Moyiga Nduru
4 June 2004
Johannesburg — While much of this year's World Environment Day (Jun. 5) will be spent discussing the fate of the oceans (the theme of the day is 'Wanted! Seas and Oceans: Dead or Alive?'), something altogether smaller is also receiving attention in South Africa: the bee.
"Our people used to smoke (out) bees, (and) that resulted in the burning of the forests. That's one of the reasons why the African indigenous bee is threatened with extinction. Our task now is to conserve this bee," Rejoice Mabudafhasi, Deputy Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, told IPS Wednesday (Jun. 2).
The African bee is regarded as the most aggressive of bee species. But, "It's also the most hardworking in the world. And its (honey) has got a sweet natural taste," says Mabudafhasi.
This flavour - and the role bees play in pollinating the crops that supply fruit for South Africa's large fruit industry - have ensured that the insects have economic as well as environmental worth. The bee industry is currently thought to be worth almost 466 million dollars, according to various sources.
As a result, efforts are underway to give people who fear bees a sense of their importance.
"We tell the communities, 'Don't burn the bees. Don't torch them. Stop forest fire in the plantations. Look after the bees'," says Jean-Marie Jullienne, Chief Executive Officer of the Bee Foundation, a private company based in the capital, Pretoria, which will be working with government to train new beekeepers.
"A bee lives only between 32 to 35 days - it has a very short lifespan. This is why we need to educate the community to look after them," Jullienne told IPS in a telephone interview Wednesday.
As part of its efforts to alert South Africans to the value of bees, the foundation plans to help 100,000 people in rural areas set up their own beekeeping businesses over a three-year period.
It will sell specially designed beehives (which come equipped with bee populations) to these people at a reduced rate of about 62 dollars each; the market price for the hives is between 93 and 124 dollars. No specialised skills are needed to manage the hives.
When the honey is ready for harvesting, staff from the Bee Foundation will collect it - paying farmers just over 120 dollars for every kilogramme of honey. As each hive is expected to yield at least 20 kilogrammes of honey every year, the farmers can look forward to a gross annual income of about 2,500 dollars.
After repaying the loans taken out to buy the hives, the farmers will have a net monthly income of 155 dollars - no small amount in a country where most of the population was impoverished by apartheid.
South Africa currently has up to 10,000 beekeepers, but there is room for an additional 10,000, according to industry analysts. "We don't produce enough - we import honey every year. So we want to empower our people to produce more honey," Mabudafhasi says.
Adds Julliene, "We produce only 2,000 tons per year. And we consume 3,000 tons per year. To fill the gap we import 1,000 tons every year from China and Australia. Yet South Africa has the capacity to produce 100,000 tons of honey per year."
Mabudafhasi believes that alerting people to the value of bees will put an end to the destructive practice of smoking them out. "They will not destroy (them). It's like farmers who do not destroy their cattle," she told IPS.
Bee farming has the advantage of being less capital-intensive than other agricultural activities, as it does not require large tracts of land, seed, fertilizer - or expensive machinery to till the soil and harvest crops. In addition honey production is not dependent on weather conditions.
Nonetheless, this potentially lucrative activity has, until now, been largely ignored in Africa.
"We have millions of hives in the trees. We need to bring the bees from the wild into the boxes - and we have asked for the support of the forestry officials (to do this)," Jullienne says.
"People in Africa have always been bee hunters not beekeepers. Our role is to educate them and make them become beekeepers," he told IPS.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2004 Inter Press Service. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
