Bookshelf

The social organization of honeybees

by J B Free Northern Bee Books, Hebden Bridge, UK (1993 2nd edition) 67 pages. Paperback. £7.25

This book is 67 pages long. It can therefore be read in one or two evenings and provides a clear summary of the enormous literature which is available on the honeybee’s social organisation. There are seven chapters and they address: the organisation and structure of the colony; the regulation of colony activities; colony defence, collection of forage, queen and worker production; colony reproduction; and conclusions.

This book has already been found useful by many students (for this is not the first edition), and beekeepers find that it gives them insight and understanding of what their bees are up to. A very compact, readable and interesting publication.

Whose trees? a people's view of forestry aid

by M A Hisham, J Sharma, A Ngaiza with N Atampugre.

Panos Publications, London, UK (1992) 192 pages. Paperback. £9.45

Panos is an independent organisation working for sustainable development. Whose trees? is part of its programme of encouraging greater participation in the development debate by people of the South, and of giving a stronger voice to those whose lives are directly affected.

How do you protect forests when local people are desperate for fuelwood, fodder and cultivatable land? How do you balance governments’ need for revenue from timber, with international demands for nature conservation? When people are surviving one day at a time, how can you ask them to undertake the long-term investment of growing trees?

After decades of forestry aid, denuded hillsides continue to lose their topsoil and rural women still spend hours gathering the fuel to cook daily meal. Where have forestry projects gone wrong? Panos commissioned independent teams in Nepal, Tanzania and Sudan to explore how far three different projects are succeeding in involving local people and in meeting their real needs. Their reports examine past mistakes and provide fresh perspective - that of village men and women - on what sustainable forestry must entail if it is to succeed. This book represents a “customer's view” of development assistance.

If we are not given other ways of meeting our basic needs, encroachment will persist. After all, who are they protecting the trees for?

Tanzanian villager.

We are blamed for destroying the forest. How could we? We are so dependent on forests that we would die without them But we also need land to grow food

Nepalese villager.

When aid is no help: how projects fail and how they succeed

by J Madeley

IT Publications, London, UK (1991) 132 pages. Paperback. £12.00

500 million people lack basic necessities and are regarded as the world’s poorest people. Within this huge group there are still great differences in income, with the bottom half much poorer than the top The challenge facing official aid programmes is to assist the poorest people. This book considers some of the aid projects that have attempted, but have failed, to do this. Case studies from around the world are considered, where well-intentioned projects have totally failed to help the neediest people. Examples of projects which have succeeded are also given: it seems that the poorest people often lose out by not knowing what possibilities are open to them.

The $50 billion spent every year on official aid could be used to great effect in helping the poorest, if programmes could become more appropriate to their needs. This book suggests changes that are needed. The closing pages give guidelines for policy-makers to ensure that the poorest people are reached.

Traditional bee management as a basis for beekeeping development in the tropics

edited by J Kaal, H H Velthius, F Jongeleen, J Beetsma.

Kaal Boek, Amsterdam, Netherlands (1992) 87 pages. Paperback. £13.00

NECTAR is the Netherlands Expertise Centre for Tropical Apicultural Resources. It is non-governmental, non-profit making association of (sub}tropical beekeeping experts in The Netherlands, formed in 1990. In May 1990 a symposium was held, and this book is record of the Proceedings of that day's meeting.

The book provides a wonderful insight into traditional beekeeping practices and why they are still important. Eva Crane writes the first article, defining traditional bee management as practices handed down from ancestors, especially by oral instruction and practice, ranging from the simplest form of management, looking after bees nesting in the wild, to the use of various hives with other equipment.

Readers of the book will quickly realise that traditional bee management methods are widely practised today, and the following chapters are written by people with experience in different countries.

Present-day examples are described from Africa, Asia and Meso-America, and some interesting historical background is also given.

This book is quite short and is easy to read.

There are very good colour and black and white illustrations which add much interest. It will be a useful guide for anyone who wants to quickly know more about (sub)tropical beekeeping as it is today practised, and who wants understanding of the sort of assistance traditional beekeepers need. The theme of the book can be summarised by the closing lines of Joop Beetsma’s introduction: “We are convinced that traditional beekeeping systems can be improved. However changes to be introduced must be within the reach of local conditions”.

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