African Bees

Why should Africa keep bees?
Honey is money. Honey is delicious and nutritious. How can man obtain honey to combat malnutrition? The answer is in beekeeping. By keeping bees, he can obtain large quantities of honey and raw beeswax for home consumption and for export. Other benefits of beekeeping are as follows:

1. Tropical apiculture is cheap. It does not involve mass feeding of bees, because the insects can provide their own food all year round, and there is no over-wintering bee management.
2. All the necessary inputs required for beekeeping are available locally. Some may be wasted if bees are not kept, e.g. pollen and nectar from flowering plants.
3. Individuals and private organizations such as churches, women's groups, youth associations and cooperative societies can initiate it with only limited funds.
4. Beekeeping is self-reliant. It does not depend on importation of foreign equipment or inputs.
5. In many rural localities, the technology is available.
6. It improves the ecology. It helps plant reproduction. Bees do not over-graze as other animals do.
7. The honeybee produces honey, beeswax and propolis. These are non-perishable commodities that can be marketed locally or abroad.
8. The honeybee provides pollination service. This is an indispensable activity in the food production process.
9. The honeybee is the only insect that can be transported from crop to crop.
10. Honey and beeswax can be produced in semi-arid areas that are unsuitable for any other agricultural use.
11. The beekeeper does not need to own land in order to keep bees.

How can Africa keep bees?
Since we have seen that bees should be kept in Africa, now we are discussing the different ways how beekeeping can be approached. Of course there are many ways of promoting beekeeping...in Africa.

1. Beekeeping industry in Africa- Uganda in particular has just started holding stands for modernization therefore, churches, agricultural departments and NGOs should come-out strongly and promote beekeeping activities in communities with emphasis on preservation of honeybees, pollination purposes and as a source of income as well as the nutritional value from bees products like honey, propolis and wax.

2. Youth and young people from 12 years should be given the biggest priority in promoting beekeeping activities since there is a big % of unemployment among the youth.

3. Organisation foundations and agricultural departments at all levels should help the beekeepers with securing equipment like extractors, settling tanks and looking for good markets for the bee products such as honey and wax.

4. Western volunteers (from western world with modern beekeeping skills) should come and help beekeepers especially with advanced modern beekeeping skills and services like queening rearing and many others.

5. Cultural constraints like women are not  allowed  to keep bees should be bypassed.

6. Loan schemes should be made available for people willing to invest in beekeeping to buy beekeeping equipment like quality bee-suits, smokers and hives.


Is the African bee worth keeping?

In recent years, however, a number of private enthusiasts have begun working with the tropical honeybee (Apis mellifera adansonii ), better adapted to African ecological conditions. Although this local honeybee does tend to be aggressive, it has the considerable advantage of producing several honey crops a year. It gathers its own food all the time. There is little or no need to feed it.

This contrasts with temperate-zone bees which only work between six and nine months a year. Colonies are then over-wintered (kept out of the cold) and are fed with sugar or corn syrup, making management expensive and tedious.

All bees in the world are feared, because all of them sting painfully. There seems to be no difference between the stings of the European and African strains.

But while the African bee is more energetic and quick-tempered than most others, it is not as dangerous as some people think. It is gentler than the "Africanized" bee from South America which is threatening American beekeepers!!!