Bee farmers in Kenya are facing surging demand for honey and bee hive products, as the world’s leading suppliers in America, Asia and Europe grapple with a deadly parasite that is slashing world honey production, but which has yet to affect African hives.
According to research by San Francisco State University scientists, honey bees in many parts of the world are abandoning their hives before being turned into “zombies” by a deadly fly parasite in their stomachs. The researchers report that the parasite lays its eggs inside the abdomen of the honey bee. About a week later, the bee dies, and the parasite’s pupae emerge from the throats and heads of the dead bees.
The parasite is the latest in a series of afflictions for international beekeepers, with honey production in Britain, for instance, having fallen to barely a third of its usual level over the last two years.
According to a report by the British Beekeepers' Association (BBKA), up to a third of Britain's 240,000 hives failed to survive the 2008 winter and spring due to disease and poor weather. This resulted to a drop of more than 50 per cent in honey production across the country. This was then followed by viruses and parasites that have further axed production. But scientists now believe that the problems may have been exacerbated, or even caused, by the new parasite.
The results have been severe. In total, Britons consume around 30,000 tonnes of honey a year – a figure that is rising by about 11 per cent a year – of which between 5,000 and 7,000 tonnes a year was domestically produced. This year the amount produced in the UK is expected to be barely 2,000 tonnes.
The story is similar elsewhere. In 2008, Argentina, the world's largest honey producer, had a 20,000 tonnes honey shortfall, ascribed to drought and pasture being planted with soya beans for biofuels, while drought and hot weather was similarly blamed in Australia and eastern Europe for drastically reduced honey production.
Against this backdrop, scientists have now discovered the parasite, which may have been fuelling many of the production problems. Apocephalus borealis is viewed as the second deadly parasite to hit the world’s bee populations.
In the past few years, Colony Collapse Disorder has wiped out entire colonies of bees. In the US, beekeepers have been experiencing annual losses ranging from 30 to 90 per cent of their commercially managed hives for the past five years. Likewise, tens of thousands of bee colonies have been wiped out in Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
But in the latest research, published in a peer-reviewed science journal, Plos One, the researchers suggest that the parasite may explain what is causing Colony Collapse Disorder.
Biology professor John Hafernik, of San Francisco State University, found that after being invaded by the parasite, the bees abandon their hives in what is literally a flight of the living dead to congregate near lights.
“When we observed the bees for some time — the ones that were alive — we found that they walked around in circles, often with no sense of direction,” said Andrew Core, a San Francisco State graduate student from Hafernik’s lab,who is the lead author on the study.
Bees usually just sit in one place, sometimes curling up before they die, said Core. But the parasitised bees were still alive, unable to stand up on their legs.“They kept stretching them out and then falling over,” he said. “It really painted a picture of something like a zombie.”
Professor Hafernik believes the parasite, called apocephalus borealis, may be changing the bees’ “body clocks.”
The scientists don’t know if the bees with parasites are leaving the hives on their own free will or being thrown by others who realise they have become different. Bees that left the hives at night were more likely to bear the parasite than those who foraged during the day, the researchers found.
However, as the world’s honey producers work to understand the tumbling honey production, the officer in charge at the Kenya National Bee Keeping Station, Grace Asiko, reports that the Ministry of Livestock Development, local researchers are yet to detect the deadly parasite in Kenya, or in Africa.
Previously, China was the world’s leading honey producer in, producing 298,000 tonnes or 21.5 per cent of the world’s honey, followed by Turkey at 82,000 tonnes or 5.9 per cent and Argentina and the US, also at around 80,000 tonnes. Ethiopia is ranked ninth in the top ten producers in the world.
But unless a cure is found soon, the leading producers and exporters of honey and bee products will be faced with a massive crisis that can only be filled by unaffected areas like Africa.
“Our bees are free from such diseases. We are yet to detect that condition locally…occasionally we have had cases where bees diarrhea and die but this has been due to food poisoning, for instance when they forage on fermented food like molasses,” Ms Asiko said.
The region does have to contend with less threatening parasites like, varroa mite, which was detected in the country five years ago. A Varroa mite is a parasitic mite that feed off the bodily fluids of adult, pupal and larval honey bees. The parasite may also carry viruses that are particularly damaging to the bees, like those that lead to deformed wings.
It has likewise also been blamed for Colony Collapse Disorder, a syndrome characterised by worker bees abandoning their hive.
“Varroa mite is not a big threat especially when you have high populations. Generally they are not a problem for a hive that is growing strongly, especially in Africa where we do not experience drastic climatic changes. But in other continents like Europe, when the hive population growth is reduced in preparation for winter or due to poor late summer forage, the mite population growth can overtake that of the bees and can then destroy the hive.
“But we need to alert the farmers to be aware of the parasite because unless it is properly tackled once it has been detected, it can lead to the loss of colony bees,” she noted.
In Kenya, beekeeping has been practiced for many years, but only 20 per cent of the country’s honey production potential (estimated at 100,000 metric tonnes) has yet been tapped.
The economic impact of beekeeping has come in the fore in the recent past especially with the emergence of value addition including honey by-products used in the production of creams, candles and other products.
“The potential of bee farming locally is huge. At the moment it earns the country around Sh4bn, but we have not even scratched the surface,” Ms Asiko said.
“Local farmers need to invest more in the bee farming because it is less tasking and the returns are high. The export market has opened up many opportunities and with value addition, our farmers stand to gain handsomely because we are yet to be affected by the problems currently afflicting others.”
The current government policy on Apiculture is broadly to develop a modern beekeeping industry, but the policy paper on apiculture is still in draft proposal stage.
Beekeeping is currently concentrated in the arid and semi-arid lands (ASALs), which offer an abundance of bee flora. These areas include Baringo, Mwingi and Kitui.
Written by James Momanyi for African Laughter
