A taste of honey in Papua New Guinea

Press, 2 June 1982, Page 22

A taste of honey in Papua New Guinea

The “Country Calendar" team travelled’ to Papua New Guinea recently to report on the progress of an experimental bee-keeping project set up five years ago in the .Goroka area of the Highlands. • >. Papua New Guinea imports atyqut 70. tonnes of honey a year. Production at Goroka, where about 1000 hives are established, amounted to about 50 tonnes last year, with commercial bee-keeping catching on amount smallholders in the Highlands. Progress on the project is considered sensational given that Papua New Guinea has no tradition of bee-keeping. In 1976,./Papua New Guinea invited New Zealand to contribute technical assistance under its bilateral aid programme . to a project being set up by the Department of Primary Industries at Goroka. It was a pilot project . only. New Zealand sent bees, hive materials and an adviser, a Waimate bee-keeper, Gavin McKenzie. By the end of his two-year assignment the project had flourished.

Not only were the Goroka bees producing honey of high quality; they were producing it at a rate almost double the New Zealand average. After a year’s break Mr McKenzie started another two-year assignment. The' Department of Primary Industries unit at Goroka carries a staff of 22, including 10 trainee bee-keepers. In charge of the operation is lan Mopafi, a Papua New Guinea national who has worked with the unit since its inception and who has made study visits to New Zealand and India. Another man, Esekia Tapit, who joined the Goroka .unit when it set out tentatively in 1976 to test the ■viability of commercial bee- ’ keeping, is now a bee-keeper on his own account. He was the pilot project’s carpenter and had never seen a hive before. Now five years later and much wiser about bees, Mr Esekia is a smallholder with more than 100 hives at three different sites in the Goroka area. According to lan Mopafi, a bee-keeping smallholder need spend only one week in

three on hive maintenance; the rest of the time he can be picking coffee (in season) or tending his gardens. “Beekeeping fits in well with the way of life here,” he said. Gavin McKenzie has now., finished his term in Papua ■ New Guinea. “Country Calendar” set out to film what had been accomplished through the project and: how it was going. “They’re really on their own now," said Adrienne Longuet, the programme's reporter. The film crew Longuet, director Brian McDonald, cameraman Brian: Latham' and sohnd recordist Malcolm Bremner — spent, a week in ; . Papua New Guinea, during which time they noted how much the local people loved their honey. “They have very sweet tooths,” said Longuet.' “Usually they chew on sugar cane but., the honey has become equally as popular.” • “No. 1. Sweet Kai,” directed by Brian McDonald and produced by Howard will be screened on One on Sunday at 7.45 p.m.