- Joined
- Mar 30, 2011
- Messages
- 37,325
- Reaction score
- 17,677
- Location
- Glanaman,Carmarthenshire,Wales
- Hive Type
- National
- Number of Hives
- Too many - but not nearly enough
Not long back from Tanzania, but on unpacking, the few items I had packed into my boots for safety (and the fact there were a few pictures captured on my phone) I thought I'd share this.
Meliponiculture (the keeping of stingless honey bees) has been around for a long time in Tanzania but the craft seems to be growing, with even some bee farmers turning it into a commercial venture.
The bee in question is Trigona togoensis,a fraction of the size of our bees (only a few millimetres long) although I did see one colony of even smaller bees (more like gnats) housed in a gourd the size of a jumbo avocado
They need very little equipment - just the 'hive', a fine strainer to remove the bees that get stuck in the honey on harvesting and a long skewer like implement to pierce the honey cells
they can be kept anywhere as the bees don't sting
they need little room, the hive just being a box of around the same dimensions as a five frame nuc
And (which would really grab the interest of many bee havers) even if you're very good at it, the honey yield is very small.
The bees nest in tree cavities so the meliponiculturist just find a young colony, cuts off the tree limb where it's lodged, takes it home then carefully transfers the colony to its new home.
The entrance is just a small aperture of single bee size.
Unlike Apis Mellifera, the colony starts building the comb from the floor and works upwards, the brood combs are horizontal and formed in an ascending spiral.
Honey and pollen are not stored in comb but rather in large capsules or 'pots' about the size of a marrowfat pea around the brood nest.
harvesting is done regularly throughout the year, and, to the great delight of the 'I do it for the bees' brigade the annual yield is between 2 and 7 litres, so no stressing about what to do with all that awful honey
The honey, though is of a totally different to Am honey, a lot less sweet with a distinctly citrusy finish (one lot I have, each taste feels like someone dumped a dab of lemon sherbet on my tongue)
the wax, or to give it its proper name - Cerumen, is much darker, and it is more akin to propolis, and has the same healing properties, it also smells wonderful.
Because the honey is stored/processed in these cerumen pots, it also has wonderful wound healing properties, which could equal Manooky (but also taste nice
In Tanzania, 'Stingless honey' attracts prices three to four times higher than 'Sting honey'
The proposed project targets Scutellata apiculture over a fairly large area, but seeing the size of the Meliponiculture enterprise already, I shall probably incorporate it into the plan.
The first picture shows (left to right) a pound of bog standard scutellata honey
Stingless bee honey from the South of the region, not far from the Mozambique border
Stingless bee honey from the North of the region, not to far from the Wildlife corridor and the South of the Selous game park.
Both stingless honeys are actually the whole single harvest from the colony, the largest bottle is a normal 500ml water bottle, so the middle one is considerably smaller.
To harvest stingless honey, you just take down the 'hive' (usually suspended under the eaves of a house, or a convenient tree -(I have photographs of an apiary, but need time to upload them off my camera) you then remove the lid, pierce all the cerumen pots, wait a short while then tilt the hive to one side and pur the honey through the strainer into a container, quite a few bees get stuck in the honey and, due to them being so small they cannot get out, hence the strainer, after 'extraxtion' it is then neccessary to dust the whole colony with maize flour so that the bees can unstick themselves from the remaining honey.
Just waiting now to see how long it takes the skywegian ice goblin to dredge google and come and tell us how it should be done, and how much more honey he could produce
Meliponiculture (the keeping of stingless honey bees) has been around for a long time in Tanzania but the craft seems to be growing, with even some bee farmers turning it into a commercial venture.
The bee in question is Trigona togoensis,a fraction of the size of our bees (only a few millimetres long) although I did see one colony of even smaller bees (more like gnats) housed in a gourd the size of a jumbo avocado
They need very little equipment - just the 'hive', a fine strainer to remove the bees that get stuck in the honey on harvesting and a long skewer like implement to pierce the honey cells
they can be kept anywhere as the bees don't sting
they need little room, the hive just being a box of around the same dimensions as a five frame nuc
And (which would really grab the interest of many bee havers) even if you're very good at it, the honey yield is very small.
The bees nest in tree cavities so the meliponiculturist just find a young colony, cuts off the tree limb where it's lodged, takes it home then carefully transfers the colony to its new home.
The entrance is just a small aperture of single bee size.
Unlike Apis Mellifera, the colony starts building the comb from the floor and works upwards, the brood combs are horizontal and formed in an ascending spiral.
Honey and pollen are not stored in comb but rather in large capsules or 'pots' about the size of a marrowfat pea around the brood nest.
harvesting is done regularly throughout the year, and, to the great delight of the 'I do it for the bees' brigade the annual yield is between 2 and 7 litres, so no stressing about what to do with all that awful honey
The honey, though is of a totally different to Am honey, a lot less sweet with a distinctly citrusy finish (one lot I have, each taste feels like someone dumped a dab of lemon sherbet on my tongue)
the wax, or to give it its proper name - Cerumen, is much darker, and it is more akin to propolis, and has the same healing properties, it also smells wonderful.
Because the honey is stored/processed in these cerumen pots, it also has wonderful wound healing properties, which could equal Manooky (but also taste nice
In Tanzania, 'Stingless honey' attracts prices three to four times higher than 'Sting honey'
The proposed project targets Scutellata apiculture over a fairly large area, but seeing the size of the Meliponiculture enterprise already, I shall probably incorporate it into the plan.
The first picture shows (left to right) a pound of bog standard scutellata honey
Stingless bee honey from the South of the region, not far from the Mozambique border
Stingless bee honey from the North of the region, not to far from the Wildlife corridor and the South of the Selous game park.
Both stingless honeys are actually the whole single harvest from the colony, the largest bottle is a normal 500ml water bottle, so the middle one is considerably smaller.
To harvest stingless honey, you just take down the 'hive' (usually suspended under the eaves of a house, or a convenient tree -(I have photographs of an apiary, but need time to upload them off my camera) you then remove the lid, pierce all the cerumen pots, wait a short while then tilt the hive to one side and pur the honey through the strainer into a container, quite a few bees get stuck in the honey and, due to them being so small they cannot get out, hence the strainer, after 'extraxtion' it is then neccessary to dust the whole colony with maize flour so that the bees can unstick themselves from the remaining honey.
Just waiting now to see how long it takes the skywegian ice goblin to dredge google and come and tell us how it should be done, and how much more honey he could produce
