Integrating stingless bees for horticulture and macadamia pollination to sustain livelihood among smallholder agriculture farmers in Africa
The icipe stingless bee project was funded by Bayer on September 2017. The goal of the project is to evaluate the pollination efficiency of different stingless bee species in enhancing fruit and seed productivity of vegetables under greenhouse and Macadamia crops. We will also contribute in discriminating the African stingless bee species on base of genetic diversity and phylogeny for possible identification of new species unknown to science.
The kick off meeting was held at Bayer headquarter in Monheim, Germany on 23 October 2017. During the events, three presentations were given to the Bayer staffs:
- Over view of the project presented by Dr. Juliana (Bayer) and Dr. Kiatoko (icipe);
- Over view on the stingless bee species of Kenya and their distribution by Dr. Frank van Langevelde (Wagenigen University) and Dr. Kiatoko (icipe);
- Promoting meliponiculture for habitat conservation and income generation for rural communities in Africa by Dr. Kiatoko (icipe).
Regarding project activities, the expansion of the meliponary at icipe duduville campus for training facilitation in Nairobi is ongoing and so far, 12 species of stingless bees are established either in wooden hives or clay pot hives according to their nesting site (underground, trees) (Photo 1). Additionally, the first training of trainers (ToT’s) on Meliponiculture and stingless bee diversity survey was held from 26 January to 6 February 2018. The first lot of participants that attended the training where from DRCongo, Ethiopia and Kenya (Photo 2). These participants are project collaborators whose duties are to conduct survey on the stingless bee diversity in their respective countries and avail bee specimen samples to the project for morphometrics and molecular data generation for species discrimination. Besides, they have responsibility to establish a pilot stingless bee rearing site for training communities locally. More other project activities have kick off which include: field site selection to study the pollinators diversity of Macadamia crop and the pollination efficiency among 7 bee species on setting sweet melon fruit quality. The Macadamia field site selection had been conducted from 6th -13th February 2018 with the participation of project Partners from Wageningen University (Photo 3). The study on the pollination efficiency among 7 bee species on setting sweet melon fruit quality is ongoing in greenhouses at the icipe Bee Health pollination garden.
Aim of the project:
The Bayer funded project aims at studying stingless bee species as a better option for crop pollination in tropical and subtropical regions of Africa. The initiative will evaluate the pollination efficiency of 10 stingless bee species for a variety of vegetables and nuts under greenhouse conditions. The studies will also focus on molecular and conventional taxonomic characterisation of African stingless bee species. A details description of Macadamia pollinators in Central Kenya will also be described through this project. All in all, the results from this work will significantly contribute to the Science, Technology and Innovation Strategy for Africa 2024 (STISA).
Funding:
- Bayer Bee Care
Implementation period:
September 2017 – June 2021
Staff:
- Kiatoko Nkoba
- Nelly Ndungu N (Consultant)
Contact person:
Scientific partners:
- Dr. Frank van Langevelde, Resource Ecology group Wageningen University
- Dr Alain Pauley, Museum Natural Sciences Belgium.