News from Njiro - Sustainable beekeeping for Africa

NJIRO WILDLIFE RESEARCH CENTRE is a very special institute devoted to the study of African bees and beekeeping. It is situated near Arusha, Tanzania in East Africa.

For several years now, Njiro's main work has been a research project investigating ways of effective African beekeeping.

The project is developing simple, low-cost methods They must be environmentally sound The project’s objectives are:

- To gain knowledge of equipment and methods that are appropriate for rural Africa

- To achieve excellent communication with people who want the information Programmes involve workshops and training courses Findings will also be made available through B&D

Njiro Wildlife Research Centre has three apiaries with 140 honeybee colonies, all in service for research The staff of 22 people plus another 12 service staff employed by the Serengeti Wildlife Research Institute make a good team for fruitful work The Centre has four academic graduates and two more will complete University studies within the project period.

The Director at Njiro is Mr Liana Hassan The Research Co-ordinator is Mr B6rje Svensson, whose work is supported by SVS (Swedish Volunteer Service).

The research project is funded by ODA (the United Kingdom Overseas Development Administration) Because research of this nature inevitably needs a long time, ODA have recently agreed to support the project for a further three years Phase II of the project commenced in October 1995, and is managed by Bees for Development.

Now that several years of work have been completed, Njiro is beginning to have tried and tested information to share with others.

In the article overleaf, Mr Stephen Liseki, one of the research team at Njiro, describes a good way to feed sugar syrup to bees kept in top-bar hives.