Company Profile
Bees as pollinators strongly influence ecological relationships, ecosystem conservation and stability, genetic variation in the plant community, floral diversity, specialization and evolution. Bees play an important, but little recognized role in most terrestrial ecosystems in farmed areas, arid and semi arid areas, in tropical forests, savannah woodlands, mangrove, and in temperate deciduous forests. Many species of plants and
animals would not survive if bees were missing. This is because the production of seeds, nuts, berries and fruits are highly dependent on insect pollination, and among the pollinating insects, bees are the major pollinators, covering over 70% of the world’s food and medicinal plants. In farmed areas, bees are needed for the pollination of many cultivated crops and for maintaining biodiversity in ‘islands’ of non-cultivated areas. If the fertilization is inadequate because of lack of bees, not all seeds will develop, and the shape of the fruit will be poor and small. Fertilization is the beginning of a new seed, which will grow and develop into a new plant. The new plant will bloom, provide the bees with food, be pollinated, and be
fertilized, and in this way, the story continues and the ecosystem thrives. The forager bee returns to the honeybee colony with her pollen loads, which are placed in the nest in areas of comb close to the brood. Pollen is the protein food for bees. Without pollen, the young nurse bees cannot produce bee milk or royal jelly to feed the queen and brood. If no pollen is available to the colony, egg laying by the queen will
stop. So it is a symbiotic relationship between the bee and the flower. Usually a honeybee can visit between 50-1000 flowers in one trip, which takes between 30 minutes to four hours. A bee can make between 15 and 20 trips a day. A colony with 25,000 forager bees, each making 15 trips a day, is able to pollinate over 250 million flowers. The ability of the honeybee to communicate to other bees in the colony where to go for more pollen and nectar is very important for their efficiency as pollinators. When bees begin foraging for pollen and/or nectar, they will visit the same species of flowers and work there as long as plenty of nectar or pollen can be found. For example,
if a honeybee starts collecting in an Acacia tree, she will fly from Acacia flower to Acacia flower and not behave like many other insects do, visiting different species of plants within the same trip without any great pollination effect. This behavior of bees is called foraging constancy making them the most effective pollinators. Some flowers are open and with nectar all day and night, but others are open only for a few hours in the morning, afternoon or night. The single worker bee learns and remembers what time the different flowers are worth visiting. One bee can remember
the opening time for up to seven different types of flowers, so they pollinate a great number of different plant species, and they do it very effectively. By pollinating trees, bushes and herbaceous plants, the bees are important for the food production of all the other animals and birds in the forest ecosystem dependent on it for
food berries, seeds and fruits. BeeKeeping in Kenya
Bee-keeping in Kenya is mainly practiced in the arid and semi-arid lands (ASALs) both by individual small-scale farmers and common interest groups. According to the Ministry of Agriculture, bee keeping can be carried out successfully in 80% of the country. It is especially suitable in ASALs where other modes of agriculture are not very possible. Bee-keeping contributes to incomes as well as food security through provision of honey, beeswax, proppolis, bees venom, pollen and royal jelly in medicine. Kenya’s potential for apiculture development is estimated to be over 100,000 metric tonnes of honey and 10,000 metric tonnes of beeswax per annum. However, at the moment less than a fifth of this potential is being exploited. Despite the downward trend in global production of honey, the Kenyan case has been different. Production in the country has steadily grown. Earnings from sale of honey compared favorably with other activities in the livestock sub-sector. However, over 90% of beekeepers use traditional methods that lead to low quality honey, loss of colonies by burning bees and destroying brood, besides lower earnings were ascribed to inadequate marketing infrastructure. Poverty and food insecurity have defined the livelihood of people in counties best suited for beekeeping due to ignorance. For a long time their livelihoods have been mainly agro-based, dependent on crop and livestock production. However, due to poor climatic conditions characterized by frequent and prolonged droughts, crop production has been very low. Livestock production has also been adversely affected by these trends, leaving honey production as the only viable option for smallholder farmers as it is less dependent on, or affected by climatic variations, and is not resource intensive. The majority of these farmers produce and sell raw honey and are ignorant of other hive products, therefore receive low value from their honey and remain trapped in poverty. Challenges facing beekeepers in Kenya
1. Limited knowledge on value addition by farmers given the potential benefits and the available market.
2. Dependence on outdated equipment especially the traditional log hives that hung precariously on trees and very difficult to manage and risky to harvest.
3. Wrong harvesting methods leading to poor quality honey and loss of colonies as these traditional beekeepers harvest using fire thereby burning bees and destroying brood and young bees worsening an already bad situation of low bee population in many regions.
4. Lack of knowledge on other very important hive products that are left to rot or damaged through harvesting.
5. Time taken for new hives to be colonized due to reduced bee populations.
6. Exploitation by middle men who buy the little honey there is at throw away prices. Our Intervention Strategy
1. Set up demonstration apiaries in various counties in partnership with local CFAs.
2. Conduct farmers and artisan training in the counties to train them on use of locally available materials to construct modern beehives especially Kenya Top Bar Hive and the Langstroth beehive. The training also covers equipment maintenance.
3. Train farmers in proper harvesting of various hive products, handling, value addition and marketing.
4. Train farmers on apiary maintenance, hive inspection, bee breeding, colony division and queen rearing to multiply bee populations.
5. Work with farmers and county governments to plant and enhance bee botany by growing bee friendly plants to mitigate loss of populations due to loss of habitat.
6. Redistribute and repopulate areas where bees have been decimated by transferring colonies and setting up apiaries to aid in pollination of food crops and the pockets of unfarmed ecosystems in farming communities. Subdivision of land in some counties in Central and Western Kenya coupled with disappearance of pollinators can easily lead to a food crisis. Products and Services
1. Training-hive construction, hive maintenance, apiary set up and maintenance, hive inspection, hive products extraction, packaging, value addition, marketing.
2. Products-Kenya Top Bar Hives, Langstroth Beehives, Improved Log Hive, Box Hive, Protective gear, Smokers, Hive Tools, Bee Brushes, Decapping Forks, TraysWax Sheets, Extraction equipment.
3. Hive Products- Honey, Royal Jelly, Pollen, Propolis, Beeswax, Bee Brood, Queens, Colonies.
4. Services-Colony division, inspection, apiary siting and set up, colony relocation, apiary relocation, harvesting, refining, packaging, labeling and marketing. PEOPLE! PLANET! PROFIT! We partner with various stakeholders to increase the honey bee population as we harness the power of apiculture to generate income, ensure food security through increased farm productivity, provide alternative health remedies and save the environment by ensuring balanced, thriving ecosystems! Contacts: 0719120021.E-Mail:info@tendo.co.ke
