POLLINATORS POLLINATION AND FOOD PRODUCTION

THE ASSESSMENT REPORT ON POLLINATORS, POLLINATION AND FOOD PRODUCTION
and husbandry methods are used by human beekeepers,
and a multitude of products have been derived from bees
(Crane, 1999).
Honey hunters in Ethiopia manufacture a permanent system
for scaling trees in order to make their task easier (Verdeaux,
2011). In India, honey hunters scale towering cliffs of
the Nilgiri Hills of South India using ladders and social
technology of songs at various stages of the operation
(Anderson, 2001; Sunil Kumar and Reddy, 2011) (Figure
5-13 C). In Nepal they use large bamboo ladders (Valli and
Summers, 1988) (Figure 5-13 D). Honey hunting in the
tropical forests of Cameroon is a perilous activity involving
climbing large tree trunks with a rope made of liana, carrying
a small L-shaped axe to cut open the nest, a smoking
tube for fumigating the aggressive bees, and a container
to keep the precious liquid without losing a single drop
(Ngima Mawoung, 2006). In central Africa, the indigenous
peoples of the rainforest have developed many specific tools
for honey collecting, including instruments to climb trees,
and also gestures to communicate during honey hunting
(Bahuchet, 1989) (Figure 5-13 E).
In France and Spain, innovations in use include traditional
swarming methods, extended beekeeping vocabulary,
harvest and honey extraction techniques, and diverse
smokers and smoking methods (Mestre and Roussel, 2005).
Diverse traditional beekeeping techniques for construction
of hives, the capture, promotion and delay of swarms have
been reported across Asia (Case example 5-10) and west
CASE EXAMPLE 5-10
TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATIONS FOR HIVES AND HONEY HARVESTS IN ASIA
Location: India, Laos, Kalimantan
Several local communities across these locations
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5. BIOCULTURAL DIVERSITY, POLLINATORS AND
THEIR SOCIO-CULTURAL VALUES
Several traditional honey harvesting methods with various
materials and types are used by some local people in India.
Kinnaur people used bamboo to make log hives (Beszterda,
2000). Chamoli people used wall hives made from cow dung or
clay, log hives from bamboo and rectangular wooden box hives
with various sizes in different localities (Tiwari et al., 2013). Kani
tribes used bamboo hives for stingless bees (Kumar et al., 2012).
Local people in Laos, particularly in Northwestern region of Laos
(Meung district of Bokeo Province) use rustic log hives for their
traditional beekeeping practices (Chantawannakul et al., 2011). In
Indonesia, the basic structure for beekeeping involves putting two
FIGURE 5-14
Traditional Ethiopian bee hives in trees. © Peter Kwapong.
Reproduced with permission.
The hives are simple six-foot cylinders made of cane and lined
with leaves. They are placed empty in the forest tree tops with
the leaves of the Limich plant (Clausenia anisate) used to attract
swarms of honey bees.
poles into the ground, or using two tree branches, and adding
a third pole or sheet of wood on top. In Western Kalimantan the
structure is called tikung (Figure 5.21.), in Sulawesi it is called
tingku, and in the Belitung it is known as sunggau. Several
communities have also developed “nesting sites” to attract feral
colonies of Apis dorsata (Hadisoesilo and Kuntadi, 2007).
In Belitung, people link gelam flowers (Melaleuca leucadendron)
to attracting large swarms from the nearby islands of Sumatra
and Borneo. Honey bees are seen to first arrive for the pollen,
then proceed to build wax comb and wait on the rafter until the
flowers produce nectar (Césard and Heri, 2015).