A Firsthand Look at Beekeeping in Hong Kong
Seventy-year-old Li Ma-kuen shows how his beekeeping benefits go beyond the hive.
Farming in Hong Kong Part 2
By Tsau Jin Cheng
Tucked away in a quaint temple in Jordan Valley, a little off the map in Ngau Tau Kok, is a sanctuary for one of the most industrious and resourceful insects in the world — the honeybee.
Ten wooden boxes perched on a slope are beehives. The bees thrive on the plants available within a 5km radius of the temple and are all taken under the wings of Mr Li Ma-kuen, a retired mechanical engineer turned beekeeper.
Video — Mr Li and fellow beekeeper Mr Ho shows us their trove of honeybees. They approach one of the hives and begin to dismantle it; they gingerly peel back the cloth and reveal the dozens of bees laying inside. Mr Li then scrapes a flake off the comb to show the amber liquid underneath.
Now in his seventies, Mr Li has cultivated more than ten colonies in the past two years and collaborates with the apis cerana, a native honey bee in Hong Kong. He fell into this agricultural endeavor after bees made the headlines back in 2006 that made him curious about the prospects of a bee-less world.
Beeapocalypse?
Beginning in 2006, beekeepers in the United States noticed an unusual decrease and disappearance in their honeybee colonies in a phenomenon dubbed colony collapse disorder (CCD).
“Beekeepers would open their hives and find them full of honeycomb, wax, even honey – but without the sign of any bees,” said Mr Alfred Fung Wai-kit, a fourth-generation apiarist and curator of Po Sang Yuen, Hong Kong’s first bee farm.
Eight years later, more than three million colonies in the US and billions of honeybees worldwide have died.
A Harvard study published in March has linked sublethal exposure to neonicotinoids, the most widely used insecticide, to the mass disappearances, but scientists are still lack of a clear culprit.
In what green groups see as the “second silent spring”, Mr Li worries if the epidemic will affect colonies in Hong Kong. Though the majority of bee farmers in Hong Kong don’t use pesticides, he believes significant declines reported in Mainland China are down to pesticides.
Every two days or so, he’d “work the bees” (a beekeeping term for inspecting the hive to make sure everything’s a-okay), to read their signals and look for anything suspicious.
Though we wouldn’t starve without their services (much of the world does live without managed pollinators) – scores of fruits, vegetables and nuts that depend on pollination could be lost.
As per the United States Department of Agriculture and Greenpeace, honeybees pollinate 70 of around 100 crop species that feed 90 percent of the world . Honey bees are also responsible for HK$230 billion a year in crops.
Homegrown Honey
For years, Hong Kong has had a thriving underground beekeeping culture, with hives kept in rooftops and bee farms in rural Tai Po and Yuen Long. It’s part of a trend that has even luxury hotels like the InterContinental Hotel keeping bees on city roofs or in tiny urban backyards.
One company, HK Honey, has eight urban beehives scattered around Hong Kong, on top of low-rise buildings in Mong Kok and Yau Ma Tei.
Despite having relatively smaller and obscure farms, honey is still being produced and consumed locally.
Mr Li continues promoting urban beekeeping in the community and passes on his expertise to beekeeping enthusiasts from time to time, hoping to reinstate the value of honeybees in our society.
“In the West, their beekeeping approach generates fear towards bees because so much protective gear is used. But you don’t need protection,” he said.
As a practitioner of urban beekeeping, Mr Li uses the methods of rural beekeepers in China, one of the largest producers of honey in the world. That means replacing the protective gear with a sense of respect for bees, slow movements, and calm.
As we enter the winter months, the bees in Mr Li’s healthy hives huddle together in a ball, rotating to create warmth as they feast on the fruits of their labor: sweet, nourishing honey.
For Mr Li, these are the joys of beekeeping. He’s fascinated by the inner workings of their complex society, which is something that he has just begun to understand.
“Some days the bees seem almost like tiny robots, bent on a mission. Other days, dramatic scenes unfold: dancing and battling with one another. To bear witness to it all will change you. These creatures, tiny as they are, have a way of making you feel a sense of something bigger than yourself.”
Relevant
A fascinating “Retro Report”, or followup on past news story, at The International New York Times, explains how the bee colonies in the US have been mostly restored or rebuilt, so the alarm and emergency has faded away. However, the story isn’t over; there’s still a steady and not insignificant decline in the size of bee populations.
Read the rest of the piece below for a good update on how experts see the state of bees today.
This story was written by Tsau Jin Cheng, a year-3 student studying International Journalism at the Hong Kong Baptist University.
