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 16: Meet the Wilkinsons

 Went on an excursion today to the beach. During breakfast, I was blogging, eating, and warding off monkeys who were begging me to read. Somehow I heard that we were going to the beach with the Wilkinsons to get snails. I didn't know who these people were, and I told some of the other interns what we were doing. Apparently, I heard completely wrong. We were going to the beach to find "wilks" which are a specific sea snail that you eat. Jessica took us all along the beach in order to find the snails to eat for lunch. We climbed up and down rocks for over an hour with the waves crashing against the rocks. It was tough to find the right snail but really fun. The rocks they were stuck to were pink and green. We were looking on the surface so they were a little smaller. It was great exercise for the day.

Cooking them up for lunch:

  

We had to sit for a couple of hours and pry out the snail from the shell:

 The snail next to the shell:

 My hand was stained purple by a "tobaco" (still not really sure what it was). Apparently I picked up a wrong crustacean that turns your skin purple (harmless though):

 Washing the snails:

 Me with a snail:

They were cooked up in a sort of curry with vegetables and very tasty over rice. Delicious!

For school

I am getting internship credit with my school while I am here. For my major, I am required to complete internship units. I wrote a "Project Proposal" in the beginning of my stay in order to set up some realistic goals for my internship. I send reports on my progress to an adviser. Here is my "Main Objective" and goals for my internship, many of which I have already completed:

I.                   Main Objective: To learn hands-on about top-bar beekeeping on a rural farm in Jamaica. To assist in completing projects for their top-bar apiary.

Goals:

1.      To understand, and implement top-bar management techniques while beekeeping on an everyday and practical level on the farm.

2.      To build other top-bar implements such as pollen traps, frames, and hive stands and fully understand their design and installation.

3.      To collect and learn about the various uses of bee products such as honey, wax, pollen, propolis, and royal jelly.

4.      To learn about the difference between Langstroth and top-bar hives and be able to weigh the benefits of top-bar in context with a rural farm in Jamaica.

5.      To acquire decision-making skills about breeding, replacing, and observing queen bees including knowing their life cycles, maintenance, and care.

6.      To become involved and participate in trainings and observe community reactions to the introduction of top-bar hives in order to understand their practicality in the local economy.

7.      Leading workshops for the local kids group Robins Bay Bee Club that visits the farm.

8.      To build my own top-bar hive for the farm using my acquired knowledge.

9.      To gain knowledge and experience in Jamaican culture in order to better understand sustainable agriculture relevant to a developing country.

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 14: Snorkeling

Went snorkeling today down the road near the Robins Bay Hotel. Kwao took us after we had gathered all the gear we needed. We started at a calm beach and swam around until Kwao knew where he wanted to be headed. It was truly amazing. Kwao describes snorkeling as visiting another world, almost like another planet. I agree entirely. The sensation of floating on the top of the water, observing other life forms with the sound of your own breathing, and the feeling of only the roll of the currents is unique. It was hard work, though, and a great workout.

Some cool things I saw:

• Lots of interesting coral
• A starfish
• Sea fans
• Lots of urchins
• Fish: needle fish, Sergeant Major Damselfish, Caribbean Blue Tang, pufferfish (only ones I could identify by asking or looking online) but saw many more. A few in particular struck me: one very dark blue with electric blue spots, bright yellow fish, long silvery fish with a blue head, and dark brown fish. 

Yesterday I recieved lots of interesting websites and PDFs from Agape as resources for reading. It all looks so interesting and I have already delved into it all. I am constantly learning in one way or another here. 

Day 13: Installing pollen traps

Today we installed four pollen traps onto top-bar hives. The design is such that the structure sits on the front ledge of the entrance to the hive. The bees fly into the entrance and have to climb through mesh in order to get inside. The mesh scrapes off pollen into a drawer that can be pulled out for pollen collection. Installing the traps was relatively easy. We had to put two nails into the sides of the hives to tie the trap on with wire. We had to figure out issues as we went, such as filling gaps to the entrance that the trap did not cover. We ended up using plastic bags and cardboard to fill in any gaps that would leave room for the bees to enter in a different way.
Looking at the hives for placement:

 Sideview of the attachment:

 Awesome in-action photo of the bees figuring out how to get in (you can see the pollen on their legs):

 Completed installation:

 Cody, Kristie, and I went back afterwards to install two more:

 Here, you can see the black plastic bag we used to fill in the gap to the entrance:

 Cody placing the drawer in:

 Completed installation on the Tanzanian hive:

We thought about certain issues that might arise in installation. One was gaps which we figured out pretty quickly. The other was alternative entrances being a problem. The Tanzanian hive lacked top-bars in the back and so left room for bees to enter under the cover. We will see if the bees start using that space as an entrance instead of where the trap is (rendering the trap ineffective). It was really neat that we visited the previous traps and saw 15-20 pieces of pollen already in the drawer. Tom says this is a slow rate, but we will check again tonight how much is collecting.
In the kitchen, we had a conversation about pollen. I asked if the pollen was transferred into cells by them scraping it off their legs or ingesting it. The answer is scraping and then adding nectar. They add more nutrients to the pollen first and then pack it into cells with their head. Pollen that is collected without their ingestion (collected in the pollen traps) is lower in protein. Apparently bees will reject lower quality pollen if they have higher quality available. This might happen if we tried to make our own pollen patties out of pollen collected by the traps. Quality also declines with extended storage. Also, Taylor looked up how people eat pollen and found mostly negative results. People would ingest it to prevent allergies and have severe reactions and things like that. But, there is still a market for selling pollen so we will see what we do with it.

Day 12: Nuke check

This morning, Taylor, Lauren, and I checked the nuke that we had placed queen cells into. I did not know what to expect, so it was really interesting. Out of the three sections, the first queen cell had emerged and the colony looked just fine. The second section also had an emerged queen but the bees were making supercedure cells. These might be mistaken for swarm cells, but are quite different. Taylor gave me a really great explanation of the difference. Swarm cells are relatively easy to tell and they are on the sides of the comb. These are for when the bees might want to swarm. Supercedure cells, as we saw, are in the middle of the comb. These are for an entirely new queen becuase the current queen is old, worn out, or weak. The bees in this section might have made the supercedure cells before the queen emerged as an insurance becuase they had no queen yet. The third section was in the worst situation, with no emerged queen and multiple supercedure cells on each side of the comb (again in the middle). We did not know why the bees would do this. One possibility was that the queen cell that we placed in there was not that great.
We did not want to do anything, such as squish down the extra queen cells, until we had talked to Kwao. It was very interesting and am I reading up more about the process and the types of cells. I have found beesource.com to be useful except that the article I was reading was about Langstroth instead of top-bar. The article is here: http://www.beesource.com/point-of-view/walt-wright/are-they-supersedure-or-swarm-cells/

Went to the beach today and did lots of reading as well.

Keep the Bees.

Day 11: Waterfall hike

Today Kwao took Kylie, Lauren, and I on the famous waterfall hike. It is along the same road as the hike of death, but more towards to ocean. We stopped at Black Sand Beach (also famous) for about an hour to swim and climb. Only, it was a little scary becuase we had to watch out for schools of fish and Barracudas. But, we just stayed towards to shore and swam around. The water was great and it was nice to get a good swim in (without rocks). Kwao took us on top of a little island near the beach with a great view of the land. The spot we were at was very special becuase it is where the two big ocean currents meet.
Me in the water:

View:

We also visited the old Spanish ruins that are nearby. There was a large, deep structure built behind the buildings that we tried to guess the purpose of. Cellar? Holding place for slaves? It was fascinating and very neat.
Me at the ruin archway:

The hike to the waterfall was mild and very pretty. The waterfall itself was not running very much but the effect was still amazing.The freshwater gathered in a deep pool that we could swim in. The water ran in a small stream down the hill. It was quite refreshing becuase it was very cool.
Me and Lauren in the pool:

  

I got to try a wild almond! There were a few trees near the waterfall that Kwao pointed out. He cut them open to eat. 

Me and Lauren in the pool:

Day 10: Building more hive stands

We built more hive stands for the next round late this afternoon. The cement was mixed in a big pile on the side of the road. Any extra cement was used to fill in a pothole (one out of a million, but it is something). We stacked concrete blocks to the side for filling. (The fire next to us was the neighbor burning yard debris).

 All of us watching Kwao mix the cement:

 Me transferring the cement to the blocks to fill:

 The key is to get the cement to be soupy and spreadable but not runny.

 Filling the blocks, which got a rebar in each hole just after:

 Taylor (right) using a rock to pound the rebar in:

 

 We will wait until they dry and then have eight stands to use for four hives!

Day 10: Installing hive stands

Today we installed some hive stands that were built last week. They are made of concrete blocks, concrete, and metal rods (I forget what they are called at this moment). We used four of these contraptions to re-establish two top-bar hives that needed new stands. The previous stand was warped wood that was falling apart. We had to dig holes big enough for the concrete blocks to fit in. It was VERY hot and a sweaty job becuase we had to wear our suits while doing it.
Placing the stands:

 The stands in the holes dug for them:

 Leveling the stands:

 

 Me digging:

 Me waiting to dig:

 Placing the other stands:

 

 Done!

 Emmanuel at the mango tree right next to us:

 The other completed hive (Tanzanian hive which is a square top-bar hive):

 Finished: