HONDURAS The Peace Corps Small Projects Assistance Programme provided funding to purchase equipment needed to bottle and store honey as a means of helping establish a honey cooperative.
LESOTHO The species of honeybee found here is Apismellifera adansonii. Most of the indigenous
CHINA Kirin Province lies in the north-east of China and is one of its key apicultural bases. NonPolluted, high quality products from rich, wild bee pasture, in the district of the Changai Mountains, are well known both at home and abroad. Kirin Province has the name of The home of the honeybee’. There are 400500 natural bee plants in the district which loom from April to August forming a long honey flow period. During this time 500 000 ~ 600000 colonies of honeybees are Moved into the mountains. On average, honey output is 10000 tonnes, royal jelly 40 tonnes, pollen 600 tonnes and bee pupae 500 tonnes per annum. The bee products of the Changbai Mountains are not polluted by industry, fertilisers and pesticides, and are from medicinal wild plants. They are espeCially nutritious, high in quality and a natural ‘Ood
The Bee Product Factory in Kirin Province Apicultural Science Research Institute is located on the shore of Feng-Mian Sang Hua Lake. In order to take advantage of the non-poiluted products provided by the Changbai Mountains the
Institute has developed high quality, new specialities which are nutritionally rich with a higher amino acid and vitamin content than similar products from elsewhere. These foods provide tonic effects, and are high-grade nutrition with a local
character.
(Wang Xun-biao, Kirin Beekeeping Scientific Research Institute, Fengman Street, Kirin City, Kirin Province, China)
source.
COSTA RICA Roxana Cordero Quiroz checking one of her bee colonies while her brother Berny works the smoker. In 1979 Roxana used a loan of US$100 to purchase a Pair of movable-frame hives and bees. The first harvest from those two colonies allowed repayment of the first loan installment and the purchase of a smoker, and Roxana has continued to expand her beekeeping enterprise. The loan was made available from IDB credit of US$500 000 given to Fundacion Nacional de Clubes 4-S, a project designed to meet the need for credit of low income youth in Costa Rica.
flowering plants that used to sustain wild bees have been indiscriminantly destroyed so much that few honey sources worth speaking of remain. Besides, wooded plantations all over the country consist mostly of minor sources because they were planted for wood production and not honey. However where suitable species of reliable, hardy and frost resistant Eucalyptus have been planted bees do very well for ten months of the year. Here at Tefobale Bee Research we practise low cost, low-technology modern beekeeping to produce choice grade cut comb honey using hives with double brood chambers and single modified supers. We planted three useful! sources of honey namely Eucalyptus sideroxylon, Eucalyptus melliodora, Eucalyptus camaldulensis, an Acacia species and an apple orchard to be pollinated by these bees. E. sideroxylon flowers at its best from April to September and supplies one or two honey crops of 10 kg per super per hive. In August Acacia flowers and provides enough pollen for colonies to keep up to strength after surviving cold, dry winters. From September to December E. melliodora known for its high yield of nectar blooms profusely. This honey flow is increased during October by a rather short flowering of apple trees. They together supply two to three honey crops of the same 10 kg per super per colony. Before the end of October this flow is further increased by E. camaldulensis flowering at its peak from October also yielding a further 10 kg honey crop. Out of a total of five or six honey crops 50- 60 kg per colony a year is quite common here. In February and March colonies then build up with abundant maize pollen collected in the cultivated areas around this small pilot project. adansonii is As regards behaviour A. aggressive, excitable and sensitive to external interference. Up to now we have encountered no problems with predators or diseases, perhaps because of our virgin environment. Basotho have no traditional beekeeping customs but they hunt wild colonies for honey to use as a food and cure for minor ailments and coughs. At market honey is in great demand because of the changing eating habits of Basotho and it sells very well indeed. One kilogram of choice grade cut comb honey sells easily for R5.00 (2.10 sterling). Unfortunately the pollinatory activity of bees is not yet generally understood, otherwise a beekeeping project could have been launched long before now, to introduce bee pollination into the intensive food production programmes now in progress. Happy, Modern Beekeeping! (T Mahalefele, Tefobale Bee Research, PO Box 46, Mafeteng 900, Lesotho)
