From page 17
required, that can vary from 17 days to 30 days. Different types of crops require bees for different lengths of time and different crops require different numbers of hives per hectare or per number of fruit trees in the orchards. The bee colonies have to be of a certain standard of strength to be regarded as a pollination unit. The farmer will call in an extension officer to check the strength of each hive and unsuitable hives will have to be replaced by other hives of required strength. The cost to the farmer is then calculated and payment made to the beekeeper at the onset of the pollination period. If not paid within a certain short time, a day or two, the beekeeper has the right to remove all his swarms. On completion of the period
of the contract, he then has to move away on the stipulated day after the pollination period to another site. Thrown into this assortment of events, the farmer has his crop spraying programme and, usually at short notice, the beekeeper is called in to close his hives for the day of the spraying. In most cases the hives are weakened by the pollination, by the fact that there is insufficient honey that could have been gathered, and the bees are starved of their carbohydrate intake from which they obtain their energy. These hives cannot be reused in the same season as they will not be up to the required strength for the pollination service. These hives have to be placed on suitable bee forage plants to build them up to strength for the next pollination contract, and for these plants the beekeeper turns to eucalyptus trees. Around 1970, the Dept of Agriculture, in collaboration with a leading beekeeper of Pretoria and others of the East Rand, decided to upgrade the bee industry in South Africa. Their vision was far sighted to the future requirements of the pollination in our country which has placed the industry in the position we have today. A fact-finding group toured Australia, then a leading country in beekeeping, and a great deal of valuable information was gleaned that started serious beekeeping in South Africa. Changes to our hive construction afforded more efficiency for migratory beekeeping, It was impressed upon the group that the eucalyptus trees would form the backbone of the industry for the good development and strengthening of swarms after
BEEKEEPING
the pollination contracts, and a place for the hives between pollinating periods which occur mainly from July to November each year. In 1976 the eucalyptus was declared“ The tree of the Year” for its value as wind breaks on farms, timber as firewood for the farm staff and most valuable forage for the growing bee industry. Thousands of trees were propagated from seeds at forestry nurseries and sold as small trees in trays of a
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