BEEKEEPING
piece of cloth. Remove the cloth and cut the comb so that it drops into the bucket (Figure 3). Large, sealed combs should be cut in three steps as shown in Figure 4. Replace the cloth quickly.
Often some sealed honey is found here but we
DEVELOPMENT 49
Combs in this area usually contain brood
leave this for the bees
This is the area from which we harvest combs with sealed honey
The person who cuts the combs must have clean clothing. A bucket of clean water should be nearby for washing gloves, brushes and knives every now and then during the harvesting operation. It is very important to wash the equipment after harvesting one hive and starting work on a different one. many bees start flying around the bucket, it is better to move and harvest another apiary a good distance away. The remaining hives in the first apiary can be harvested another day.
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Entrance
If
Figure 2. The combs containing honey are found at the back of the hive; far from the entrance.
Conclusion If these harvesting procedures are followed well, the best honey can be obtained, and very few bees will be killed during the process. The honey will contain no bee venom. It can be used for all food preparations. This honey will be first class, and it can fetch a good price.
4
EXPLANATION PLEASE! Brood comb is that part of the bees’ nest containing the developing bees: eggs, larvae and pupae.
Njiro Wildlife Research Centreand Bees for Development
~.
if
a
are co-operating on the project “Sustainable Beekeeping for Africa” funded by
the United Kingdom DFID.
made my first trial hive from a broken box and filled it with non-embossed wax sheets. I made the sheets by pouring about 50 ml of melted beeswax onto a wet newspaper, folding the newspaper over to make a “sandwich” and pressing out the sheet between the newspaper on a table.
hy
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Figure 4. Cutting the sealed honeycomb - steps one to three.
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a
Figure 3. The honeycombs should be put into a clean bucket. Replace the bucket cover immediately to prevent bees getting in.
aH He,
also shape sheets to fit inside my gourd hive, made from four dried gourds sewn together. By the second week the bees will have made about half the sheet into comb |
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made my honey extractor from 0.3 mm tin and the gear from a hand drill. The combs are spun at about 300 rpm and the honey extracts well. Using thinner tin is cheaper but the extractor vibrates too much to be operable. |
After reading the articles in B&D41 made the smoker (shown on the photograph). The smoker works well and dried papaya trunk serves as a long lasting smoker material In previous years papaya trunk was worthless to me, but now I can give it many lovely names! lam so glad to receive Beekeeping & Development to know that am not working alone for am working with encouragement from many hundreds of miles away: thank you for sponsoring |
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me. Abrham Tesfaye, Arbamich, Ethiopia
A Bees for Development publication
PHOTOGRAPH
ABRHAM TESFAYE
SEVEN
