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The history of beekeeping in Brazil

by Luiz Bispo | 08-06-2015 13:44








It is difficult to associate raising Bee with Brazil. In general, people are likely to remind Brazil of soccer, coffee farm or carnival festival. However, today I would like to introduce the Brazilian apiculture based on my experience.

 

I had a good opportunity to join a practical class in the field, which was about the university subject "Learning about Bees". So, I was able to know a little bit more about the behavior of bee?s society, honey production and also about the function of nature for them. It was a great section to understand about such an awesome animal and environment surrounded them. I really admire how bees are organized and develop teamwork. In the end of class, I figured out that we needed to preserve its treasure of our planet.

 

In 1839 the beekeeping was introduced in Brazil for the first time. That time European honey bees reached by Father Antonio Carneiro and other species were continuously brought into mainly the South and Southeast areas by European immigrant. 

 

The bees imported in 1839 led to 300,000 colonies in Brazil in 1859 and some of them were taken by German immigrants to Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina in the south of Brazil in 1845. In 1950s African bees were imported in Brazil in an effort to increase honey production, however, a swarm of bees escaped from the experimental apiary accidently and started to mate with the various European honey bees. This accident brought out hybrid ones called Africanized honey bees in 1956..

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These bees are very aggressive so that beekeepers had a difficulty in managing the apiaries initially and gave up continuing this job. However, since 1970s, appropriate techniques have begun to develop, which caused result in bee?s spreading throughout South and Central America and North America in 1985.

 

Recently, local beekeepers have focused on enhancing the technical capacity by cooperating with the Ministry of Agriculture in Guyana. These efforts contributed to the positive result in boosting the apiculture industry this area. They expect that this collaboration will support to increase of honey production and food production in need of the pollination process.