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BEEKEEPING
‘The need for appropriate beekeeping without
fear: coping with the persistant problem of the “aggressiveness” of African honeybees byBERNHARD CLAUSS
Bernhard Clauss has worked for many years with beekeepers in Botswana where a very calm and gentle approach to bees is adopted. This method of beekeeping is described in the following article which was prompted after Bernhard visited various African beekeepers after last year’s Conference on Apiculture in Tropical Climates. Bernhard Clauss is the author of The Beekeeping Handbook, an excellent guide to the successful beekeeping which can be achieved with A. m. adansonii using simple equipment made from locally available materials, and adopting the approach to the bees described in this article. Photographs by B. Clauss and L. Tiernan.
After visiting several Kenya
top-bar hive beekeeping sites, I would like to once more emphasise the importance of the philosophy of Botswana beekeepers. Their top priority in manipulating bees is to use a gentle and fearless, but respectful attitude.
* Beekeepers
ought to know that like any other creature, bees of every different strain and race are primarily docile when their colonies are left in peace; aggression comes to them from outside, and
An apiary of top-bar hives in Botswana. The hives are well shaded and cut branches give extra protection against disturbance by animals.
efficient defensive behaviour. The better we know how to identify the possible causes of defensive reactions the better we know we will be able to avoid them, or cope with them, and eventually adapt to them. Sometimes people do not realise that several causes can sum up to aggravate already dangerous situations. In Botswana we observed strange reactions by colonies which had been under persistent stress from various interacting disturbances: bees rushed out of the entrance holes after the first puff of smoke and attacked everything in the vicinity, even the smokers .
Respectful and unaggressive bee handling is an art which should be thoroughly understood by all beekeepers and their instructors...
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