Pollinators hard at work!
Category: Bees, Butterflies, Culture, Ecology, Flies, Forests, Moths, Pollination | Date: Nov 17 2009 | By: dududiaries
Pollinators hard at work!
“One in three bites of food can be attributed to a pollinator”. This statement is often quoted by biologists around the world when talking about pollinators and their importance to our lives.
In Africa pollinators are primarily wild insects that travel between farms and natural habitat, and are extremely vulnerable to habitat loss and destruction.
Pollinators intimately link wild species with basic human livelihoods. The relationships between insects and flowers are at once ancient, beautifully intricate and correspondingly fragile.
These intricate and essential links between wild species, natural areas and food production were beautifully evident on a recent visit I paid to a farmer in Western Kenya. Lucy Murira grows a wide range of vegetables and fruits for her family. Her farm is located in the Nandi Hills nestled between tea plantations and forest patches. It is these forest patches that provide the pollinators for Lucy’s crops. Below is a short video showing some of the crops and pollinators on Lucy’s farm. (Please forgive the sloppiness of this video - it is my first attempt at doing this!)
As mentioned in the video, one of the important and nutritious crops growing on this farm is ‘Njahe’ a local variety of blackbean. It is a verdant climber with lovely pinky-lilac flowers.
The main pollinators of the blackbean here appear to be wild bees, including these lovely, robust and fast-flying carpenter bees.
Without the pollinating visits of these hardworking bees, there would be no pods to harvest.
One of the other crops growing here that benefits from pollination is the butterbean. As Lucy says, these are really yummy (in fact one of my favourites!). Skipper butterflies and bees were pollinating the butterbeans on this farm. All of them need the patches of forest to survive.
Pollinators need a clean, safe and pesticide-free environment to survive. Lucy’s farm is filled with a huge number of different pollinating insects. Not only were pollinating insects thriving on the farm, we even found this little reed frog dozing among the tendrils of the butterbeans!
More from the wonderful world of bugs soon!
Tags: Bees, Butterflies, dino j. martins, food security, indigenous vegetables, Kenya, pollinators
Male bees on patrol…
Category: Bees, Culture, Ecology | Date: Nov 16 2009 | By: dududiaries
Male bees keeping watch on their patch of bush….
Dear All, Hello – have just been travelling through Western Kenya working on pollinators at various sites with groups of farmers. Its been amazing and I look forward to sharing some of the discoveries and photographs with you all over the next few days.
Yesterday I spent the day looking at insects in some mango farms in the Kerio Valley. During the hottest part of the day we decided to take a break and shelter in the shade while eating our lunch of (you guessed it!) mangoes.
As I settled down to the mango feast I noticed a loud buzzing sound drawing closer. Then a flash of yellow and black whirred by. A few seconds later it returned. At first I though, hmmm, this is someone after a piece of my mango. However, it kept circling the bush and showed no interest in the fruit.
As I watched it closely, I realised that it was a male carpenter bee patrolling its territory. Looking out over the dappled bush I realised that there were literally hundreds of male bees doing the same thing – endlessly circling some prime spot in the hope of a female wandering by…
Every ten seconds or so it returned to hover in a sunspot in front of me.
It kept this up for the entire half-hour break that we took for lunch. Four hours later as I prepared to call it a day, the same male bees were still at it, endlessly circling their little patches of bush in the hopes of wooing a lady carpenter bees’ heart…
Tags: Bees, dino j. martins, Kenya, kerio valley, xylocopa
Bees in the news
Category: Bees, Climate Change, Culture, Ecology | Date: Oct 16 2009 | By: dududiaries
Bees in the news
Dear All – here are a couple of links that might be of interest. Bees have been in the news over the last couple of days.
Newsweek has an article about the effect of bees disappearing on agriculture.
Here is the link to it:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/141461
And George Monbiot who writes for The Guardian has a piece on the failure of science to investigate the effects of pesticides on bees:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2009/oct/14/bees-scientific-research
Please spare a moment if you can to look at them. Bees are in deep trouble, especially in Europe and North America as well as parts of Asia such as China. Whatever the may causes behind the decline of bees, especially the honeybee, we need to wake up and start doing something about it.
There is also a new film out called ‘The Vanishing Bees’, you can watch a trailer and learn more about it here:
More soon – was just watching some honeybees foraging on the flowers of some acacias, will share those pictures shortly.
And more pollinator diversity…
Category: Bees, Beetles, Culture, Ecology, Flies, Pollination | Date: Jul 16 2009 | By: dududiaries
More pollinator diversity…
Category: Bees, Butterflies, Culture, Ecology, Flies, Forests, Hoverfly, Moths, Orchid, Pollination | Date: Jul 15 2009 | By: dududiaries
Pollinator diversity…
Category: Bees, Culture, Ecology, Pollination | Date: Jul 14 2009 | By: dududiaries
Hello - I’ve been meaning to share parts of a booklet about the diversity and importance of pollinators in Africa. Here are some of the amazing creatures who work hard at keeping our farms and ecosystems running!
More on bees
Category: Bees, Culture, Ecology, Forests, Pollination | Date: Jul 03 2009 | By: dududiaries
Hello - many thanks for the comments from everyone. I thought I would share these fun facts about honeybees - they really are incredible creatures…
Did You Know These Cool Facts About Honeybees?
Honeybees originate in Africa – evidence comes from both from modern genetics as well as ancient rock art and the folklore of hunter-gatherer peoples.
Pure honey never goes bad. Jars with honey from the tombs of the Pharoahs have been opened after 2000 years and the honey is still perfectly delicious and edible!
A honeybee can tell her fellow bees where to find flowers through a special dance language – very few other animals can do this! Karl Von Frisch shared a Nobel prize with Konrad Lorenz and Niko Tinbergen for figuring this out.
It takes four honeybees working their entire lives to produce just one teaspoonful of honey.
All honeybees that forage and work are sisters and sterile – they spend their entire lives just working for the colony!
Honeybees start out life as nannies, looking after their younger siblings, then graduate to foraging from flowers, as they grow older and more experienced.
Here is a sketch of a honeybee and a traditional log hive that is the typical way of keeping bees throughout East Africa;
Vanishing bees?
Category: Bees, Butterflies, Ecology, Flies, Hoverfly, Pollination | Date: Jun 25 2009 | By: dududiaries
Hello - here is a response to the recent question about the disappearance of honeybees in Europe and North America. This phenomenon has been called Colony Collapse Disorder, also known as CCD, is a mysterious and widespread phenomenon of the sudden disappearance of entire colonies of honeybees from their hives and the environment.
CAUSES
No single cause of CCD that has been identified by scientists, and speculation as to the ultimate reason for this dramatic loss of honeybees is rife. Many scientists seem to be moving towards a consensus that this may not be the result of a single factor, but more due to the cumulative effects of a number of things, including:
Nosema – this is a vicious little parasite that infects the honeybee gut. It is related to fungi-like organisms and similarly to the human gut pathogen Giardia, and has an equally debilitating effect on honeybees. Infection leaves honeybee colonies weakened and vulnerable to other parasites. Scientists have tracked its spread through honeybee colonies in Asia, Europe and North America over the last few years.
Pesticides – a number of pesticides are especially toxic to bees, even in very low doses. They are designed after all to kill insects, and honeybees are insects just like the pests the chemicals target. Some pesticides impair the honeybees’ learning ability and others affect their orientation and navigation leading to a breakdown of the colony over time through repeated exposure.
Mites and viruses – The mite, Varroa destructor, and the many associated viruses it transmits to honeybee colonies are one likely cause of the demise. Some farmers have resorted to treating mite infestations with chemicals that have also accumulated to levels that affect the honeybees.
Electromagnetic radiation – there is little evidence for this apart from one study that embedded receivers inside hives. Emanating from cellular-phone and other telecommunication devices these waves are thought to disorient bees.
Genetically-modified crops – again here there are no direct studies. A number of GMO crops produce toxins engineered from bacteria and if these are present in the pollen it could affect foraging honeybees.
Bad beekeeping – one characteristic of the modern honeybee industry in the developed world is the trucking around of thousands upon thousand of colonies. These are often mixed and housed in close proximity allowing for the transmission of diseases.
Climate change – again here there’s no direct evidence. Colonies that were overwintering now run out of food stores as erratic weather patterns play havoc with flowering cycles and nectar flows.
EFFECTS
The full effects of the disappearance of honeybees are yet to come. Bees and other pollinating insects are responsible for one in three bites of food. Some of the effects witnessed so far include:
Loss of almond pollination ‘services’ in the Western United States. Some 90 % of the world’s almonds are grown in California. The almond trees flower early in spring and require pollination by honeybees trucked in from far and wide. Due to the lack of honeybees for commercial pollination of the crops, the production of almonds has dropped significantly.
The 100 million sterling-pound plus contribution made by honeybees to the UK’s economy was dented severely this past Christmas season as there was virtually no British honey on supermarket shelves. The UK has seen some two-thirds of its honeybee colonies vanish and the remaining ones are stressed and weak. Frighteningly there’s evidence emerging now that bumblebees too are starting to go the same way as honeybees!
Honeybees have featured recently in the politics of economic recovery as both the Europeans and the Americans have included honeybees and pollination services as part of their studies and strategies towards overcoming the current financial global crisis. While this has attracted ridicule of the Obama administration by political opportunists, who are laughing at this as ‘frivolous’, many people, including some of the world’s leading scientists are begging politicians and decision-makers to take an interest in solving this problem.
Is there hope?
Yes – there is evidence that with help some honeybee colonies can recover. Also, a little known fact is that there are thousands upon thousands of other pollinators available and working hard on our farms. We need to understand and protect these overlooked creatures as we work towards a solution for the current honeybee crisis.
“One in three bites of food…”
Category: Bees, Ecology, Pollination | Date: Jun 23 2009 | By: dududiaries
“One in three bites of food can be attributed to a pollinator”.
An overlooked ‘ecosystem service’, pollination, is essential to humanity. In Africa pollinators are primarily wild insects that travel between farms and natural habitat, and are extremely vulnerable to habitat loss and destruction.
Pollinators intimately link wild species with basic human livelihoods. The relationships between insects and flowers are at once ancient, beautifully intricate and correspondingly fragile.
Saving pollinators justifies conservation of small species-rich habitats, such as forest patches and contributes to food security and rural livelihoods of the communities living close to nature/alongside critically endangered species.
More on pollinators soon!
The picture below is of a carpenter bee pollinating pigeonpea, a widespread crop grown in both Africa and Asia and an excellent source of minerals and healthy protein!
A sign of rain?
Category: Bees, Ecology, Pollination | Date: Mar 16 2009 | By: dududiaries
Hello - many greetings and sorry for not posting more often - have been really busy and have limited access to the internet here. The plains grow hotter and dustier everyday and we hope that it rains soon. A few evenings ago I found a lovely shrub, the Maerua flowering at the edge of the Kiserian gorge. Some large, fat carpenter bees were swarming around the flowers as were some hawkmoths… Perhaps this is a sign that the rains will start soon and life will return to our dusty world here… 
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