Win-wins for conservation and communities is what the Nedbank-funded Green Trust promotes.  Heather Dugmore went along to have a look.

“Badgers and Beekeepers” illustrates this ethos.

Launched eighteen months ago, this Green Trust project is successfully resolving the long-term battle between honey badgers and commercial beekeepers.

Contributing an estimated 3.2 billion rand to the South African economy, many commercial beekeepers would not, in the past, tolerate honey badgers because they destroyed their hives. At R1000 per hive, the beekeepers went to war and either poisoned or trapped the badgers, whose numbers plummeted.

Honey badgers, contrary to their name, eat honey and bee brood as more of a treat than their staple diet. Generalist carnivores, their prey ranges from insect larvae to rodents to blackbacked jackal cubs.

But, when the occasion presents itself, they can’t resist a spot of honey and break into the hives.

Not much was known about honey badgers until wildlife documentary makers, Keith & Colleen Begg, researched the tenacious little predator between 1996 and 1999. They subsequently produced an excellent documentary on honey badgers – which many saw when it was screened on the wildlife TV programme, 50/50.

Their research revealed the honey badger (or ratel as is it also called) was in danger of becoming extinct.

This triggered the Green Trust’s Badgers and Beekeepers project, headed by Joan Isham. In the past eighteen months she has traveled the country demonstrating the solution to the badger problem to commercial beekeepers.

The solution: badger-friendly hives.

To keep the badgers out of the hives, all the beekeepers need to do is to elevate the hives beyond the badger’s reach or to reinforce them so that the badgers cannot pull them apart. At minimal cost, this eliminates the need to kill the badgers.

All badger-friendly beekeepers now use the official badger-friendly label on their honey.

“It’s a cost-effective, win-win solution and a growing number of beekeepers have introduced badger-friendly hives,” Isham explained during Nedbank’s client visit to “Hurters Honey” - a badger-friendly beekeeper and honey producer in Langebaan on the Cape West Coast.

Most of the beekeepers who have come on board are honey producers but Isham is confident the beekeepers who keep hives solely for pollination purposes will follow suit.

Clients were fascinated to learn about beekeeping and honey production from Johan Hurter of Hurters Honey who supplies Woolworths with badger-friendly honey.

Woolworths sells 160 tons of honey a year and has been a frontrunner in the badger-friendly campaign. Pledging to only buy honey bearing the official badger-friendly sticker, they have further pledged never to carry honey that has been irradiated (imported honey gets irradiated before entering the country).

“There is a shortage of honey in South Africa,” Hurter explained while demonstrating to Nedbank’s clients how honey is extracted from the combs. “As a result, quite a bit of honey is being imported, especially from the east, and it gets irradiated before it enters the country. By law, the label is supposed to say whether it has been irradiated or imported, but this often does not happen.”

Lower grade honey is also being imported which riles the South African beekeepers who are trying hard to “Keep Quality in the Country”. The badger-friendly label, apart from saving the honey badger, helps to control standards.

Donning beekeeper outfits, clients followed Hurter into a fynbos field where he showed them the inside of a hive. The jackpot of the day was when he found the queen – something few see.

“The queen has a lifespan of three years, while the workers live for thirty days,” he explained, holding up the large-bodied monarch. This instantly agitated the worker bees and Hurter quickly put her back and closed the hive.

One client for whom this experience was especially meaningful is Andre Claassens, a doctor of Zoology who studies insect life cycles.

Understanding life cycles and the interconnectedness of nature is what the Badgers and Beekeepers project is all about.

“As a top predator (in the absence of lion, leopard and hyaena), the honey badger plays an important role in maintaining a healthy balance in the ecosystem,” Isham explained.

“They control the numbers of other species – such as rodents and snakes. By keeping rodent numbers down they make a positive contribution to preserving healthy veld conditions. Also, where livestock farmers suffer stock losses from other predators – like caracal and blackbacked jackal) – honey badgers play a positive role in controlling their numbers as their diet includes the young.”  

Since the inception of the Badgers and Beekeepers project, Isham has done an extraordinary job. Apart from convincing an increasing number of commercial beekeepers to save the honey badgers, the public is now more aware than ever before about beekeeping and the badgers’ plight.

The sweet ending to this story is that each one of us can help save the honey badger. It’s simple. Buy only honey with the official badger-friendly label.