We returned to Addis Ababa to check on the lines of
yeast being propagated under laboratory conditions. The yeast will be used in
the production of Ethiopia’s distinct honey mead, known as tej. Those who
participated in the project to produce the honey mead proclaim it is their goal
to bring tej to a level of prestige. Once reserved for the elite, tej is now
enjoyed by many. This trip to Ethiopia has been quite an experience. I met many
people interested in our projects centered in Bonga, Ethiopia in the highland
organic honey region. A food scientist discussed organic crops and the role of
honey bees in pollination and food production. Several Ethiopians shared
passed-down knowledge of tej making. Abraham Tesfaye explained the microbiology
of yeast propagation. Hafez Anwar explained how foreign countries are helping
build Ethiopia’s infrastructure with large projects like his road construction.
I asked, “How can Ethiopia progress to a six-lane superhighway carrying trucks
to Djibouti’s sea port when the road cuts through pedestrian neighborhoods
blocking foot traffic and even livestock herding?” Students and businessmen listened
intently to details of the bee hive projects I assisted Apinec develop. I spent
hours with my host Wubishet Adugna, often over bereles of tej, sharing thoughts
on beekeeping and ways to provide opportunities for the Ethiopian people by
harvesting the honey bees’ products derived from the diverse forest bounty. I
got an opportunity to share wonderful food, music, and other riches of Ethiopian
life. I saw resourceful people who never complained no matter how adverse the
situation. They were always helpful, friendly, and eager to laugh with me. I
had a most memorable visit to Ethiopia.
On the road we pass more livestock including cattle
with high upturned horns. From Addis Ababa a long air flight will return me to
Proctor, Arkansas and waiting family. Much bee yard work waits as well. Unlike
tropical Ethiopia, the temperate United States experiences seasonal changes. My
bees are visiting spring flowers
We entered the Great Rift Valley near Nazareth. This
massive depression dividing the Ethiopian highland regions is the location
where many of our human ancestors’ fossilized remains are being found. It
appears likely that this area of eastern Africa is the origin of humans and our
predecessors. I had the privilege of viewing many of the fossil findings at the
National Museum in Addis Ababa including the over-three-million-year-old Australopithecus
called “Lucy.”
While the climate of the Ethiopian highlands is
moderated by their altitude, the low elevation and proximity to the equator
makes this rift area quite hot and dry. The Rift, eastern Ethiopia, and much of
the Horn of Africa is now in its third year of severe drought which coincides
with a particularly strong La Nina event described as a cooling of the surface
waters of the central and eastern Pacific Ocean. While some individuals in
parts of the world deny the existence of global warming or climate change,
those who live in the Great Rift Valley understand climate destabilization. Pastoralists
of eastern Ethiopia and the Great Rift Valley see their livestock stressed by
dried-up pasture grasses. Herdsmen carry their livestock great distances to
rivers for water. Projections are for continued drought in this arid region as
well as in Ethiopia’s poorest area, the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and
People’s Region. Worldwide, climate destabilization moves the weather toward
the extremes. An English language article in Addis Ababa’s Daily Monitor datelined Nairobi, Kenya outlines proposals for
correcting the effect of human-generated greenhouse gasses such as water vapor,
carbon dioxide, and methane released by the burning of coal, oil, and natural
gas. Technologies used around the world to alleviate greenhouse gasses are
classified as Carbon Dioxide Removal and Solar Radiation Management. Reforestation
and avoidance of deforestation help by absorbing carbon dioxide. Large portions
of Ethiopia’s forests have been cleared for farmland. Climate disturbance tends
to affect those already experiencing the harshest of conditions. Today’s photo:
dromedary camels in Ethiopia’s Great Rift Valley.
Ten neatly dressed women sitting in the shade of a spreading
ficustree appear to be conducting an
important meeting. My Ethiopian contact explains that I am witnessing a Social
Court, a structure that exists in rural Ethiopia where a police or governmental
presence is rarely seen. Community leaders convene a Social Court to settle
domestic disputes or community complaints. A person found guilty by his
community may be fined, forced to perform work, or shunned, a harsh penalty in
a close-knit interdependent community. Social Courts are an effective control
over the behavior of rural citizens. They hold the community together and give
offenders a real understanding of the group’s expectations.
Examples of social bonding abound in Ethiopia. A
strong example is the Ethiopian tradition of family, friends, and invited
guests sharing the same food from a common serving—and eating by hand. The meal
of meat or vegetables is placed on a thin sheet of fermented bread, known as
injera. Those sharing the meal tear off pieces of injera to scoop up bites of
food. Social customs in Ethiopia build bonds between friends as well as between
those meeting for the first time. Ethiopians always stand, shake hands, and
acknowledge everyone in the room. However, if a person is sick or his hands are
not clean, he offers the wrist as a handshake. In the Ethiopian countryside, one
sees the close bond that Ethiopians have with their animals. When young boys
herd the family’s animals, they mind their owners like well-trained dogs.
Beasts of burden carry bundles of goods along roads ahead of their owners who
follow on foot. Animals and people sleep together inside small huts for
protection from predators. Quite a few Ethiopian families maintain a bond with
their honey bees, mounting their hives under the low-hanging thatch roofs of
the family’s hut. Children play among the flying honey bees. People, livestock,
and honey bees live in close proximity. Wubishet Adugna and I share bereles of
tej.
As we traveled northward, the forests thinned and
farms abounded in Ethiopia’s open plains. As we left the forests, we
encountered less monkeys and baboons on the road, but larger herds of
livestock. Our truck stopped repeatedly for cattle being driven to water in the
rivers. Crossing the Omo River gorge, we encountered numerous volcanoes. Today’s
photo shows a typical farm with a thatched roof, stick and mud daub house
located near the base of a volcano. The entire family shares the single-room
house with cattle, sheep, goats, and donkeys. Young boys direct the cattle herd’s
movements with a stick like a conductor directing an orchestra. The cattle obey
their master with whom they live night and day. Stacks of teff recently
harvested by hand with a short sickle sit on the ground. Family members,
including children, toss the teff into the air to separate the fine seed. Teff
is the staple crop used to make the fermented bread known as injera that is
eaten at every meal.
As we continued on our drive to Nazareth, Wubishet
and I discussed how Ethiopia’s honey bees tend to abscond, or abandon their
hives, much more frequently than do the honey bees of beekeepers in the more
temperate climate of the United States. Wubishet described seasonal management
of the hives in which beekeepers increase the volume of the hives prior to major
nectar flows to accommodate the colonies’ honey storage capacity. I explained
that some believe that tropical bees, like those in Ethiopia, don’t hoard
honey, but instead abscond and move to the mountains during the dry season.
Wubishet said that that description of tropical bee behavior is not correct. I
told him that honey bees will abscond if their hive becomes completely
undesirable. He explained that at times the comb melts in the equatorial heat, truly
making for an unfit nest. We stopped at Walesa for a meal of traditional
fasting food: injera with an assortment of beans, peas, lentils, and peppers.
Wubishet and I brought an empty drum from Bonga to
the fuel depot at Jimma, but Jimma was experiencing a shortage of fuel. An
angry encounter at the fuel depot was the only time I heard voices raised my
entire time in Ethiopia. Many trucks converged on the fuel depot, and the
operators would not pump any extra fuel. They did, however, allow us to fill
our truck’s fuel tank with diesel. A guard with an automatic rifle ensured no
actions exceeded the raising of voices. After a final cup of Jimma’s famous
Kaffa Zone forest coffee, we started the long and beautiful drive to Nazareth.
Wubishet Adugna, an accomplished beekeeper and
businessman, taught beekeeping skills to 2000 farmers who supply honey and
beeswax to Apinec. As we made the long trip by truck from Jimma to Nazareth, we
discussed honey bee health and compared beekeeping techniques between
Ethiopia and the United States. In the Kaffa Zone, we encountered many
traditional bee hives hanging high in trees I spotted a dark mass 50 feet up a
tree and adjacent to traditional bee hives. I asked Wubishet if that might be exposed
honeycomb or a swarm. He explained that it was a colony of small ants, locally
called “enni.” These ants fight larger ants living in the ground, and ants are considered
Ethiopia’s greatest honey bee pest. Ethiopia doesn’t have Varroa mites,
America’s most deadly pest. Ethiopia doesn’t allow the importation of bees or
items which might bring in Varroa. Ethiopia has lesser trade in shipping containers
and no sea harbors. Discussing bees, Wubishet explained that he resents the image
presented of African “killer bees.” We visited a farm house with traditional bee hives attached
to the walls under the thatched roof eaves. Children regularly played around
the hives. We saw honey bees and humans living together in harmony. The photo
shows the stick and mud daub construction of a typical Ethiopian farm house
protecting humans and domestic animals from predators.
I said good bye to the students at Apinec. In the few
days that I was with them I shared information about producing products from
the bee hive, and together we created a procedure for making tej, the Ethiopian
honey mead. I also answered quite a few questions about America. There were
numerous questions about “red-skinned” American Indians and American family
customs, especially the role of females in our society. Many wanted to know
about the prospects for the reelection of President Barak Obama. The citizens
of remote Bonga, Ethiopia were versed in American political issues at great
depth and understanding. The men each gave me a warm Ethiopian handshake,
shoulder bump, and hug. They were all amused when I gave the one female in the
group an American hug. Wubishet Adugna and I headed for Jimma by truck.
As we travelled the dusty road through the Kaffa
Zone, we observed numerous traditional hives hanging high in trees. The hives
are a beautiful sight on the Ethiopian highland ridges adorning tall Cordia africana trees, “weyra” in
Amharic. We stopped at the home of beekeeper Abeba Rausha who showed me the
bees he keeps in modern bee hives, modified Zander hives. Most modern bee hives
in Ethiopia are painted yellow. Forest coffee beans dried in the sun on the
ground in front of Abeba’s bee hives. Abeba served us fresh bread that his wife
had baked along with valonia honey and coffee. This was indeed a delicious and
memorable meal shared on the porch of Abeba’s home. Abeba manages 175 bee hives
with some modern hives and many traditional hives. White blossoms of valonia, a
low tree of 20 to 30 feet covered the southwestern Ethiopia highlands. The
Kaffa Zone is the heart of the organic forest honey and coffee region. The word
“coffee” comes from Kaffa. The coffee tree is thought to have been discovered
here and taken from the Kaffa zone to be replanted in equatorial regions around
the world.
I considered the training sessions at Bonga to be a
success. In an effort to expand upon the Ethiopian beekeepers’ sources of
income, I demonstrated methods to producing cosmetic products from the
available beeswax and honey. The processors at Apinec made nicely finished lip
glosses, hand creams, and restorative skin care products, adding Ethiopia’s
cocoa butter, olive oil, sesame oil, Ethiopian spices, and the essential oils
of frankincense, citronella, palmarosa, and eucalyptus. Apinec’s spices
included Ethiopian cardamom and wild pepper. The processors’ tej honey mead
production was quite successful using the Kaffa Zone’s organic forest honey and
native plants to recreate Ethiopia’s traditional honey wine. Microbiologist
Abraham Tesfaye joined in the tej production effort to ensure that our
procedures consistently produced a tej in a traditional manner while preventing
contamination of our yeast cultures. To ensure consistency of the tej
production over numerous batches, Abraham started propagating our lines of
yeast in laboratory conditions. He explained that the yeast cell division
occurs under aerobic conditions. Abraham assisted by directing the production
of tej in anaerobic conditions to enable the yeast to convert the carbohydrate
of the honey to alcohol. Complete filling of the fermentation vessels and the
use of fermentation air locks that processor Fasika Habtemariam built ensured
the proper conditions existed. The honey used to produce the tej is the forest
honey collected from traditional bee hives. The honey is derived by crushing
the honeycomb by hand, which leaves significant amounts of pollen and brood in
the honey. The pollen and brood are sources of protein necessary for yeast cell
development. Protein makes this raw forest honey an excellent medium for yeast
cell growth and fermentation.
Twice a day during our training sessions, Apinec’s
Tigist Wildemichael roasted, ground, and brewed Bonga coffee in a jebena and
served it to us along with roasted barley or chickpeas. Many a Kaffa Zone thatch-roof house sports a
jebena coffee pot atop the center pole of the roof, the house’s only adornment.
On the second day of our training sessions in Bonga,
Ethiopia, the students arrived with bundles of foliage that they harvested in
the surrounding forest. The bundles contained aromatic plants used to make
Ethiopia’s traditional honey mead, tej.
In today’s photo, my host, Apinec Agro-Industry’s Managing Director
Wubishet Adugna, checks the fragrance of the broad leaves of wild pepper. The
center plant in the bundle, with small leaves, is limich; and the plant to the
right is gesho. The people of the Ethiopian highlands are adept at finding and
harvesting the rich plant life of the forest. The wild pepper will be burned
along with Olea africana to produce a
sterilizing smoke for the vessels holding the tej. The smoke also imparts some
of the distinctive flavor to this traditional mead.
When I bruised the leaves of the limich plant, Clausenia anisata, I immediately
recognized the bright, pleasant odor. It is the odor of honey bee Nasanov
pheromone! Worker honey bees raise their abdomens and use their wings to fan
air across their Nasanov glands to direct flying bees back to the hive. Nasanov
pheromone helps organize bees while they are swarming, and worker bees fan
Nasanov pheromone while their virgin queen is making her mating flights. Scout
bees use Nasanov pheromone to mark the location of food sources including
favorable sources of water. Nasanov pheromone is of great importance for
communications within the honey bee colony. A plant-based substitute would be
of great use to beekeepers. I quickly learned that limich is well founded in
Ethiopian indigenous knowledge of beekeeping, as it is used to attract swarms
to traditional bee hives placed high in trees. Limich is commonly used in Ethiopia
to bathe mothers after they give birth. Essential oils of the plant are used to
treat a number of ailments of humans and cattle. The gesho plant is used to
give tej its distinctive flavor. The bitter gesho stems and bark counter the
sweetness of the honey.
Mead, or honey wine, considered our oldest alcoholic
beverage, is produced by fermenting honey diluted with water. There is no
single formula for mead, and it is made in many styles and flavors. Most mead
recipes include a fruit or spice added to balance or contrast with the
sweetness of honey. Some of the fruits added to mead include tart apples,
citrus fruits, and raisins. Cloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon are spices commonly
used in making mead. Yeast, which provides the fermentation, for mead may be
added by the mead maker or it may be derived from “wild” yeast existing in the
air or on the surface of fruit. While mead is made and enjoyed throughout the
world, Ethiopia has its own traditional honey wine known as tej, which is
produced from three ingredients: honey, water, and gesho. Gesho is the native
Ethiopian shiny-leaf buckthorn, Rhamnus
prinoides. The stems and bark of gesho are used to counter the sweetness of
honey in tej.
The production of tej is an art passed as indigenous
knowledge across generations over thousands of years. The unrecorded oral
tradition of tej-making has been lost in some locations. At Apinec in Bonga, we
recreated the process of making tej using traditional materials and techniques
along with modern production methods. A microbiologist joined us in producing
tej. While we used modern techniques for sterilizing containers and equipment,
we also burned Olea africana and wild
pepper, two plants smoked in traditional tej making to sterilize containers.
While modern sterilizing methods are effective, traditional tej receives some
of its distinctive flavor from the smoke. Once a drink of nobility, tej is now
enjoyed by many Ethiopians. It is usually served at room temperature in round
flasks called bereles. This tej is cloudy in appearance. The processors at
Bonga are experimenting with techniques to produce a clear golden, effervescent
tej. Today’s photo shows bereles of tej served with a traditional meal of wot,
rolls of injera, and squares of false banana enset.
Bonga, Kaffa Zone, Southern Nations, Nationalities,
and People’s Region, Ethiopia is in the heart of the organic forest honey and
coffee region. Located in the highlands at seven degrees north latitude, the
region produces ample amounts of product from the surrounding forests. Apinec
Agro-Industry purchases raw, hand-crushed honey and beeswax from two thousand
area farmers. They process and pack honey and beeswax along with coffee and
spices for export. Apinec requested that I train their employees to produce
additional products from the honey, beeswax, and propolis collected from the
Kaffa bee hives. I conducted a series of training sessions similar to those
conducted by the Tennessee Beekeepers Association across the state of Tennessee.
In both cases the purpose was the same: to make beekeeping more sustainable by
expanding the number of products available for sale. Numerous products can be
produced based upon beeswax and honey.
Through an Amharic language interpreter, I demonstrated
how to produce beeswax candles, hand and skin lotions, lip glosses, and other
cosmetic products. A student repeated the steps to verify accurate translation
and understanding. Having a rich supply of vegetable oils, spices, and
essential oils, Ethiopia is well suited for producing such products. I also provided the Apinec processors with
formulas and procedures to produce other products from leather conditioners to
furniture polish. The technology for producing each of the products is
relatively simple, so start-up of manufacturing products should begin fairly
soon. The first attempts by the student processors resulted in very presentable
packaged products. The appearance, texture, and fragrance were very nice. To
get some feedback on the appeal of the products, we gave samples to five
ladies. Each of the five reported that they were not comfortable with the feel
of the product on their lips. This proved to be an important marketing test of
the product, which will now be reformulated with beeswax and other Ethiopian
oils. Apinec’s venture into producing other products from the bee hive is a
first for Ethiopia.
Agriculture and beekeeping contrast starkly from the
United States to Ethiopia. America’s food production is now accomplished by a
small fraction of the population, while almost all Ethiopians are farmers. Even
though beekeeping and the pollination it provides is responsible for one third
of our food production, an extremely small group of people manage our bees. By
contrast, beekeeping is a part of many Ethiopian farm families’ endeavors. Honey
bees in the US are housed almost exclusively in removable frame hives, mostly of
the Langstroth design. A few individuals keep bees in top bar hives or Warre
hives. In Ethiopia, modern bee hives are few; some keep bees in mud-coated
straw top bar hives, known as transitional hives. However, the vast majority of
hives are traditional bee hives which are simple six-foot cylinders made of
cane and lined with leaves. Traditional Ethiopian bee hives are placed empty in
the forest tree tops with the leaves of the Limich plant used to attract swarms
of honey bees. The hive trees are truly beautiful and impressive sights. With
woven bee hives mounted among the branches of trees from 50 to 120 feet above
the ground, the trees resemble larger-scale versions of native Ethiopian trees covered
with weaver bird nests.
The keeping of honey bees in Ethiopia involves indigenous
knowledge passed down through generations. Nimble two-man teams of beekeepers
harvest the hives at night. One barefooted climber with a torch negotiates the
tree and gently lowers a hive to his waiting partner. The bees are worked at
night because these are the bees with the reputation as the most defensive honey
bees in the world. Harvesting the honey is destructive of the nest. Using heavy
smoke to drive the bees back, the beekeepers cut combs from the hive. The combs
are crushed by hand, and the collected honey and beeswax are sold. The displaced
colony of bees flies to another awaiting traditional bee hive. Beekeeping in
Ethiopia depends upon colonies regularly swarming.
It is a long trip from Proctor, Arkansas to Bonga,
Ethiopia. It’s 21 hours in the air at six hundred miles per hour, stopping at
Atlanta, Amsterdam, Khartoum, and Addis Ababa. And then it’s almost two more days
by truck, stopping regularly for goats, sheep, cattle, and donkeys. Addis Ababa,
the capital of Ethiopia, is a cosmopolitan city. Ethiopians call it “The
Capital of Africa.” The African Union meets in this colorful, flowered city.
Diplomats, tourists, engineers, and business leaders are seen on the streets.
The traffic in the city of four million is similar to that of American cities.
Drivers negotiate busy intersections with their vehicle’s horn because there
are no traffic signals. Traffic officers referee the larger intersections.
Newcomers, like me, are surprised to see small herds of sheep, goats, or cattle
on city streets. Driving out of the city, the sight of animals becomes the
norm. The people of Ethiopia hold a strong connection to their animals. After
leaving the capital city, one sees a continuous flow of humans and animals on
foot along the roads. People walk with their donkeys laden with goods for the
market, or they carry a plow by hand as they follow their oxen to the field to
plow. Young boys herd drought-thinned cattle to rivers for water or to fields
to forage. Near the small towns, two-wheeled horse carts called “garis” and
three-wheeled “bajajs,” diesel-powered, enclosed rickshaws, serve as taxis.
Buses carry passengers between towns, and large trucks carry sacks of coffee,
grain, fuel, and goods to markets.
I knew that I had arrived in the land of Ethiopia’s
forest honey when I saw the weathered sign on the side of the road. The sign
proclaimed “The Town of Bees” in Amharic. Two traditional bee hives stand on
the highlands above the Great Rift Valley with volcanoes in the background. The
cylindrical hives are adorned with honey bees, modern bee hives, and honey. Endemic
Limich plants top the hives.
By the time I made my presentation to 150 new
beekeepers at the Memphis Area Beekeepers Association’s Forty-Seventh Annual
Short Course in Beekeeping, I was already packed for my next assignment.
Speaking to the enthusiastic Tennessee, Arkansas, and Mississippi beekeepers about
different approaches to keeping colonies healthy, I explained that some
beekeepers reacted to the invasion of parasitic mites in the mid-1980s by
attempting to kill the pests with chemical miticides. The result of this
approach was a temporary control followed by an evolution to a heartier strain
of mites resistant to the chemicals. I told the new beekeepers that some
individuals took no steps to control the parasitic mites, and that their
colonies usually dwindled and died after about two years. I proposed that the
beekeepers adopt an Integrated Pest Management approach to beekeeping designed
to strengthen the bees and weaken the pests while using a minimum of chemicals
in the bee hives. I explained that our goal should be to evolve strains of
honey bees that are capable of living in the presence of pests that, once
introduced into our area, are surely here to stay. The reception from the
audience was positive. Many are entering into beekeeping with a desire to be
environmentally responsible, and they seek a way of effectively managing bees
without relying upon chemical agents to control honey bee pests. An
individually designed IPM plan offers them a workable solution. In today’s
photo Adam Power and Sam Mardis demonstrate building bee hive frames.
Leaving Memphis’ short course, I turned my attention
to my next beekeeping teaching assignment far from home. I had been invited to
travel to Africa to train beekeepers in techniques for producing additional
products from the bee hive. The voyage would take me to areas I never expected
to see. It would provide me with great insights into the capabilities of people
who live close to the land and rely upon the honey bee to harvest the resources
of the forest.
EAS Certified Master Beekeeper and Owner of Peace Bee Farm of Conway, Arkansas.
Former President of Arkansas Beekeepers Association, Tennessee Beekeepers Association, and Memphis Area Beekeepers Association. Recipient of the President's Volunteer Service Award.
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