Save the gum trees for the bee-keepers
2008-03-27
Marguerite Lombard
AS autumn approaches bee-keepers’ main harvesting season that started in December, draws to a close. Jacques Smith is a bee-keeper based on the Dagklip farm outside Wellington and says that his biggest concern is that bee-keepers may loose an important source of nectar if all the sugar gums are removed from the surrounding farms. “Sugar gum trees (Eucalyptus cladocalyx) are an excellent source of nectar. The trees are huge and produce an enormous amount of flowers, especially when there is very little fynbos flowering. “When the trees are in flower, you can actually smell the honey in the hives,” according to Jacques. He says his fascination with bee-keeping started in 1992 when he was working on Bloublommetjieskloof and was asked to help harvest the honey. “I was fascinated by bees and how they made their honey. “Actually I think bee-keeping must be a Khoisan instinct. The Khoisan were big honey eaters, and clans used to own the right to harvest honey in certain areas. “As a matter of fact, my uncle also kept bees. My grandmother told me the story that when they first travelled down to the Cape from Ladysmith - by donkey cart - my uncle, then still a youngster, collected wild honey for them while they travelled through Bain’s Kloof.” Spring marks the beginning of the bee-keeping season. Once the fruit orchards begin to blossom, the hives are moved from their permanent sites into transit camps in the orchards. These transit camps can be stocked with up to 100 hives at a time. Timing is critical and sometimes it means taking up to three trips in a single night to move the bee hives into a transit camp. It is an exhausting time for the bee-keeper, especially if the orchards are many kilometres away. Jacques explains that the bees are there in the orchards to pollinate the fruit trees and gain strength after the winter. “The bees are starving after the winter, but we only leave them there for one, sometimes two weeks. If you are not careful, the bees will swarm off looking for a better source of nectar.” In late spring the hives are moved into the flowering canola fields. According to Jacques, bees are particularly fond of canola. Managing the bees in canola fields can be very tricky. Here the problem is not that there is too little nectar, but too much. “I can’t explain it, but bees become very aggressive with all the food about. They can sting you for no reason. “You also have to manage the hives very carefully, or your bees will swarm off to make new colonies. So before you know it, you can be left with a very small colony in your hive.” Jacques keeps his hives on 30 farms in the Wellington district and sells his honey under the Lalibela label.
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