Science through the lens

Beekeeping in Laos: More than honey

Pesticides are endangering honeybees. So, too, in Laos. “Honey hunting” also remains widespread in the country, sometimes destroying entire bee colonies. Meanwhile, several initiatives to promote agrobiodiversity in Southeast Asia include a focus on honey production: Forests are healthier and harbour more flowering trees in places where wild bee colonies are no longer plundered, but rather maintained using low-tech practices. Despite such progress, other problems remain that must be addressed.

Photos by Albrecht Ehrensperger, CDE

Bees and hornets

Besides the eastern or Asian honeybee (Apis cerana), honey is also harvested from dwarf honeybees (Apis florea) and giant honeybees (Apis dorsata) in Laos – albeit to a much smaller extent. For non-specialists, the eastern honeybee is almost indistinguishable from the western honeybee (Apis mellifera). The dwarf honeybee, for its part, is about half the size of the typical eastern honeybee, while the giant honeybee can reach the size of a hornet. These two bee species build their honeycombs in the open, on twigs and branches.

Unlike the western honeybee, which is native to Africa, the Middle East, and Europe (but has been introduced to all continents), the eastern honeybee lives in a sort of balance with the Varroa mite and does not require treatment against it.

Nevertheless, it does have predators – among them the Asian hornet. While the eastern honeybee has developed defence strategies, its colonies are not immune to raids by hornets. As a consequence, eastern honeybees often flee in swarms. This exodus is exacerbated when villagers choose places near bee colonies to breed hornets, whose larvae they sell at local markets: In Laos, hornet larvae – like many other insects – are considered a nutritious delicacy.

From honey hunting to box beekeeping

Without human intervention, both eastern and western honeybees live in tree hollows. In the past, their honey was harvested by breaking open wild forest beehives – often destroying the entire bee colony in the process. This kind of “honey hunting”, once common practice worldwide, remains widespread in Laos.

Thanks to trainings and awareness-raising – including in projects involving CDE, such as The Agrobiodiversity Initiative (TABI) and, more recently, the ongoing Pha Khao Lao – beekeeping smallholders in Laos now increasingly “collect” wild bees in log hives (see above) before transferring them to homemade boxes with moveable honeycombs.

While beekeeping among the rural population is mostly “low-tech”, it is nonetheless vital to the environment and biodiversity: CDE projects show that the forest is better protected and agrobiodiversity rises when the rural population keeps bees. Moreover, switching from log hives to box hives enables Lao beekeepers to harvest significantly more honey – and at a better quality.

One major obstacle to the advancement of more modern honey production practices is the severe economic and financial crisis in which Laos – one of the world’s least developed countries – currently finds itself.