‘The Killer Bees’, ‘The Swarm’, ‘Deadly Invasion’ – these are just three examples of the way the African honeybee is depicted on Hollywood celluloid. Yet these industrious and gregarious creatures are indispensable in sustaining the quality of life we hold dear. They are responsible for pollinating a third of all food eaten across the globe.
So important are these engines of the economy to the food and beverage industry that the company Haagen-Dazs is funding research to help secure the sustainability of the pollination-reliant ingredients that are the building blocks of many of its fruit- and nut-flavoured ice creams and sorbets.
It has been said that without bees, humankind would survive no longer than four years. No bees, no pollination, no plants, no food, no life.
Worldwide, the declining bee population is being given increasing attention. Extensive research is being conducted into the causes of a phenomenon called colony collapse disorder (CCD), and countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom and others in Europe have strong bee population management strategies, complemented by disease management centres. In the UK, alone, last year, the bee industry research and management budget was boosted from 2-million to 10-million pounds.
South Africa, on the other hand, is not the hive of activity it possibly could be. On its website, the South African Bee Industry Organisation (SABIO) reports that, in recent years, beekeepers in South Africa have been faced with several problems, including vandalism and theft, the loss of bee-friendly forage through habitat destruction and urbanisation, and the appearance of the tracheal mite and the parasitic varroa mite, which has devastated colonies in other parts of the world.
And, from 2008, having previously been largely unaffected by the various diseases of their global counterparts, African bees experienced their first taste of American foulbrood (AFB), a potentially deadly condition that strikes the larvae.
These serious problems are emerging at a time when honeybee research capacity in South Africa is at its lowest level in decades.
The bee department housed in the Plant Protection Research Institute of the Agricultural Research Council (ARC) is the sole dedicated honeybee research facility in the country, and its sole staff member is senior researcher Dr Mike Allsopp. Anything related to bee research lands on Dr Allsopp’s desk, from disease management and the effects of pesticides to pollination and beekeeping industry development. It’s a far cry from the 1980s, when the department’s two bases, in Pretoria and Stellenbosch, were staffed by 15 people.
There are several items on the bee industry’s shopping list, says Dr Allsopp, clearly the most pressing being the need to generate institutional capacity. ‘Other countries recognise bees for what they are – a critical natural asset,’ he says. ‘They take research into bees and management of the population very seriously, but this is not true of Africa. Perhaps it never needed to be, but this may be changing.’
The lack of industry regulation is another contentious issue. ‘There is legislation, but it is not enforced and only a small percentage of beekeepers are registered,’ says Dr Allsopp. ‘No-one knows really how many beekeepers South Africa has and where they are.’
‘The UK has 60 inspectors responsible for bee disease control and management. South Africa has none. The matter is on the government’s agenda, but whether anything will come of discussions is uncertain, as many beekeepers are opposed to regulation.’
Hugh Campbell, general manager of the Deciduous Fruit Producers’ Trust Research, agrees that greater management is necessary, but adds that beekeepers are mainly individualists who resist external interference and control.
Currently, South Africa has about 80 full-time commercial beekeepers (compared to some 300 in the UK), but thousands of hobbyists. Dr Garth Cambray, owner of Makana Meadery, a Grahamstown-based producer of mead and honey products, hazards a ballpark figure for South Africa hives in the wild of between 1,2 million and 2,4 million, based on an estimate of one to two hives per square kilometre. ‘I think there is currently probably an increase in the number of people keeping bees, but the majority of hives are wild and the effects of poison and disease in this area are very worrying.’
Dr Cambray believes that human ignorance is among the biggest threat to bees. ‘This is evident in, for instance, the poisoning of bees performed as a service included in the household insurance packages offered by certain companies.’
Equally worrying, he adds, is habitat loss. ‘Bees need biodiversity to survive. As housing developments expand and land is grazed to death through bad farming practices, the available habitat for bees is declining. In addition, modern travel means a smoother passage into the country for new diseases.’
The resilience to date of the African bee as a result of its genetic diversity and the strength of the natural environment in which it lives, has taken the sting out of most situations, says Campbell. ‘Varroa affected the industry but not to the extent it did in New Zealand. When AFB came in two years ago, we didn’t know what effect it would have, but again, we are surviving it.’
AFB may not appear to be manifesting as a meaningful threat – losses to date have not been significant and, says Allsopp, the disease seems to be fading quietly. However, it could just as easily be a disaster waiting to happen.
‘Our bees may not continue to be as tough as they have been: the stress of factors such as forage loss increase their vulnerability and exposure to factors such as varroa have made them more susceptible to viruses and disease,’ says Allsopp. ‘To date, we have dodged the bullets, but we may not be so lucky in future
Adds Campbell: ‘Each new threat has the potential to bring the industry to its knees and the current lack of research capacity doesn’t position the country well to face the next onslaught. We can’t rely on international work because our bees and our circumstances are so different. Some basic research is happening at university level, but applied research, with support from the government, is essential.’
Looking at the potential of the industry for the short- to medium-term, Dr Cambray sees scope for at least another 300 000 managed beehives, which would obviate the need to ‘waste forex importing honey’. ‘The old Transkei region has huge beekeeping potential, but wild hives have been almost totally destroyed by overharvesting,’ he says. ‘Managed hives would help food production and wealth generation.
‘I believe, too, that some of the best places to keep bees are our towns and cities. We need to do as is done in other parts of the world and encourage responsible urban beekeeping – rooftop bees in Sandton, bees in big gardens, on smallholdings. After a day at the office, stressed lawyers and stockbrokers would benefit from the calming activity of working with bees, as their counterparts in New York and London are increasingly doing.
‘Having land with no bees on it should almost be frowned on.’
Dr Allsopp cautions, however, that urbanisation of beekeeping in South Africa would be difficult as local bees are more defensive than their European counterparts.
Research conducted by Reading University, UK, into the alternative to bees – hand pollination – indicates that the price of foodstuffs would increase tenfold and that if the human pollinator was earning only the minimum wage. BBC News put the matter further in perspective, pointing out that a single hive of 50 000 bees pollinates half a million plants a day.
A study by Dr Josef Settele of the Helmoltz Centre for Environmental Research in Germany revealed that the cost to pollinate artificially should insect pollinators be lost across the globe would be between 190 and 310 billion euros.
The ARC website sums the situation up thus: ‘Although honeybee colonies are not regarded by many as livestock, the role they play in agriculture and ecology is more important than that of any other domesticated animal. They are an indispensable link in the ecological chain and are directly responsible through pollination for the survival of many plants. Some of these plants are crops that are essential food for the nation and huge earners of foreign exchange. Research on the honeybee and beekeeping remains, therefore, essential.’
‘If we do not prepare adequately,’ Dr Cambray concludes, ‘we will see a major decline in bee numbers in the wild, and a shift in our ecosystems from forests, thickets and woodland to grasslands. There will be a drop in fruit and food production, and an increase in prices.
‘Even the meat and dairy industries will feel the impact, as the industry’s primary feedlot, lucerne, relies on pollination.’
When the flower blooms, the bees come uninvited’, said the 19th century mystic Ramakrishna. Let us hope he is never proved wrong.
SABIO estimates that the value added by commercial beekeepers in terms of the additional production of crop plants through commercial honeybee population is around R4,1 billion a year. Crops dependent on commercial honeybee pollination include most deciduous fruit, some sub-tropical fruits, oilseed and vegetable seed, and many fodder plants. Taking into account pollination of garden plants, exotics and indigenous plants, honeybees are said to be responsible for about 60% of flowering plants in South Africa.
Crops dependent on bee pollination include almonds, citrus and deciduous fruit, berries, sunflower, canola and squashes.
