Global Journal of Management and Business Research, F: Real Estate, Event and Tourism Management, Volume 23 Issue 3

iv. The Country's Memory Heritage It comprises the itineraries of slavery and the history of precolonial period kings (Lohento, 1999; Girard and Scheou, 2012). We can mention here, the Slavery Road and the Ouidah history museum, the war holes in Abomey, and those of the tailed men of the district of Dogbo. In November 2022, the government succeeded in obtaining the restitution of 26 royal treasures looted by French colonial forces in 1892 from the kingdom of Dahomey with the deportation of King Behanzin. They constitute powerful curiosities both at the national and international level, which will significantly revolutionize the tourism industry of the country. b) Bee Biodiversity in the Republic of Benin The Republic of Benin is located in an area of great diversity of social and solitary bees. As everywhere in the world, social bees are the most studied, while much effort remains for the solitary bees (Johnson et al. , 2023). As far as the social bees are concerned, the honey bee Apis mellifera. Linnaeus 1758 and the non- stinging bee Hypotrigona ruspolii. Cockerell 1934 are the two widespread native species (Amakpe et al. , 2019). A. mellifera , the honey-producing species under the provisions of CODEX Alimentarius (1981) is known as the domestic bee. But most honey bee populations in Benin are still in the wild where they nest in trees, termite mounds and houses. Morphometric and molecular genetic analyses (Amakpe et al. , 2018), showed that they belonged to three races which were adansonii, scutellata and iberiensis. These races are distributed in the dry Benino-Guinean ecotype, the Benino-Soudanian ecotype, and the Benino-dry tropical honeybee ecotype as the consequences of their adaption to the different ecological areas of the country. Hypotrigona ruspolii, the non-stinging bee, is found in the wild, as in the entire tropical regions (Gruter, 2020; Chakuya et al. , 2022). In rural areas of Zou and Borgou departments, more, and more people are keeping this species (melliponiculture) in special “hives” to satisfy the growing magico-pharmacological needs of its products in tropical areas (Kiprono et al. , 2022; Grando et al. , 2023; Mduda et al. , 2023). As such, any initiative targeted at integrating this species into the production system constitutes an opportunity for its conservation, deeper scientific knowledge and to add value to its economic, and ecological services. Regarding the solitary bees, Amakpe et al. (2019) identified at industrial quarries located in the southwest of the country, two species of Apidae family ( Xylocopa luteola and Xylocopa nigrita ), two species of Halictidae ( Seladonia jucunda and Pachynomia amoenula ), and two species of Megachilidae family ( Chalicodoma cincta and Eutricharaea sp .). Unlike social bees, which benefit from the recognition of their ecological services and the different products they issue, which justify their domestication for millennia (Etxegarai-Legarreta & Sanchez-Famos, 2022), solitary bees, and their ecological functions are poorly known in the tropical region. In the Republic of Benin, as in many countries, they are sometimes considered as crop pests (Silva et al. , 2023). Such a situation constitutes, apart from the climatic factors that are increasingly worsening for all biological entities, additional risks to their disappearance (LeBuhn & Vargas, 2021; Johnson et al. , 2023). Their maintenance on tourism sites constitutes a tangible contribution to their conservation (Silva et al. , 2023). c) Beekeeping Systems and their Challenges Communities in Benin have developed and preserved practices of harvesting honey and other hive products from ancient times (Botoyiye, 1999). The widespread method used to obtain honey is honey bee and Melipona hunting. In this system, social colonies are raided at night with fire, and such a method persists in some areas of the centre and north of the country. But it constitutes, along with deforestation and anarchic land use/land over, one of the leading causes of the disappearance of natural colonies of social bees (Johnson et al. , 2023). Alongside this problematic system, beekeeping and melliponiculture with actively kept hives are very old in the regions of Atacora, Borgou and Zou. The materials used for this purpose are hives made of clay, jars, or hollowed-out tree trunks (figure 1). These traditional hives are set high in the trees that the owner harvest in the dry season (Ahouandjinou et al. , 1997; Paraizo et al ., 2012). The system of hives with removable combs set by a beekeeper who works with a smoker and bee suit is recent and started only in 1972 (Botoyiye, 1999). The average size of apiaries is five hives, dominated by traditional hives made in jars, and sometimes in plastic cans and Kenyan top bars hives. A few professional beekeepers in the departments of Zou, Borgou and Donga have apiaries with more than 50 Kenyan, or frame hives, the colonies of which are obtained by trapping hives, fragmenting colonies or rarely by queen rearing. The significant challenges of beekeeping in the country are poor management skills, extensive agriculture and livestock farming, bushfires, uncontrolled pesticide use, pollution, and habitat fragmentation. In addition to these problems, which are common to the entire tropical areas (Johnson et al. , 2023), beekeeping in the Republic of Benin is particularly impacted by night time theft and vandalism of colonies. No beekeeper is spared from this phenomenon, during which unidentified looters break the hives, burn the colonies, and take away any comb they find (figure 2). Buzzing opportunities: Integrating apitourism for enriching the tourism heritage of the Republic of Benin Global Journal of Management and Business Research ( F ) XXIII Issue III Version I Year 2023 3 © 2023 Global Journals