Support pours in for Knysna beekeepers
GARDEN Route and Eastern Cape beekeepers are biting the bullet after the destruction of well over 1 000 cultivated hives in the areas by fires.
While the destruction has translated into substantial financial losses for the beekeepers it has also raised concern for the wellbeing of the Cape honeybee (Apis melliferra Capensis) on which they all rely.
The Cape honeybee has the smallest distribution of any bee globally, extending through the fynbos tract from Cape Town to Port Elizabeth.
The hives-loss toll means millions of bees perished in cultivated hives, still more in wild hives and many bee colonies which were not wiped out will now be swarming desperately looking for forage, beekeepers said yesterday.
Save Thornhill Bees coordinator Jackie Hume said while there were only three commercial beekeepers in the area, there were many more in total with their hives spread out through Loerie, Witteklip, Rocklands, Lady Slipper, Van Staden’s Gorge and Longmore – all of which were hit hard by the fires.
“The latest total of hives lost is 700 and we know that this figure for cultivated hives makes up just 5-10% of the total Cape bee population in an area.”
A hive can be home to anything from a handful of bees to 50 000 so it was clear that a huge number of bees – already struggling because of the drought and the lack of flowering fynbos – had been killed, she said.
“Where they weren’t burnt in their hives, they would have been killed by the smoke. Others that escaped and survived may have had to fly too far for forage and still have died. “Millions were killed for sure.” Hume said she had initially initiated a “sugardrive” for donations of sugar to make sugar water to replace their normal pollen and nectar diet but this could only work in the short term.
“Sugar water for them is like us eating Macdonald’s every day. It’s not healthy. In the immediate term it sorts out the protein they get from pollen but they also need the carbohydrates they get from nectar.
“So I will now be focusing on raising funds to buy a balanced bee booster supplement.”
In the long term, the aim was to establish a Thornhill bee foundation to guide the regeneration of fynbos and repopulate the area with healthy colonies, she said.
The process will be made easier because the Cape bee is the only bee species in the world that can “re-queen itself” – produce another queen and regenerate the hive even if the old queen dies.
People wanting to help should go to the Save Thornhill Bees Facebook site, Hume said.
Knysna Beekeepers Association coordinator Eddie Hart – whose honey was judged the best in the world at the Black Jar Honey Contest in North Carolina in the US in 2013 – said their hives had been hard-hit in the fires.
“We lost at least 300 hives. Now it’s just a matter of helping the surviving bees to make it through until the next rains – when they come – revive the vegetation.”
The association was hugely grateful for the donations they had received and was dividing distribution according to the most needy and hard-hit members, he said.
International aid organisation Gift Givers has spearheaded this support Knysna beekeepers.
The organisation’s founder, Dr Imtiaz Sooliman, said he was fascinated by what he had learned about the Cape bee.
“We had been down in Knysna from the start of their terrible fires, helping in whatever way we could. At one point someone came to us and asked for sugar to make sugar water for the bees. I inquired for what, and it all started from there.”
Keen to learn more, he attended an education session hosted by the Knysna Beekeeping Association and came away convinced his organisation had to help.
“I was so impressed by this unique little bee and the focus by the organisation on keeping everything organic. I said let’s put in R250 000 and take it from there,” Sooliman said. of for the the