A Port Elizabeth beekeeping company is spreading the sweetness with an innovative share strategy.
Based in Kragga Kamma, The Urban Beekeeper partners with landowners around the Eastern Cape to expand the range of the besieged honeybee, protect its key pollination power and bump up the supply of good-quality honey.
Now they’ve turned to social media to up the ante with a message posted this week on The Herald’s Facebook page by the company’s assistant, Bernadette Meistre.
“We have bees looking for a temporary hangout spot on your smallholding or farm within the areas surrounding Port Elizabeth or in the [broader] Eastern Cape.
“Our team will manage the hives and as a show of gratitude from us and the bees you may be rewarded with a taste of honey made on your own land.
“Contact us if you are interested in helping the honeybee to survive.”
Meistre said the taste offered would be a bottle or two depending on the number of hives and their production.
Potential host land needed to be larger than 4,000m² to allow for space between the hives and any homestead. Besides the danger of children and dogs especially being stung, bees were very sensitive to disturbance.
The managing team would also need to be able to access the hives to monitor the honey production process, she said.
“As long as blossoming plants are available in the area for the bees to source pollen, production should begin within two to three months.
“If it doesn’t it may mean the bees are getting hungry and the team may decide to serve up some of their special homemade glucose mixture.”
Bees were under threat from a range of factors driven by human activity including climate change, drought, the destruction of habitat by development and fires, poisons and swimming pools, she said.
“Bees are attracted to pools to drink but they have nowhere to settle, so they drown.
“The answer is to give them their own secure water hole consisting of a saucer of water with stones or marbles in the middle for them to perch on.”
Honeybees pollinate about 90% of wild plants, and about one third of the world’s food crops. A 2015 Nature Communications report found that bees provide a crop pollination service and their value to the human food system was “worth billions globally”.
Meistre said honey production was a magical life lesson.
“Bees work very hard. There’s no instant gratification.
“Beyond that, the message is clear. If we want to eat, we need to save the honeybee.”