Bees for Development Journal 136 September 2020
Bees for Development Journal 136 September 2020
Africanised bee removals in Trinidad
Image © Aditya Ramlochan
Gladstone Solomon, Tobago Apicultural Society, Mesopotamia, Tobago
Aditya Ramlochan is known as the “bee whisperer” because of his deft bee-handling and bee removal skills
The arrival of Africanised honey bees in Trinidad, the most southerly island in the Caribbean, is undoubtedly the biggest game changer in the island’s beekeeping history. The first established colony was found in July 1979 in Saint Patrick County in south-western Trinidad. Annual reports from the Ministry of Agriculture indicate that a succession of swarms arrived from South America (11km away) and irreversibly changed beekeeping.
with their higher propensity to swarm and abscond, and to be defensive compared with their European counterparts. Their arrival precipitated a decline in Trinidad’s beekeeping sector and marked the end of the parallel development of beekeeping on both islands. There were significant reductions in both the number of colonies and beekeepers in the aftermath of the bee’s arrival. More than half of the beekeepers practising in 1978 had given up by 1984 because of the bee’s high swarm frequency and defensive nature.1 Over 28,000 established feral colonies were destroyed or collected by the Ministry of Agriculture’s Bee Abatement Programme. A least 5,300 people and over 800 animals were stung by honey bees during the period 1979 to August 1992. By December 2005, 16 persons in Trinidad had died because of stings from Africanised bees.
To date, the honey bees on Tobago, Trinidad’s counterpart in the twin island Republic, are of the same genetic stock as introduced by European colonists. This is because of the de facto prohibition of the movement of bees from Trinidad to Tobago, Tobago’s location 35km ‘up-wind’ of Trinidad, and the nature of passenger and cargo traffic between both islands, limits the possibility of undetected transportation of honey bee colonies.
The emergence of a new generation of beekeepers around the turn of the century with no prior exposure to the easier-to-manage European honey bees, and no option but to work with the available stock of Africanised honey bees, heralded the start of the resuscitation of beekeeping on the island. Hayden Sinanan, Inspector
Serious challenge Africanised honey bee colonies pose a heightened challenge to public safety, particularly in urban areas, 7
