Bark hive beekeeping and forest maintenance - Part II

Janet Lowore, Programme Manager, Bees for Development

Part I considered whether bark hive making causes deforestation. It does not. The number of trees suitable for making hives within any given area of forest are relatively few, and most of the trees in an area used for forest beekeeping are retained – because they are the wrong species, the wrong shape or the wrong size for hives. Smaller trees are left until they grow larger.

In this article we recognise that the first people to notice whether bark hive making causes a shortage of trees will be the beekeepers themselves. Based on research done 2015-2018 in north-western Zambia, we report beekeeper perspectives on this and wider questions about resource availability.

Beekeepers in Mwinilunga obtain food by growing crops, for example maize, and cash, by selling honey. Both activities are necessary for their survival. Maize farming involves the total removal of forest, including de-stumping

Image: Janet Lowore

Beekeeping in the landscape

Inevitably resource usage varies from place to place. In Mwinilunga trading and village life tend to take place near the roadside, while farming – including the permanent and semi-permanent fields of cassava and maize - is done on suitable land within a few kilometres of a village (although more distant fields are also used). Most hives are located at sites further into the forest, often a day’s walk away from the roadside.

A forest hive site is indistinguishable from the surrounding mature forest, with hives located very sparsely, placed on tree branches and spaced 50m apart, spread over many hectares. There is no fence or boundary. Beekeepers have their own sites and know the sites of other beekeepers and will locate hives in more than one place to take advantage of natural variations in flowering patterns, topography and vegetation. Of the beekeepers interviewed during my research, 88% had more than one hive site and about 40% of those sites were inherited from an older relative, indicating that the same sites have been used for many years.

One way that beekeepers stake a claim to a hive site is by identifying their hives with carved initials. Beekeepers respect each other and acknowledge one another’s sites

Image: Janet Lowore

Hive site ownership

Beekeepers explain that each person has their own hive site and no one else can interfere with it:

Each person might have different places, but they stick to them when they have them. I know my place. I have used the same place for 20 years, and I replace hives if old. We have our own places, (beekeeper, Kasochi Central, 2015).

In fact, beekeepers have no formal ownership rights to the forest which belongs to the Chief and is governed by statutory laws:

The forest doesn’t belong to me, but my hive site does. I have used the same place for 30 years. No one can interfere, (beekeeper, Muzeya, 2015).

At a local level, people agree and respect each other’s activities and beekeepers are protective of their hive sites:

People are not allowed to cut trees there (in my hive place) - it can never happen, (beekeeper, Kasochi Central, 2015).

Around 40% of hive sites used by beekeepers are inherited: this suggests a longevity to hive site locations. Bark hives are sited in the place they are made, so this permanence indicates that that the natural re-growth of trees meets the demand for hive replacement.

The reasons for identifying new sites in the other 60% of cases were mixed. Reasons included people taking up beekeeping without having anyone from whom to inherit, the need to find new hive sites due to loss of access to forest because of land sales, and not being able to find enough trees for hive making. A beekeeper in Kanongesha explained more on this last point:

Yes, trees die when we make the hives, but we do it selectively. We leave the small trees to grow. Sometimes we need to find a new place [for hives] then we go back to the original place after 5 years. The smaller trees will be big enough. If you see the places where our ancestors kept bees and made hives, the trees are all big now, (beekeepers, Kanongesha, 2015).

Beekeepers are thoughtful in the way they use forest resources

One way to reduce bark usage is to take care of existing hives so they last a long time and to re-use empty hives. Beekeepers know that hives which have been previously occupied by bees are likely to attract swarms more readily than new hives, and they know also that a specific hive location that attracted a swarm once, is likely to do so again. One way to maximise hive occupancy therefore is to move an empty, but previously used hive to a new location and place a new hive in the previously used site. This action increases the chance of both hives (the new and the old) being occupied by bees. Bee occupation not only ensures a honey yield, which is clearly of utmost priority for beekeepers, but it also contributes to hive longevity because occupied bark hives can last for up to 10 years. This insight helps to show that beekeepers are very thoughtful, not careless, users of resources.

Availability of forest resources for forest beekeeping

All beekeepers agree that the forest is essential for their wellbeing, income, employment and wealth, for beekeeping and many other benefits. In responses to questions about beekeeping and resource availability, 70% of respondents thought that there was sufficient forest at present, even if people wanted to do more beekeeping. However, 47% were less confident about the future, concerned about forest loss, growing human populations and loss of access to forest due to land sales and possible opening of mines.

Beekeepers are particularly concerned about losing access to forests:

The government and the Chief sell the land to large-scale farmers and to the mines. The Government wants money through selling the land. We have no powers, (beekeepers, Mayimba, 2015)

and:

We worry about the Chief giving land to big farmers, (beekeepers, Kachikula, 2015).

On the question of mines, beekeepers in Chibwika explained in 2018 that mining companies were prospecting in the same forest where they keep their hives and that if the mines were made, they would lose everything. Beekeepers know that mining can potentially bring jobs, but they fear that they do not have the skills that mining companies are looking for.

This image shows a typical forest hive site. The contrast in terms of forest maintenance between this activity and maize farming is very evident

Image: Janet Lowore

In Mwinilunga, charcoal burning was considered a threat to beekeeping only in a few places near the main town, and here beekeepers admit that seeing bee-useful trees being cut for charcoal:

… is painful to see. But what can we do? Everyone needs to make a living (beekeepers, Mayimba, 2016).

In other parts of Zambia the conflict between beekeeping and charcoal burning is greater. One key informant reported that where charcoal burning and beekeeping are done side by side, such as in Kapiri Moshi, charcoal making brings in more money and beekeeping suffers from the consequent forest degradation

Actions to support future bark availability

On the question of bark, beekeepers were asked specifically how they ensured that there will be sufficient trees to make bark hives in future. Beekeepers responded by saying that they were careful to use resources wisely, by making more than one hive from each tree, where possible, (50% of respondents) and that they were very selective in their use of trees (76% of respondents). Most interestingly 94% of beekeepers said they act to safeguard the next generation of trees for bark making by a forest management activity known as ‘early burning’.

This action involves setting deliberate fire before the main dry season, to remove tall grasses which later in the hot season would fuel very destructive intense bush fires.

Early burning is the solution and the Forestry Department used to get people to do that in June and July. We beekeepers do that now, we burn here and there, where our hives are. Small trees are protected when we do early burning (beekeepers, Muzhila, 2015).

Early burning burns grass but is harmless to trees, unlike late season fires.

Natural checks and balances

The unsuitability of most trees for hive making places a natural constraint on the rate of tree use and means that the harvesting pressure on the forest is light. While this ‘natural constraint’ might be good for the forest, it has implications for beekeepers, who are obliged to traverse large areas of the forest making and siting hives. This is good for the forest because it means no specific area is subject to intense harvesting pressure, and good for bees because hives are not over-crowded in one place which is good for bee health and nutrition. The two disadvantages of this method are:

• Beekeepers are obliged to work for days in distant forests away from farms and villages, and while most men consider this level of effort acceptable in comparison to the returns, the activity is not suitable for women

• While forest beekeeping is benign for forests, it also needs forests and if forests are lost or cut-over for farming or charcoal making then bark hive beekeeping is also constrained. This limitation is evident in places, for example, where cassava is grown using shifting agriculture. Here farmers cut all trees in a plot, but do not remove the stumps. They grow cassava for a few years then leave the field and allow the stumps to re-grow. Importantly these re-growth fields produce flowers and nectar before they yield trees big enough for bark hive-making, and in the absence of bark to make hives, it is hard for beekeepers to take advantage of the nectar resources of young re-growth forests.

Swathes of forest have been cut to make way for an electricity line to a new mine. Mining may serve some national development goals, but beekeepers do not have the skills to take advantage of potential job opportunities: they see this tree-cutting as harmful to forests and beekeeping with no positive trade-offs

Image: Janet Lowore

Conclusion

Beekeepers are very protective of their hive sites in the forest, as they provide them with all the resources they need to make an income from beekeeping. Beekeepers use forest resources carefully and wisely, yet there are many causes of forest loss which are outside beekeepers’ control. Where beekeepers can control factors which damage forests, for example, harmful late season fires, they will do so.

In the final article of this series we will return to the question of trade-offs and consider the wider impact of bark hive beekeeping on the environment, rather than looking narrowly at hive making alone, and explore whether the forest is helped or harmed, by the sum of all the activities of bark hive beekeepers. Fire mitigation will be discussed in more detail.

Beekeepers walk long distances looking for trees for hive making and for suitable places to hang hives. This work takes place in the forest interior, necessitating beekeepers to make temporary campsites in the forest

Image: Janet Lowore

References

LOWORE,J. (2021). Forest beekeeping in Zambia: analysing the nexus of sustainable forest management and commercial honey trade. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Huddersfield, UK.

Images © Janet Lowore/Bees for Development