MSWAKINI PRIMARY SCHOOL APIARY - HONEY HARVESTING-SHORT REPORT, June 2022
Hive inspection was done with help from Nelson and Amina from TAWIRI on Friday,
June 17, 2022, for about six hours. We got nearly three buckets of crushed comb
honey, which gave us 43kg of liquid honey after extraction. We have not had time to
process beeswax from the remaining combs.
1. Field Observations:
i The exercise was done late. We would have better results within May and first
few days of June.
ii We needed inspection in March/April. As part of management of the honeybee
colonies we would do some necessary adjustments in the hives, which would
have given us even better results.
iii The frame hives (Langstroth type) are more suitable for the area than the Top
Bar Hives.
iv Generally, with appropriate hives and required management, the area has good
production potential.
2. Suggestions
To improve the project, we suggest that we should:
i) Inspect the hives at least four times in a year, as follows:
In July we inspect the hives to observe development of bees after
harvesting, and clean the hives which the bees have absconded due to
harvesting disturbances.
After short rains / during flowering of herbs and some shrubs to monitor
development and remove honey if there is any
March/April to monitor development and do necessary adjustments and
prepare colonies for storage of honey (for May/June harvest)
May/June inspection for main harvesting
ii) Increase the number of Langstroth bee hives:
Langstroth hives have shown to be more appropriate for production in Mswakini
area. We suggest, if possible, to install 10 more of such hives in the area.
However, this has to be done after discussion with school and village
administrations.
iii) Identify a few individuals committed in beekeeping who will be given protective
gears and a more intensive practical training that will enable them to do
necessary inspections and required adjustment at any time. This can be followed
by training to few committed people (including some women and students) on
handling of the products, including honey extraction, preparation of beeswax and
its value addition to get commodities like skin balm, lip balm and candles.
iv) Success of the above will lead to more suggestions to improve the project.
Flashback to my 2021 trip
Rik Munshi
Finally this fall I could visit the school and check out the beehives. Sorry for the delayed post. It was an amazing experience to travel to the xx school from Arusha. The children were super enthusiastic to see outside visitors. We reached during recess time and most of them were playing outside. The beehives were pretty healthy. We checked each and everybox and realised some of them were dry though. We are currently in the process of figuring out water accessibility for the hives. I was reassured to see the hives were in an area pretty isolated, away from the children playing. Overall, it was a good visit.
This year’s harvest-an experiment
Though small, the first harvest was successful. Colony management will improve next year’s harvest.
Lessons
The area is viable for beekeeping project, and quality of honey obtained from the area is superb.
Due to strong winds, placement of hives on stands may bring more yield than hanging them on trees
Frame hives performed better than top bar hives.
There are so many honeybee colonies in the area that allow for expansion of the project.
There is a great need for provision of fence for the school, especially on the western side, to stop livestock from reaching apiary site and also allow regeneration of tree plants. For a start, a thousand tree seedlings for can do. After growing, the trees will form a live fence that can be reinforced by a barbed wire.
There is a need for planting trees in the area to expand and enrich the available tree for provision of better environment and increase area for bee hives.
Suggested next steps
The students should be involved in tree planting, especially the fence. They should be psychologically prepared to take up the tree planting, protecting and caring.
An incentive should be planned for the students (and their supervising teachers). The initial idea is to plant
Moringa oloifera (English: drumstick tree or horseradish tree) which is fast growing, drought tolerant and good for bees. Motivational sessions should be done during July – September, to prepare students plant trees any time it rains from October.
The hives should be inspected in September to monitor development. The super boxes taken to Arusha with honey will be replace to the hives during this period. In case of severe draught the colonies will be provided with water.
The Harvest Results. Now update
Harvesting was done on June 5, 2021. All the hives were opened and inspected. The following are the results.
Only a few frame hives had some honey in them. No top bar hive had any honey for harvesting, most of them had some brood, indicating that they were still in colony build up stage.
After extraction of the honey using dropping method, the honey obtained was of light clear (gold) colour, in perfect quality.
Learning through Doing. Fact 2-Harvest Year
In beekeeping, especially tropical beekeeping which depends pacing a hive, provide minimum management and harvest at harvesting season, there are bad and good years in terms of harvest.
The year 2020/2021 was generally a bad year for Mswakini and the surrounding areas. One of the causative factor was that the rains were highly erratic, raining beyond flowering time. This provided very short time for bees to forage and store honey.
Learning through Doing. Fact 1-Wind
Mswakini area has very strong winds at sometimes during the year. Such winds tend to swing the hung hives, making it difficult for bees to work properly in hives
Hive Occupation. Fast
The hives were quickly occupied by wild honeybee colonies. In fact, on the first day itself, 12 out of the 20 hives were occupied by bees, while the rest got occupied after a short while.
Basic Facts about the Project. A refresher
This is a small beekeeping project intended for Mswakini Primary School students and the surrounding community. The project started by training about 25 students and 10 community members on basic beekeeping skills early July, 2020. Then, through the training 20 hives were sited, including 10 top bar hives and 10 frame hives. The top bar hives were sited by hanging on trees while frame hives were placed on firm steel benches, fixed on ground by cement concrete.
Initial Setbacks: Short Report on MSWAKINI Primary School Beekeeping Project (Copy)
It all begins with an idea.
Dr. Nicephor Pius Lesio, Rik Munshi
The project area was visited and inspected by the team. We opened few hives. It was a general inspection for development monitoring. A few things that were detected include:
16 hives are occupied with bee colonies.
For the four hives that had no colonies we corrected the entrances. The entrances seemed to be too small for bees to enter, and for two of them, the bees even clustered outside for sometimes but failed to enter. For the other two the bees could enter, but were too small for the queen as she has relatively larger size than other bees.
We replaced some hive top covers which were blown away by strong winds of the area. We also tied the hives with binding wire to avoid such covers to be blown away in future.
We checked development of some colonies. Few colonies are strong but many are weak (few number of bees per colony). We believe the weal ones came to the hive while weak, and form that time there has not been abundance of flowers for the bees to feed on. The few flowers occurred were enough for the bees to sustain life but not to gain a lot of strength. We believe there will be flowers to give them food for growth of strength in the near future. There will be a need of re-inspecting the hives again in March for prediction of harvests of this year. Date of inspection will depend on when the long rains start.
We found only a few pests (especially wax moth) in hives, which indicates that the site is good. Otherwise, we would find much more occurrence of the moths and also other pests such as hive beetles.
Our Next Steps:
Beekeeping project management: Our field side have not had strong commitment to the project. For instance, we do not get the updates on the project as quick as things may occur. One of the reasons is that involvement of the beneficiaries (students and community members that received training) has been very low, although they were expected to be upfront for all the project matters. Probably it is their fault or maybe we have not been able to push them enough to take up their responsibility. In this case we suggest that no more investment on the project in terms of project expansion until we are able to manage this small project we have. Instead, we urge our team to work harder in managing the project and also involving the students and the community in the project. Once we are satisfied that the project is well managed then we suggest for expansion.
Tree planting and fencing: According to Head Teacher, preparation for planting live fence polls is in good progress. We suggest that continues as planned. However, preparation for tree planting is minimal. Process for getting suitable seedlings for the area is long and has not started. We suggest we postpone tree planting for this year and start the process as early as situation allows after the long rains. We think we re-discuss this amongst the project team in Tanzania.
Honey harvests this year: We don’t have much hope for good harvest this year. BUT if we do everything correctly from now on, the colonies we have now will remain strong in hives after the June (or July) harvesting season. This will lead to having more than one harvest next year.
Data collection/Information sheet filling: This has not been done. Probably we need to discuss it again and see how it can be done (with a help of the Head teacher).
January 2021
It all begins with an idea.
The Mswakini Primary school started with 20 hives. 10 of these were big and divided into two compartments, one up and and one down, bringing the total to 30 hives.
Once the hives were fixed to the school ground, Tawiri Research Institute sponsored a formal beekeeping training for 20 students and teachers from the school who learned about beehives, harvesting, and taking care of the bee environment. The school got funding for bee equipments, suits, smokes, gloves, boots.
Currently the beehives are all good. Although, the school lost 2 hives, one due to a small door, and the other damaged by wind. All others are filled with bees. The school is working hard to protect the hives against wild animals, livestock, and the strong wind. One of the major challenges is to protect against the rain and the wind that can bring water inside the hives. Also, the Maasai people sometimes bring livestock grazing on school property that might harm the hives. Hence, the school is planning to plant trees to create a fence. In this regard, the Mali Hai club in Arusha will help plant trees, specifically, the comiphora africana tree.