Pax Vobiscum

This year brought me the opportunity to once again travel to Africa to share ideas with the beekeeper farmers of Ethiopia. I am thankful for the hospitality of the Ethiopian people and of the support of my family who took care of Peace Bee Farm in my absence. I want to acknowledge some of the others who are working to train beekeepers in Africa. Megan Wannarka is a Peace Corps volunteer working daily with beekeepers in Senegal. Stephen Petersen, Cesar Flores, and Ed Levi are Winrock International volunteers working in diverse regions of Ethiopia. Their expertise helped identify bee colony problems which should lead to healthier bees and increased incomes for the Ethiopian farmers. Daniel Kocha and Gemechis Jaleta are thorough in making training arrangements in Ethiopia, and they are both extremely knowledgeable of the needs and resources of the Ethiopian farmers. Johnnie Frueauff handled my travel arrangements with great care. My driver in Addis Ababa, Kassahun Wegayehu, was always friendly and ready to travel, night or day. My host in Ethiopia’s Amhara Region, Behailu Alemayehu, effectively handled the translation from English to Amharic. Driver Daniel safely negotiated the Blue Nile Gorge. I offer my best wishes to Selamawit Abebe, Demke, Teshome, Abeba, Fantahun, Abisu, Sefinew, Haimanot, Getenet Yitayew, Ketemau Melkamu, Tarekegn Wondimagegn, Melkamu Bezabih, Haile Dembosa, and Firewu. I offer my great thanks to Ato Gebeyehu who graciously took me into his home and shared his beekeeping experience with me. In my beekeeping training assignment I was treated with kindness by the people of Debre Markos, Embulie, Yewbush, Amanuel Town, the Machakel District, and Dembecha, West Gonder.

 In today’s photo, I am dwarfed, literally, by the statue of Nelson Mandela at the gallery of renowned Ethiopian artist Lemma Guya. Nelson Mandela passed away December 5 of this year. On behalf of the Underhill family that operates Peace Bee Farm, I offer to all who observe the great religions, traditions, and philosophies of the world: Peace be with you.

--Richard

Honeycomb Walls

Ethiopia’s Amhara Region is a day’s drive northwest of the capital city of Addis Ababa. Farmers in Amhara, like farmers throughout Sub-Sahara Africa, rely upon honey bees to provide an important part of their farm income. They recognize that the honey bee alone has the ability to harvest pollen and nectar from forests and pastures and produce valuable products of honey and beeswax. The farmers of Amhara asked for assistance. I accepted the USAID-funded assignment of Winrock International to assist the farmers gathering at The Hunger Project-Ethiopia’s Machakel agricultural training facility. The farmers explained that when they harvested honey and beeswax, their product was judged to be of low quality; and their beekeeping added little to their incomes. Despite their best efforts, their honey and beeswax yields seemed to continuously dwindle. Those keeping bees for long periods expressed that beekeeping was easier and yields were greater 15 years earlier. In fact, many of the bee hives that farmers owned sat empty of bees. Many of the farmers blamed herbicides for killing their bees. While some herbicides are used by farmers in an effort to increase production on plowed fields, most fields in the Amhara highlands are plowed by oxen and cultivated by hand ax. Herbicides seemed to me to be an unlikely cause for the farmers’ plight. While herbicides kill weeds and reduce this source of forage for bees, the chemicals themselves are generally considered to be safe for bees.

The Amhara farmers also complained of their losing bees to two common activities of tropical honey bees: absconding from the hives and reproductive swarming. I felt like an investigation into the farmers’ bee hives and their beekeeping practices might help explain these losses. The agricultural fields of Ethiopia’s highlands are interrupted by two of the world’s magnificent river gorges, the Jamma and the Blue Nile. Approaching Machakel, rock walls built of six-sided crystals of volcanic columnar basalt line the paved road offering a honeycomb pattern to this land of bees.

--Richard

Pax Vobiscum

The year 2012 brought Tod Underhill and me three opportunities to travel to Ethiopia to train beekeepers. The USAID-funded projects were conducted by Little Rock, Arkansas based Winrock International. I want to recognize and thank those who shared in my experience and helped make my training sessions meaningful. Thank you, Winrock International staff who made arrangements for my travel: Johnnie Frueauff (USA), Daniel Kocha, Gemechis Jaleta, Kassahoun (Addis Ababa, Ethiopia), Bonface Kaberia (Nairobi, Kenya), and Winrock International volunteers, Damon Szymanski, and Jennifer Bowman (USA) who provided friendship and assisted in communications. I give my special thanks to my Ethiopian hosts, Wubishet Adugna, managing director of Apinec AgroIndustry, and Guta Abdi, founder and managing director of Education For Development Association, for their hospitality, generosity, and friendship. While making sure that their people received the training that they requested, my hosts showed me their beautiful country and shared with me their food, and traditions. Among those who helped me in my planning for training in Ethiopia: Pam Gregory (Wales, UK), Kushal Chandak (India), Nita (Bangkok, Thailand), Hafeez Anwar (Pakistan), and Wondimu Teferi and Lemma Tamiru (Ethiopia)

I fondly remember those I encountered during the dry season in southwestern Ethiopia:, Abraham Tesfaye, Wondimagegn Tadesse, Tsegaiye Haile, Fasika Habtemariam, Johannes Bekele, Atrise Abebe, Ademe Abebe, Tigist Wildemichael, Abeba Rausha, Johannes Abebe, Gezahgn Tadesse, Hemlem Tesfaye, Eyob Assefa, Silishe Katama, Misaurets, Achi, Aklil Cnewn, Hadella, and Michael. During the rainy season in western Ethiopia I had the pleasure of meeting: Jotte Hailu, Tucho Enkossa, Gedefa, Mengistu, Gobena, Debisa, Buze, Melaku, Teshome, Tolera, Gurmesa, Lemma Goya, Mekonnen Egziabher, Tewelde, and an additional 50 seasoned beekeepers. These are but a few of those who I encountered in my travels. They were friendly toward me and interested in helping Ethiopia’s people. I had the opportunity to observe in Ethiopia Orthodox Christians, Muslims, Evangelical Protestant Christians, and naturalistic believers living harmoniously and setting an example of tolerance. The Underhills who operate Peace Bee Farm offer: Peace be with you.

--Richard

Traditional Thanksgiving

Winrock International, www.winrock.org, sends volunteers to developing countries around the world on USAID-funded food security projects. Africa is a fond memory now. I reflect on my assignment teaching beekeeping trainers in Ethiopia’s Oromia region. I travelled with Guta Abdi, the founder and managing director of Education For Development Association. Guta’s name means “full of hope” in Oromifa language. With Guta, I observed the beautiful, volcano-strewn land, resourceful farmers, and Oromia’s rich customs. My training sessions in the mountain-top village of Shambu began and ended with prayers by traditional belief elders. These people, numbering five million believers, deeply respect the land and attribute all existence to a single deity without praying to any prophet. They gather annually around six volcanic lakes for thanksgiving. Guta Abdi is shown at the thanksgiving in the center of today’s photo wearing a gray sweater and open collar. When he took me to the site, I knew I was in one of the earth’s special places.

Travelling through Oromia, I saw children proudly wearing banana leaf hats. The children of each village fold their banana leaf hats in a distinct regional design. Along mountain ridges, I saw “fachas,” tall poles with tin roofs covering a cape buffalo’s tail. The facha is a sign proclaiming that a man accomplished a feat such as killing a lion or leopard with a spear. In earlier times, a facha was placed to proclaim the killing of one’s tribesman has been revenged by killing nine of the opposing tribesmen. Fortunately, this is a past practice. I especially enjoyed sharing Ethiopian food with my host. A typical day started with eggs and red peppers, enjira, Ethiopia’s flat bread made from fermented teff grass seed, bread, and tea. Coffee and bread was served at morning and afternoon breaks. Lunch included enjira, potatoes, and a “wot,” or stew, of sheep. Supper included enjira, cabbage wot, roasted sheep with carrots, “tej” honey mead, Ethiopian beer, and “areke,” locally-made vodka. Thank you, Winrock and EFDA.

--Richard

Steady, Little Donkey!

Riding with Gemechis Jeleta of Winrock International and driver, Kassahun, on a busy four-lane, divided road through the streets of Addis Ababa to meet my host Guta Abdi of the Education For Development Association, I see a startling sight: donkeys in the air! Yes, a herd of donkeys crossing overhead in a pedestrian crosswalk. I tell Guta about the sight; he laughs, and gives me today’s picture of five people and a donkey sharing a very small dug-out canoe. When a western Ethiopian river was impounded, forming Fincha Lake for hydroelectric power, area farmers lost land and were presented with a transportation problem. The EFDA taught craftsmen to build canoes at Chitu Island to cross the lake. As their boat-building skills improved, the size of their boats increased. With larger boats, the EFDA trained the farmers to fish for tilapia in this western highlands reservoir. The fishermen now face a lifetime of food security. In the next few days, I see first-hand the breadth of EFDA’s work. The boat building and fishing training are just two of EFDA’s job skills training projects designed to upgrade existing skills and introduce new skills. Among those trained are leather workers, blacksmiths, basket weavers, and clay workers who produce “jabena” coffee pots, clay water jugs, and fuel saving stoves. EFDA’s rural livelihood programs work to provide jobs for women. I meet women trained to build low-fuel cook stoves, distribute sacks of cane sugar and dig bicarbonate of soda from volcanic soil for the manufacture of medicine.

Guta states that development should first take place in the minds of the people. The EFDA, which operates in the Oromia and Benish Gumuz regional states, builds schools to increase the quality of life through quality education. Schools encourage children to learn traditional knowledge of their community. EFDA’s health projects include women’s reproductive health, HIV/AIDS programs, and a campaign that abolished female genital mutilation in the Jimma and Horro districts. Oh, I have much more to see.

--Richard

Preparing for the Tropics

Preparation and planning is important for a successful outcome in beekeeping, so I started preparing as soon as I accepted my Winrock International Farmer-to-Farmer assignment for Food Security. I gathered literature about beekeeping in the tropics. My son, Tod, and I sat down and shared ideas from what we had observed from our experiences. We both travelled to Ethiopia earlier this year on separate volunteer beekeeper training assignments in Ethiopia’s southwestern highlands. Tod described his experiences working with Ethiopia’s national standard modern bee hive, the Zander hive. He explained how the attached solid bottom board prohibits some hive manipulations, like brood box reversing, that are regularly employed in temperate zones. Tod also explained that the single rather small entrance to the hive can lead to difficulties in hive ventilation and cooling.

I contacted Pam Gregory in Credigion, Wales, UK, and she graciously sent me her Manual of African Beekeeping for Beekeeping Trainers. Pam, who has extensive experience training beekeepers in Sub-Sahara Africa, also shared her ideas with me about which items are most suitable for the farmer beekeepers of Africa. She offered me plans for a standard-sized Kenyan top bar hive that can be made from locally found materials and for a bee veil which can be made from a grain sack and a piece of mosquito netting. I put together a veil to test the ease of producing the most important piece of beekeeping safety equipment. The veil proved to be quite satisfactory. The grain sack’s stiff fabric of woven plastic held the veil comfortably away from the face to prevent stings. Rita tested the hand-made beekeeper’s veil shown in today’s photo. Tod and I also discussed differences in descriptions of some authors’ opinions about the behavior of bees in the tropics. My previous host in Ethiopia, beekeeper Wubishet Adugna, explained that many assumptions regarding bee behavior don’t apply across all of Ethiopia’s diverse geographical regions. Some, he says, are simply wrong. I have much to learn.

--Richard

From Proctor to Shambu

I give all of my bee hives a quick check to make sure that they are healthy, queenright, and stacked with enough honey supers to accommodate the end of the summer’s nectar flow. I will leave Proctor for a few weeks. A request to train beekeeping trainers sends me back on another volunteer assignment to Ethiopia on a USAID-funded trip to this land where almost every farm includes bee hives. Two days of flying from Memphis to Detroit to Amsterdam to Khartoum, and then to Addis Ababa brings me to the Winrock International field office. Here, in Ethiopia’s capital city, I meet my host, Guta Abdi, the founder and managing director of the Non-Governmental Organization, Education For Development Association (EFDA). An early morning start takes Guta, me, and our trusted driver, Jotte, through volcano-laced Ethiopian highlands of the Oromia Region to the mountain-top town of Shambu. Travelling by truck in Africa’s rainy season is completely different from my travels during the dry season. In February, I experienced brown fields and blinding dust; in August, I face lush green fields and muddy, sometimes washed-out roads. At one point a broad, shallow rain-swollen river rushes over our dirt road.

From Shambu, I visit farms and educational projects of the EFDA. I train leaders of seven beekeeping self-help groups. Those individuals attending my training sessions are all seasoned beekeepers selected to spread their skills among farmers in their home areas. Having a varied terrain, Ethiopia is considered a semi-tropical land. Ethiopia’s honey bees exhibit different behaviors from by bees in America’s Mid-South due to seasonal differences in climate and the flowering of plants. I come to Ethiopia hoping to offer these seasoned beekeepers some outside ideas to consider adding to their endemic beekeeping knowledge handed down from generation to generation over thousands of years. I know that I will learn much from them. Today’s picture is a view from Winrock International’s field office in Addis Ababa where taxis share wet streets with cattle.

--Richard

Winrock International

Agriculture is our most effective usage of solar energy. Through photosynthesis, plants produce food from the sun’s energy, ultimately accounting for virtually all of our food. We eat fruit, seeds, and plant parts; or we eat animals that consume plants. Two important food products of the flowering plants can only be harvested by bees: nectar and pollen. We rely upon honey bees to exploit the carbohydrate of nectar and the protein, fats, vitamins, and minerals of pollen. Bees make honey from nectar. Valued since early man robbed bee trees, honey is considered the only food unchanged since cave men gathered it. Among the highly valued products of the bee hive are honey and beeswax, which are important sources of income in many countries. The value of bee hive products largely depends upon the skill and capabilities of the beekeeper and those processing, handling, transporting, and storing the goods. In most developing countries, honey is primarily used in the production of mead, or honey wine. Usually harvested by crushing honeycombs, the honey contains considerable amounts of beeswax, pollen, and some protein from bee brood. In this form, the honey is most suitable for fermentation into mead. More modern honey extraction and handling techniques produce pure honey sold at a premium on world markets.

Tod Underhill is currently in Ethiopia serving in Winrock International’s Farmer-to-Farmer program assisting beekeepers solve problems in honey handling, processing, and transportation. This is one of many USAID funded project seeking to improve agriculture in developing countries. Though Ethiopia’s semi-tropical climate and diversity of flowering plants make for large honey harvests, the quality of the honey is often low. Tod is teaching the Ethiopian beekeepers the importance of harvesting “ripened” honey that the bees have capped with beeswax. Uncapped honey tends to have a high moisture content, and the honey may ferment in storage. A friend, Phil Craft, the retired Kentucky State Apiarist, also took a Farmer-to-Farmer assignment in Bangladesh. You can follow Phil’s recent travels at http://philcrafthivecraft.com/?p=437.

--Richard