Where to keep bees?
The ideal vegetation for commercial honey and beeswax production is on savannah (irrigated) and semi-arid lands. Such areas have very low annual rainfall, between 125 and 1 250 mm. The tropical deciduous forest, with an annual rainfall between 1 275 mm and 1 875 mm, can also support considerable bee activity. It is this vegetation that produces such cash crops as coffee, cola, palm oil and coconut, all of which require the honeybee’s pollinating service. The vegetation not suitable for honey production is the equatorial evergreen rain forest with an annual rainfall between 2 000 mm and 10 000 mm. Is the African bee worth keeping? The first beekeeping project in Ghana was initiated by the government in the 1960s. Exotic bees were imported for breeding, in an attempt to replace the aggressive tropical African bee with the more gentle Caucasian and Italian strains. However, the bees (which had been purchased with scarce foreign exchange) died off quickly, the project failed, and beekeepin
