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Guyana 2006

Third and fourth generation beekeepers conserving honeybees for sustainable development

Rabbie Rajkumar is the largest employer in Guyana by far. With 250 hives he has around 200 million bees working away collecting honey for him.

They don't strike, take no holidays and only occasionally bite the hand that minds them. And the great beauty of bees is that not only do they do zero harm to the environment, but they help propagate a wide array of flowers that in turn support vibrant eco-systems.

Rabbie and his son Ravi are the third and fourth generations of the Rajkumar family in the honey business and they are only two of several beekeepers in the country. They have 250 hives set up at Fort Wellington, Mahaicony and at Laluni, in the interior. Each hive contains between 500,000 to 1,000,000 bees.

Once a month Rabbie and his son Ravi journey to their apiary at Fort Wellington, West Coast Berbice to extract honey. They go fully dressed with protective headgear and gloves.

Venturing on one such trip, but staying a safe distance away this reporter observed that the hives consist of four super boxes or stories. Rabbie laid them out evenly on the grass. The brooding chamber where the queen bee lays her eggs is in the bottom box.

At Fort Wellington the tree of choice for the bees to collect their nectar, which they convert into honey, is the mangrove. This tree is widespread here as it is close to the shore. The blossoming season for the mangrove occurs from late August to early January and during this period one hive produces up to six gallons of honey. The bees, by collecting the nectar, help pollinate the mangrove as they move from one flower to the next and as such play a vital part in preserving the shoreline from erosion.

The role of bees in preserving ecosystems is widely acknowledged. In an address to the International Bee Research Association conference held in London, lecturer in Genetics Dr Robert Paxton noted the "growing awareness and interest in the demise of the world's wild bees, and the impact this may have on other wildlife, ecosystems (including agro-ecosystems) and the world's economy."

Making good use of bees

Ravi deployed a smoker around the hives to make the bees drowsy as Rabbie lifted the covers to see that the honey had fully reached reaping stage. He brushed the bees off the hives with a hand brush. Then Ravi picked up the frames on which the bees make their honeycombs and placed them in boxes to take to the factory at Mon Choisi Village. He then placed new frames into the hives, and these would be ready in about another month.

Over at the factory father and son offloaded the boxes and started the process of extracting the honey. Workers uncap the seal from the frames (the bees seal off the frames once they are filled with honey). Together with a worker, Ravi lifted these into the extractor and turned the handle to spin the honey out in a fashion similar to spinning clothes in a washing machine.

They placed buckets at the bottom of the extractor to collect the honey and then strained it into a barrel. When all of the honey is extracted the task of bottling the product in sizes of 200 millilitres and half and one litres begins. And after being labelled: Rajkumar's Honey Works & Apiary - Nature's Own Food, the bottles are ready for the market.

Ravi said: "We do our own breeding of bees. We also manufacture all equipment such as bee boxes, frames, wax foundation and protective gear and this is a lot more economical."

According to him they also provide a service capturing Africanised bees that are nesting on rooftops or in trees. Though the bees would not interfere with anyone they act defensively and only attack if they are disturbed. Ravi recalls getting stung a few times but "it was not so bad for me to be hospitalised."

He said it is not advisable to have the bees close to homes but that does not mean persons should destroy them. Rather, they should have them captured and put to good use. He stressed the usefulness of bees and said often farmers exterminate them while spraying their crops to get rid of pests and diseases.

"Farmers have little knowledge of the benefits of the bees to their crops and if they happen to spray during pollination they would not only get rid of the diseases but the bees as well," Ravi said. "By doing this they also decrease their yield."

Paxton puts forward three major arguments for the conservation of wild bees:

"1. Bees are of conservation value in their own right, as a component of the world's biodiversity.

"2. Bees are important components of natural ecosystems and play a big role in their functioning. As such, they are important for the conservation, directly or indirectly, of other wildlife.

3. Bees are important in agriculture as crop pollinators."

'Organic honey'

Honey coming from the Laluni apiary is not at risk from pesticides since that area is known for its rich wild forest. "We are even planning to label the honey from there as organic," Ravi disclosed. "Another advantage of having apiaries in that area is that honey is produced all year round."

Ravi boasts that beekeeping extends beyond honey and pollination. "Bees produce other products that can be harvested and put to good use, including beeswax, pollen dust and propolis." The beeswax is useful for manufacturing items such as lipsticks and shoe polish, while the pollen dust after being put to dry, can be used as an energy-giving cereal and is also rich in protein. Propolis - a gummy, black substance that the bees use to seal off cracks in hives have significant antibacterial qualities.

Honey is composed of sugars like glucose and fructose and minerals like magnesium, potassium, calcium, sodium chlorine, sulphur, iron and phosphate.

It contains vitamins B1, B2, C, B6, B5 and B3 all of which change according to the qualities of the nectar and pollen. Apart from that, copper, iodine, and zinc exist in small quantities. Honey is also said to prevent seasonal allergies.

Beekeeping is thriving in Guyana despite not getting the support of other agricultural ventures. An apiculturist from the Caribbean Institute of Beekeeping (CIB), Mohamed Hallim recently held a talk with beekeepers at the Red House in Georgetown.

Rabbie is pleased that government has accepted an invitation from the CIB to host a beekeeping conference in Guyana in 2008. According to him that would give the industry a boost.

At the moment IICA is looking at training Amerindians to start beekeeping in the interior so as to make full use of the rich wild forest. He recalled that the previous government had brought in a specialist to train local beekeepers from the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) in Cuba and Brazil.