Beekeeping in Africa.

[biglongdarren]

I have a friend who started up an orphanage in Uganda maybe 10years ago now and one of the volunteers who travels out to help him has thought about trying to set up bees over there, this man(the volunteer) is a beekeeper himself here in N.Ireland and will donate what ever it takes or costs to get this project up and running, he is not on the forum and i am writing this on his behalf, he is very interested to get talking to somebody that has worked with bees in Africa to talk about hives and equipment etc...

If anybody has ever worked with bees over there we would be delighted to hear from you.

Cheers Darren

 

[Erichalfbee]

PM JBM, he is a master of beekeeping in Lesotho

 

[biglongdarren]

thank you .

 

[44Whitehall]

Also worth looking at www.beesfordevelopment.org which has some good resources and also seems to have some good experience in Uganda.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Bees for development have done quite a bit in Uganda - the Mount Egon cooperative was one of them SWMBO met them when she was out there on her placement (she was a bit miffed as news of my project in Lesotho had travelled ahead of her so they were more interested in trying to get her to send me over there ) BfD is his best bet for Uganda they may be able to help steer the project. Bees abroad is another organisation which I think has done some work out there as well.
What part of Uganda is the orphanage?

 

[irishguy]

Bees for development have done quite a bit in Uganda - the Mount Egon cooperative was one of them SWMBO met them when she was out there on her placement (she was a bit miffed as news of my project in Lesotho had travelled ahead of her so they were more interested in trying to get her to send me over there ) BfD is his best bet for Uganda they may be able to help steer the project. Bees abroad is another organisation which I think has done some work out there as well.
What part of Uganda is the orphanage?

Have you your own project set up for Africa or am I reading it wrong?

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

It was a one-off, I've set it up and is now being cared for by the forestry department's beekeeping officers - trying to get organisations in this country to take an interest but it's hard going

 

[irishguy]

It was a one-off, I've set it up and is now being cared for by the forestry department's beekeeping officers - trying to get organisations in this country to take an interest but it's hard going

Was at the north of Ireland beekeeping conference in march and remember someone handing out leaflets about beekeeping in Africa. Sounded interesting at the time but TBH, forget most of it now.

 

[rook66]

I have a friend who started up an orphanage in Uganda maybe 10years ago now and one of the volunteers who travels out to help him has thought about trying to set up bees over there, this man(the volunteer) is a beekeeper himself here in N.Ireland and will donate what ever it takes or costs to get this project up and running, he is not on the forum and i am writing this on his behalf, he is very interested to get talking to somebody that has worked with bees in Africa to talk about hives and equipment etc...

If anybody has ever worked with bees over there we would be delighted to hear from you.

Cheers Darren

Contact Tom Carroll on FB
https://m.facebook.com/apiconsult

 

[biglongdarren]

thanks again for all the info,

this is the place here.
http://newbeginningscharity.org/the-village/



Darren

 

[domino]

Is the African honey easier to manage than the American Africanised bee?

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Is the African honey easier to manage than the American Africanised bee?

yes - a bit more defensive than ours although I must say that in general the ones I managed out in Lesotho were probably gentler than mine back home! a lot of people live in close proximity to bees and have no issues, I was shown quite a few properties with bees in the roof or walls - one in their latrine!! and they coexisted comfortably, the only desire to get them out was to hive them and harvest honey.
They have a tendency to abscond so less frequent inspections are better in fact, colony sizes are usually a bit smaller than we expect so a standard Langstroth is ample for a colony. the bees tend to have three 'honey harvests' each year a super being taken off in late spring, summer and autumn.
The biggest difficulty i had was trying to convince them that they didn't require loads of smoke - obviously in the past someone with preconcieved ideas had come over and told them that loads of smoke was the only way to manage bees (BBKA dogma perhaps?) I found that very little smoke was needed - just a small puff would have all the bees vacating the hive and waiting politely near the entrance for me to complete the inspection, too much smoke just wound them up - probably just triggering their defence mechanisms as for centuries smoke meant some honey hunter was trying to rob their nest. I visited a convent out there that had an apiary and they let me taste their last harvest; shall we say a faint floral boquet with a distinct background of kipper?

 

[peterbees]

Good luck with the project.
I visited a Bees for Development project in Ethiopia last December. BfD are training new starters how to make top bar beehives with locally available materials, how to manage their bees, and how to prepare their honey for the market. The results were very impressive.