Daylight harvesting of honey

by Mr S. O. Apjare, Technology Consultancy Centre, University of Science & Technology, Kumasi, Ghana.

The aggressiveness of the tropical honey bee makes it difficult for many beekeepers and wild honey-tappers to approach their bees, or harvest their honey-combs in broad day-light. In practice comb-moving and most related jobs like brood-nest control are performed late in the evening or delayed to the night or early in the morning when bees are less aggressive. There have been two occasions near here when some hives were opened during the day at 10 am by beekeepers wearing protective clothes. The entire inhabitants of a nearby village had to desert their homes and take refuge in bushes. The harassment continued until 5 pm when the villagers were able to return to their homes. These are some of the reasons why most honey-tappers do their work at night.

It is not easy to work in the dark for light must be provided, and this definitely requires an extra hand to assist the process. Flash lights which are ideal for the job are beyond the reach of the average honey-tapper. In most tropical countries, dry-cell batteries cannot be found on the open market; therefore lanterns and live burning torches have been used, the obvious danger being that bees are attracted to them and most of these bees are burnt. Sometimes the attracted bees cover the lampshade so that visibility is made difficult. Under such circumstances an efficient job cannot be executed and crushing of precious bees and combs cannot be ruled out. Beginners find it difficult at night to differentiate broodcombs from honey-combs and all are harvested together. It is because of these problems that beekeepers must endeavour to evolve a method to do the work during the daytime to ensure efficiency.

The Apicultural Promotion Unit of the Technology Consultancy Centre has adopted a simple, effective and efficient method of approach to harvest honey and control the broodnest even during the warmest time of the day (i.e. between 11 am and 3 pm) without any danger. The plan is as follows:

1. Take a good container with a lid to the hive.

2. Smoke around the hive to allow hiding bees and “‘security guards” to rush in and gorge themselves with honey, or apply any desensitizing material * to make the bees less aggressive.

3. Carry the hive away towards a different direction not in the flight-runway and place it on a temporary platform erected for the nearest hive in the apiary; all the returning foragers will come and wait for their hive. The beekeeper can provide an empty hive in place of the one that has been removed so that the bees will play around as they wait. Now the operator is confronted with bees which have had enough smoke and cannot show any considerable aggressive tendency.

4. Proceed with the normal honey harvest until the work is completed. The beekeeper is warned here to execute the job quickly to avoid robber bees which can give trouble. The lid must cover the container of honey combs to avoid robber bees.

5. On finishing, the hive must be dressed and covered with the lid and carried back to its original position-and the empty box or hive which was placed there for the waiting foragers removed. The waiting bees now join their colleagues.

The cheapness of this plan is obvious; daylight is utilized to ensure proper execution and efficient harvest or efficient broodnest control. Diseases can easily be detected. Hive predators like the wax moth, wax moth larvae and beetles can be found and eliminated. Crushing of combs and bees in between top-bars is minimized or avoided. Top-bars can be restored to their proper position. Work can be done throughout the day. In darkness crushing of bees in between top-bars cannot be avoided and this carried with it another serious problem, that is, the last top-bar may not fit. The entire top-bars must be removed again, the dead bees found in between them swept away and the top-bars re-arranged. This repetitive process may not guarantee the answer to the problem and the frustrated beekeeper may leave the problem unsolved. In this way, the bees will have to solve it by carting propolis to fill the gap created by the careless beekeeper and all beekeepers know how propolis carting wastes the time of the insects in honey production.

To take advantage of this cheaper process it is advised that beehives must be erected on platforms to facilitate easy moving instead of hanging them on trees or nailing them to a table.

* The Centre has just discovered a local plant grown in Southern Ghana which one particular village of honey-tappers use to desensitize bees. The villagers describe the plant as “very effective”. The Centre will be making serious effort to make investigations to determine its application. The result will be made available to the International Bee Research Association.

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.... And more news of substances used to quieten bees (see also Newsletter 5. p 7).

Mr Francis Sosu from Ghana writes “My project is at Kintampo in the Brong Ahafo Region of Ghana. Kintampo district is one of the bee populated districts in Ghana. During our two years of operation with Kenya top-bar hives we discovered that the leaves of cassava plants can be used as bee repellent. We squeeze the leaves and smear the sap over our bodies. This protects us from being stung by the bees. We have other plants and means of protection from bee stings used by local honey-tappers, who are not yet aware of modern beekeeping methods.”

Br Forster from the Solomon Islands writes “One professional beekeeper (when we were being knocked about by a very unlikeable hive of black bees) produced some raw linseed oil from his bag and smeared it on exposed areas. The bees still took off with evil-looking intent but wheeled away before making contact”!