A story by Rashid Kimati, a villager who benefited from the bee keeping project training sponsored by KiliTech in month of April, 2017.
It was a normal Monday just like any other in Majengo, a sub-location of Kyomu village in East Kahe Ward. Grace Justin one of the village residents had contracted a tractor to come and work on her piece of land so that she could plant some maize.
Grace, like most of the villagers in this location practices bee keeping using local bee hives curved from tree trunks and hanged on trees.
On this particular day the tractor came to work on her land, and she went to supervise the work in the field. In Grace’s farm, there are several bee hives with a lot of bees that Grace herself had them hanged in the tree grown at the edge of her farm. As the tractor worked its way and got closer to the edge of the farm the bees got anxious because of noise and smoke emitted from the tractor.
They started attacking anything close by starting with tractor driver who had already got very close to the hives by then. The driver escaped in fear of the bee stings leaving the tractor on, making matters even worse. The next victim was Grace who was standing not far from the tractor. She cried for help but no one could go anywhere close to her in fear if the bees.
African bees are well known of their aggressiveness when they feel threatened and are known to kill their victims if they attack in large numbers, which was most likely in such case. Luckily for Grace Rashidi happened to be close by. He suited up in a protective suit and immediately and hurried to rescue Grace.
When Rashid got to Grace, he immediately covered her with a blanket to prevent other bees from inflicting more stings. He managed to get her out of harm’s way and asked people to give her first aid.
After helping Grace, Rashid went back to deal with bees by removing the tractor which was agitating the bees. He found a swarm of bees resting on the steering wheel of the tractor, bravely he collected them and sent them back to the hives. He then drove the tractor off hives and peace reigned once more in the field.
Rashid explains that this is one way that the community has benefited from bee keeping training that was funded by Kilitech a few weeks ago. He goes on to say that, since the day he understood that there are ways of extracting honey without killing the bees, he has made it his mission to protect the bees and educating others on ways managing bees.