Honeybee connection

By Leticia Suarez-Orendain

Mixing job creation with environmental protection, beekeepers stay as busy as, well, bees

BEES are nature’s chemists and man’s inspiration for altruism.

Worker bees draw nectar from flowers and convert it into honey in special sacs in their esophagi. They feed honey to bee larvae and store the rest in honeycombs as food for rainy days.


The tiny insects, however, are wary of flowers that have been sprayed with pesticides.

“The bee has a ‘natural mentality’ not to enter the hive if it accidentally lands on flowers sprayed with pesticides. If it is unaware that it has been contaminated, it will re-enter the hive but guard bees will drive it off. It will not insist, knowing that doing so would harm the hive. So it stays below the hive, crawls round and round, until it dies,” Roberto “Boy” Flores Sr. said in Cebuano.

Flores, a resident of Lomboy, Banawa, is the president of the National Beekeepers Network in the Philippines and treasurer of Cebu Honeybeekeepers Association Inc. (Chai). The latter was organized in 1993, former Chai vice president Catalino “Titing” Solon said.

All abuzz

“Some of the founders were City Agriculturist Joey Baclayon and Roberto “Jojo” Nemenzo, one of the beekeeping coordinators of the Department of Agriculture (DA 7),” Solon said.

Chai mainly promotes beekeeping in Cebu and all over the Philippines. There are 60 active members as of now, and all are working for the welfare of the group.

The non-government organization (NGO) updates the know-how of members with trainings in beekeeping management. In 2006, they had training in new methods of bee technology. This year, they held a seminar, open to the public, at the DA Livestock Division on M. Velez St. from March 7 to 8.

“Anyone can be a beekeeper as long as he or she is not allergic to pollen and pollen products,” Flores said.

Asked if beekeeping can help answer the unemployment problem, he said in Cebuano: “I believe beekeeping is a good venture but if you are just starting, it’s better to keep it as a hobby. Observe first how the production goes. Only then can you make it a business.”

The former overseas worker (a ship radio operator) knows whereof he speaks. When he retired in 2000, God answered his prayers by inspiring him to try beekeeping, he said. “It has supported my family; sent my four children to school.”

Protection

Rosales, who lives in Lourdes Village, Cebu City, said that after taking a beekeeping seminar in 1999, he has never looked back. It is his main livelihood now.

“It was my first time to learn bees can be cultured,” he said in Cebuano.

Just as bees protect their hive, Chai also seeks to protect the environment. “We depend on the surrounding vegetation for our bee products. Beepkeepers don’t want to cut down trees, except for development,” Flores said.

If more fruit trees are planted, honey output will increase. In the Philippines, honey is multi-floral. Cebu’s honey is mainly from narra, acacia and mango nectar. Other sources may be tamarind, lomboy, mahogany, and lagundi.

The NGO advocates natural farming, the use of organic fertilizers, composting and vermiculture (i.e., growing earthworms). They promote the use of three types of natural repellents: bitter, smelly and spicy plants. For example, the bitter juice from panyawan effectively wards off bugs.

Chai wants to maximize honey and pollen production. However, their problem is marketing. They have the technology for value-added goods—like beeswax candles, skin cream, honey vinegar, and soap—but because members have day jobs, no one can sell the items full time.

Another concern is “honey-bal” or honey sold in a balde (pail), which gives honey a bad name. It is an adulterated jumble of honey, molasses and honeycomb to “prove” purity, Rosales said.

“Summer is our main honey flow,” he added. Honey flow refers to the time when flowers bloom and make nectar. For Cebu, it is from March to June.

“You can buy honey from us during off-season as we have stocks in bottles,” Flores said.

Chai is acting like the bee: forthright in its duty and protective of its environment.

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RP wetlands under threat

CANDABA - Black-crowned night herons take off to roost at sunrise as the day shift arrives for a feeding frenzy at the Candaba marsh in the Philippines.

Thirty years ago the marshes covered some 32,000 hectares (79,000 acres) but thanks to the spread of agriculture and urbanization just 72 hectares remain.

Valentine's 2009 blog

Today, ornithologists count some 12,000 birds a day—a fraction of the number three decades ago.

“In the 1980s, they would routinely count 100,000 wild Philippine ducks and mainland Asian garganays (wild ducks) in one day, just for the two species,” said Michael Lu, president of Wild Bird Club of the Philippines.

Key

Among the 50 or so wetland areas in the Philippines, the Candaba swamps—covered in reeds and water hyacinths and bisected by high earthen levees—are a key staging ground for birds ranging from huge purple herons to tiny Arctic warblers that return to continental Asia in the spring.

They had flown several thousand kilometers (miles) south months earlier, just before the winter.

But as the swamp has shrunk so too of course has the supply of fish, snails, insects and other food. What remains is hemmed in by rice paddies and communities that raise hogs and domesticated ducks.

The honking transients jostle each other on a huge fishpond owned by Candaba town mayor Jerry Pelayo, who has earned his environmental spurs by setting aside half the property for the seasonal visitors.

“This is the only place that remains as habitat for the birds,” said Carmela Espanola, a wildlife biologist at the University of the Philippines.

“A lot of the wetlands are under threat because people keep reclaiming them,” Lu said.

Titled

Since the area is all titled property, if owners drain the swamp the habitat would disappear and there is nothing the government could do, he added.

The Philippines situation is also unique in that a lot of people still hunt wild birds, Lu said.

Candaba farmhand August Sombillo used to belong to these ranks.

The 38-year-old father of six told AFP he used to hunt snipes that strayed into the six hectares of rice paddies he tends nearby. The great winter migration coincides with the only time of the year that the marshwater ebbs low enough to allow rice planting.

The meat of the pointy-beaked wading birds was a key protein source for his family who subsist on his annual share of the grain produce that adds up to less than 100 bags of unmilled rice.

Ban

But the mayor has banned the trapping of birds, unilaterally declaring the marsh a protected area and asking restaurants in surrounding towns to stop serving wildlife dishes.

Pelayo said he has also asked hog farmers upstream not to dispose of pig waste in streams that empty into the swamp.

The environment department, which conducts an annual census here, said there had been some good news with the endangered black-faced spoonbill and the rarely seen pied avocet returning this year after a three-year absence.

However the main trend is toward a decline.

“The big ones like the spot-billed pelican used to come here in Candaba,” Espanola told AFP. “There used to be cranes and woolly-necked storks, but they have been extirpated in the Philippines.”

The decline mirrors the status of birds endemic to the country—of the 593 birds found in the Philippines, 181 are indigenous. Of these, 25 are considered endangered, half of them critically.—Cecil Morella, AFP

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Bigger emission cuts sought by RP

Philippine Daily Inquirer

MANILA, Philippines—The Philippines is hoping the United States would heed calls for significant reductions in carbon emissions when a global conference on climate change takes place in Copenhagen at the end of the year.

Presidential Adviser on Global Warming and Climate Change Heherson Alvarez told Inquirer reporters and editors in a recent dinner that because of the “creeping” effects of climate change, developed countries led by the US, China and India should consider cuts of 30 to 40 percent of their present emission rates by 2018.

“We don’t know how flexible the US position will be in December, but we have some level of confidence the cuts would be substantial. And US public opinion is on our side,” Alvarez said.

Alvarez noted that the US Congress had just passed a law mandating a 17-percent cut based on 2005 rates. US President Barack Obama had also proposed an 80-percent cut when he was campaigning for the presidency, he said.

Based on past conferences, China and India were “sympathetic” to calls for deeper emission cuts, Alvarez said.

He said he hoped the issue of setting up some sort of financing scheme by developed countries for developing countries to mitigate the effects of climate change would also be ironed out in Copenhagen.

On the part of countries belonging to Asean (Association of Southeast Asian Nations), Alvarez said the member-countries were talking about calling on developed countries to make deeper cuts on greenhouse gases.

He said the Philippines was committed to reducing its carbon emissions from 1.5 tons per capita to one ton in 2018. China produces 3.5 tons of carbon per capita, and the US 10 tons, Alvarez said. Alcuin Papa

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