LA TRINIDAD, Benguet – Many get skittish when their faces or ears get buzzed by bees, but many Benguet farmers and bumblebee advocates love the buzz as the sound of music as it plunks cash onto their pockets.
As demand for honey in the country escalates, so too, are the number of highland farmers and bee lovers engaged in apiculture increasing, as Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR) has been pointed to by government experts as a propitious bee-keeping region.
Hence, cheap modern technology is keeping many farmers in CAR abuzz with apiculture, or bee culture. Apart from better-rearing techniques, CAR farmers and bee enthusiasts have also been introduced to an effective honey marketing strategy which helps supplement their income.
Behind the backbone of this effort is the Cordillera Regional Apiculture Center (CRAC) of Benguet State University (BSU), created through a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) between Don Mariano Marcos Memorial State University (DMMSU) and BSU way back in September of 2013.
CRAC evolved into the regional center of the National Apiculture Research Training and Development Institute (NARTDI-CAR), with a mission to educate and train bee enthusiasts, apiarists and others interested in raising bees, conduct researches and extend technologies towards CAR apiculture development in collaboration with concerned government agencies and other interested parties.
CRAC’s goal is to assert apiculture as another sustainable source of income for CAR households, contributing to other sources of income while at the same time being automatically integrated into CAR’s agricultural system.
CRAC is a “beacon of hope” for conservationists and beekeepers alike in CAR, on a calling to espouse beekeeping as a maintainable livelihood and at the same time an intermediary for bees’ conservation and their habitats, explained BSU staff members assigned with CRAC.
CRAC staff are in the forefront of advocacy for bee conservation and livelihood enhancement, from the Bees for Economics and Ecosystem Services (BEES), Program to the Bee Education Services ( BeES) Project and the Bees for Equalizing Economy and Ecology Services (BEEES).
CRAC notes that CAR possesses a salubrious climate set on high elevation naturally favoring growth of sunflowers. As sunflowers are bee-loving crops, these require bees’ assistance for pollination success.
A recent US-initiated study titled “Medicinal value of Sunflower Pollen Against Bee Pathogens,” proved that sunflowers greatly reduces infection of bees from certain parasites after ingesting sunflower pollen.”
The study pointed out that sunflower’s spiny pollen texture is responsible for destruction for a gut bug called “Crithidia bombi,” and known for significantly reducing bumblebee populations. This pathogen increases bee mortality under stressful conditions and decreasing success of bee queens in establishing colonies. It also leads to destruction of bee mass, male production and overall fitness.
Therefore, the study highly recommended for “planting of sunflowers in agricultural ecosystems and native habitats as these provide a simple solution in reducing diseases and improving health of economically and ecologically important pollinators, like the bees and others. “We depend on them (the bees and sunflowers) for diverse, healthy and nutritious diets,” the study stressed.
Cordillera-wide, honeybees continue pollinating both wild and economically useful plants while their products are used as food by humans and the pharmaceutical industries.
Honey is used mainly by Filipinos as a health food. Pharmaceutical firms use it as a base of medicines like cough syrup and energy drinks. Pollen and royal jelly are components of energy pills or capsules. Bee products are utilized by cosmetic companies. The list goes on and on. . .
Regional apiculture continues to face threats like adverse effects of climate change, shifting seasonal precipitation, variable rainfall and escalating temperature averages. But determined groups of bee enthusiasts and farmers are utilizing various scientific aspects of apiculture to sustain development of autonomous systems for sustainable beekeeping.
Bees have been entwined with history since the appearance of early humans. But bees were long here on earth before mortals. Science traces bees evolved from wasps about 125 million years ago; they shifted from predators to gatherers of nectar and pollen from flowers.
Early bees treaded solitary paths and nested either in hollows or in soil and were notable for branched hairs that trapped pollen grains when a bee visited a flower. From these hairs, the pollen was – and still is – transferred to other flowers on subsequent visits, hence pollinating a plant’s seed.
Flowers secrete nectar or excess pollen as food reward to interest bees; the nectar provides carbohydrates and the pollen as protein for bees. Such evolutionary wonder has led to explosion in diversity and abundance of plants, coinciding with that of the bees and eventually to the biosphere mankind knows today.
In CAR, local honey produced by four species of honeybees possesses a distinct taste, golden color and quality. Of the four species, CRAC identified the three as indigenous to CAR, the Apis cerana, locally known as “anig,” Apis dorsata or “uyukan,” and Tetragunola spp., or “lukot,” or “lukotan.”
The one remaining honey bee species, Apis mellifera was introduced by the Americans in 1913 and a large percentage of honey produced in Benguet comes from Apis mellifera. Benguet is fortunate to have this bee and supplies these to other beekeepers in CAR.
If everybody wants honey but are alarmed at the bees hovering near them, it’s high time to understand that bees teach mortals to be human, indeed.
Diverse bee species are vitally important to CAR’s economy as well as its environmental welfare due to their pollinating role in both agricultural and natural ecosystems. Without bees, CAR dwellers would have vastly diminished groceries, missing most of the varied fruits, vegetables, berries and nuts that residents depend on for a healthy, balanced diet.
Bees’ value to CAR’s natural ecosystem as pollinators is immeasurable. One can put a price on the pollination services that nature provides for crop production in the region; it’s more challenging to monetize the full range of services provided by the rich hues and shades of plants that depend on bees.
Perhaps one way to assess the worth of bees for nature is to consider the extent to which advanced plants (angiosperms) in CAR depend on them for pollination. A study on ecosystem valuation pointed out that 20 percent of all angiosperms can be pollinated only by bees.
While another 45 per cent are pollinated by bees, the wind, birds, moths, bats, butterflies and other animals, clearly indicating any drop in bee population in the region has repercussions.
Less heralded but equally crucial are myriad solitary bees often encountered on gardens, generally small and unobserved, providing the blue-collar pollination work for CAR ecosystems to thrive.
Shouse Facsoy, from Sadanga, Mountain Province and a BSU graduate of BS in Forestry, one time allowed Herald Express a visit to the apiaries he tended at barangay Bahong, La Trinidad, Benguet. Walking into a colony of bees is intellectually challenging, riveting and alluring.
Awareness is heightened, focus increased and senses captivated. Time slows down. Entering an apiary has its ritual and rhythm.
As Facsoy instructed, one slips into pants not penetrated by bee stings, puts on a veil and lights a smoker to calm the bees, all routine arrangements imbued with deeper meaning as they indicate portent of change into bee mode.
Facsoy narrated, as he lifted gently the smoker, how he unconsciously connects to fellow beekeepers’ region-wide of innumerable long days in other apiaries where they shared periods of relaxed labor.
As Facsoy removed the lid of the first hive, the bees were surprisingly calm, going about their business. The Facsoy slowly removed the frames one by one to check on the combs. It’s one of the moments in life when everything shifts.
First, one hears the sounds, the low hum of hundreds of female bee workers flying in and out of their hives, each bee circling the apiary to get her bearings then heading off purposely in literal beeline towards blooming wild sunflowers that grow profusely in CAR and other flowers as well.
Smells and textures bombard the senses. The sweet odor of beeswax and honey, the stickiness of plant resins collected by the workers wafts into the air. Then there are the bees themselves, walking over your hands with the subtlest of touches as their claws lightly cling before taking flight.
A trained beekeeper himself, Facsoy went on to reveal countries in Asia and other western countries readily recruit trained beekeepers in CAR to work in apiaries overseas, proving that trained CAR beekeepers have good market access and employment. This truth, CRAC, confirms.
On the other hand, honey harvested from CAR apiaries easily generates profit. Cost of pure unadulterated honey produced in Benguet, Abra and elsewhere in the Cordillera is pricey, can range from Php 300 for a 250 ml bottle to as high as a thousand pesos for a liter of honey.
On a lighter side, bees, like humans, come out fighting mad when their prized possession — the honey – is pilfered by humans who are honey interlopers, the reason why bees swarm over intruding humans on the territories.
When Facsoy was asked if the honey he regularly harvests is shared by her lady bosom-companion to their friends or acquaintances, he negatively quipped, “No!”
Pressed why his lady bosom-friend refused doing so, Facsoy curtly commented, “Well, you know, bees, like females, are too possessive. Such that when I call her by her name, which happens to be Bee, she demands that she’d rather be called honey, something that bewilders me.”