Day 17: Kingston and Bees

Taylor left today from the Kingston airport. Kylie and I went along for the drive to say goodbye. We will all miss Taylor very much. She contributed to much of the great vibe here and guided me when I first came. It was hard to say goodbye but we all wish the best for her in her future endeavors.
Here is a great picture of all of us. Left to right: Kwao, Enoch, Emmanuel, Me, Joshua, Melchezidek, Taylor, Kylie, Christie, Cody, and Agape. 

 Me, Taylor, and Kylie at the airport:

 Interesting billboard outside the airport:

 We went a visited Richie, a friend of the family. He is dry docked in Port Royal working on his boat. Here is a picture of a private boat that was abandoned after being damaged in the hurricane, you can see the severe damage in the front:

 Place we went to was called "Y Knot":

 There was an old building there going to ruin that was built in 1890 so it was probably built by the British. There are a lot of old buildings that I see in towns or cities, but most have gone to ruin. Kwao said only a few are ever saved. I wish more of them were, they are like a piece of history.

 While Richie took us to eat, Kwao somehow found the only guy that knew where bees were in the area. This wild bee colony was in an electrical box. You can see the guard bees hanging out at the bottom.

 After we got back, I went into the bees to take pictures for Christie and Cody. Here is a nice comb with a strip of honey at the top (the bar is flipped over, so the honey is at the bottom of the picture):

 The side apiary:

Here are the queen cells that we found in the Langstroth hive. There were five in total so we had to kill four of them to prevent swarming. I got to try royal jelly for the first time! It was not very tasty...

 We also tested that hive for mites by using a jar of bees with powdered sugar:

 We then poured out the powdered sugar through mesh onto a white tray and let the bees back:

We found one mite for a infestation (for the 300 bees we tested) of 1%. No natural treatment/intervention needed.

Day 15: St. Marys Training

Went to a training all day today (9:30am-7:30pm) led by Tom about top-bar hive construction.
 Here is the meeting room Tom presented in:

We presented at one of the Beekeeper's Association's meetings in St. Mary's. Tom likes to give an introduction about himself first. I really like this approach becuase he gives his background and where he is coming from, especially regarding bees. It makes him a real person, and he references his own experience throughout his presentation. His style of teaching is very interactive with the audience, including doing hands-on construction. He gave a short presentation on top-bar hives and then we got started with building one. The wood they got for the training was a little warped and piecemeal, but Tom could look at it and know what to do. He has a great eye for looking at what can be done with different pieces of wood for building hives. We went outside to cut all the wood and nail it together.

Here is Tom showing that a piece of scrap wood can still be used for another piece of the hive (you can see the four faces already cut out on the table):

 Nailing pieces together for the bottom of the hive:

 We went inside afterwards for Tom's presentation about top-bar hive management. He used the hive they had just built for presenting.

Tom uses paper pictures of comb that he took stuck into bars for presenting. Tom had the audience show most of the hive:

I got a couple of good pictures of ackee from earlier (these are the ripe, opened fruit):

 

 

Flame of the Forest or colloquially "Donkey pee-pee" tree:

 

The Jerk place we ate at on the way back:

 

Day 9: Top-Bar Training in St. Thomas

We left at 5:30 in the morning to go to Tom's training for top-bar beekeeping in St. Thomas. It was alittle tough for me becuase I had woken up in the night with an earache from water being in my ear. I got help drying it out but still only got four hours of sleep. The car ride was three hours long. We got breakfast when we got there. The coffee came with sweetened condensed milk! I got chicken as well...haven't had meat in awhile.

 The training was at the St. Thomas Beekeepers Association meeting. Tom presented about top-bar hive management. They had already gotten a training about building top-bar hives so they had a good idea already of what it consisted of. But, Tom informed them about how to look into the hive, make decisions based on what you see, and how to deal with problems. It was all very practical and extremely well done. The members were very responsive and actively engaged. Tom is a teacher and did a really great job in interacting with everyone. He had lots of volunteers to demonstrate!
People at the meeting who are beekeepers:

 

Tom showed everyone how to make the wax foundation mold. This was a very popular idea becuase wax is expensive in Jamaica, as are wax foundation sheets. They have to buy from someone that had invested in a mill to make the sheets. Wax is also hard to come by, so it ends up being very expensive for the beekeeper to replace their sheets. One man in particular was very impressed and excited about the service that this cheap alternative can give to a beekeeper.
Tom putting together the wax foundation mold:

 A volunteer helping to build the wax foundation mold:

 Tom showed everyone how to make a pollen trap of his own design that can fit on a top-bar hive. He had everyone involved in building one of their own. He also left them cut pieces of wood as templates so that they could build more. We all had a really great laugh when one of the women was joking about the drawer being "draaws" (ladies underwear).
Building the pollen trap:

 Painting on the wall at the meeting building:

 Tom showing everyone alternative hive material ideas:

The training ended up being from 9:30 to 5:30 becuase of all the topics covered and the tools created. The pollen trap took quite awhile to put together. But, overall it was a fantastic experience. Kylie and I did surveys of all the members for the Farmer to Farmer program. Everyone was SUPER nice. I had lots of fun just talking to people and hearing what they liked about the trainings. It was clear that many of them were able to get more hives and understand management better of the bees. A lot of people wanted to see marketing of bee products as a future training topic. Very cool.