Livestock: Fish and Bees
Senior 3 · Agriculture
Livestock: Fish and Bees
Lesson 2 of 4
25 min
Let's begin
Some of Rwanda's busiest workers never receive a wage: they visit flowers on the hills around Nyungwe, Akagera, the Volcanoes, Gishwati Forest and Mount Kigali, where the Rwanda Agriculture and Animal Resources Development Board (RAB) counted hundreds of thousands of beehives in 2022. Their work showed up in MINAGRI's figures: Rwanda produced about 5,500 tonnes of honey in 2020 and 8,460 tonnes in 2025 (MINAGRI, Annual Report 2024–2025). To keep bees well, a farmer must first understand how a colony lives.
Definition
Beekeeping (apiculture): keeping colonies of honeybees in hives to obtain honey, beeswax and other products, and to pollinate crops.
Colony: a family of bees living together: one queen, thousands of workers and, in season, some drones. An apiary is a place where hives are kept.
Caste: one of the three kinds of adult bee in a colony (queen, worker, drone), each with its own body and duties.
Brood: the eggs, larvae and pupae of a colony.
Nectar: the sugary liquid made by flowers, which bees turn into honey. Pollen: the powder from flowers that bees eat for protein.
Royal jelly: a rich food made in the heads of young workers and fed to all young larvae, and to future queens throughout their growth. Propolis: a sticky resin collected from plants, used to seal gaps in the hive.
Swarm: a group of workers that leaves the hive with a queen to start a new colony.
| Benefit | Details |
|---|---|
| Honey | a food and sweetener, used in traditional remedies, sold locally and exported |
| Beeswax | made by workers to build combs; used for candles, polishes, cosmetics, batik and making new hives attractive to swarms |
| Other products | propolis, pollen, royal jelly and bee venom, used in health products |
| Pollination | bees carry pollen between flowers, raising the yield and quality of coffee, avocados, sunflower, fruit trees and many vegetables |
| Little land or capital | hives stand on steep or stony land, forest edges and boundaries; bees forage on land the beekeeper does not own and do not compete with crops |
| Income and jobs | for youth, women and cooperatives, and for carpenters, tailors (protective suits) and honey processors |
| Conservation | beekeepers protect trees and forests, because flowers are their bees' food |
Rwandan beekeepers keep the African honeybee, Apis mellifera, a hard-working bee that defends its colony fiercely.
| Feature | Queen | Worker | Drone |
|---|---|---|---|
| Number per colony | one | thousands to tens of thousands | a few hundred, mostly in the flowering season; none in hard times |
| Sex | fertile female | female, normally does not lay eggs | male |
| Body | longest, with a long abdomen; short wings | smallest | broad and heavy, with very large eyes that meet on top of the head |
| Sting | smooth; used only against rival queens | barbed; a worker that stings a person or animal dies | none |
| Duties | lays all the eggs (up to about 2,000 a day at the peak); her scent (pheromones) holds the colony together | does all the work of the hive (see below) | mates with a young queen from another colony, then dies |
| Life span | several years | about six weeks in the busy season, months when little is flowering | a few weeks; driven out when food is short |
A worker's career. A worker's duties change with age: in her first days she cleans cells; then she becomes a nurse, feeding larvae; next she makes wax, builds comb and stores nectar and pollen; then she guards the entrance; from about three weeks old until she dies she is a forager, collecting nectar, pollen, water and propolis.
Bees go through complete metamorphosis: egg, larva, pupa, adult. The queen lays a fertilised egg in a worker cell or a queen cell, and an unfertilised egg in a larger drone cell. Fertilised eggs become females: a larva fed royal jelly throughout its growth, in a large queen cell, becomes a queen; one switched to pollen and honey after a few days becomes a worker. Unfertilised eggs become drones. After the larval stage the workers seal (cap) the cell with wax, and the larva turns into a pupa inside.
Figure 10. Development times of the three castes (typical values for Apis mellifera).
Worked example 1: how fast is honey production growing?
Problem. MINAGRI reports Rwanda's honey production as 5,500 t in 2020 and 8,460 t in 2025. Find the percentage increase and the average increase per year.
Solution.
Answer: about 54% more honey, an average of 592 t more each year.
Worked example 2: when will the new queen emerge?
Problem. A colony's queen dies on 1 March. That day the workers choose a larva that is one day old and feed it royal jelly in a new queen cell. On what date should the new queen emerge?
Solution.
Answer: about 13 March. She must then fly out to mate before she can lay, so the beekeeper should not expect fresh eggs for one or two weeks more.
Warning
Common mistakes. (1) Calling the queen the "king" of the hive, or drones "workers": drones do no work in the hive. (2) Thinking the queen controls the colony like a ruler: she lays eggs and gives out scents; the workers decide most things. (3) Thinking all bees sting: drones have no sting. Safety: a person allergic to bee stings can collapse within minutes. Swelling of the face or throat, or difficulty breathing, after a sting is an emergency: get medical help at once.
Tip
Memory hook: "Queen 16, worker 21, drone 24": the days from egg to adult rise as the caste's work in the hive falls.
Access Agriculture: "Turning honey into money (Summary)". Note how beekeepers add value to honey and wax, and how working in groups helps them sell.
Practice
Key points
Sources and credits
Written by Ganzaa: the text, the tables, Figure 10 and the worked examples. Development times are typical values for Apis mellifera.
This lesson adapts CC BY-SA material and is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.
