Zooming in on Guatemala

Population

8.434399

Location

Guatemala straddles Central America, sharing borders with Mexico, Belize, Honduras and El Salvador, and has coasts on both the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea.

Geography

Guatemala is mountainous country, and heavily forested. A string of volcanoes rises above the southern highlands along the Pacific, and three of these are still active. El Petén is an area of undulating tableland in north-west Guatemala. It is covered by inaccessible, hardwood forest. This area covers about one third of the national territory and yet is home to only about 40,000 people.

Agriculture

Coffee is Guatemala’s major export product. accounting for one third of foreign earnings. Other major export crops are bananas," cardamom, cotton and sugar cane.

Bees

Stingless bees are the native honey- producing bees of Guatemala. Maya people kept them in the hives, and stingless bees are still kept in this way.

No honeybees are native to Guatemala. The exact date when European honeybees were first introduced to Guatemala is not documented, although it may have been several centuries ago. Between 1830 and 1860 many Germans settled in Guatemala to establish coffee farms, and may have brought honeybees with them.

Africanized honeybees were first reported in Guatemala in an area bordering Honduras in May 1986.

Beekeeping

Guatemala is the only Central American country where beekeeping developed commercially before 1900. Early beekeeping with Apis mellifera was practised in log hives, and concentrated on the central highlands between the old colonial capital of Antigua and the Lago de Amatitlan. At this time large quantities of honey were marketed in Antigua. Indian groups were the main consumers, fermenting it into mead. At the start of this century commercial beekeeper arrived in Guatemala from Germany and started larger-scale beekeeping. The original goal was to improve coffee yields by pollination. Although coffee production did not increase, honey production was excellent. Gradually beekeeping took over from coffee production on some farms, and by the 1930s, Guatemala was annually exporting over 1000 tonnes of honey. The arrival of the Africanized bees in 1986 had severe effect on the existing Guatemalan beekeeping industry, and has reduced the numbers of practising beekeepers.

There are currently about 200,000 honeybee colonies in frame hives. Most are in apiaries of less than 10 colonies, as shown:

Apiaries with less than 10 colonies 46%

Apiaries of 10-50 colonies 34%

Apiaries of over 50 colonies 20%

There are two forms of beekeeping: Domestic, where several hives are kept close to the house and the honey produced is for the family, and Commercial, when beekeeping may be as the primary, secondary or side-line income source.

Honey yield

Honey yield per colony per year ranges from 7.5 kg to 55 kg, with an average of 30 kg.

Total national production is between 3500-4000 T annually. 80% is exported.

Honey export

Year Value in USS

1982 2,867,300

1987 2,174,000

1988 1,769,000

1989 1,062,300

Government Department

Ministerio de Agricultura, Villa Nuev

Beekeepers’ Association

Asociacién Nacional de Apicultores, Anapi.

Honeybee diseases

American foulbrood has been positively identified. It is likely that most other common diseases are also present.

Melliferous vegetation.

On the Pacific coast large honey surpluses are obtained from mangrove trees. Coffee is an important nectar source, and bees collect sap from the freshly cut stumps of sugar cane.

Projects

Foreign governments especially Germany and the USA have assisted with the development of apiculture in Guatemala. Currently the Guatemalan Ministry of Agriculture has national beekeeping development programme to cope with Africanized honeybees.

Equipment

Movable-frame hives are produced in Guatemala, but other items of equipment such as smokers and beeswax foundation are imported from the USA.