26 www. sasmallholder. co. za
BEEKEEPING
The arithmetic of a small-time Gauteng beekeeping operation
An article in our regular series on bees and beekeeping by Peter Clark, veteran beekeeper and chairman of the Eastern Highveld Beekeepers Association
Beekeeping is a way of farming similar to any other farming venture: it is governed by the weather, good management and continual hard work. The bees are your work force, your employees and need to be cared for and kept up to a good working strength. Therefore you are the boss in a partnership with millions of workers. But unlike unionised human workers, they are always eager to work from early light to dark every day of the year. There are no public holidays and no demands for increases in pay every six months. And, in a good nectar flow season they will even work overtime, deep into the bright moonlight. There are three types of beekeeping:
# SAFoodCrisis
From page 23
And he has been most handsomely rewarded for his efforts. Before he retired recently his salary was R100 million a year. And when he retired, his fellow directors thought it a fine idea to vote him a small retirement present. Of R1,7 BILLION. Not surprisingly the largest institutional investor in the Shoprite – Checkers group, Allan Gray, took a dim view of this. Butthepointisthatifthose are the sorts of number being
❑ The pure hobbyist who keeps up to five hives in his back yard and enjoys an abundance of honey for his family and his friends, ❑ The beekeeper who keeps up to 100 hives. This will constitute a good paying hobby. He enjoys good pocket money, does not count his costs and keep going in a merry way. ❑ There is the commercial beekeeper, with 500 hives plus. He has to specialise to keep the boat afloat and practice good management skills. He will employ trained semi-skilled assistant staff. And he will have the headaches and heartaches of any other farmer. Commercial beekeeping is not a quick-fix-get-rich venture. It entails hard work for which one needs to be fit,
Continued on page 27
bandied about the boardrooms of the big food retailers, something is mightily wrong, and South Africans in the street can be sure in the knowledge that they are being royally screwed food price-wise. This is one of a series of articles and comments by Pete Bower, publisher, on the state of South Africa’ s food industry as it affects farmers and consumers. Other articles in this series appeared in the July, August and September editions.