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Beekeeping In The Gambia An Update

Alexander Kent, Peace Corps Volunteer working with BEECause, The Gambia

In June 2011 Bee World published an article on the work of Africa BEECause and its journey in supporting sustainable beekeeping development in The Gambia. Just over a year later Africa BEECause has gained further perspective through time spent with African bees and the beekeepers of The Gambia. With this perspective Africa BEECause hopes to further rural beekeeping knowledge through its observations and comprehensive trainings that it carries out all over the country.

│Bee World│December 2012 www.ibra.org.uk

Introduction Africa’s smallest country, The Gambia, lies in a river basin of West Africa surrounded by Senegal. Here, in this sliver of a country, Africa BEECause has been working to bring progressive practices of beekeeping to life. This past year has shown how a small United Nations Development Programme grant can have real impact in successfully training existing beekeepers, aspiring beekeepers and bush burning honey hunters alike. It is necessary to understand the interaction that West African beekeeping culture has with African bees as it is an enormous barrier to development. The bees are often misunderstood and mismanaged. While there was once abundant local beekeeping knowledge with numerous grass hive weavers, this has faded considerably, leaving only bands of “honey hunters.” Essentially a honey hunter is someone who lights a fire, climbs a tree with a branch of fire, kills the bees with fire and smoke, and harvests every-thing. Often in the bush we have come across families who have killed a wild hive and the children are happily munching scorched brood comb with the larvae popping out as they chew; eventually the family produces a highly pollinated smoke-filled syrup which is the only thing they know as honey and invite us, the beekeeping trainers, to take part. The state of the honey in The Gambia is horrendous and from the surveys and contacts we have had with development organisations in other West African countries, it seems The Gambia is the norm.

Existing beekeepers are not much better. Various aid organisations have provided Kenyan Topbar hives (KTBs) at different times, but any training or management skills that have been imparted seems to have been lost or not absorbed in the first instance. In travelling the country, time after time we find people who have left their hives sitting in the bush and have not been out to check them in a year if ever. The West African bee swarms with far greater frequency than other species and surprisingly colonizes these forgotten wooden boxes at a rate of 30-40% with little or no baiting and no management. Time and time again we have taken frightened villagers who call themselves “beekeepers” to their forgotten KTBs in the bush. Using all locally made material and wielding a welded smoker, we have hacked and sawed our way through countless hives, painfully reattaching each crossed comb bar by bar with strips of wire or cloth. Sadly, episodes such as these are not encouraging to aspiring local beekeepers as they only get to see how aggressive African bees are and how much work an unmanaged cross combed KTB can be. It is certain though that despite there being very few true beekeepers, the profession is profitable and viable for social entrepreneurship. A favourite test cohort of ours mobilised their village group after going through our training sessions. This group started with nothing, built their own hives, and using our baiting techniques caught nine colonies in their first season of beekeeping out of 10 hives. This coming season will be highly informative as to potential honey production in The Gambia as nectar sources vary greatly in frequency across this country. Examples such as these serve to show what is possible with continuous baiting of hives in The Gambian swarming season (November-March). This presents a good outline of the problem facing bee-keeping as we see it on the ground in The Gambia. Despite great potential and abundant swarms, lack of knowledge, backward cultural beliefs (such as the predominant belief that beekeeping should be done in the dead of night) and a justified fear of a highly aggressive African bee mean that development in West African beekeeping has a long way to go. The final frontier for determining the best method for bee-keeping in West Africa lies in a lack of knowledge of specific

Photo. 1. Making a grass hive utilizing locl materials and skills.

West Africa honey bees. The lack of western scientists in West Africa means that much knowledge on exact patterns and behaviours of species of bees native to West Africa remain unknown. With these barriers as a foundation, Africa BEECause’s mission has three goals:

To teach and sensitise beekeepers onsite and in the field as to the best practices of rural African bee-keeping as they exist.

To observe, study, and experiment with West African bees and beekeeping culture to try and determine how to best craft our future training and materials

To make beekeeping in The Gambia a more profitable and sustainable endeavour through the linking of rural beekeepers with city markets, and educating people on the important impact bees have on the environment and agriculture.

To accomplish these goals, Africa BEECause has developed a comprehensive training programme, a unique demonstration apiary, and an essential group of trainers. Kumoo Kunda Kumoo Kunda (“Home of the Bees” in the local language of Mandinka) is the experimental and demonstration apiary that Africa BEECause has been developing over the past two years and which has now become a site for best practices in beekeeping and agricultural development. It is based on the idea that beekeeping works in harmony with the environment. Our apiary now has hundreds of mango, cashew, bamboo, and moringa trees growing alongside natural flora and fauna of The Gambia. With most of the country’s forests degraded, having areas where bees can find adequate nectar, water, and pollen sources is one of the only ways to keep strong colonies of bees alive in West Africa. On a well preserved piece of African forest, Kumoo Kunda is a site for training and observation of all aspects of West African beekeeping. Kumoo Kunda is still young but is already home to a collection of different hives: 37 KTBs, 7 catcher boxes, 5 log hives, 10 grass hives, 1 concrete hive, and 1 converted metal box are placed, hung, situated in trees, on hives stands, or wrapped with wire throughout the site. All the hives were created with materials on site, or wood and nails purchased from the local market. With continuous baiting and re-baiting throughout the swarming season (November-March) we have seen a fluctuation of between 25 and 30 colonies in our hives with a high preference for KTBs and grass types. Compounding this is an incredibly variable honey production among seemingly identical colonies. Among well-managed KTBs we have hives with productions that range between 3 and 20 litres of honey in a season with all values in between. Finally, African bees are much more aggressive than European bees and surrender their stinger gladly at any disturbance. This erratic, variable, and defensive behaviour has been a frustrating hallmark of beekeeping development in Africa.

Experiments Our desire in making Kumoo Kunda a premier experimental and advanced training site in West African beekeeping has prompted us to undertake numerous experiments in our time here. While many of our experiments are currently ongoing or need further review, there are a few techniques that we believe have value and deserve notice. Baiting of hives using a strip of corrugate metal. Designed by Peace Corps volunteer David Harrelson, BEE-Cause has taught baiting of topbars using corrugate metal to countless Gambians. Corrugated metal is ubiquitous and easy to acquire, One person pours hot wax into the trough, and another guides the wax down the middle of a slightly inverted topbar. This speedy technique allows us to quickly bait 100s of topbars using all local means. Blocking out capped honey from brood comb. A recurring problem with KTBs without a queen excluder is that most combs have a band of capped honey above the brood on many combs within the hive. Using a hot wire or knife, former Peace Corps volunteer and current country manager Micah Wood has devised a method of carefully removing a square of honey from the comb while leaving enough attachment so that the comb does not fall. Two weeks later the bees have filled in the hole with fresh comb. Transferring bees from traditional grass hives to KTBs. Grass woven baskets are cheap, KTBs are not. Catching bees in grass baskets and moving them to KTBs is a difficult but effective way to make sure there are bees in topbar hives. We have had sustained success in transferring colo-nies from grass to KTBs by cutting and attaching combs and carefully emptying the bees from the grass hive into the KTB. The bees sometimes abscond but overall this is a good way to increase value on your bees.

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Photo. 2. Placing the newly made grass hive in safe and secure position while remembering the need for future access.

The Integrated Training Approach In beekeeping, the general barriers to development are as follows:

Beekeeping requires a large knowledge base to be effective.

Beekeeping requires a significant initial investment of hives and equipment

Beekeeping is subject to fears, dogmas, and cultural misnomers.

Rural beekeeping often doesn’t have a market to get value for quality honey

When drawn against normal funding cycles of development organisations we have seen how these barriers make single infusions of hives or a single season training sessions completely ineffective. Africa BEECause has endeavoured to create integrated training, evaluation, monitoring and lasting support so that beekeepers or aspiring beekeepers of any income or experience level can start on the road to sustainable beekeeping. We do this through the following way: Step 1 Starting a beekeeper out, we first want to see initiative. Taking the time to come to onsite training shows us that a beekeeper is committed to making a time investment that ensures we don’t waste ours. If a beekeeper completes our two to three day onsite training which includes an introduction to African bees, two evenings of beekeeping, baiting, siting, and honey and wax processing, we graduate him or her to the next level. Step 2 We visit the beekeeper on site in the village though a year long series of treks that generally occur during swarming season to help the beekeeper site hives and catch swarms. Then again in the honey season to ensure correct harvesting techniques - not taking brood or too much honey and that processing the honey to reach the highest quality. Step 3 Once our training onsite and in the field is completed we provide lasting support to the beekeeper in the form of a market link. In our treks, we offer to buy high quality honey at an above average price of 100 Dalasi ($3.40) a litre to create a market for good honey. Often in the village, honey is too expensive for locals to afford A culture of charity means honey is given away and many beekeepers cannot make a living selling their product locally. We buy it and sell it to city and tourist markets that have greater demand and deeper pockets for high quality Gambian honey. This past year we purchased 930 litres of high quality honey from our network of beekeepers and are in the process of marketing it for the coming season. Much of the success that BEECause has had has been through the way in which Peace Corps identifies motivated beekeepers, links them to BEECause, and then continues to train and support them. Working with Peace Corps has provided valuable field agents to monitor and support the beekeepers trained at Kumoo Kunda. Hives and development Most development work has taken the KTB hive as the gold standard. While granting it has a place as a useful tool, we

have seen how an integrated approach to beekeeping can have a greater impact on development work then focusing on KTBs to the exclusion of other hives. Kumoo Kunda has tried to be a resurgent centre in the training of grass hive weaving, where existing cultural practices of weaving can be integrated cost effectively with a basic knowledge of bees to allow poorer rural villagers to become involved beekeepers. Often in The Gambia, where 59% of the population lives on less than $1 a day, having a KTB means a 500-800 Dalasi ($17-$27) investment. To encourage all income levels to participate in beekeeping, grass hives provide a cheap and low management approach for beekeepers who are poor or just getting involved and desire to only harvest their hive once. Grass hives can act to encourage Gambians to take the first step toward beekeeping in a low cost, low risk, and culturally appropriate way. Conclusion Honey hunters are the cultural norm in the Gambia. Roaming through the bush they light fires and burn bees out of trees, killing the bees, and often starting destructive forest fires that rage through the Gambian bush. The honey laced with smoke and ash is sold to sometimes dishonest retailers who have been known to add water, sugar, and molasses colouring to honey. The result is a nasty sugary smoky syrup that barely resembles honey. Sadly few Gambians have tasted how good their own honey can be when properly processed. Converting honey hunters to beekeepers, creating forested areas where bees can flourish, and allowing Gambians to taste their own honey for the first time are the goals that can defeat this paradigm. The Future In our time here 215 beekeepers of 48 villages have passed through our training courses and on site training sessions and are now on our support register of beekeepers. It is from them that the 930 litres of high quality Gambian honey was produced and it is our hope that as we expand these beekeepers will in turn spread their knowledge of bee-keeping throughout the country and allow The Gambia to grow as a place that bees can call home.

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52│Bee World│September 2012 www.ibra.org.uk

Photo. 3. Ants can be a serious problem and beekeepers need to be taught how to prevent a situation like the one above.