Caribbean Update

CARIBBEAN UPDATE TRINIDAD & TOBAGO

Gladstone Solomon, 11 Farm Road, Hope Village, Mesopotamia, Tobago, West Indies

Keywords: Africanised honey bees, beekeeping decline, European honey bees, policy

UK beekeepers on a BfD Safari to Trinidad & Tobago. These Safaris are run by Gladstone - see page 12.

PHOTO © PETER EDWARDS

Available data indicates that in 2008 there were around 300 beekeepers and 6,000 honey bee colonies in Trinidad, and 16 beekeepers with 450 colonies in Tobago. This represents a decline in beekeeping in both islands, clearly suggesting that new strategies must be found to secure the sector's future and enable it to realise its full potential.

Since 1997, the Government has agreed to designate areas of forest reserve lands to be used for beekeeping activities, but to date this agreement remains unfulfilled. This potentially fruitful policy decision could, if implemented, significantly improve the sector's viability and be a positive milestone in the sector’s history. This is because a recent survey revealed that beekeepers on both islands considered lack of suitable apiary sites as their major constraint to enterprise development.

Government policy, as reflected in statements by Food Production Minister Vasant Bharath, is one of support for resurgence of beekeeping. Local beekeepers hope the Minister will recognise that unless a structured mechanism for support of beekeeping is appropriately resourced, mobilised and mandated, attempts to develop the sector are likely to be short-lived. Due consideration must be given to the fragility of the national beekeeping environment, which is threatened by new and exotic pests and diseases, subjected to denudation by untamed bush fires, slash-and-burn agriculture, creeping urbanisation, 'fogging' for mosquitoes, and large-scale industrial sites being established in rural communities. Complementarity between beekeeping on the two islands may be also explored: a significant market exists for European queen bees in Trinidad, which could be satisfied by developing commercial queen-rearing capacity in Tobago. Of course there is also the need to ensure that Tobago remains free from Africanised bees. Given the probability that Africanised bees will eventually arrive in Tobago, action must be taken, both to forestall and yet prepare for that eventuality.

Beekeepers must exploit to the fullest their collective potential as a 'cluster' of socio-economic interests, and enjoy the benefits of co-operation rather than competing within their community. There is significant scope to expand and diversify the production and marketing of bee products. The bottom line is that ‘api-culture' must be tweaked to emphasise its 'api-business' component. Finally, and of critical importance, is the need to recognise that 21 st century beekeeping is not a simple vocation. The perception by aspiring beekeepers, investors, advisers, policy analysts, and planners, that there is 'money in honey' and that the transformation process is as figuratively straightforward as changing the 'h' in honey to the 'm' in money, must give way to the reality that sustainable beekeeping is as complicated an activity as the bees we are working with.

Gladstone Solomon is Bf D’s Correspondent in the Caribbean, President of the Tobago Apicultural Society and Chairman of the Association of Caribbean Beekeepers Organizations