• by Patricia Montero Lafourcade (paysandu, uruguay)
• Wednesday, May 05, 2010
• Inter Press Service

Beekeepers in the small South American country of Uruguay are facing climate change and a complex web of problems that threaten their livelihoods.

In the last few years, prolonged droughts followed by flooding have compounded the high costs of fuel, a weakening dollar that has hurt the competitiveness of local exporters, an increase in the area planted in transgenic soy, and the growing use of pesticides and herbicides that pose a threat to beehives.

Liliana Rodríguez, a psychologist by profession, has been keeping bees since she was 20. That was three decades ago, when she met her husband, who has worked as a beekeeper since the age of 16. Grandparents now, they have kept thousands of beehives on different fields around this small country of 3.3 million people located between Brazil and Argentina.

'It all started when I met Ignacio,' Rodríguez told IPS. 'We both had jobs -- he worked in a real estate agency and I was in ANCAP (the state oil company) -- but our dream was to set up a beekeeping business while we raised a family.

'At that time, nature was stable, and my husband's production projections were always exactly on target,' she said. 'That was the best gauge I had in the last 30 years. Until nature started changing, in a negative sense. As the years went by, my husband was no longer able to accurately predict how many kilos of honey we would harvest.'

Scientific studies forecast that in the next 10 to 15 years, the climate in Uruguay will start moving from sub-tropical to tropical, which will affect agricultural production and thus the economy, which is largely based on agricultural exports.

As a result of the climate changes that have already been seen, average honey production per hive, which had been growing, began to level off, to the point that 'we had to reach the decision to reduce the number of hives, because of the shrinking cost-benefit ratio,' Rodríguez said.

She added that 'in those terrible five years,' she and her husband had to sell off assets acquired over years of beekeeping 'to keep our cherished business alive.'

The effects of climate change are threatening the entire beekeeping industry in Uruguay and the foreign exchange it brings in.

The first managed bee colony was brought to Uruguay in 1834 by Bernardino Rivadavia, the first president of neighbouring Argentina (1826-1827), who had long shown an interest in bringing agricultural development and European colonists to the temperate grasslands around the Rio de la Plata, the largest estuary in South America.

'Anyone who really loves this trade never leaves it; I'm going to follow bees as long as they are on the earth,' said Eduardo Rivero, head of the Apiculture Development Bank run by the government of the northwestern province of Paysandú.

The bank is the only institution in Uruguay to provide free advice to beekeepers. Rivero, 54, is one of 600 apiculturists in Paysandú, and has been involved in the activity since the age of 18.

Domestic honey consumption has increased, to the point where it is equal to consumption of dairy by-products in the winter months, Rivero told IPS.

A colony of 20 hives produces a drum of honey that fetches 700 dollars on average. Depending on the flowering cycles of different plants, the hives can produce up to four harvests a year.

There are currently between 3,000 and 4,000 beekeepers in Uruguay, 50 percent of whom are in the north.

Four years ago, Uruguay exported 20,000 tons of honey, worth 40 million dollars. But in the last season, that shrunk to just 5,000 tons. Exports in the current season are expected to be higher than that, but not significantly.

The main markets for Uruguayan honey are Germany, the United States and Brazil.

Given the scant support received from the government, which has protected other areas of agricultural production but not apiculture, many beekeepers have gone from small business owners to farmhands.

Rural extension expert Ariel Arrambide told IPS the beekeepers' associations have become much less active.

Like many beekeepers, Liliana and Ignacio have been 'pushed out' of fields as the soybean crop and plantation forests have expanded.

The profit margin of beekeeping is no longer in line with 'the dedication that is needed' in order to meet international sanitary standards and comply with traceability requirements -- which refer to the completeness of the information about every step in the production chain -- Liliana Rodríguez said.

The difficulties ushered in a new form of organisation, which has led to improved quality and has made Uruguayan apiculture an example in the world, traceable 'from the hive to the honey extraction room,' Rivero said.

In Uruguay today, honey is only extracted in installations certified by the Ministry of Livestock, Agriculture and Fisheries, and every single beekeeper and beehive is identified with a number in a National Register of Apiculturists.

'Today we are fighting to keep alive our sweet dream of being beekeepers, diversifying by selling by-products like propolis and pollen, beeswax and royal jelly in order to cover costs and make a decent living for our family,' Rodríguez said.

She called for 'a greater appreciation of what beekeeping signifies for all other areas of agricultural production and for nature itself.'

Albert Einstein reportedly said that 'If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would have only four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.' But over the last few years, bees have been disappearing in record numbers. Beekeepers in Uruguay are trying not to disappear themselves.

© Inter Press Service (2010) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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