Tradition within transition

Denneke immediately appears like a wise man. He lives with his large family in a green part of Ethiopia, about 400 km south of Addis Ababa, in the Dawro Konta Zone, and he is one of the most respected beekeepers of the area. He learned to keep bees as a young man, by himself, watching them in the wild, starting from traditional kafò hives made of wood or bamboo. Today he has more than a hundred hives and has started using Kenyan Top Bar and Langstroth hives.

His son Deresse follows in his father’s steps, combining tradition and modernity to make beekeeping more profitable. At night, with Deresse and his friend Admasu, we moved the bees of a traditional kafò into a modern hive: a symbolic passage from past to future. The old hive is not denied but kept as an added value, because in a rural and uncertain environment tradition deserves attention and respect.

The next day we visited the Chicho Hayo Beekeepers Cooperative, where honey is collected, packed and sold, and where wax is no longer wasted but becomes an additional source of income. Sharing experiences on bee decline, diseases and pollution, we realised that even in apparently remote areas the problems are almost the same as ours.

Gianluca Pressi