Why importing honeybees from South Africa would be a disaster for Namibia

The government is currently considering a proposal to bring honeybees from South Africa to help pollinate blueberries grown in the Kavango East. If permitted, this is likely to destroy Namibia's managed honeybee colonies and threaten many other native bee species. The resulting widespread, irreversible negative impacts on agriculture, biodiversity, and the economy far outweighs any short-term, marginal benefits that may be gained by blueberry producers.

Honeybees and other native bee species in Namibia provide crucial pollination services for our crops and native plants. Their importance cannot be overstated. Without bees, fruit and vegetable crops in northern Namibia would collapse, taking the food and livelihoods of many Namibians with it. Protecting our native pollinators from external threats should therefore be considered as important as protecting our livestock from diseases such as Foot and Mouth.

While Namibia's Department of Veterinary Services (DVS) are rightly ramping up their efforts to prevent Foot and Mouth from coming to Namibia from South Africa, they are considering allowing South African honeybees into Namibia. Yet allowing honeybee imports is as unthinkable as opening our borders to infected cattle, as will soon become clear.

What's the big deal with importing honeybees?

The honeybees in South Africa are divided into two subspecies – the Cape honeybee, which occurs naturally in the Western Cape and parts of the Eastern Cape, and the Savannah honeybee, occurring in the rest of the country. Namibia only has the Savannah honeybee subspecies, besides other native bees that are not closely related to honeybees.

The Cape honeybee became a serious threat to Savannah honeybees during the early 1990's, after hives of the Cape subspecies were moved by beekeepers from the Western Cape to other parts of South Africa. South Africa recognises a biological boundary between these two subspecies (see map), creating a red line to prevent further mixing of the two subspecies.

Understanding why this occurred requires some knowledge of honeybee biology. In normal bee hives, only the queen bee can produce female offspring that are known as ‘worker bees'. These workers can produce male bees (drones) if necessary, but even these are usually produced by the queen bee. Queen-centred reproduction is essential for bee hives to function normally. As the name suggests, the worker bees perform most of the work for the hive (including going out to pollinate plants), even though they rarely or never reproduce.

Due to a genetic change within the Cape honeybee subspecies, some worker bees are able to lay eggs which hatch into female worker bees. These seldom work and mostly lay eggs, and are therefore false queens and parasites on the hive. They go undetected in the Savannah honeybee hives, and thereby evade detection and rejection from the hive. By doing this the parasitic Cape honeybee workers can produce more parasites and gain control over the host colony. The more lazy, parasitic workers in the hive, the less food is available, later leading to the death of the queen and collapse of the colony.

In South Africa, beekeepers moved Cape honeybees to a region north of Pretoria to strengthen their hives on the strong aloe honey flow. The crop farmer pays a beekeeper to bring their strong hives to the farm during the crop's flower season. This increases the rate of pollination, leading to better fruit harvests than would occur naturally.

Beekeepers at the time did not realise that their Cape honeybees would invade the hives of Savannah honeybees and cause them to collapse. Since hive collapses take time and the Cape honeybees are difficult to tell apart from their Savannah cousins, the invasion caused massive loss of colonies in South Africa's beekeeping industry before anything was done about it.

In 1993, 50,000 to 100,000 honeybee colonies were lost due to what is now called Capensis Calamity – the invasion of Cape honeybees. Capensis calamity causes colony losses of 40-70% when Cape honeybees invade new apiaries (bee farms). When infestation occurs, it results in huge economic and bee losses.

Since 1998, no one is allowed to move bees beyond a veterinary ‘red line' between the southern and northern parts of South Africa (see map). The purpose for this restriction is to prevent more Cape honeybees entering the rest of the country, thus reducing the chances of fresh waves of invasion. Unfortunately, many hives in the rest of South Africa have already been invaded and it is difficult to eliminate the Cape honeybees without damaging apiaries.

Preventing Capensis Calamity and other threats to bees in Namibia

The South African story is a strong cautionary tale for Namibia. South African bee expert, Professor Robin Crewe of Pretoria University warns, Beekeepers have not been able to eliminate it from their apiaries in over 30 years of the existence of the infestation. He emphasises that once the Cape honeybees invade, the impact is irreversible.

Namibia's Savannah honeybees have not yet been invaded by Cape honeybees, yet some commercial farmers want to bring bees into Namibia for the same reasons that caused the Capensis Calamity.

The farmers in question are government-funded blueberry farming operations in Kavango East. They are trying to import honeybees in the hope that they will boost harvests through increased pollination. Yet Cape and Savannah honeybees are not ideal blueberry pollinators, according to Professor Connal Eardley of South Africa's North-West University: honeybees routinely underperform in blueberry orchards, especially in confined net-house systems where they cluster at the roof, die from stress or starvation, or drift away. Bumblebees (which are not native to Africa) are the real pollinators of blueberry plants, but importing this exotic species will pose still more threats to Namibian bees.

Besides the known dangers of Capensis Calamity, there are unknown diseases and genetic threats associated with moving bees long distances or importing exotic bee species. The imported bees may infect our bees with new diseases, or interbreed with them and reduce their ability to survive in Namibia, or otherwise compete with our native pollinators (in the case of exotic species).

While the blueberry farms wanting to import honeybees may achieve slightly higher harvests, Namibian beekeepers, farmers and ordinary citizens across the country risk paying a high price for this reckless decision. If our native pollination services are undermined by Capensis Calamity and any of the other threats, crop harvests will plummet and indigenous plant species will no longer be able to reproduce. These indigenous plants provide food for wildlife and livestock, with potential knock-on effects on the livestock, game and tourism sectors.

In short, Namibia's economy and food security will be threatened for the sake of a debatable small harvest increase for two blueberry farms. The government investment in these farms should not influence a decision that has nation-wide negative ramifications. DVS can only give one sensible answer to this proposal for importing honeybees: No.

A better path forwards for bees and people

There are other ways of increasing blueberry harvests that do not involve importing pollinators, and these have the added benefit of developing Namibia's young beekeeping industry. Most beekeepers in Namibia keep hives as a hobby or for producing honey as extra income to their usual farming activities. Few of them are large enough to provide pollination services such as those required by the blueberry farms. If the beekeeping industry receives greater investment and support, it could start to offer pollination services.

Professor Connal Eardley, an expert on pollination and bees, gave this advice in a letter to the Beekeeping Association of Namibia:

1. Blueberry farms experiencing low yields must evaluate other production challenges (including plant nutrition, climatic conditions, irrigation regimes, net-house management, and varietal performance) and unsustainable agricultural practices rather than relying on blaming the pollinators only.
2. Namibia should prioritise and appoint a dedicated team to strengthen and coordinate domestic apiculture (beekeeping) production while enhancing on-farm ecological conditions that support indigenous pollinators.
3. As part of a larger strategy, Namibia should develop a regulated national pollination programme. This can be supported by strategic placement of local colonies, increased colony multiplication, improved natural forage and habitat management, and mandatory pre- and post-pollination health inspections.

Currently, beekeeping is regulated by the Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism, yet the DVS falls under Agriculture. To make matters worse, the blueberry farms that are applying to import these bees started with investments facilitated by the Namibian Investment, Promotion and Development Board. This conflict of interest between one arm of government and another must be ironed out as soon as possible.

It is therefore essential that all government stakeholders be brought together to coordinate their efforts and create a common understanding of the beekeeping industry in general and the threat of Cape honeybees specifically. Beekeepers, farmers, conservationists, scientific experts and other affected non-government stakeholders can then address concerns and work with all relevant branches of government on the way forward.

The overall goal of this multi-stakeholder platform should secure the biosecurity and sustainability of the whole agricultural sector in ways that support indigenous pollinators and create economic opportunities for local beekeepers. Growing the national beekeeping industry into a professional sector that generates income and creates jobs should be a priority for this platform.

This call to prevent honeybee imports is not just about bees. It is about protecting farming livelihoods, national food security and Namibia's environment. If we look after our native pollinators, they will look after us.