Wooden boxes painted blue and white hanging on trees. Keith Wichenje, picks one small box and opens it. “These are stingless bees. They are very friendly because they don’t sting like the honey bees. In fact, I don’t wear any protective gear while harvesting honey or handling them,” he says.
To harvest, Wichenje takes the hives to a closed room and removes the nest. Then he pricks the honey pots with a syringe and presses it inside the pots to suck the produce. The dark room prevents aphids and flies from finding their way into the honey nests. Although there are up to 18 species in Kenya, the farmer keeps about five because he says they are economically viable. They come in clusters of a queen, drones and the workers.
Wichenje started to domesticate the insects as hobby in 2010 when he inherited a few hives from his aging grandfather who kept the stingless bees for medicinal and subsistence use in Kaimosi and Kakamega forests.
Initially, he began by putting the bees that reside in underground cavities in small traditional pots. He later used the smaller and more modern Australian beehives.
Wichenje’s hives have two compartments. “I don’t remove all the honey combs. I leave some, together with the young bees to allow continuity of the population,” he explains.
And the bees have other benefits too, beyond the honey which he sells. Farmers with greenhouses have been knocking at his door seeking the bees to pollinate their crops.
SMALL CREATURES
“Farmers who grow tomatoes come to lease the occupied hives at a cost of Sh500 each for a month. They pollinate tomatoes, watermelons and strawberries in enclosed structures.”
He, however, recommends that the crops are sprayed at night or when the boxes are sealed to protect the bees from coming into contact with the chemicals. “Most people don’t know that you can domesticate these friendly insects and make sweet money from them,” he says, adding that there are other salient features which make the small creatures distinct from the other bees.
“As you can hear, they are silent. They don’t buzz and are relatively small (2 to 8mm). They also never go beyond a radius of 5km when looking for nectar,” says the 31-year-old who holds a degree in Business Management from Moi University.
He adds that their honey has a unique tangy taste compared to that of the other bees, though this attribute depends on the type of tree on whose nectar the bees feed. Dr Kiatoko Nkoba of the Nairobi-based International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE) says stingless bees’ small bodies enable them to suck nectar from small plants. “Some of these plants are herbs with tiny flowers. This is what gives these bees an edge when it comes to the medicinal content of their honey.”
Dr Nkoba adds the stingless bees are less susceptible to diseases, though different species tolerate different climatic conditions.
TREE LOGS
“Some of the species produce up to 20 litres of honey in a year. Even though the yields are lower than those of the common bees, this honey is pricey because of its medicinal value. A litre goes for up to Sh1,000,” says Wichenje. The farmer also makes and sells hives containing bees at Sh7,000 each to aspiring bee keepers.
The bees are too sensitive to smoke or chemically-polluted environment and can fly away, he warns. “Other challenges are flies which lay eggs in the hives. Their larva devours the combs and one may end up losing the whole harvest.”
During dry spells when most flowers have withered, he mixes water and sugar and pours them in crucibles next to the hives. The farmer sources the bees from underground cavities such as dead ant-hills or dead tree logs in forests. From the honey business, he has been able to buy a piece of land and is now paying for his post-graduate diploma in project management.
