THE local office of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation in Agriculture (IICA) continued its support for local beekeepers by bringing in an expert who gave them training on permapiculture, a new and proven way of beekeeping which will boost their productivity and the profitability of their businesses. The IICA programme was held at the Mangrove Benab at Cove and John, East Coast Demerara, from Monday to Wednesday last, and the beekeeping expert, who was the main resource person, was Dr Manuel David Sanchez Hermosilo, a beekeeper from Mexico, who also works as the IICA country representative in The Dominican Republic.

Members of the Guyana Apicultural Society (GAS), some from as far away as Aliki and Mainstay in Essequibo,were the beneficiaries.
Mr Wilmot Garnett, the IICA representative to Guyana, told the Guyana Chronicle that the programme was one of a number of regional programmes in support of agriculture organised by IICA.
This one, he said, fell under the heading of support for family agriculture with the objective being general improvement of apiary units in the Caribbean.
The permapiculture initiative also targets beekeepers in St Lucia, Barbados and Trinidad.

During the programme, Dr Sanchez told participants that the new technique of permapiculture was a beekeeping system conceived by famous beekeeper and agriculture expert, Oscar Perone of Argentina, with the aim of returning the bees to the possibility of developing their colony in keeping with their natural instincts and wisdom accumulated during tens of millions of years of existence with minimum human interference.
Permapiculture made beekeeping simple to the point that almost anyone in the right place, including people in marginal rural areas, can become beekeepers, generate income by selling high-quality products without agro-chemicals and other contaminants, and help in the recovery of bio-diversity, eco-system conservation and agricultural productivity.
He told them that the bee hives for permapiculture, named the Perone Hive, costs about one third of the traditional hives they were accustomed to.

The Perone hive, which he was training them to build and use, was designed with the proportions of a “divine geometry” and imitated the holes in a large tree where wild bee colonies used to make combs.
Additionally, in permapiculture, the Perone hives are placed in the right point considering the magnetic lines of the earth, enabling a better development and performance of the bee colony.
The hive, most importantly, does not require any type of management.

“The only interventions are the harvesting and restitutions of the empty sections.”
Wilmot Garnett said that IICA will provide the programme to improve apiculture in Guyana and other targeted Caribbean countries for four years.
He noted that the IICA local office had been providing support to the GAS for the past two years, even before this programme had been envisaged.
IICA assisted GAS members with the governance and structure for the GAS; with equipment, some suits and some extractors.
He said that the IICA support for GAS will continue with the donation of Perone hives.
He said, “We also have to consolidate since there is no one beekeeper in Guyana who can produce the volume demanded.”
He said that IICA will assist with quality assurance issues, so that all local producers could produce honey in a standard way and thereby guarantee the quality demanded by local and external markets.

By Clifford Stanley