commendations were made regarding the future of beekeeping in Malawi and also the whole of the Southern African Development Co-ordination Conference (SADCC) Countries.
This seminar was the first of its nature ever held in Malawi, so the 1.
Government must support the project to get it off the ground. In order to ensure that people work hard such workshops should be held annually. The same applies to other SADCC countries who would like to promote the project and need assistance from Malawi, they are welcomed to host such conferences where ideas can be shared in order to meet our goal of self-sufficiency in food production. We should join hands and assist each other in the promotion of the project. 2. The Ministry of Agriculture should play a role in promoting the project in the country. Through the assistance of the Beekeeping Officer who is under the Ministry of National Parks and Wildlife, farmers should be encouraged to do beekeeping in order to improve their living standards in the rural areas. The farmers who have been practising traditional beekeeping should be encouraged to start more modern beekeeping. This can be done giving some equipment at a subsidised price, encouragement to form groups so that they can be given funds for the purchase of equipment and other needs. This will help the farmers to be profitable by producing honey and wax of good quality. 3. Mr Mweso, the commercial beekeeper, should act as an interim between the traditional beekeepers and the international market until such time as a co-operative can be formed for the collection of the products and their disposal to the outside market. 4. Malawi is densely covered with miombo woodland, especially in the north, which if utilised could make her one of the biggest exporters of bee products in the tropics. 5. The Government should take the responsibility of training beekeeping officers so that the project has trained personnel who will help with
Traditional Beekeeping in Malawi by M. N. Kawa, Apicultura Programa, Mozambique Malawians traditionally keep bees in log, bark and pot-hives. They construct their hives from the same plants as used in other countries with miombo woodlands, from May to August. Siting is done after construction, i.e. between August and
ences thereafter are terrible and bees tend to become extremely defensive. Perhaps the reactions the bees show after the use of the roots in smoking them resembles the reactions after use of ‘“‘puff-balls’” as practised in
September. In a good beekeeping year, swarming occurs in March and April and again in July and August. Malawians bait their hives with burnt old combs or by smearing a mixture of propolis and beeswax inside the hive. Aromatic herbs are sometimes used. In exceptional cases, sugar pellets can also be used as a bait. The last method is very questionable as you might attract sugar ants and not exploring bees. Harvesting is done from May to July as a lesser honey flow and mid October to January as the main honey flow. The major honey flow coincides with the blooming period of the greater part of the miombo bee plants. As their hives do not enable the beekeeper to know whether the honey crop is ready or not, the beekeepers traditionally wait until the pods of Brachystegia spp. start coming up, and then they begin honey harvesting. To quieten bees, they use local torches made of dry grass with a wrapping of fresh grass; the dry grass lights up (but not into flames because of the fresh grass) and it usually gives a cool white smoke. Other beekeepers are not so skilled and use burning twigs which often burn bees. In rare cases, it has also been the practice to use the roots of a climber called Adenia gummifera. When the bees are smoked by these roots, they become stupified but the consequ-
Containers used locally in collecting honey from the bush are gourds, barrels made from hollowed-out tree trunks, sown-up bark and sometimes plastic buckets. As the transport infrastructure is still not advanced, a beekeeper cannot carry all he has harvested on his head, so the annual honey turn-over of a beekeeper is not always based on how much he has harvested but rather on how much he has managed to carry home. Lucky ones are those with farm carts.
in the field. This is very extension important as lack of skilled personnel the progress of any always delays project. There were plans for building a beekeeping Institute; we (trainers)
Arusha-Tanzania.
There is a general belief that honey pressed from combs is still raw. That is why traditional beekeepers talk of raw-honey and heated-honey, and by heating honey they believe that they are preserving it. Malawians by tradition then, “boil” the honey combs in a pot. When the mixture of honey, brood, pollen and other foreign particles has melted, the liquid part sinks and the molten beeswax floats. After cooling off, the wax cake is knocked off and the dark-brown liquid, according to them, is then ready. Malawians know how to render beeswax using the local Tanganyika method (Smith 1957), although beeswax is also imported from India. Very little honey is incorporated into their diet, and most honey is sold locally for local brew and for medicinal purposes. There are buying centres in Mbuzi i Nandi, Tete, Nkharanga and Tochi.
suggested that it should be built either inside the Nyika National Park or near where the miombo could be utilised in carrying out research and a school practicals.
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