One of the bees, stingless honey bee, which was recently discovered in Kakamega forest by the scientist, Mary Gikungu, is now big-time business for bee farmers in Brazil and India because of its ability to make exceedingly good medicinal honey.

In Brazil and some Asian countries, the bee, scientifically known as Meliponula, makes honey which is said to be highly prized and well sought after for its ability to cure conditions ranging from male impotence to baldness.

It is claimed that when a man regularly takes two tablespoons of this honey, prior to sleep, it strengthens the semen and greatly reduces impotence.

For baldness, literature from Canada shows that people suffering from hair loss can reverse the problem by applying on the scalp a mixture of one tablespoon of this honey, olive oil and one tablespoon of cinnamon powder. This is then washed-off after 15 minutes.

Although the bee requires unique conditions for domestication, Kenyan bee keepers who will able to domesticate it are likely to make huge sums of money like their counterparts in Brazil.

The bee resides in areas of heavy canopy, with a lot of shade and less penetrating sun rays. The potential breeder is expected to simulate the same environment for it to do well.

When reared well, these type of bees can give high quality honey of up to five kilogrammes in a season, which might fetch more money than the 20 kilogram honey produce by the common honey bee.

Gikungu, who is behind the identification and documentation of these bees, says besides making money from sell of honey, identifications of the bees is also going to benefit farmers of crops such as coffee, passion fruits, strawberry, mangoes and French beans.

Such farmers are now going to know which of the bee pollinates their crops well, resulting in high quality yields.

Countries like Israel are currently relying heavily on bees to pollinate and improve the quality of their fruits such as citrus, strawberry, cucumbers, and avocados, which they export.

Studies also show that pollination by exotic honeybees increases coffee crop yields by more than 50 percent.

Says Gikungu: “By knowing which bee is effective in pollinating certain crops and improving their quality as well as those that produce medicinal honey, we can be able to advise the farmers on how to improve profits of their ventures.”

Fruits pollinated by bees, notes Gikungu, are tastier, have good shape, size and colour.

At the moment, farmers are said to use wrong bees for pollinating particular types of crops ending up with disappointing results.

Whereas stingless bees are known to be the best pollinators as they are able to penetrate deeper into the flower, they have not been domesticated.

Hence, farmers use stinging honeybees, which perform the same task, but are not as good as their stingless counterparts.

Since 2004, Gikungu, who has just completed doctorate studies in studying bees, has managed to document over 240 bee species in Kenya, with 12 of them being honey making bees.

Of this, seven of the honey making species are found in Kakamega Forest. She has also documented the type of bees found in Mt. Kenya, Mwingi and in the country’s dry lands.

The only bee taxonomy (branch of biology dealing with classification of organisms) in East and Central Africa, Gikungu has now moved to Kansas University Bee Laboratory in America, to describe and have the new bee species in Kenya officially recognized worldwide.

One of the implications of this description and documentation at a such leading world bee research centre will be increased interest from both local and international researchers to study in detail the new species.

The German Government, who funded her PhD studies through the BIOTA-East Project, has a keen interest in this.

These developments come at time when it was revealed that several farmers, especially those cultivating fruits and French bees, have been in the last three years hiring bees from research stations to pollinate their crops.

Other crops currently in demand of bees for pollination are mangoes, avocados, passion fruits and Dania.

Horizon has learnt that leading in the demand are farmers from Naivasha, Limuru and Thika who normally undertake huge horticultural farming.

According to Robin Mbae, the Officer in Charge at the National Bee Keeping Station, they are currently supplying bees to French beans growers in Limuru and a farmer in Naivasha who grows strawberry fruits.

Discussions are also underway on how the station can collaborate with the University of Nairobi to pollinate the institute’s fruits now growing in Kibwezi.

To hire one colony of between 40,000 and 60,000 bees for a period of three months, a farmer pays Sh 2,000. This excludes the transport cost, if the client is located far away from the station.

Once hired, the bees are positioned in areas where the crops they are expected to pollinate are. The person hiring the bees is also required to discuss with the breeders on the type of chemicals to be used when spraying the crops to avoid killing the bees.

“Our clients tell us their production is high and the quality of the fruits in terms of the size and weight is impressive after using the bees for pollination,” says Mbae.

In Australia, for instance, a study done in 2002 showed that Avocado yield in the fields pollinated by bees to be 788 fruits per tree compared to 227 in fields without the honeybees. The weight of the fruits was also found to increase as the number of hives per hectare.

“The only problem in Kenya is,” says Mbae, “this is a new concept and most Kenyans do not know they can optimize their production by using bees in a targeted way for pollination purposes.”

Some people avoid using bees - which are said to be involved in 75 percent of pollinating certain groups - fearing they might sting members of their family or the public.

The good news is, the national bee keeping station has acquired some two colonies of stingless bees from Namanga and Baringo for purposes of breeding. One of the reasons for this is to meet the demand of different types of bees as bees in many areas become extinct.

It is understood that with the destruction of forest and heavy use of pesticides sprays and other chemicals, some areas of the country are now suffering from lack of or acute shortage certain bees species used to pollinate crops such as passion fruits and French beans.

Bees like the stingless honey bee that inhabit areas with thick canopy that do not allow sun rays to penetrate have succumbed to intense sun rays as mankind destroys their natural habitats.

This development is forcing farmers to lean back to the bee research stations, for bees that will pollinate their crops.

Says Gikungu: “The low crop production that has been registered in the recent past got us interested in finding out what was happening in the biodiversity and we realized key pollinators are fast disappearing.”

She thinks the poor yields and of low quality of crops like coffee may lie in lack of good pollinators such as bees and not only in other factors that people tend to focus on.

And this is evident with certain fruit crops. Gikungu notes that passion fruits that have not been pollinated by bees have distinct features which a consumer can easily discern when buying them in the market.

Such fruits are less juicy, lighter in weight, have a crooked outer-coat, and with seeds that are poorly formed. Otherwise, fruits pollinated by bees possess quality characteristics.

Those who have used the bees are said to experience immediate and huge improvements in their yields than those which have not.

What is however worrying bee experts like Gikungu is as farmers go out to reap this benefits by transporting bees from one location to another for pollination purposes, the move might affect the quality of the bee species.

It is feared that mating of bees from one region with others from a different region might result in species with poor attributes that in turn affects the quality of crops they pollinate.

For now, to help farmers gain from using bees as pollinators, local scientists are researching on how best different bees so far documented can be reared to ensure they return better results.