ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the example of local African beekeeping to explore how the forest can act as an important locus for men's work in Western Tanzania. The beekeeping camp, and the organization entailed in working in the forest, is of signal importance to the lives of large numbers of men who engage in seasonal activities such as beekeeping, hunting and fishing. In popular thinking in Tanzania, beekeeping is typically characterised as the preserve of 'old men’. The dry season forest camp is a context in which men of different ages work together, often in the absence of any women. Mzee Chalamila and his friend, William Nsokoro, choose to keep bees at Kwalungu and Nsontwa because the forest is considered good for honey and beeswax production. Reflected in this civil servants narrative is a long legacy of active exclusion by the state of women from the forest or urban areas.
