on beekeeping. Farmers are each provided with seven hives containing bees. The farmer is asked to pay 40% of the cost of these, and the remaining 60% is paid back over the next three seasons. Payment can be with money, honey or bees.
(Amir El-taweel)
GHANA The inhabitants of Etsli-Beidu, a Fanti Village on the seacoast in the Central Region’s Ekumfi_ District, have long practiced a type of beekeeping. The bees are housed in
CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC The Government of the Central African Republic, the Peace Corps and the US Agency for International Development have been organising an apiculture development project since 1983. The aim of the project is
to increase small farmer production of honey and beeswax, and the project now produces its own Newsletter to further promote beekeeping: Bulletin Apicole de la Republique CentrAfricaine, or BARCA. This is a trimonthly Newsletter for Central
African Beekeeping Extension
Agents and for others involved with CAR beekeeping and rural develop-
ment. BARCA contains technical articles, beekeeping folktales, word games and distractions. The purpose of BARCA is continued training of the readers and exchange of information between beekeeping experts and extension agents.
(Kathleen De Bold)
CENTRAL AMERICA The Inter-American Development Bank has awarded $1-34 million from the Social Progress Trust Fund to help carry out a program to manage and control Africanized honeybees in Central America, Mexico and Panama. The program, which will be carried out by the Regional International Organization of Plant Protection and Animal Health will consist of an interrelated series of training and information activities designed to maintain production and productivity of the apiculture sector, as well as to help prevent any threat to 6
clay pots, which are modelled by the old women of the village. The handhuman health from the bees. The total cost of the project is estimated ling of the bees, however, is a man’s activity. Some villagers have as many at $2 580 000. as fifty “bee-pots”’. (IDB News, Volume 13, Number 1) A small hole is left at the midsection of the pot which the bees use as their EGYPT During the last ten years the Coptic entry and exit point. The villagers do Evangelical Organization for Social not feel it is necessary to bait their Services (CEOSS) has distributed pots as the bees willingly colonize 12 000 hives to the provinces of them without inducement. The pot is Minia and Assiut. The aim of usually installed by turning it upsideCEOSS is to increase the income of down, placing the wide mouth on the village farmers living at subsistence ground. level: CEOSS estimate that a farmer Honey harvesting presents little difreceives as much income from seven ficulty as the villagers utilize a certain modern hives as could be attained vine, known locally as “‘bekyem’’, to from another acre of land. Under the subdue the bees. To prepare the vine CEOSS system, farmers are trained for use, a twelve-inch length of it is to work together with their families cut and then beaten with a club. Next, the spongy material is forced Beekeepers in Egypt fitting sheets of into the pot selected for harvest. The wax foundation into frames for use in is then removed from the pot pulp Langstroth hives. after about seven minutes. The bees Photograph by Amir El-taweel
