hi, honey

days 6 - 12: sandcastles and swarms

Time is flying! It’s starting to feel like so long ago that Jessie’s family came to visit - her mother Lynn, husband James, and daughters Abigail and Hannah who have the best imaginations in the world and filled my free time with treasure hunts, boats to China, secret notes, and sandcastles:

Rock castles and sand watermelons with Hannah

Sandcastles, hammocks, and secret notes with Abigail

In bee land, two mornings this week started with catching swarms. The second one was up so high in a tree out by the road that Kwao had to find an extra long piece of bamboo and attach a crocus bag to the end. To catch a swarm you can use boxes, bags, or almost any kind of container that fits the situation. Because a swarm can be there one minute and gone the next it’s a good idea to have your swarm catching equipment ready at all times, especially during swarm season. Once this week we went to catch a swarm and it was gone within 10 minutes.

Swarm catchin (picture above by Jessie Brown)

Aside from a container, other equipment to bring when catching a swarm is lemongrass (oil or leaves), a smoker, and a friend. Lemongrass mimics the “attractant” pheromone created by the bees’ nasanov glands, which scout bees release when looking for a new home. The smoker you’re mainly keeping around in case the bees become agitated, but you don’t want to directly smoke the bees because it can cause them to scatter. If the bees seem like they are getting testy and trying to sting the person who is catching them, blow some smoke on/around the person to give them a little forcefield.

Some beekeepers will also put a frame from an existing hive in the container to help lure the bees. With the big bamboo catch, Kwao put a frame laid out with young brood and honey directly in the crocus bag. Last Sunday when we checked this colony was alive and well, and we transferred it to a full sized top bar hive that now belongs to Joshua.

The fun thing about swarm catching (besides the rush of adrenaline - if I could start every day catching a swarm, I could maybe quit coffee) is that it requires creativity. Bees can swarm in an attic, on a powerline, a roof, anywhere. Les Crowder in his book Top-Bar Beekeeping even talks about catching one in an abandoned outhouse toilet. Because every swarm is unique and requires its own solution, the impression I get is when catching a swarm you need to think fast and tap into your inner MacGyver.

This is probably where the original idea for the bee vacuum began. Yes, a bee vacuum! I did not know these existed until last week and it blew my mind. Here’s the diagram Jessie made me with beeswax candles and a rubber band (100% MacGyver). The straight candles are the hoses and the ovals are the chambers:

Plans for a DIY bee vacuum

The best case scenario with a swarm is if they’re gathered on a tree branch or anything within reach that you can shake. If you’re lucky, sometimes it’s as easy as shaking them into your container and then brushing the remaining ones in with your lemongrass or any grass or leaves that happen to be around, closing it up and then shaking them again into the hive you’ve prepared. The prepared hive should have lemongrass leaves or oil on the inside, and ideally some frames from two other hives containing young brood, some empty comb, and honey. If it’s not best case scenario, you might use a bee vacuum, or come up with your own MacGyvery trick.

Thank you, Jessie and family for bringing joy to Jamaica. We miss you!

days 5 + 6: the queens of strawberry fields | langstroth vs. top bar | treatment vs. treatment-free

This first weekend in Strawberry Fields we spent mainly in the hives, with Agape and Natalie who came in from Montego Bay. We hadn’t been in any of their bee yards yet so it was really nice to see what was going on in them.

In general top bar hives feel much calmer than the langstroth, like the bees are less cramped and angsty. A langstroth hive feels a little like a college dorm with everyone crammed in, where a top bar hive feels more like a nice apartment building where everyone gets along like in sitcoms.

Jessie’s birthday on Sunday turned out to be an exciting bee day/bday, with lots of new queen life in the hives. In one we were able to see a queen emerge from her cell (kind of like a chick emerging from an egg) and catch her in a cage. We ended up catching four newly emerged virgin queens in cages and also removing several capped queen cells, donating most of them to queenless hives.

Catching a queen

Collected queen cells

It was also really nice to be in the hives with three women. Strangely enough beekeeping is at this point still a male dominated field. It surprised me to find this out because a lot of keeping hives is a process of nurturing, and also meticulous organization, two areas that historically have been left to women.

Ladies

This is the thing about top bar is that it seems to be a more nurturing method than langstroth. Partly this is because the focus with langstroth is most often honey production, where with top bar the focus is more diverse. Of course all beekeepers want honey, but langstroth hives, especially when there are many, many of them stacked up, can get to feel like factory labor. Really in any situation where the focus is maximum production rather than the health of those producing it is a problem. 

Langstroth are built for maximum efficiency which is why I think the bees tend to seem more cramped and get to be more opposed to the conditions (old comb that has become unsanitary, not enough space) or dissatisfied with the management (a weak queen), and then go on union strikes (swarm). This is only an observation from my limited experience, and doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of happy, strong langstroth colonies.

Whatever type of hive it is, the popular practice now of giving the same chemical pest solutions over and over to your colonies, when the reason they are sick in the first place is chemicals in the surrounding environment, is strikingly similar to the problem humans have with being overprescribed antibiotics. So it’s not really just about top bar vs. langstroth - it’s about treatment-free beekeeping vs. beekeeping with chemical pest solutions.

It makes me think of Owen thinking he had pink eye when he first got to Beijing, and then being told it was just a reaction to the smog in the air that would clear up when he got back to the states. But it’s not like everyone in Beijing goes around with pink eye - they’ve adapted.

And so in some ways you can look at verroa mites and other pests as a good thing for the bees, like Sam Comfort does (a well-known DIY beekeeper in the states who runs Anarchy Apiaries), because it means that it’s creating stronger bees in the long-run, who are adapting to be resistant to pests, or even like some bees recently who have actually started picking mites off each other’s bodies.

Sam Comfort singing about varroa mites.

The main thing is not to underestimate the resilience of nature, and a little bit of patience. Bees will keep adapting so long as we aren’t forcing them with the same antibiotics and acaricides the way many beekeepers desperate for a quick solution keep trying strip after strip of Apistan in their hives, sometimes leaving them in there for years even though the usage instructions say to remove after six weeks.

As Dr. Ian Malcolm would say, life finds a way. And, for beekeepers who are having pest problems, two actions you can take are re-queening and removing unused comb that can become attractive hiding spots for pests like hive beetles and moths. Some have also turned to natural solutions like essential oils and formic acid, but it’s good to be cautious when trying anything like that, only try it when other less invasive actions haven’t worked, and try it out first on one hive as a test.

A study* on the use of essential oils and formic acid published in the Journal of Basic and Applied Scientific Research had the following conclusions:

• Data indicated that the percentage of varroa mite infestation on sealed brood and adult workers was clearly reduced after the end of treatments (fourth treatment) in all experimented essential oils and Formic acid.

• From the foregoing results it could be concluded that the experimented essential oils were more effective against varroa mite infestation and could provide an attractive tool in an integrated pest management program for varroa control in honey bee colonies.

*http://www.textroad.com/pdf/JBASR/J.%20Basic.%20Appl.%20Sci.%20Res.,%202%288%297674-7680,%202012.pdf

For more on top bar vs. langstroth:

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day 4: kingston and st. thomas

Friday was our last day of travel for a while, first to Kingston and then St. Thomas for two beeswax candlemaking workshops run by Jessie. During the first Kwao and I went into the Kingston farmers market for many many bushels of watermelon and oranges and cauliflower and so many other vegetables that they had to be pushed out on a big wooden cart. Most amazingly is they go every week. We eat so much fruit here that yesterday I think we went through three watermelons and the bushel of oranges is almost out.

Now Jessie’s daughters who are here are getting into it - today Hannah their three year old ate three oranges in a row and kept saying, “okay, ONE more orange for me” in the most tiniest voice that no one could say no to, so we kept all getting her oranges. It made me realize that when there’s no processed sugar around, kids crave fruit like it’s candy. And that’s COOL!

Here’s a photo from the market. It was a hot day with wind blowing the tarps all around and a lot of vendors were dozing. Here are the watermelons, one we used for Jessie’s birthday cake.

The next workshop was in the parish of St. Thomas which is bordered by an emerald green salt pond that seems to go on for miles.

The St. Thomas workshop went really well. There were a lot of women and children, and the kids were excited to experiment with colored dyes and making dipped candles out of flowers. Most of the guys there videotaped the whole workshop on their telephones, so Jessie may be getting some notoriety soon on the Jamaican candlemaking youtube circuit. You heard it here first: Jessie is a great teacher! Here is her blog: http://brownsdowntownbees.blogspot.com/

This drive home was up the eastern edge of the island, through the towns of Portland and Port Antonio. Port Antonio is where Errol Flynn once lived and location of the largest house in Jamaica, the Trident Castle. The story (there are a few different versions) goes that the castle was first commissioned as a private residence for a baroness named Sigi Fahmi and then acquired by Earl Levy, her former lover. The baroness then ran off on him and built the Jamaica Palace on the peninsula just across. Both are now hotels that over the years have attracted people like JFK, Patti LaBelle, Johnny Depp, Eddie Murphy, and Twiggy.

Trident castle

During its golden age Port Antonio was once a thriving port for banana export. Kwao told us that when he was a kid anyone with even one bunch of bananas could go to the port on a day they were loading a ship (“Banana Day”) and they would be bought. It’s said that on Banana Day, planters would light their cigars with 5 dollar bills. Most of this ended with onset of the Panama disease which almost wiped out the banana industry here. There are still some bananas on this side of the island but here in Robins Bay most of them were wiped out last fall by a hurricane. Agape says normally they have so many bananas and plantains they don’t know what to do with them. Too bad because this girl luh some plantains.

Between all the bigger towns are little hamlets that go by in a few blinks. Toward the end of the day, at dusk, everyone comes out of their houses and shops and stands by the side of the road, or sits on porches at home or at little bars by the roadside that usually have decks off to one side and also sell provisions like salt. Houses and shops are built with concrete and clapboard with rebar fences and roofs and they are painted yellow and pink and turquoise and orange and blue. Names of shops and bars are painted on the sides by hand and sometimes just say simply Cook Shop or Bar.

The drive back was nice, and I think we were all relieved to be done with three full days of travel. I don’t think Jessie or I realized that we were going to see almost the entire island in our first few days here but neither of us could complain about that. Here were our routes Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday:

Future posts will be about swarms of bees, tiny visitors from New Mexico, Jamaican car washes, and probably more watermelons. And pirates!

day nothing: cuties

We haven’t had internet at the farm the last few days so I’m writing from the internet rock next door. I’m going to write out a post tonight and come back to this rock tomorrow. Thanks, rock! For now, two little faces. This first kiddo is Kofi their youngest son in a John Deere hat and his “cutie pants” in a picture that for some reason looks like it came from a disposable camera. The next one is Camilla from last Friday’s beeswax candle workshop in St. Thomas, who sat with me and ate green beans.

day 3: hanover + westmoreland

Thursday morning Kwao, Jessie, and I hit the road at 4am for two workshops on the northwest coast.

Like with any island we were on island time and were stopped for a while waiting on the guy heading the Hanover Bee Farmers Association to pick up a generator in Kingsvale, a little town at the base of Dolphin Head Mountain.

Kingsvale

When they were ready we drove up the mountain - up up up where the group has their apiary and a covered gazebo for hosting meetings. In the truck bed ahead of us rode the generator and one of the many rasta men from the village. Hanover is known for being a rasta parish. Jenny who I mentioned earlier also jumped in at the last minute, to avoid the 40 minute walk up the mountain.

The workshop was a top bar building class but because they’d already had an initial training and were determined to make 20 hives, instead of having a formal class people set to work sawing, drilling, and nailing while other people watched, which I’m told is the Jamaican way. While this went on Jenny and another girl from the peace corps took me on a walk down to their apiary in the jungle.

When we returned, Jessie, Natalie, and I were able to weasel in and build a couple of top bars. In the end we finished 20 hives except for landing boards, and definitely put in a good morning’s work.

The second workshop of the day in Sav-la-Mar in Westmoreland parish was an informative presentation from Jessie, and otherwise uneventful except for a man who kept wanting to bring the conversation back to genetic cross-breeding and what he perceived as potential risks with bringing in genetics from foreign bee strains. It is illegal to bring in foreign bees to Jamaica, but not illegal to bring in something like bee sperm - unless the law changes, the limited gene pool of a small island could also pose a threat to the longevity of the bees here.

The idea relates to Russian queens, also called hygienic queens, a newer development some beekeepers are trying because of their ability to picking off varroa mites, which are a big problem for beekeepers here in Jamaica and elsewhere and often combated with excessive use of pesticides, typically Apistan.

It was a good point to discuss but went on a little bit long and Jessie and Kwao did a good job of steering us back into productive conversation on the benefits of top bar hives and how they help solve the pest problem as well as the financial burdens of langstroth hives. Soon I will do a brief post on the topic of langstroth vs top bar to share what I’ve picked up from Kwao, Jessie, and Agape, who are big advocates of top bar.

Outside the facility was the biggest most beautiful mango tree I’ve ever seen that afterward I went and stood with.

All around were fields and fields of sugar cane and trucks full of the harvest that we passed on the road. I don’t remember much else of the drive back except that it was long and we stopped for jerk chicken at an open air bar that reminded me a lot of Bradley’s in West Palm Beach, the Clark family’s favorite haunt ♥, and passed this ice cream shop:

day 2: st. catherine

Kwao, Jessie, and I drove out to St. Catherine in the early morning. A beautiful drive through ravine villages just as the sun came up. Kwao is a true Jamaican driver - the joke we heard from Jenny today (a peace corps volunteer we met on another excursion, who has been here working bees for two years) is Jamaican drivers have PhDs - pot hole dodging. So too bumpy to take many pictures. The image that stays with me is a very quiet bend in the road and a woman sweeping the roadway with a broom - I don’t know why that’s the one I remember other than that it felt peaceful.

Jessie’s reflection and a house on the morning drive

The workshop in St. Catherine was with a church group and was really more of a ceremony. First a couple of hymns outside the house where the group’s apiary is kept, and a few words from different visitors - a local student studying beekeeping, a man from the ministry of agriculture, Kwao, etc. The coordinator Mister Gardner was very funny and welcoming, going around the whole group assembled in the yard and grasping each of their hands very warmly, and offering grapefruit and muffins from the trunk of his car. One of the many things you can’t complain about in Jamaica is that you’re always being handed fruit.

Mister Gardner shaking Jessie’s hand

Toward the entrance to the apiary was a yellow ribbon and a sign hanging above that read “Barton’s Empowerment Scheme.” The apiary is a big part of that scheme and I think is the reason for the formality - this group is really serious about becoming financially self-sufficient as a church and a community, and it was really inspiring to see. Mister Gardner gathered everyone by the entrance where a local politician (we think) said a few words and cut the ribbon. Afterward people gathered in the yard for jelly, coconut water straight from the coconut that a farmer from across the road cut open with his cutlass. Ice Cold Jelly stands are something you see a lot of by the roadside.

Ribbon cutting

Apiary

Jelly

After the jelly we went into the hives, and I wore my very first bee veil. I felt a little like an astronaut on another planet, and also hot, but so happy to be getting into the bees so soon after arriving. Luckily it was a cooler day and because we were high up on a hill big gusts of wind kept coming up from the gully. Kwao and Jessie looked through some of the hives assessing them for weaknesses and then Kwao and some of the guys transferred a hive from a langstroth to the top bar hive Yerba was donating.

I also got to go through a hive and handle the frames, and found my first queen! The guy looking through with me when we found her said, look! There she is - you can tell because she’s so tall and sexy.

Queen

Queen cup

Pictured above is the queen and then an example of a queen cup, which worker bees will sometimes build throughout the hive. Once a queen fertilizes a queen cup it becomes a queen cell. A certain amount of queen cups is normal but an abundance of them can be a sign that a hive is getting ready to swarm (ie leave the hive in search of another one), usually because they are getting overcrowded in their hive or because the queen is weak or aging. Simply put, you don’t want queen cells because if one of them hatches, another queen is born who may leave with half the hive. So one of the main things you’re doing when working a hive is looking for queen cups and cells, and pinching the cups off. If you find a capped queen cell, sometimes you can carefully cut it out and save it, in the chance that you’ll want to donate it to a hive that’s missing a queen, or needs a new one.

Excessive queen cell building happens most during swarm season, which is why they’re also called swarms cells. Swarm season varies depending on your location but is always in the spring. Swarming preparations are actually the sign of a healthy hive, because a hive’s response to success is to divide and propagate into a new hive. But for various reasons swarming is something beekeepers want to prevent, because it can reduce colony strength and also honey production. Two mains ways to prevent a swarm include removing the queen cells and giving the hive more space - in a top bar this means spacing in some empty bars, in a langstroth you can also do this by adding a “super.” During swarm season you should also be checking your hives every 10 - 14 days.

In the coming few days I’ll write a post dedicated to those tall sexy queens, and what I’ve learned about them so far.

For now, this puppy, and a recipe for Jamaican Rundown, which we had for lunch at the church. Usually it’s made with mackerel but this is the vegetarian version. Just about any vegetable can be swapped out for any of the ones in this recipe. In any form I have a feeling it is delicious. 

http://eatjamaican.com/recipes/Jamaican-vegatable-rundown-recipe.html

Since I didn’t really provide a great overview of the situation here yesterday, here’s some background on Yerba Buena if you are interested, or confused:

Agape and Kwao run Yerba Buena and live with their five sons here, where Kwao grew up also. Agape and Kwao met as kids in the Berkshires in Western Mass, and later lived in San Francisco and Vermont. Kwao told us this morning that actually they both have the same godmother, and when they first met they didn’t like each other because they both wanted to ride the same bicycle. (:

They do a beautiful job running the farm, raising the boys, and being a force of good spreading awareness of permaculture and pesticide-free top bar beekeeping across Jamaica and beyond. In my three days here I’ve seen nothing but generosity and genuine care from them for the land and people that surround them, and am very thankful that they’ve invited me to join them.

arrival

36 hours ago I landed in Jamaica and everybody clapped. The guy next to me turned and said - that was good, wasn’t it? It had been a while since I’d been on a plane where anyone bothered to clap for the landing, and it felt nice. Jamaica!

Walking outside I heard my name - it was Cathy, Agape’s mom who had arrived just before me from San Francisco, and Kwao, who drove us out of town and onto the winding roads through Saint Mary into Strawberry Fields. Suddenly the green rolling hills I’d seen from the plane were all around us, banana and pineapple fields to our left, huge ravines built with houses all up and down, and then the ocean to the right.  

A red eye flight can make almost everything seem surreal but arriving at Yerba Buena was surreal in all the simplest most breathtaking ways, and because I’d done a bad job reading up on the place, everything was a surprise.

The first thing I did after dropping my things in the hut was walk down and sit with Susie the dog who is pregnant with a litter of puppies, and sweet as pie. Agape showed me the farm, which is not a farm the way you might imagine, but the kind of farm that is all around you. From where we stood Agape pointed out almond trees, cassava root, yucca, avocado, etc etc etc, and said, I want to tell you that everything around you is edible. Definitely this is true. Willy Wonka’s garden exists and I’m here to tell you it is here at Yerba Buena Farm, except better for you than candy and instead of a chocolate river, the Caribbean Sea.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ-uV72pQKI

On our walk we met Jessie, the beekeeping trainer who arrived the day before from New Mexico and instead of relaxing for the morning had been painting the door to her hut green. I wish I could say the same for my own ambitions but after lunch all I managed to do was go to the beach and fall asleep.

The picture posted yesterday is from the walk we took after dinner. Strawberry Fields has a population of about 100 and most of the town is the one dirt road with a few small shops, houses, and a bar. Agape pointed out a house built by a Spanish explorer named Don Christopher. From the beach here you can see Don Christopher’s Point (map below) where the Spanish and English fought their last battle for a claim on this last bit of Jamaican territory. Before fleeing, when it was clear that the English had won, it’s said that Don Christopher and other Spanish explorers buried their gold along the coast. Agape says treasure hunters still come to Strawberry Fields to search for gold, and sometimes they find it.

There’s a lot more to say about today - we visited an apiary in St. Catherine - but tomorrow Kwao, Jessie, and I are leaving at 4am to visit two bee farm cooperatives in the northwest part of the island, so it’s time to crawl under the mosquito net. Check back for more pictures, and lots more about bees. ♥