Beehive Fence Construction Manual

My previous post talked about the Al Jazeera film that includes footage of villagers at the Kileva Eastfield School making beehives and erectng a beehive fence at Ambrose’s farm.  For those of you that are interested in learning more about beehive fence contruction, click on the image below to download a copy of Lucy’s Beehive Fence Construction Manual.

Happy reading!

Cliff

Al Jazeera film showing STE/Kileva beehive farms

Back in March I posted a series of Beehive Project Update posts (see the 1st here ) which included information about an Al Jazeera film crew visiting Sagalla with Dr Lucy King of the Save The Elephants organisation to make a programme about elephant – human conflict.

The film is now available to view at http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/earthrise/2012/03/201233092435120486.html

Brief highlights:

• 1st few minutes – Background with Lucy introducing some of the issues to Russell (the film presenter) that are involved in the human-elephant conflict that has led to her ground breaking work to use bees as a deterrent to crop-raiding elephants
• 3:33 – approaching the Kileva Eastfield school
• 3:41 – Russell (the film presenter) and Lucy meet Kilele at Eastfield
• 4:19 – Ambrose (the farmer whose farm has some of the STE/Kileva beehive fences) shows the impact of Elephant crop raids at his farm
• 5:36 – Lucy at a beehive fence construction workshop at Kileva Eastfield school
• 7:40 – Erecting beehives at Ambrose’s farm
• 10:00 – end of the elephant/bee part of the film

Stills from the film:

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

For more information about Lucy’s work go to www.elephantsandbees.com 

Enjoy!

Cliff

Japan International Cooperation Agency visit Kileva Eastfield

From: Kilele & Margaret

It’s with pleasure that on 30^th March we got guests from the Mwatate District Gender / Social Development Office of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) volunteers from Japan.

They paid a courtesy visit to the school and then they visited the beehive fencing project which they learnt of beehive fencing over the internet. They learnt of top bar beehives and lucky as nearly six beehives are occupied by bees and it’s a big and good organization which is changing people’s lives.

Attached here in, find a few photos of the visitors at school and at the farms.

Best wishes

Kilele & Margaret

Kilele, Joyce, Misako-san, Patrick at Kileva Eastfield

Margaret, Joyce, Misako-san

At the beehive fence farm

For more information about the work of JICA in Kenya go to

http://www.jica.go.jp/kenya/english/activities/activitiy01.html#a03

BBC Film “Queen of the Savannah”

As mentioned in a recent blog post ,  the film “The Queen of the Savannah” showing footage of our beehive fences at night was shown recently on BBC2. 

Here are a couple of photos of Julie Moniere (the camera woman) filming at the time

Also here are some stills from the program where the Kileva Foundation and our Mwakoma villagers were mentioned in the credits. 

This is all good publicity for Lucy King of the Save The Elephants organisation and let’s hope it brings more funding for her and her team to continue the great work they’re doing to protect crops and provide a sustainable additional income to the farmers of Mwakoma and surrounding villages.

Regards

Cliff

PS: For more information about Lucy’s work click on the image below.

 

 

 

 

Beehive Fence Update Part 4: Report and Photos from Margy

Aljazeera TV

The Aljazeera TV group from England brought with them many reading materials and they had prizes for the best performed students. It was a great joy for the best perfomed students at Kileva Eastfield school. The kids presented to them poems and traditional dances and the pre school teacher was given stationeries for preschool.

They were acompanied by Dr.Lucy King of the Save The Elephants organisation who discovered that bees are deterient to elephants  and thus she discovered beehive fencing might be a solution to the human wildlife conflict which has contributed much to the peoples poverty through farm raids and loss of  human lives by wild elephants.

They filmed the beehive fencing project and they had live interviews with Mr Kilele, the locals and Dr. Lucy King.

Honey Care Africa

Honey care Africa import honey from Uganda and Tanzania as Kenya doesn’t produce much as the  demand of honey is very high in Kenya. They visited our beehive fences and promised the locals ready market for honey and they shall be coming to collect directly from the farms and there price is 170/=to 200/= per kilo of honey which is an encouraging price.

They are ready to fund the locals or individuals acquire beehives but on condition that the farmers must sell the honey to them. So they are reviewing the idea of putting up more beehives fences to a few farms and we hope it is going to be positive. They are still evaluating the idea of bringing beehives to the villagers even up over the mountains

Carbon Wildlife Works

These people work with wildlife and forest conservation. They are associated with kenya Wildlife service and it has  got about 1000 forest rangers and 1000 game wardens with a lot of office staff. Its main office is in Maungu area (38 km from voi town) and it is overlooking Kasgau mountains and plains which are heavily invaded by elephants.

They wanted to borrow a leaf from Kileva beehive fencing for them to try it to farms in Sasenyi, Mkamenyi, Bughuta, Bungule, Jora and Ngambenyi. Its a big organization and we think funding is not an obstacle to them.

Best wishes

Margy

Beehive Fence Update Part 1: Al Jazeera TV visit to prepare for filming

The post below is from Kilele regarding a visit last month to Sagalla by people from the Al Jazeera broadcasting company who were preparing to make a film including use of our beehive fences to protect crops from elephant raids.

Over the coming days I’ll post a couple of other subsequent reports from Kilele and Dr. Lucy King (from the Save the Elephants organisation) regarding the  filming and various other meetings that took place when the Al Jazeera crew returned to Sagalla with Lucy earlier this month.

Regards

Cliff

From: Kilele
            Voi, Kenya
            28^th Feb 2012

Hi Cliff,

I am back home and today having been going round with guests [Scott and a lady] from the Al Jazeera broadcasting company who came to visit our beehive fencing project in Mwakoma and we had a wonderful day at Eastfield.  Standard five kids performed a traditional dance [kirindi] to the guests.

They will be coming down to Voi again on 7th March accompanied by Lucy King and I think they will be increasing more beehive to our 2nd farm.

It feels good to be the hosts of this project and it has now been confirmed that many people are seeing and reading the news all over the world.

I have alerted the villagers that on 8th March we have a prizegiving day and the guest to present the awards are these guests with Dr.Lucy King and the Area Education Officer (A.E.O.)

Regards

Kilele

BBC Visit Sagalla. Scene 3: Showing elephant film to school kids

It was like looking for a needle in a haystack.  However after the disappointment in Samburu when no elephants were seen at the beehive fences there, it was with great relief and excitement that on the night of 23rd May 2011 the team saw and filmed elephants at the feces in Mwakoma.

Indeed that same excitement was felt throughout the school over the next few days when the team came back to talk about the experience. They also showed clips from the BBC documentary ‘The secret life of elephants’ which was a great treat for the Kileva kids.

BBC Visit Sagalla. Scene 2: At the beehive fences

Picture the scene.  Lucy is back at one of the 2 beehive fences that she and her Save The Elephants team organised the building of back in 2010 . 

 [A letter from her at the time  can be found on pages 6 of the following Newsletter 091204 Newsletter]

She’s there with Valeria and Julie from the BBC who have been filming with her up in Samburu but without much luck. They’re now at the Kileva beehive fences hoping to get shots of elephants near the beehives at night – something that’s never been achieved before.

The search is on …

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

BBC Visit Sagalla. Scene 1: Arriving at Kileva Eastfield School

As reported in an earlier blog post (click here for details) the BBC joined Lucy King and her father when they visited our projects in Sagalla earlier this year.  They were doing a film for the Natural World Series (BBC 1) on the African Honey Bee and wanted to incorporate our beehive fences into the story.

I’m delighted to say that Julie Moniere (the film cameraman) has sent me some photos of the trip.  Over the next few days I’ll post them to the bog in the following “scenes”:  

• Scene 1:  Arriving at Kileva Eastfield School
• Scene 2:  Visiting the Kileva Beehive Fences
• Scene 3:  Showing the film to the school kids
• Scene 4: Helping out at the school prizegiving
• Scene 5:  Watching school play about elephants
• Scene 6:  Shots of parents & pupils at the school

And now to scene 1 …

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

It’s raining in Sagalla

From Godwin Kilele
Voi, Kenya

Dear all,

We are all well here in kenya and iam telling you its been raining since the day cliff, jane, steve, and dave went back to englishland from kenya, i think they brought us rain from england.

Farmland near Mwakoma

We are very proud to see the much work you are doing to help us here in kenya and thus we wish you well and happiness. May God bless you abundantly.

Well,to be sincere[not sarcastic],i wont make it to  england for the 4th Dec 2011 meeting as i have much commitments to some family issues.  please pass my apologies to the uk Board members. But if you wont mind,you can forward to me the minutes  of the meeting.

Otherwise love and regards to all.

Kilele