BRAZIL A meeting will be held held in September (1418) to honour Dr Warwick Estevam Kerr on his 70th birthday. The meeting will include talks and symposia by invited speakers. Part of the meeting will be in Rio Claro and part in Ribeirao Preto (150 km apart). During the reunion in Rio Claro there will be a dinner in honour of Dr Kerr, The symposia will be mostly in portuguese, though some invited speakers will give talks in english. See Look Ahead for contact address.
Top-bar hive in action in Congo. Picture provided by Madeleine Moulin - Acevedo, a UN Volunteer assisting
to
promote beekeeping in Congo.
THE GAMBIA A training programme in beekeeping has started. DANIDA (The Danish International Development Agency) is supporting the
The Gambia: placing a traditional hive in a tree.
Traditionally
this is done after the rainy season is
finished (OctoberNovember) The hive is left there for eight or
nine months before harvest.
project with 136,000. The project is one outcome of a social-anthropological research programme on beekeeping in rural development started in 1989. The project involves co-operation between the Gambian Co-operative Beekeepers’ Association, the Association of Farmers, Educators and Traders, The Danish Beekeepers’ Association and DANIDA. The Danish Beekeepers’ Association is administering the project and providing consultants. Two local organisations are responsible for the project without any interference from the government. Teaching is all done by Gambian beekeepers, carpenters, agriculturalists, specialists in pesticide use and in cooperative organisations. It is our hope that half of the trainees are women One woman beekeeper (F Sonko) has the special job of motivating others to participate in the training. The traditional way of beekeeping includes killing of the bees with fire when harvesting the honey. In the training programme we will use local knowledge and materials, combined with new knowledge, so that honey can be harvested without destroying bee families - to get more honey and to secure a strong bee population for better pollination. Six small training centres in different parts of the country will be constructed, and training carried out in a rotatory system. Equipment will be bought or made locally. The trainees will join three training sessions in different seasons. One bee uniform will be provided free of charge, and they will make their own hives to take back to their villages. Trainees will learn to use all types of hives, but the emphasis will be on top-bar hives and sing local hives in modern ways. The first broup of trainees half females and half started ales, training in January 1992. Bource: Ole Hertz, Denmark
=HANA
«
OLE HERTZ
Dnce the sweetness of the pudding has been ealised people will not wait their turn to aste it.
ed
ALY
rhat was the case in 1991 when rural ndustries officers found they could rely on a lood of invitations from beekeeping
