Honeybees…

Dear All,

I recently visited a project at Lake Bogoria that showed how important honeybees are in East Africa. Beekeepers keep honeybees here and this helps provided a livelihood for them in what is a dry and remote area…

Beehive ready to be hung up at Lake Bogoria
Beehive ready to be hung up at Lake Bogoria

The beekeepers at this site use a traditional log hive. This keeps the bees cool in the hot weather. However, they have a clever innovation inside the hive that serves as a ‘queen excluder’ to keep the honeycombs and brood (bee babies = larvae) separate inside the log hive…

beehive-split-bogoriaLR1

A closer view of the 'queen excluder' inside the log-hive
A closer view of the 'queen excluder' inside the log-hive

Thanks to the efforts of honeybees, communities all across East Africa produce delicious and nutritious honey!

Some of the delicious Kenyan honeys!
Some of the delicious Kenyan honeys!
The Honeybee - producer of all that amazing honey (Photo courtesy A. Powys)
The Honeybee - producer of all that amazing honey (Photo courtesy A. Powys)

2 thoughts on “Honeybees…”

  1. What sensational photographs and how pleasantly surprised I am to see yet another form of forms of bee hives. I follow closely a charity set up for beekeeping in Tanzania and when I first met them they were unsure as to what to do with their Propolis. I advised they eat it as it is such an amazing natural antibiotic. Do they use their Propolis at Lake Bogoria? How I envy your travels, wonderful, and I look forward to reading more of your posts.

    Reply
    • Dear Janet, thanks for your kind comment. Yes, propolis is used in Kenya for medicinal purposes. We are hoping to develop better methods of harvesting it and ways of using things like propolis, royal jelly and beeswax to make products that can add value both locally and make full use of all the amazing things that honeybees provide! Thanks for reading the blog.

      Reply

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