating indicators and targets separately is that it is easier to set out intervening milestones. Below are examples of how to combine or separate indicators and targets.
Making your indicators specific Indicators and targets shown separately: Indicator: We are going to measure the change in household income from beekeeping. Milestone: 80 households in Itengule earn US$30 (€25) of additional income by end of Year 1. Target: 100 households in Itengule will earn US$50 (€42) of additional income by end of Year 3. Indicators with target combined: Our target is for 100 households in Itengule to earn additional income of US$50 (€42) from beekeeping by March 2018. Feedback: Please tell us what Indicators you use to measure your achievements in beekeeping projects. Contact info@beesfordevelopment.org If you are on Facebook remember to like Bees for Development Follow us on Twitter @BeesForDev 17
Bees for Development Journal 124 September 2017
International Meeting of Young Beekeepers
Next year in France we will be joined by young beekeepers from several, previously unrepresented countries.
Dear fellow beekeepers
We are taking applications to host the 10th anniversary IMYB meeting in 2019. We would like to ask candidates to sign up by 25 September 2017. After receiving your email, we will contact you and discuss your ideas. The selected candidate country will be announced by 31 December 2017.
I hope you have had a successful beekeeping year and that those of you who attended have good memories of a successful International Meeting of Young Beekeepers (IMYB) in the UK in July. A huge thank you to Ian and Ruth Homer for their hard work in organising this wonderful event. Please see our website www.icyb.cz for pictures and our report.
Jiri Piza, Founder, IMYB
NOTICE BOARD FUNDING OPPORTUNITY The Rome 1% Fund offers grants of up to US$ 5,000 (€4,500) for small-scale beekeeping projects, and is making a call for proposals from community groups in the following regions: the Caribbean, Latin America, and south-west Pacific. Applications can be made online at www.one-percent-fund.net
African women in agricultural science, empowering them to contribute more effectively to poverty alleviation and food security in sub-Saharan Africa. See www.awardfellowships.org AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL The oldest English language beekeeping publication in the world. See a digital copy and subscribe at www.americanbeejournal.com
FUNDING FROM FAO TeleFood Special Fund Beekeepers’ groups and associations may apply for project funding of up to US$10,000. Request documents should include a brief description of project objectives, proposed food production or income-generating activities, work plan, number of participants, detailed list of inputs with cost estimates and reporting arrangements. See www.fao.org
BEE CRAFT UK Beekeeping Journal for beginners and seasoned apiarists. View a digital copy and subscribe at www.bee-craft.com BEE CULTURE The magazine of American beekeeping. 140 years’ experience. Today’s techniques. Tomorrow’s ideas. US$15 for a digital subscription. See www.BeeCulture.com
TRAINING GRANT Conservation Workshop Grants fund organisations to train communities, stakeholders, park guards, and others on local and regional conservation issues. These grants support training workshops with hands-on learning components that will build capacity for people living in WWF priority places in select countries in Africa, Asia, and Central and South America. Organisations must meet all the eligibility criteria to be considered for a grant of up to US$7,500. See www.worldwildlife.org/projects/ conservation-workshop-grants
TELL US YOUR STORY
We accept articles and short reports on new or improved beekeeping techniques, information about bees and beekeeping in your country and your events. We welcome your comments and responses to articles we have published. Articles should be 800–1,600 words in length and accompanied by images. Items can be sent by post or in e-mail text or attachment in Word or .pdf format. We accept images as colour prints or digital images saved as .jpeg files or as created by the camera/phone. Images sized for website use are not suitable for printing.
HOTSPOT Eastern Afromontane Biodiversity Hotspot Call. Small grants (maximum US$10,000) in Burundi, DR Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe – applications only accepted upon invitation. To discuss your project idea with one of our team members first write to cepf-eam-rit@birdlife.org
Our aim is to publish as much information as we can. If it is not possible to include your submission in Bees for Development Journal we may place it on our website. All the information material we receive is added to our databank on beekeeping worldwide.
AWARD A professional development programme that strengthens the research and leadership skills of
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Bees for Development Journal 124 September 2017
LOOK AHEAD BELARUS 3rd Tree-beekeeping Workshop 6-10 October 2017 Further details fundacja@bartnictwo.com GERMANY 5th ApiBio Symposium 2018 Further details will appear here GUATEMALA Mesoamerican Congress on Native Bees 20-24 November 2017, Antigua Further details melipoguate@gmail.com KENYA Certificate course Entrepreneurship in apiculture in East Africa Baraka Agricultural College, Molo Further details www.sustainableagri.org NIGERIA 6th ApiExpo Africa 2018, Abuja Further details www.apitradeafrica.org NORWAY 31st Annual Meeting Scandinavian Pollination Ecologists (SCAPE 2017) 26-29 October 2017, Drøbak Further details www.uio.no/english/ TANZANIA BSc Beekeeping Science & Technology University of Dar es Salaam Further details www.coasft.udsm.ac.tz TURKEY APIMONDIA: 45th International Apicultural Congress 29 September – 4 October 2017, Istanbul Further details www.apimondia2017.org UK National Honey Show 26-28 October 2017, Sandown Park Further details www.honeyshow.co.uk British Beekeepers Spring Convention 13-15 April 2018, Harper Adams University Further details www.bbka.org.uk
Bottlingtanks Made of high quality stainless steel. All tanks come with a loose-fitting lid or with an airtight lid as an option. Capacity from 25 kg - 600 kg.
Solar Wax Melter For frames or comb. It has a strong wooden frame, insulating double window and a small tray for collecting the melted wax / honey.
Refractometer Measures water content in honey. Range: 12-25%. With automatic temperature compensation.
Honey Press Easy and effective way to press your honey. Made entirely of stainless steel. Holds approx. 9.5 L.
Honey Extractors Our modern tangential manual extractors. High quality machines at a very affordable price.
Packaging Many different sizes and shapes in both PET plastic and glas. Available with plastic and metal lids.
If you want notice of your conference, workshop or meeting to be included here and on our website, send details to Bees for Development.
WORLD BEE DAY 20 May 2018 Further details www.worldbeeday.org/en/ Bees for Development QUIZ with Patrons Tom Seeley and Bill Turnbull 27 October 2017, UK National Honey Show, Sandown Park BfD Courses Sustainable beekeeping 23-24 September 2017 and 7-8 April 2018 Ragman’s Lane Permaculture Farm Treatment free beekeeping in horizontal hives Leo Sharashkin 11-12 November 2017 Ragman’s Lane Permaculture Farm Further details www.beesfordevelopment.org
at Available om ienty.c www.sw ... for better honey
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Bees for Development Journal 124 September 2017
Workshop Success Chris Mtsenga, Runnymede Village, Tzaneen, South Africa
Make sure you contact us well ahead of your planned event! Projects in other areas can purchase Resource Boxes through our website store (address below).
SPONSORED SUBSCRIBERS When your sponsorship to receive Bees for Development Journal is due to expire you will receive an e-mail or letter from us. Complete and return it to us as soon as possible. REMEMBER if you change your e-mail address or any other contact details let us know and we will update our records. If we cannot contact you, we cannot sponsor you! Photo © Chris Mtsenga
For some reason unknown to us, our package arrived later than the 2016 community workshop day, held annually in Runnymede village. This was a problem as the beekeeping workshop was long advertised and had an interested following we did not wish to disappoint. With no Resource Box at hand, we created a training programme to fill the gap. Shortly after, our package arrived. With the workshop day already past, and several people already disappointed at the training, I reluctantly opened the package. The Journals and training manuals were in good condition. I notified Bees for Development of its arrival, and after that I resealed the package to wait for the 2017 community workshop day. However, after being contacted again, I was motivated to organise a private workshop to conduct the Bees for Development series in November 2016. During the month, the interest kept growing with each lesson and at the end of November I announced that our series had come to an end. However, the participants proposed that we study BfD Journal articles and do presentations from them, which we did. I am still surprised at the wealth of information found in these Journals.
Projects and associations in developing countries are welcome to apply for a Sponsored Resource Box by filling out the application form on our website or request the form by email.
After completion of our training we distributed Bees for Development Journal among the eleven most consistent participants Bees for Development, 1 Agincourt Street, Monmouth NP25 3DZ, UK Telephone +44 (0)1600 714848 info@beesfordevelopment.org www.beesfordevelopment.org © Bees for Development 2017 ISSN 1477-6588 Printed on environmentally friendly paper
