Rukwa Harvest May-June 2017

What a great year for honey! In the month of May-June 2017 we harvested from 80-90 of our bee hives in Tanzania's Rukwa Valley. Part of our harvest coincided with our training and the trainees got first-hand experience at opening bee hives and the multi-faceted art of harvesting from African bees.

The rains were moderate this year, yet the harvest was exceptional. Last year the rains were heavy and the harvest was also exceptional. I am not so sure that the rains have a lot to do with quantity of honey harvested. Of course, if they were very poor it may affect the harvest negatively. We have not currently experienced a rainy season so poor that it affected the honey output.

The finished product. Here is honey coming from one of our settling tanks. This is the first year we harvested over a ton of honeycomb!

Holding honeycombs during the harvest. Harvesting honey is an exciting time! You have built a hive, bees have entered and done everything else on their own! There is no need to feed them and they care for themselves. It is rewarding and we have found that most Log or Top Bar hives pay themselves off in the first year.

African bee on our main May bee fodder plant “Leucas nyasae.”

Our hives located in the mud flats did exceptionally well! We had a 90-95 percent success rate with a high percentage of our hives there containing substantial honey stores. Our hives closer to the mountain range over sandy soil only had a 40-45 percent success rate and seem to do worse than those over clay soils. We have been seeing this trend every year. It should be noted as well that the bee fodder is also different. The hives over clay soil rely mainly on Hygropila schulli (a prolific light blue colored flowering plant), whereas our hives located over sandy soil use the widespread Leucas nyasae as their main nectar bearing flower. These are pictures of both of plants.

This plant “Hygropila schulli” is the main nectar bearer in the open mud flats of the Rukwa valley where many of our hives are located.

In at least 4 of these hives, large hive beetles were found propolized by the bees in corners proving their ability to deal with a menace. In two hives this year as well as 4-5 hives last year we found hundreds and thousands of bees killed and lying heaped on the floor of the hive. These were the hives we have located in the open mud flats. These areas do not have many natural structures for bees to occupy and it can only be assumed that larger colonies move into hives already occupied and kill or overpower the previous colonies and take over as the new owners. This is not a practice I have ever heard of happening among European bees.

Harvesting honey from African hives is a group activity. The aggressive bees need to be smoked harder than European bees. Many hives in Africa are also hung from trees making it a lesson in team work. African beehives are best worked two hours before dark and into the night using headlamps if possible. Although aggressive, the bees will wake the next morning having forgotten about the previous days disturbance.

Our harvest was higher than ever before. I weigh our comb as it comes into the processing and packing room. Before I had to travel in early June I recorded 1,782 lbs of honeycomb. After I had traveled, my team harvested comb exceeding 300 lbs making this the first time to break one ton of honeycomb.

After pressing the comb, it came down to under a ton of raw honey. Wax was extracted from the leftover pressings. I will try to get more exact figures on how much honey and wax was taken from our hives next year. As always, the income from any sales will be pumped back into production so that we can learn more and share our findings with you!


Best wishes on your beekeeping project! Tanzania is ripe for honey production. It impacts not only individual small-scale famers economically by providing them a better way of diversifying but also the pollination of farm crops and the entire African eco-system in a wonderful way.

Honeycomb from a top bar hive. Notice the beautiful progression from capped to uncapped comb. House bees cap off the full cells using wax that they produce from their wax glands. The carbohydrate rich nectar they feed on allows production of this beeswax.

Moving another hive to the harvest table.

Lowering a hive to take to the harvesting table.

Loaded "burr combed" hive. These bees decided to not follow our starter strips when building their comb. Therefore, it was difficult to harvest although rewarding due to all the honey they put up.

Brushing off a beautiful honeycomb from a hive in the mud flats of Rukwa valley.

What builders! In their efforts to keep "bee space" the bees do incredible things. We will try to get what picture we can of interesting bee activity in the colonies we open.

The honeycomb from a modified log hive. This honeycomb was harvested from the hive pictured to the right.

Active, modified log hive. There is a heavy gauge plywood top with no bars. This is a fixed hive and the bees build the way they want inside. It is only “harvestable" by two men holding the top of the hive while one cuts the comb away from underneath. We have many different hives and this is an effective honey and wax producer. It is also very inexpensive to build. The beekeeper must have clean gloves and realize he must touch each comb as done when harvesting from a regular log hive.

Opening beehives for harvest in our eco-system.

Beautiful and unique looking capped comb. When you see comb that looks like this you know it contains ripened honey (less than 20 percent water content).