https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article ... f-opinion/
Leave them or rewild them? Survival plan for bees clouded by a swarm of opinion
By Aisha Abdool Karim and Tessa Knight• 13 December 2019
Bees are an integral part of any ecosystem, but globally the bee population continues to decline. With the spread of disease, widespread habitat loss and pesticide poisoning, the Western Cape is looking towards solutions to help save its bees. However, the answer is not straightforward, as scientists debate the best course of action.
Global wild bee populations are declining, either due to habitat loss and the use of pesticides or as a result of the spread of disease. Ever-increasing agricultural demands have put pressure on beekeepers to expand their hives, while natural forage decreases as urbanisation eats away at local flora. Due to the important role bees play as pollinators, the loss of the population would have a devastating impact on the ecosystem and food security.
While globally, particularly in Europe, there have been significant losses to the wild bee population, the extent of the issues, if any, facing South Africa’s wild bee population is still unknown.
According to Colleen Seymour, a principal scientist at the South African National Biodiversity Institute (Sanbi), a lack of resources and taxonomists means little research on South African pollinators, including bees, has been conducted.
“We don’t really know much about pollinators in general in South Africa, we don’t really have a systematic programme to monitor them at the moment. But based on world trends, definitely wild pollinators are in decline due to a combination of habitat destruction, pesticide use, disease and parasites, and climate change,” Seymour told Daily Maverick.
The majority of research in this field focuses on “managed bees”. These are bees which are kept in hives and maintained by beekeepers. Sometimes also referred to as domestic bees, these bees are used in commercial honey production and for pollination on farms. Whereas wild bees, as their name suggests, are unmonitored and indigenous to nature.
Given the limited information available, there are different viewpoints on how best to manage the local bee population. Some advocate for different forms of intervention and others believe the best thing to do is leave the bees alone.
In 2017, the Western Cape Department of Environmental Affairs and Development Planning launched “Plan BEE”. This study assessed the honey bee industry, with specific emphasis on determining current risks and threats to the wild honey bee population.
Albert Ackhurst, head of biodiversity in the Western Cape department environmental affairs, explained that one of the major reasons for starting Plan BEE was to assess the threats to wild honey bees.
The assessment found that key threats to wild bees in South Africa include loss of adequate forage due to habitat loss and intensified agriculture, large-scale removal of bees from the wild for the beekeeping industry, diseases like American foulbrood as well as increased and more intense wildfires.
As a result, phase two of Plan BEE involved the creation of a strategy to promote bee conservation and protection, as well as explore wild bee breeding opportunities.
Part of the controversial plan suggests “rewilding honeybees”, where bees will be bred in man-made hives and then placed into “natural protected areas”. This aims to target areas, such as Knysna, where fires are believed to have killed the bee population.
However, bee conservationist Jenny Cullinan does not believe bees need to be artificially returned to fire-ravaged areas, as she thinks they will come back naturally.
“In South Africa, 90% of our bees live in the wild and are healthy,” Cullinan told Daily Maverick. She believes that implementation of this plan will interfere with the existing wild bee.
A former beekeeper, Cullinan realised there was no information about the wild honeybees. Together with fellow conservationist Karin Sternberg, she started Ujubee, an organisation that works towards the conservation of bees, and began collecting research on wild bee colonies.
“We bee watch like other people bird watch,” quipped Sternberg.
For the past six years, the pair have spent eight hours a day gathering information by watching wild bees in Cape Point Nature Reserve and Table Mountain National Park.
Based on their observations, Cullinan and Sternberg found that there are naturally occurring pollination networks among wild bees and introducing managed bees from hives into these environments will “crash the whole system” as the bees will have to compete for resources.
According to Cullinan, saving the bees means ensuring the safety of their natural habitats and allowing them to live freely.
“We don’t have to do anything else, they look after themselves,” said Cullinan.
The “Wild Bee Populations Conservation Strategy” proposed in April is still under advisement, as it needs more scientific input, and has not yet been formally adopted or implemented by the Western Cape government. Given the stage at which the document is in, Ackhurst said that it should not yet have been made public.
Sanbi director John Donaldson told Daily Maverick that Sanbi intends on writing to the department to voice their concerns over specific aspects of the strategy, including the introduction of bees and forage into areas ravaged by fire.
The additional controversy stems from the government-funded study itself. The conservation strategy, which forms phase two, was conducted by environmental consulting firm Jaymat Enviro Solutions. One of the researchers on the team was Tlou Masehela, who serves as chairman of the Western Cape Bee Industry Association and is also a scientist at Sanbi.
Due to his role at Sanbi, the strategy was published on their website in April 2019. However, there is dissent within Sanbi regarding the plan and given that it was not Sanbi research it should not have been shared on the platform, according to Donaldson.
Although there was controversy over Masehela’s role in the study, considering his ties to both industry and conservation, Donaldson told Daily Maverick that Masehela only contributed to the chapter involving bee forage working group, a project he was already working on, and was not part of the other parts of the study.
Another concern, raised by Cullinan, is that conservation strategies and policies primarily focus on honeybees. Given their role in the commercial sector, both in honey production and pollination, Cullinan said that these policies do not adequately consider other bees, such as solitary bees, and pollinators which create a natural ecosystem.
Beekeeping and other pollinators
For beekeepers Tracey James and Toufiq Fataar, bee conservation is very closely linked to beekeeping. When asked how to conserve bee populations, Fataar responded with: “Aside from beekeeping, what other bee conservation is there?”
To them, there is no difference between a wild bee and those in hives.
“A domesticated bee is first a wild bee,” Fataar told Daily Maverick.
“It’s only once you put it in a box that it becomes domesticated, like after a while you’ll see they become less volatile and they don’t sting you as much because they become used to being in the box, but they will still swarm off once they outgrow that space.”
James and Fataar started their business, TnT Honey, in 2017 and now have 20 hives across the Western Cape region. Most of their hives started in a very similar manner. They were called to remove a bee nest from someone’s house, placed those bees into a hive, then began harvesting honey from the hive to sell.
Earlier this month, they set out at 4am to do a bee removal from Ottery. This was the culmination of a week-long effort to get a bee colony off someone’s property and into a hive, which they then took to one of their beekeeping sites in Stellenbosch.
“The opposite to the bee removals would be that people would Doom [poison] them,” Fataar told Daily Maverick.
“Instead of that, you rehouse them, you put them on another place where they are of benefit to the ecosystem, to the flowers and so you’re also helping conservation of the bees.”
Although the duo primarily began their business as a means to sell honey, they also run bee awareness projects and educational programmes in schools around beekeeping and conservation.
Yet, beekeeping is seen by some as one of the biggest threats to the wild bee population.
“We’ve got the problem that people put wild bees in boxes,” Ackhurst told Daily Maverick.
Bees are captured from the wild for commercial use to produce honey and pollinate farms. Once the bees are put in these boxed hives, it “weakens them”, said Ackhurst.
The bees become more vulnerable to diseases and lose their resilience, as they are forced to feed on monocultures. Without the naturally varied diet bees get by foraging, they are unable to get the required nutrients and vitamins.
Currently, no policy exists in any of the provinces to prevent farmers from placing multiples hives on to one piece of land, a practice known as overstuffing, Masehala told Daily Maverick. Overstuffing can devastate the populations of other pollinators in the area, who suddenly have to compete with hundreds of thousands of honey bees.
According to Masehela, beekeepers find it particularly difficult to locate large tracts of land where they can store their hives during the pollinating off season.
“If a beekeeper knowingly overstocks an area then you will have issues with food competition,” Masehala told Daily Maverick. According to Cullinan competition for resources can get ugly.
“The other pollinators sometimes attack honey bees when beekeepers bring them in, because they know the honey bees will eat everything before they can,” said Cullinan.
Bees are also under attack from diseases, which are easily spread across hives that are in close proximity to one another. Wild bee nests, on the other hand, can be kilometres apart, preventing disease from spreading rapidly.
“We know that several bee species do share certain pathogens and pests across the species, but locally we don’t have any data to substantiate that,” Masehala told Daily Maverick.
According to Ackhurst one of the possible consequences of using honey bees as pollinators is their resilience to diseases may be reduced.
Although there has been little research into the impact managed bees have on the wild bee population in South Africa, the hive environment leaves the bees vulnerable to chemicals from pesticides used on farms.
“The managed bees and the farmed bees are suffering because of the stresses we put them under,” said Cullinan. “Not just from housing, but how we manage them, how we move them around, they can’t locate themselves and just be healthy in their environments.”
To the everyday South Africans worried about pollinators such as bees, Seymour recommends planting a variety of different flowers, particularly indigenous flowers, in gardens. DM 1
Threats to Bees - Studies
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Re: Threats to Bees - Studies
Air pollution could be making honey bees sick – new study
August 10, 2020 - Barbara Smith, Associate Professor of Ecology, Coventry University | Mark Brown, Professor of Evolutionary Ecology & Conservation, Royal Holloway
Whether it’s exhaust fumes from cars or smoke from power plants, air pollution is an often invisible threat that is a leading cause of death worldwide. Breathing air laced with heavy metals, nitrogen oxides and fine particulate matter has been linked to a range of chronic health conditions, including lung problems, heart disease, stroke and cancer.
If air pollution can harm human health in so many different ways, it makes sense that other animals suffer from it too. Airborne pollutants affect all kinds of life, even insects. In highly polluted areas of Serbia, for instance, researchers found pollutants lingering on the bodies of European honeybees. Car exhaust fumes are known to interrupt the scent cues that attract and guide bees towards flowers, while also interfering with their ability to remember scents.
Now, a new study from India has revealed how air pollution may be depleting the health of honey bees in the wild. These effects may not kill bees outright. But like humans repeatedly going to work under heavy stress or while feeling unwell, the researchers found that air pollution made bees sluggish in their daily activities and could be shortening their lives.
Unhealthy bees in Bangalore
India is one of the world’s largest producers of fruit and vegetables. Essential to that success are pollinator species like the giant Asian honey bee. Unlike the managed European honey bee, these bees are predominantly wild and regularly resist humans and other animals eager to harvest their honey. Colonies can migrate over hundreds of kilometres within a year, pollinating a vast range of wild plants and crops across India.
An exposed comb hive hanging from a tree branch.
A giant honey bee hive. Muhammad Mahdi Karim
Researchers studied how this species was faring in the southern Indian city of Bangalore, where air pollution records have been reported as some of the highest in the country. The giant Asian honey bees were observed and collected across four sites in the city over three years. Each had different standards of air pollution.
The number of bees visiting flowers was significantly lower in the most polluted sites, possibly reducing how much plants in these places were pollinated. Bees from these sites died faster after capture, and, like houses in a dirty city, were partly covered in traces of arsenic and lead. They had arrhythmic heartbeats, fewer immune cells, and were more likely to show signs of stress.
There are some caveats to consider, though. For one thing, areas with high pollution might have had fewer flowering plants, meaning bees were less likely to seek them out. Also, the researchers looked at the health of honey bees in parts of the city purely based on different levels of measured pollution. They couldn’t isolate the effect of the pollution with absolute certainty – there may have been hidden factors behind the unhealthy bees they uncovered.
But, crucially, it wasn’t just bees that showed this trend. In a follow-up experiment, the study’s authors placed cages of fruit flies at the same sites. Just like the bees, the flies became coated in pollutants, died quicker where there was more air pollution, and showed higher levels of stress.
The threat posed by pesticides is well known. But if air pollution is also affecting the health of a range of pollinating insects, what does that mean for ecosystems and food production?
Fewer cars, more flowers
Our diets would be severely limited if insects like honey bees were impaired in their pollinating duties, but the threat to entire ecosystems of losing these species is even more grave. Crop plants account for less than 0.1% of all flowering species, yet 85% of flowering plants are pollinated by bees and other species.
Giant Asian honey bees like the ones in Bangalore form large, aggressive colonies that can move between urban, farmed and forest habitats. These journeys expose them to very different levels of pollution, but the colonies of most other types of wild bee species are stationary. They nest in soil, undergrowth or masonry, and individuals travel relatively short distances. The levels of pollution they’re regularly exposed to are unlikely to change very much from one day to the next, and it’s these species that are likely to suffer most if they live in towns or cities where local pollution is high.
Thankfully, there are ways to fix this problem. Replacing cars with clean alternatives like electrified public transport would go a long way to reducing pollution. Creating more urban green spaces with lots of trees and other plants would help filter the air too, while providing new food sources and habitat for bees.
Road traffic and rubbish burning make Bangalore one of the most polluted cities in India. EPA-EFE/JAGADEESH NV
In many parts of the UK, roadside verges have been converted to wildflower meadows in recent years. In doing so, are local authorities inadvertently attracting bees to areas we know may be harmful? We don’t know, but it’s worth pondering. From September 2020, Coventry University is launching a citizen science project with the nation’s beekeepers to map the presence of fine particulate matter in the air around colonies, to begin to unravel what’s happening to honey bees in the UK.
Air pollution is likely to be one part of a complex problem. Bees are sensitive to lots of toxins, but how these interact in the wild is fiendishly difficult to disentangle. We know cocktails of pesticides can cause real damage too. But what happens when bees are exposed to these at the same time as air pollution? We don’t yet know, but answers are urgently needed.
August 10, 2020 - Barbara Smith, Associate Professor of Ecology, Coventry University | Mark Brown, Professor of Evolutionary Ecology & Conservation, Royal Holloway
Whether it’s exhaust fumes from cars or smoke from power plants, air pollution is an often invisible threat that is a leading cause of death worldwide. Breathing air laced with heavy metals, nitrogen oxides and fine particulate matter has been linked to a range of chronic health conditions, including lung problems, heart disease, stroke and cancer.
If air pollution can harm human health in so many different ways, it makes sense that other animals suffer from it too. Airborne pollutants affect all kinds of life, even insects. In highly polluted areas of Serbia, for instance, researchers found pollutants lingering on the bodies of European honeybees. Car exhaust fumes are known to interrupt the scent cues that attract and guide bees towards flowers, while also interfering with their ability to remember scents.
Now, a new study from India has revealed how air pollution may be depleting the health of honey bees in the wild. These effects may not kill bees outright. But like humans repeatedly going to work under heavy stress or while feeling unwell, the researchers found that air pollution made bees sluggish in their daily activities and could be shortening their lives.
Unhealthy bees in Bangalore
India is one of the world’s largest producers of fruit and vegetables. Essential to that success are pollinator species like the giant Asian honey bee. Unlike the managed European honey bee, these bees are predominantly wild and regularly resist humans and other animals eager to harvest their honey. Colonies can migrate over hundreds of kilometres within a year, pollinating a vast range of wild plants and crops across India.
An exposed comb hive hanging from a tree branch.
A giant honey bee hive. Muhammad Mahdi Karim
Researchers studied how this species was faring in the southern Indian city of Bangalore, where air pollution records have been reported as some of the highest in the country. The giant Asian honey bees were observed and collected across four sites in the city over three years. Each had different standards of air pollution.
The number of bees visiting flowers was significantly lower in the most polluted sites, possibly reducing how much plants in these places were pollinated. Bees from these sites died faster after capture, and, like houses in a dirty city, were partly covered in traces of arsenic and lead. They had arrhythmic heartbeats, fewer immune cells, and were more likely to show signs of stress.
There are some caveats to consider, though. For one thing, areas with high pollution might have had fewer flowering plants, meaning bees were less likely to seek them out. Also, the researchers looked at the health of honey bees in parts of the city purely based on different levels of measured pollution. They couldn’t isolate the effect of the pollution with absolute certainty – there may have been hidden factors behind the unhealthy bees they uncovered.
But, crucially, it wasn’t just bees that showed this trend. In a follow-up experiment, the study’s authors placed cages of fruit flies at the same sites. Just like the bees, the flies became coated in pollutants, died quicker where there was more air pollution, and showed higher levels of stress.
The threat posed by pesticides is well known. But if air pollution is also affecting the health of a range of pollinating insects, what does that mean for ecosystems and food production?
Fewer cars, more flowers
Our diets would be severely limited if insects like honey bees were impaired in their pollinating duties, but the threat to entire ecosystems of losing these species is even more grave. Crop plants account for less than 0.1% of all flowering species, yet 85% of flowering plants are pollinated by bees and other species.
Giant Asian honey bees like the ones in Bangalore form large, aggressive colonies that can move between urban, farmed and forest habitats. These journeys expose them to very different levels of pollution, but the colonies of most other types of wild bee species are stationary. They nest in soil, undergrowth or masonry, and individuals travel relatively short distances. The levels of pollution they’re regularly exposed to are unlikely to change very much from one day to the next, and it’s these species that are likely to suffer most if they live in towns or cities where local pollution is high.
Thankfully, there are ways to fix this problem. Replacing cars with clean alternatives like electrified public transport would go a long way to reducing pollution. Creating more urban green spaces with lots of trees and other plants would help filter the air too, while providing new food sources and habitat for bees.
Road traffic and rubbish burning make Bangalore one of the most polluted cities in India. EPA-EFE/JAGADEESH NV
In many parts of the UK, roadside verges have been converted to wildflower meadows in recent years. In doing so, are local authorities inadvertently attracting bees to areas we know may be harmful? We don’t know, but it’s worth pondering. From September 2020, Coventry University is launching a citizen science project with the nation’s beekeepers to map the presence of fine particulate matter in the air around colonies, to begin to unravel what’s happening to honey bees in the UK.
Air pollution is likely to be one part of a complex problem. Bees are sensitive to lots of toxins, but how these interact in the wild is fiendishly difficult to disentangle. We know cocktails of pesticides can cause real damage too. But what happens when bees are exposed to these at the same time as air pollution? We don’t yet know, but answers are urgently needed.
"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world." Nelson Mandela
The desire for equality must never exceed the demands of knowledge
The desire for equality must never exceed the demands of knowledge
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Re: Threats to Bees - Studies
BEE WISE
by Ron Swilling
O n the south-western tip of Africa, a bee-conservation group has spent the last seven years discovering the wisdom of our wild honeybees.
I make it to Simon’s Town to meet Ujubee’s Jenny Cullinan and Karin Sternberg just before the Covid-19 lockdown is enforced in South Africa. The national parks are already closed and the wildlife in Cape Point, Ujubee’s primary research area, has the place all to itself and is probably giving a big sigh of relief............
Click on the title to read the whole story and see the gorgeous macro photos...
"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world." Nelson Mandela
The desire for equality must never exceed the demands of knowledge
The desire for equality must never exceed the demands of knowledge
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Re: Threats to Bees - Studies
Honeybees are disappearing overnight: Theft and vandalism of bee boxes and honey are rife throughout SA
By Julia Evans• 22 June 2021
Theft and vandalism of bee boxes and honey is increasing in SA, decreasing an already endangered insect group. (Photo: Julia Evans
Bee theft and hive vandalism threaten beekeepers’ livelihoods and the bee industry’s sustainability, but also have a serious impact on the ecology, food security and the economy. Bee farmers are trying to get bees to be seen as livestock so that authorities will take them seriously.
On the morning of 27 May 2021, beekeeper Craig Campbell visited his apiary site (an area ideal for bees to forage), to find that overnight, 235 of his bee boxes had been destroyed. The thieves cut out the honey, destroying the hives, equipment and killing the broods in the process.
The few bee colonies that survived the destructive vandalism lost their home. Campbell told Daily Maverick that the total loss of the equipment, bee colonies and honey amounts to about R700,000.
“How do you recover from that, you know?” says Campbell, who’s been a bee farmer for more than 30 years. “It’s a massive knock to us. I mean, we’re carrying on for now, but to me, the writing’s on the wall, I’m closing up.”
Unfortunately, this is not an isolated occurrence. Campbell knows several beekeepers who’ve experienced the same thing and who have either had to close down or are considering closing.
“We have a massive problem with vandalism and theft,” says Kai Hichert, chairman of the Southerns Beekeeping Association and board member of the South African Bee Industry Organisation (Sabio).
Hichert has experienced several instances where his bee boxes were vandalised or thieves would carry off several boxes. He told Daily Maverick that while there has always been theft and vandalism involving bees, in the last year more and more cases have been reported.
Hichert, who is also the chief beekeeper at Simplie Honey, says, “What they do is come and cut out the honey, straight into buckets. Then they tend to sell the honey on places like Facebook. Often you’ll see a guy in the East Rand selling a couple hundred kilos of honey, but he doesn’t own any hives.”
Mokgadi Mabela, Pretoria beekeeper and owner of Native Nosi, recently shared a video on Twitter showing her vandalised bee boxes at one of her apiary sites.
“The honey, as well as the brood, as well as all the frames inside the actual box — they were gone. It was only a small cluster of bees that were left,” Mabela told Daily Maverick. This is the fourth time Mabela has been the victim of theft or vandalism of her honey or bee boxes.
The ongoing theft and vandalism are further reducing an already endangered insect group.
“I can say that we are experiencing a global bee population decline,” says Mabela. “And that is obviously going to have a direct impact on our food and on our ecosystem.
“We are developing more areas faster than we are planting alternative accommodation for the bees.”
Dr Annalie Melin, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for Statistics in Ecology, Environment and Conservation at the University of Cape Town’s Faculty of Science, published a research paper in 2019 on the taxonomy of the South African bee.
Honey from Kai Hichert’s company, Simplie Honey. ‘Honey is literally a byproduct for us,’ says Craig Campbell. (Photo: Julia Evans)
In the paper, Melin states that bees “appear to be facing numerous threats globally, from habitat destruction, diseases and climate change, and are considered an insect group especially vulnerable to extinction”.
So what are the repercussions of losing bees?
The impact of this doesn’t just affect the beekeeper’s livelihood and the bee industry as a whole (more and more bee farmers are closing up), but has ecological repercussions, threatens food security and has a knock-on effect on the economy.
Threat to biodiversity and ecology
Bees support our biodiversity and ecosystems, pollinating 40%-70% of indigenous flowering plants.
This in turn affects ecology, threatening other animals’ livelihoods.
“The thing that people forget is that bees pollinate flowers and trees,” says Mabela. “And species depend on certain plants that the bees pollinate. Other animals, even if they are not herbivores — like lions, and leopards — depend on trees for shelter, for their cubs and things like that.
“So it’s a whole ecosystem that’s affected by this… by what you’re destroying, what you think is only a hive.”
Threat to food security
Bees are the world’s largest crop pollinators. The Western Cape government reported that more than 50 types of crops rely on bees’ pollination.
Hichert told Daily Maverick that bees are responsible for pollinating 70%-80% of the food we eat. Macadamias, avocados, apples, cherries, sunflowers, kidney beans, pumpkin, watermelon, lychees and mangoes are just some of the crops that rely on pollination.
“So without bees, we won’t have fruits, we won’t have vegetables, we won’t have seeds, we won’t have nuts, basically,” says Mabela.
“Honeybees are the biggest food pollinators. We do have other pollinators, but bees are the biggest food pollinators that we have on the planet.”
Kai Hichert and his team of beekeepers harvest honey from his hives at a sunflower farm in Gauteng. (Photo: Kai Hichert)
“People are all so focused on the honey,” says Campbell, “but if this type of theft and vandalism doesn’t stop, the whole food security will go, because we need pollination on crops. Honey is literally a by-product for us.
“The basic thing is, if nothing happens, food security or the country is buggered.”
Even without vandalism and theft, there is a massive shortfall of pollination requirements in SA. For example, Hichert says that there are about 50,000 hectares of macadamias planted in South Africa. You need four hives minimum per hectare to pollinate the nuts, so 200,000 colonies to cover the macadamia industry alone. But there are only 180,000 registered colonies in the country.
Threat to economy
South Africa is the largest producer of macadamia nuts in the world. A decline in bee populations, or in the bee industry, affects the South African economy because without bees, we can’t trade crops.
“These macadamia farmers, they need us every single year to place our beehives there so that we can provide the pollination,” says Mabela. “So I know that with nuts, the bees are vital for the farmers to realise a good yield in terms of crop quality and quantity.”
Campbell says, “Unless government takes us seriously, more and more beekeepers are just going to pick up and say, ‘what’s the point?’ ”
Security a major problem
The main problem bee farmers face when it comes to vandalism and theft is that it is incredibly difficult to secure the areas where bee boxes are placed. Boxes are either located on apiary sites, which are open spaces that have forage (like blue gums) which bees can feed off, or they are placed on crop farms for pollination.
Campbell says that beekeeping on a large scale means you can’t keep bees in urban areas — they have to be in rural areas. “We need to put the bees where there’s forage, to keep them feeding in the area.”
Hichert had just moved his hives from sunflower farms after the pollination season ended. “We were totally unprotected… The farms are miles and miles of sunflowers and we try to hide our hives as much as possible, but the guys find out about them.”
“I’ll give you an idea,” says Hichert. “I had 60 hives in one spot on the farm hiding among the sunflowers, hoping the guys wouldn’t see them. Sixty hives, R3,000 a super [part of the box where they harvest the honey] — that’s R180,000 standing in the middle of nowhere.”
Mabela says, “It’s very difficult to get a safe spot for your bees that also has food. So I think it’s one of the challenges that make us vulnerable as beekeepers.”
Like many beekeepers, Mabela doesn’t have her own farm — she relies on other people’s crop farms or forage apiaries to host the bee boxes, which are often unprotected.
However, Mabela says that even on farms that have security, theft and vandalism still occur.
A bee collects nectar and pollen from a flower, at an apiary site. Bees pollinate fauna and flora and food crops. Destroying hives affects biodiversity and food security. (Photo: Julia Evans)
“We’ve had our hives on very sophisticated farms where there are actually security fences. People find ways to break those fences and make their way into the farm to specifically kill the beehives.
“They don’t go there to steal whatever it is that we’re pollinating… they’re not stealing the fruit or the avos or the macadamia nuts, but the bees or honey.”
Additionally, beekeepers have to pull their hives off crop farms and on to an apiary site when the farmers spray pesticides on their crops.
“Where do you take your bees to safe forage sites where nothing will happen to them?” Hichert asks.
“You need to be able to put your bees down where they’re getting enough food, and hopefully safe from being vandalised.”
Beekeepers are in desperate need of people to offer potential apiary sites.
“I think more people who have land they are not fully using need to open their doors to assist beekeepers,” says Mabela.
“You can just get into a gentlemen’s agreement with them, giving them some honey from whatever the bees make there. But more than anything, people need to realise that all of us need bees.”
Possible solutions
Bees are not regarded as livestock, which means the authorities don’t take it seriously when beekeepers report that their bees or hives have been stolen or destroyed. One solution would be to change the law so that these occurrences are seen as livestock theft, which has serious repercussions.
“We’ve got to change the law,” says Hichert, “If I steal your cow, I’m going to jail for 10 years. If you steal my bees, you get out of it. That’s the problem.”
“Nobody cares about an insect… especially not the criminals,” says Campbell, “but if they [government] see it as livestock… at least maybe the police will take it more seriously.”
One of Kai Hichert’s bee boxes at a Blue Gum apiary. His registration number is on the side. Beekeepers have to register their colonies with the Department of Environment, Forestry and Fisheries. (Photo: Julia Evans)
The problem Hichert and other beekeepers have had in the past is that when they do manage to take a case to court, the defence argues that beekeepers can’t prove they own the bees.
“All our boxes are marked with a registration number on the side. Thieves will take an angle grinder and remove that,” says Hichert.
Additionally, as beekeepers catch the bees wild with a catch box, lawyers claim they don’t own them.
Food for thought
Bee populations are in decline. Bee theft is on the rise. This has serious consequences.
But perhaps one has to consider that the recent spike could be attributed to a lack of knowledge about the consequences for food security and the economy. Also, the current tough economic times are causing people to become more desperate.
“The lockdown has put a lot of people out of work. So no matter how much education you do, no matter how secure your beehives are, somebody who is operating from a hungry stomach is not going to care about all those things. They need a plan, now.
“We’ve got a lot of desperate people… this doesn’t justify things because at no point are you justified to steal or do harm to somebody else’s belongings. But it’s not a factor we can ignore,” says Mabela.
What’s become clear in recent times is that social justice and environmental justice are intertwined. If one is affected, the other will suffer. If bee populations decline, food security is at risk. If unemployment is alleviated, the thefts and vandalism might decrease. DM
By Julia Evans• 22 June 2021
Theft and vandalism of bee boxes and honey is increasing in SA, decreasing an already endangered insect group. (Photo: Julia Evans
Bee theft and hive vandalism threaten beekeepers’ livelihoods and the bee industry’s sustainability, but also have a serious impact on the ecology, food security and the economy. Bee farmers are trying to get bees to be seen as livestock so that authorities will take them seriously.
On the morning of 27 May 2021, beekeeper Craig Campbell visited his apiary site (an area ideal for bees to forage), to find that overnight, 235 of his bee boxes had been destroyed. The thieves cut out the honey, destroying the hives, equipment and killing the broods in the process.
The few bee colonies that survived the destructive vandalism lost their home. Campbell told Daily Maverick that the total loss of the equipment, bee colonies and honey amounts to about R700,000.
“How do you recover from that, you know?” says Campbell, who’s been a bee farmer for more than 30 years. “It’s a massive knock to us. I mean, we’re carrying on for now, but to me, the writing’s on the wall, I’m closing up.”
Unfortunately, this is not an isolated occurrence. Campbell knows several beekeepers who’ve experienced the same thing and who have either had to close down or are considering closing.
“We have a massive problem with vandalism and theft,” says Kai Hichert, chairman of the Southerns Beekeeping Association and board member of the South African Bee Industry Organisation (Sabio).
Hichert has experienced several instances where his bee boxes were vandalised or thieves would carry off several boxes. He told Daily Maverick that while there has always been theft and vandalism involving bees, in the last year more and more cases have been reported.
Hichert, who is also the chief beekeeper at Simplie Honey, says, “What they do is come and cut out the honey, straight into buckets. Then they tend to sell the honey on places like Facebook. Often you’ll see a guy in the East Rand selling a couple hundred kilos of honey, but he doesn’t own any hives.”
Mokgadi Mabela, Pretoria beekeeper and owner of Native Nosi, recently shared a video on Twitter showing her vandalised bee boxes at one of her apiary sites.
“The honey, as well as the brood, as well as all the frames inside the actual box — they were gone. It was only a small cluster of bees that were left,” Mabela told Daily Maverick. This is the fourth time Mabela has been the victim of theft or vandalism of her honey or bee boxes.
The ongoing theft and vandalism are further reducing an already endangered insect group.
“I can say that we are experiencing a global bee population decline,” says Mabela. “And that is obviously going to have a direct impact on our food and on our ecosystem.
“We are developing more areas faster than we are planting alternative accommodation for the bees.”
Dr Annalie Melin, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for Statistics in Ecology, Environment and Conservation at the University of Cape Town’s Faculty of Science, published a research paper in 2019 on the taxonomy of the South African bee.
Honey from Kai Hichert’s company, Simplie Honey. ‘Honey is literally a byproduct for us,’ says Craig Campbell. (Photo: Julia Evans)
In the paper, Melin states that bees “appear to be facing numerous threats globally, from habitat destruction, diseases and climate change, and are considered an insect group especially vulnerable to extinction”.
So what are the repercussions of losing bees?
The impact of this doesn’t just affect the beekeeper’s livelihood and the bee industry as a whole (more and more bee farmers are closing up), but has ecological repercussions, threatens food security and has a knock-on effect on the economy.
Threat to biodiversity and ecology
Bees support our biodiversity and ecosystems, pollinating 40%-70% of indigenous flowering plants.
This in turn affects ecology, threatening other animals’ livelihoods.
“The thing that people forget is that bees pollinate flowers and trees,” says Mabela. “And species depend on certain plants that the bees pollinate. Other animals, even if they are not herbivores — like lions, and leopards — depend on trees for shelter, for their cubs and things like that.
“So it’s a whole ecosystem that’s affected by this… by what you’re destroying, what you think is only a hive.”
Threat to food security
Bees are the world’s largest crop pollinators. The Western Cape government reported that more than 50 types of crops rely on bees’ pollination.
Hichert told Daily Maverick that bees are responsible for pollinating 70%-80% of the food we eat. Macadamias, avocados, apples, cherries, sunflowers, kidney beans, pumpkin, watermelon, lychees and mangoes are just some of the crops that rely on pollination.
“So without bees, we won’t have fruits, we won’t have vegetables, we won’t have seeds, we won’t have nuts, basically,” says Mabela.
“Honeybees are the biggest food pollinators. We do have other pollinators, but bees are the biggest food pollinators that we have on the planet.”
Kai Hichert and his team of beekeepers harvest honey from his hives at a sunflower farm in Gauteng. (Photo: Kai Hichert)
“People are all so focused on the honey,” says Campbell, “but if this type of theft and vandalism doesn’t stop, the whole food security will go, because we need pollination on crops. Honey is literally a by-product for us.
“The basic thing is, if nothing happens, food security or the country is buggered.”
Even without vandalism and theft, there is a massive shortfall of pollination requirements in SA. For example, Hichert says that there are about 50,000 hectares of macadamias planted in South Africa. You need four hives minimum per hectare to pollinate the nuts, so 200,000 colonies to cover the macadamia industry alone. But there are only 180,000 registered colonies in the country.
Threat to economy
South Africa is the largest producer of macadamia nuts in the world. A decline in bee populations, or in the bee industry, affects the South African economy because without bees, we can’t trade crops.
“These macadamia farmers, they need us every single year to place our beehives there so that we can provide the pollination,” says Mabela. “So I know that with nuts, the bees are vital for the farmers to realise a good yield in terms of crop quality and quantity.”
Campbell says, “Unless government takes us seriously, more and more beekeepers are just going to pick up and say, ‘what’s the point?’ ”
Security a major problem
The main problem bee farmers face when it comes to vandalism and theft is that it is incredibly difficult to secure the areas where bee boxes are placed. Boxes are either located on apiary sites, which are open spaces that have forage (like blue gums) which bees can feed off, or they are placed on crop farms for pollination.
Campbell says that beekeeping on a large scale means you can’t keep bees in urban areas — they have to be in rural areas. “We need to put the bees where there’s forage, to keep them feeding in the area.”
Hichert had just moved his hives from sunflower farms after the pollination season ended. “We were totally unprotected… The farms are miles and miles of sunflowers and we try to hide our hives as much as possible, but the guys find out about them.”
“I’ll give you an idea,” says Hichert. “I had 60 hives in one spot on the farm hiding among the sunflowers, hoping the guys wouldn’t see them. Sixty hives, R3,000 a super [part of the box where they harvest the honey] — that’s R180,000 standing in the middle of nowhere.”
Mabela says, “It’s very difficult to get a safe spot for your bees that also has food. So I think it’s one of the challenges that make us vulnerable as beekeepers.”
Like many beekeepers, Mabela doesn’t have her own farm — she relies on other people’s crop farms or forage apiaries to host the bee boxes, which are often unprotected.
However, Mabela says that even on farms that have security, theft and vandalism still occur.
A bee collects nectar and pollen from a flower, at an apiary site. Bees pollinate fauna and flora and food crops. Destroying hives affects biodiversity and food security. (Photo: Julia Evans)
“We’ve had our hives on very sophisticated farms where there are actually security fences. People find ways to break those fences and make their way into the farm to specifically kill the beehives.
“They don’t go there to steal whatever it is that we’re pollinating… they’re not stealing the fruit or the avos or the macadamia nuts, but the bees or honey.”
Additionally, beekeepers have to pull their hives off crop farms and on to an apiary site when the farmers spray pesticides on their crops.
“Where do you take your bees to safe forage sites where nothing will happen to them?” Hichert asks.
“You need to be able to put your bees down where they’re getting enough food, and hopefully safe from being vandalised.”
Beekeepers are in desperate need of people to offer potential apiary sites.
“I think more people who have land they are not fully using need to open their doors to assist beekeepers,” says Mabela.
“You can just get into a gentlemen’s agreement with them, giving them some honey from whatever the bees make there. But more than anything, people need to realise that all of us need bees.”
Possible solutions
Bees are not regarded as livestock, which means the authorities don’t take it seriously when beekeepers report that their bees or hives have been stolen or destroyed. One solution would be to change the law so that these occurrences are seen as livestock theft, which has serious repercussions.
“We’ve got to change the law,” says Hichert, “If I steal your cow, I’m going to jail for 10 years. If you steal my bees, you get out of it. That’s the problem.”
“Nobody cares about an insect… especially not the criminals,” says Campbell, “but if they [government] see it as livestock… at least maybe the police will take it more seriously.”
One of Kai Hichert’s bee boxes at a Blue Gum apiary. His registration number is on the side. Beekeepers have to register their colonies with the Department of Environment, Forestry and Fisheries. (Photo: Julia Evans)
The problem Hichert and other beekeepers have had in the past is that when they do manage to take a case to court, the defence argues that beekeepers can’t prove they own the bees.
“All our boxes are marked with a registration number on the side. Thieves will take an angle grinder and remove that,” says Hichert.
Additionally, as beekeepers catch the bees wild with a catch box, lawyers claim they don’t own them.
Food for thought
Bee populations are in decline. Bee theft is on the rise. This has serious consequences.
But perhaps one has to consider that the recent spike could be attributed to a lack of knowledge about the consequences for food security and the economy. Also, the current tough economic times are causing people to become more desperate.
“The lockdown has put a lot of people out of work. So no matter how much education you do, no matter how secure your beehives are, somebody who is operating from a hungry stomach is not going to care about all those things. They need a plan, now.
“We’ve got a lot of desperate people… this doesn’t justify things because at no point are you justified to steal or do harm to somebody else’s belongings. But it’s not a factor we can ignore,” says Mabela.
What’s become clear in recent times is that social justice and environmental justice are intertwined. If one is affected, the other will suffer. If bee populations decline, food security is at risk. If unemployment is alleviated, the thefts and vandalism might decrease. DM
"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world." Nelson Mandela
The desire for equality must never exceed the demands of knowledge
The desire for equality must never exceed the demands of knowledge
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Lisbeth
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Re: Threats to Bees - Studies
"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world." Nelson Mandela
The desire for equality must never exceed the demands of knowledge
The desire for equality must never exceed the demands of knowledge
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Richprins
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Re: Threats to Bees - Studies
We have the same locust mentality down here!
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Lisbeth
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Re: Threats to Bees - Studies
What honeybees in South Africa need from people: Better-managed forage resources
By Tlou Masehla• 7 September 2021
(Photo: Unsplash / Subhasish Dutta)
Honeybee forage resources are under increasing pressure in South Africa. This directly affects beekeeper livelihoods and pollination services.
Tlou Masehela, scientist, South African National Biodiversity Institute.
First published in The Conversation.
Honeybees are often in the news. Research constantly updates what’s known about their importance to the environment, biodiversity, economies and food security.
In South Africa, managed honeybees support livelihoods in various ways, such as honey production. In the last decade or so, pollination services to agriculture have also become a huge revenue area for beekeepers. It is estimated that honeybees pollinate over 50 crops in South Africa.
In just one province, the Western Cape, about 91,000 hives are currently required to serve the deciduous fruit industry. And this number is expected to increase to at least 100,000 in the next five years. In February 2020, the government’s beekeeper registration database recorded 77,088 managed hives for the province — more than 45% of the country’s total of 161,610. If these numbers are accurate, then there is already a shortfall of hives in the Western Cape.
In a book chapter I co-authored with my colleagues, we outlined the importance of the two honeybee subspecies, Apis mellifera capensis (Cape honeybee) and Apis mellifera scutellate (African honeybee). We explored their importance for pollinating agricultural crops and indigenous plants, helping to maintain various ecosystem functions. These honeybees require a diverse quality and quantity of good forage resources to survive and produce. But those resources are under threat and need to be better managed.
The bee forage challenge
Studies conducted by the South African National Biodiversity Institute, between 2011 and 2014, found that beekeepers manage a variety of forage resources important to honeybees. Some are indigenous; others are exotic — such as forestry plantations, agricultural crops, garden plants and tree lanes in cities.
These various resources all have preferred and complementary uses and are all important. They may be best for honey flow, colony build-up, or swarm trapping, or be available at different flowering times and accessible to different users.
Therefore, an overarching strategy for managing forage resources has to consider indigenous and exotic plants, as well as use, availability and accessibility.
We note with great concern that honeybee forage resources are under increasing pressure in South Africa. Threats to forage availability and accessibility directly affect beekeeper livelihoods and pollination services. They put both wild and managed honeybee populations at risk.
Here are some of the threats:
Taking into account the projected pollination demands for years to come, there’s an urgent need to plan for expansion and provision of forage resources for managed honeybees in South Africa.
In the Western Cape, a strategy for the industry was developed in 2017 with the assistance of the Western Cape Department of Agriculture. However, the plans are yet to take off, through lack of funding and, to some degree, political will to commit in the areas of demand. A public-private partnership is critical at this stage to plant and provide enough forage. The government needs to take leadership and responsibility, realising the importance of the beekeeping industry, and the services it provides to the agricultural sector — food production.
In our chapter, we put forward for consideration various management recommendations. A few are ready for action, while others still need to be developed further.
Raising awareness and building understanding
The public has to realise why the current situation needs to change. This process must be informed by facts and focus on the right target audience. It must also be monitored to ensure effectiveness.
Practices that protect existing forage resources
The goal is a viable and sustainable honeybee population. This must be a concerted effort among policymakers, agriculture and environmental sectors, researchers and the public at large.
Practices that promote planting of honeybee forage
The initiatives and practices around planting bee forage need to happen on both public land and private land. There are successful campaigns to draw from internationally.
The pollination demands in agriculture are expected to keep rising. This means that more land and forage is required to feed the bees naturally. Hive theft and vandalism have increased tremendously in most areas across the country as hives are in demand for pollination. This adds to security costs for beekeepers. Beekeepers have started passing the cost of feeding and hive security to growers. They will no doubt pass these costs on to consumers.
Unlike some countries, South Africa is in no position to import any other species of bees for crop pollination. It’s up to us to keep them alive for the continuous provision of pollination services. DM/OBP
By Tlou Masehla• 7 September 2021
(Photo: Unsplash / Subhasish Dutta)
Honeybee forage resources are under increasing pressure in South Africa. This directly affects beekeeper livelihoods and pollination services.
Tlou Masehela, scientist, South African National Biodiversity Institute.
First published in The Conversation.
Honeybees are often in the news. Research constantly updates what’s known about their importance to the environment, biodiversity, economies and food security.
In South Africa, managed honeybees support livelihoods in various ways, such as honey production. In the last decade or so, pollination services to agriculture have also become a huge revenue area for beekeepers. It is estimated that honeybees pollinate over 50 crops in South Africa.
In just one province, the Western Cape, about 91,000 hives are currently required to serve the deciduous fruit industry. And this number is expected to increase to at least 100,000 in the next five years. In February 2020, the government’s beekeeper registration database recorded 77,088 managed hives for the province — more than 45% of the country’s total of 161,610. If these numbers are accurate, then there is already a shortfall of hives in the Western Cape.
In a book chapter I co-authored with my colleagues, we outlined the importance of the two honeybee subspecies, Apis mellifera capensis (Cape honeybee) and Apis mellifera scutellate (African honeybee). We explored their importance for pollinating agricultural crops and indigenous plants, helping to maintain various ecosystem functions. These honeybees require a diverse quality and quantity of good forage resources to survive and produce. But those resources are under threat and need to be better managed.
The bee forage challenge
Studies conducted by the South African National Biodiversity Institute, between 2011 and 2014, found that beekeepers manage a variety of forage resources important to honeybees. Some are indigenous; others are exotic — such as forestry plantations, agricultural crops, garden plants and tree lanes in cities.
These various resources all have preferred and complementary uses and are all important. They may be best for honey flow, colony build-up, or swarm trapping, or be available at different flowering times and accessible to different users.
Therefore, an overarching strategy for managing forage resources has to consider indigenous and exotic plants, as well as use, availability and accessibility.
We note with great concern that honeybee forage resources are under increasing pressure in South Africa. Threats to forage availability and accessibility directly affect beekeeper livelihoods and pollination services. They put both wild and managed honeybee populations at risk.
Here are some of the threats:
- Changes in land use and landscape management. Changes and competing priorities resulting from land use and its management, including agricultural practices, have been shown to threaten bee populations through habitat loss;
- Removal of invasive alien plant species that are important forage resources. Although invasive alien plants have a negative impact on biodiversity and ecosystem functions, some of these plants also serve as important forage for honeybees. Managing them must take trade-offs into account;
- Accessibility to important and secure forage resources. Most beekeepers do not own the land where their hives are kept or where they can access forage. Permission to access good forage sites remains a challenge for beekeepers. This puts pressure on the foraging area and encourages overstocking, which may hinder hive productivity, increase competition with other pollinators and promote the transmission of diseases, pests and pathogens;
- Crop chemical regimes that affect the viability of crops. Various crops serve as important forage for bees, especially at times when natural vegetation might be out of flower. However, these crops are often subjected to heavy pesticide application to manage pests, and this can kill bees. Beekeepers are then reluctant to place hives in agricultural areas; and
- Impacts of climate change. Extreme events associated with climate change, such as high frequency of fires and droughts, has an impact on forage and habitat for bees. Adverse changes in temperature also affect flowering, creating a mismatch in seasonal timing of when flowers produce adequate nectar and pollen for bees.
Taking into account the projected pollination demands for years to come, there’s an urgent need to plan for expansion and provision of forage resources for managed honeybees in South Africa.
In the Western Cape, a strategy for the industry was developed in 2017 with the assistance of the Western Cape Department of Agriculture. However, the plans are yet to take off, through lack of funding and, to some degree, political will to commit in the areas of demand. A public-private partnership is critical at this stage to plant and provide enough forage. The government needs to take leadership and responsibility, realising the importance of the beekeeping industry, and the services it provides to the agricultural sector — food production.
In our chapter, we put forward for consideration various management recommendations. A few are ready for action, while others still need to be developed further.
Raising awareness and building understanding
The public has to realise why the current situation needs to change. This process must be informed by facts and focus on the right target audience. It must also be monitored to ensure effectiveness.
Practices that protect existing forage resources
The goal is a viable and sustainable honeybee population. This must be a concerted effort among policymakers, agriculture and environmental sectors, researchers and the public at large.
Practices that promote planting of honeybee forage
The initiatives and practices around planting bee forage need to happen on both public land and private land. There are successful campaigns to draw from internationally.
The pollination demands in agriculture are expected to keep rising. This means that more land and forage is required to feed the bees naturally. Hive theft and vandalism have increased tremendously in most areas across the country as hives are in demand for pollination. This adds to security costs for beekeepers. Beekeepers have started passing the cost of feeding and hive security to growers. They will no doubt pass these costs on to consumers.
Unlike some countries, South Africa is in no position to import any other species of bees for crop pollination. It’s up to us to keep them alive for the continuous provision of pollination services. DM/OBP
"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world." Nelson Mandela
The desire for equality must never exceed the demands of knowledge
The desire for equality must never exceed the demands of knowledge
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Richprins
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Re: Threats to Bees - Studies
I actually did a newspaper story on bees and visited a farmer who was quite aware, as many are. They are planting lavender on unused bits of land, which provides dry-season forage! 
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Lisbeth
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Re: Threats to Bees - Studies
That's good
Too many people do not realize how important the bees are for our survival.
Too many people do not realize how important the bees are for our survival.
"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world." Nelson Mandela
The desire for equality must never exceed the demands of knowledge
The desire for equality must never exceed the demands of knowledge
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Lisbeth
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Re: Threats to Bees - Studies
Beehive removal services: Scammers are swarming in Western Cape
Honeybee Heroes beekeepers in full safety gear tending to hives. Photo: Supplied by GroundUp)
By SarahBelle Selig | 21 Feb 2022
An increase in bee activity in suburban areas has led to a spike in illegitimate ‘services’ that cruelly destroy colonies while undercutting apiarists and associated professionals who remove hives humanely.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Good winter rains and hot summer weather have made the Western Cape a prime breeding ground for honeybees this season, and as a result, bee removal service providers have been inundated with calls for help. But scammers looking for a quick buck and illegitimate bee removers are now also thriving with the newfound demand, undercutting prices by killing colonies rather than removing them.
Ernst Mulder has been a bee remover in Cape Town’s southern suburbs for almost ten years. While demand for his services typically increases in the spring and summer months when an abundance of blooming forage and temperate weather conditions encourage swarming, Mulder says he’s seen an unprecedented increase in the number of bee removal requests over the past year. In December, he was removing up to nine swarms a week, double his heaviest workload in normal years.
Although the number of beekeepers in the region has increased in the past five years, Mulder also believes that heavy rains in recent years have meant an increase in blooms and a lot more food available. Bee numbers have risen.
Lohan Geel, owner of Beelicious Honey bee removal services, has also noted a “huge increase” in the number of calls he received in the last few months. Geel was busy through the winter this year, a rare occurrence for such a typically seasonal industry.
Geel believes the pandemic has played a role. “There were a lot more people looking after their gardens, so there’s more food for the bees in home gardens. With good food, colony birth rates increase, the space inside their hive gets too small, and the colony splits and the new colony swarms to a new location.”
Chris Oosthuizen, founder and director of Honeybee Heroes, a honeybee education non-profit in Stanford Valley, sees a much larger shift in the way we cohabit with the creatures around us.
“As a result of humans taking away so much of their habitat — whether its levelling tree stumps or removing rock formations where they might make their homes, or the many other ways we develop our properties — the bees are forced to migrate to where the food is and where they can live.”
“While bees may have more opportunities for where they can live on farms — because farmers don’t remove as many natural formations from their land — the way we’ve created mono-cropping systems means that the bees don’t have enough food there except for a few weeks a year when that crop is blooming.”
Oosthuizen says we’re going to see more and more bee migration to urban areas in the years to come.
Beelicious team members remove a hive from a barrel. (Photo: Lohan Geel)
Beware of scammers
With demand skyrocketing for bee removal services, scammers have stepped in. These “bee removal” services charge a reduced fee, then arrive with a can of poison and kill the bees inside the hive.
With legitimate providers’ schedules getting booked up, it becomes an issue of numbers, says Geel. “I can do two to three removals a day, maximum, whereas a guy with a can of Doom can do one every half an hour.”
“You give a quote. They go to the other guy, and that person will undercut your quote. It’s a vicious cycle, and a lot of us have had to cut our prices significantly to keep up,” says Geel. “Removing a hive safely is a labour-intensive process, which is why it’s costly.
“A proper removal is not just removing them and sticking them in a box somewhere. You have to feed those bees, because you’re taking them out of their natural environment. You have to make them strong again so that they can survive where you’re going to place them. There are costs on the beekeeper’s side to help them live a better life,” he says.
Most legitimate bee removers will have temporary apiaries where they will take the bees, care for them until they’re laying brood again. Then they’ll either move them to a permanent apiary site where they produce honey or sell them to other beekeepers looking to increase their hive count. But fraudulent bee removal service providers don’t have these apiary sites.
“Even some of these guys that take them out alive actually dump them on the ground once they leave your property, because they don’t have a place to take the bees afterwards,” explains Lohan.
“I’ve had quite a few calls when I show up and it was someone that removed the bees, got paid, took the honey and dumped the baby bees — the brood and the larvae — with the rest of the bees on the side of the road. It’s awful.”
He has teamed up with beekeeper John Thornton of Garden Route Honey Producers to offer bee removal courses in Gqeberha and the Western Cape.
The Western Cape Bee Association offers field days to train registered beekeepers in bee removal techniques.
“There is no such thing as a colony that cannot be removed alive,” says Mike Allsopp, a longtime beekeeper, bee remover and honeybee researcher. “You can get every colony out alive if you’re prepared to put in the amount of time and money it takes.”
He has removed colonies that took almost six weeks to get out of the hive.
But there are times when it’s necessary to terminate a hive, Allsopp says, if it’s a dangerous situation and people are getting hurt. He recently was forced to terminate a hive that was causing havoc at a pre-primary school, having placed three children in hospital and stinging multiple others. “In that case, it was the right thing to do,” he explains.
There is no legislation in South Africa making it illegal to kill bees. “Someone who has never looked at bees is just as entitled to do a bee removal as anyone else,” says Allsopp. “You can use a bulldozer or a jackhammer or Doom or do anything you like. There are no legal or illegal bee removal people. It doesn’t require a license or certification or anything.”
Allsopp has been advocating for 20 years for licenses, writing legislation in the hope that government would incorporate it into law, and lobbying insurance companies to include infrequent bee removals into their housing packages. But so far those efforts haven’t succeeded because there’s just not enough uproar about the issue.
The regulation of bee removals is complicated because a financial burden would be placed on the homeowner, not just the beekeeper. “Should homeowners be allowed to terminate a bee colony for R300, or should they be forced to pay R2,000 or more to remove it?” says Allsopp. If that financial burden came into effect, homeowners wouldn’t phone anyone but try to poison or remove the hive themselves. This might lead to fewer bees getting saved, because someone who may have been interested in getting a quote for a proper removal will skip that step entirely.
“A person needs to have the necessary insurance, training and equipment before they should be allowed to work with dangerous animals, or they’re going to get themselves and other people hurt,” says Allsopp.
Poisoned bees don’t always die immediately, and often leave the hive and die outside. Other animals like birds may eat the bees and get poisoned themselves.
It’s also ineffective. Even if the colony dies, the honey and comb inside the hive remains, which is a signal to swarming bees of a safe habitat to make their home. That means it’s likely another swarm of bees will soon take the place of the last one, and then the cycle continues: more bees to kill, more bills to pay.
Bees are friends, not foes
Having a bee colony on your property or nearby can be a blessing. “There are many people who happily share their properties with a bee colony,” says Oosthuizen of Honeybee Heroes. You shouldn’t remove them unless they are problematic.
The only time a removal should be necessary, he says, is if the bees move into a location where you walk frequently in their flight path or disturb their hive with movement or sound, which could trigger defensive action from them.
“The bees are just doing their day-to-day thing, just like all of us. If you leave them alone, they’ll do the same to you. But if you get too close, keep in mind that you’re a burglar and they’re going to defend their home, just like any of us would.
“All honeybee colonies have their own personality, and some are docile while others are a bit more energetic. But in general, South African honeybees are just like the rest of us South Africans — hardworking, resilient, and a little feisty,” Chris says with a smile.
Ernst Mulder removing a hive from a wall. (Photo: Supplied by GroundUp)
Have bees? Here’s what to do
If you have a honeybee colony in an unwanted location on your property, the most important thing to do is to call a qualified removal provider. Do not try to remove the hive yourself as it poses a safety risk. Don’t forget to notify your neighbours if you’re scheduled for a bee removal, so that they can ensure their families and pets are indoors for the duration of the process.
How to identify a legitimate bee remover
Honeybee Heroes beekeepers in full safety gear tending to hives. Photo: Supplied by GroundUp)
By SarahBelle Selig | 21 Feb 2022
An increase in bee activity in suburban areas has led to a spike in illegitimate ‘services’ that cruelly destroy colonies while undercutting apiarists and associated professionals who remove hives humanely.
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Good winter rains and hot summer weather have made the Western Cape a prime breeding ground for honeybees this season, and as a result, bee removal service providers have been inundated with calls for help. But scammers looking for a quick buck and illegitimate bee removers are now also thriving with the newfound demand, undercutting prices by killing colonies rather than removing them.
Ernst Mulder has been a bee remover in Cape Town’s southern suburbs for almost ten years. While demand for his services typically increases in the spring and summer months when an abundance of blooming forage and temperate weather conditions encourage swarming, Mulder says he’s seen an unprecedented increase in the number of bee removal requests over the past year. In December, he was removing up to nine swarms a week, double his heaviest workload in normal years.
Although the number of beekeepers in the region has increased in the past five years, Mulder also believes that heavy rains in recent years have meant an increase in blooms and a lot more food available. Bee numbers have risen.
Lohan Geel, owner of Beelicious Honey bee removal services, has also noted a “huge increase” in the number of calls he received in the last few months. Geel was busy through the winter this year, a rare occurrence for such a typically seasonal industry.
Geel believes the pandemic has played a role. “There were a lot more people looking after their gardens, so there’s more food for the bees in home gardens. With good food, colony birth rates increase, the space inside their hive gets too small, and the colony splits and the new colony swarms to a new location.”
Chris Oosthuizen, founder and director of Honeybee Heroes, a honeybee education non-profit in Stanford Valley, sees a much larger shift in the way we cohabit with the creatures around us.
“As a result of humans taking away so much of their habitat — whether its levelling tree stumps or removing rock formations where they might make their homes, or the many other ways we develop our properties — the bees are forced to migrate to where the food is and where they can live.”
“While bees may have more opportunities for where they can live on farms — because farmers don’t remove as many natural formations from their land — the way we’ve created mono-cropping systems means that the bees don’t have enough food there except for a few weeks a year when that crop is blooming.”
Oosthuizen says we’re going to see more and more bee migration to urban areas in the years to come.
Beelicious team members remove a hive from a barrel. (Photo: Lohan Geel)
Beware of scammers
With demand skyrocketing for bee removal services, scammers have stepped in. These “bee removal” services charge a reduced fee, then arrive with a can of poison and kill the bees inside the hive.
With legitimate providers’ schedules getting booked up, it becomes an issue of numbers, says Geel. “I can do two to three removals a day, maximum, whereas a guy with a can of Doom can do one every half an hour.”
“You give a quote. They go to the other guy, and that person will undercut your quote. It’s a vicious cycle, and a lot of us have had to cut our prices significantly to keep up,” says Geel. “Removing a hive safely is a labour-intensive process, which is why it’s costly.
“A proper removal is not just removing them and sticking them in a box somewhere. You have to feed those bees, because you’re taking them out of their natural environment. You have to make them strong again so that they can survive where you’re going to place them. There are costs on the beekeeper’s side to help them live a better life,” he says.
Most legitimate bee removers will have temporary apiaries where they will take the bees, care for them until they’re laying brood again. Then they’ll either move them to a permanent apiary site where they produce honey or sell them to other beekeepers looking to increase their hive count. But fraudulent bee removal service providers don’t have these apiary sites.
“Even some of these guys that take them out alive actually dump them on the ground once they leave your property, because they don’t have a place to take the bees afterwards,” explains Lohan.
“I’ve had quite a few calls when I show up and it was someone that removed the bees, got paid, took the honey and dumped the baby bees — the brood and the larvae — with the rest of the bees on the side of the road. It’s awful.”
He has teamed up with beekeeper John Thornton of Garden Route Honey Producers to offer bee removal courses in Gqeberha and the Western Cape.
The Western Cape Bee Association offers field days to train registered beekeepers in bee removal techniques.
“There is no such thing as a colony that cannot be removed alive,” says Mike Allsopp, a longtime beekeeper, bee remover and honeybee researcher. “You can get every colony out alive if you’re prepared to put in the amount of time and money it takes.”
He has removed colonies that took almost six weeks to get out of the hive.
But there are times when it’s necessary to terminate a hive, Allsopp says, if it’s a dangerous situation and people are getting hurt. He recently was forced to terminate a hive that was causing havoc at a pre-primary school, having placed three children in hospital and stinging multiple others. “In that case, it was the right thing to do,” he explains.
There is no legislation in South Africa making it illegal to kill bees. “Someone who has never looked at bees is just as entitled to do a bee removal as anyone else,” says Allsopp. “You can use a bulldozer or a jackhammer or Doom or do anything you like. There are no legal or illegal bee removal people. It doesn’t require a license or certification or anything.”
Allsopp has been advocating for 20 years for licenses, writing legislation in the hope that government would incorporate it into law, and lobbying insurance companies to include infrequent bee removals into their housing packages. But so far those efforts haven’t succeeded because there’s just not enough uproar about the issue.
The regulation of bee removals is complicated because a financial burden would be placed on the homeowner, not just the beekeeper. “Should homeowners be allowed to terminate a bee colony for R300, or should they be forced to pay R2,000 or more to remove it?” says Allsopp. If that financial burden came into effect, homeowners wouldn’t phone anyone but try to poison or remove the hive themselves. This might lead to fewer bees getting saved, because someone who may have been interested in getting a quote for a proper removal will skip that step entirely.
“A person needs to have the necessary insurance, training and equipment before they should be allowed to work with dangerous animals, or they’re going to get themselves and other people hurt,” says Allsopp.
Poisoned bees don’t always die immediately, and often leave the hive and die outside. Other animals like birds may eat the bees and get poisoned themselves.
It’s also ineffective. Even if the colony dies, the honey and comb inside the hive remains, which is a signal to swarming bees of a safe habitat to make their home. That means it’s likely another swarm of bees will soon take the place of the last one, and then the cycle continues: more bees to kill, more bills to pay.
Bees are friends, not foes
Having a bee colony on your property or nearby can be a blessing. “There are many people who happily share their properties with a bee colony,” says Oosthuizen of Honeybee Heroes. You shouldn’t remove them unless they are problematic.
The only time a removal should be necessary, he says, is if the bees move into a location where you walk frequently in their flight path or disturb their hive with movement or sound, which could trigger defensive action from them.
“The bees are just doing their day-to-day thing, just like all of us. If you leave them alone, they’ll do the same to you. But if you get too close, keep in mind that you’re a burglar and they’re going to defend their home, just like any of us would.
“All honeybee colonies have their own personality, and some are docile while others are a bit more energetic. But in general, South African honeybees are just like the rest of us South Africans — hardworking, resilient, and a little feisty,” Chris says with a smile.
Ernst Mulder removing a hive from a wall. (Photo: Supplied by GroundUp)
Have bees? Here’s what to do
If you have a honeybee colony in an unwanted location on your property, the most important thing to do is to call a qualified removal provider. Do not try to remove the hive yourself as it poses a safety risk. Don’t forget to notify your neighbours if you’re scheduled for a bee removal, so that they can ensure their families and pets are indoors for the duration of the process.
How to identify a legitimate bee remover
- Look for a provider who is listed specifically and solely as a humane bee removal service.
- A legitimate bee removal service provider will be registered as a beekeeper with the Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development and have proof of registration.
- Ask them how long the removal will take. If the removal will take less than an hour, it is likely this is an illegitimate service provider who intends to kill the bees and leave the hive intact.
- A legitimate bee removal provider will charge a “call-out” fee of about R300 to visit your property and assess the hive. A legitimate quote will be based on a time estimate, and most qualified providers will charge between R300 and R500 per hour.
- Ask for references, and be sure to follow them up. All legitimate service providers will be able to provide several references.
- Ask their plans for the bees after the removal process is done. You can ask for photo evidence of their apiaries.
- Ask them about their safety measures and ask to see their safety clothing. If they need to access a tall tree or second story to retrieve the colony, ensure that they have completed a Working From Heights certification programme. As a homeowner, you can be held liable if anyone gets injured on your property. DM
"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world." Nelson Mandela
The desire for equality must never exceed the demands of knowledge
The desire for equality must never exceed the demands of knowledge