pieces and pineapples

Between the rain, we've managed to finished inspecting all the hives in the yard. We need to go back through the apiary and feed them again soon for the flow has yet to start and they are dry.

 

Yesterday Agape and I stripped and planted a few pineapples and a rainbow blessed us after some late afternoon showers.

a cockscomb flower

Kofi watching momma rolling sushi

dog house + dry larvae

Suzy is due to have her pups any day now so Agape, Joshua and I spent the morning finishing up the walls of her dog house, throwing in some more sawdust and even fashioned a door for her out of a crocus bag. Spoiled much?

 

 

 

 By late afternoon, I was following Agape, Emmanuel, Melchizedek and Joshua into the bush to inspect another three hives. There was a lot of tightly patterned capped brood to be found though the larvae looked a bit dry. Usually they are swimming in a pool of milky royal jelly! We will be feeding these guys for a little longer. There is a balance to find when feeding - too much and we will artificially induce a swarm, feed too little and the young will suffer, especially since we've been generously feeding in the past month. Melchizedek nearly smoked Agape and I out of the apiary with his liberal usage of the smoker! 

roof building

Agape, Joshua and I sorted through a few more hives. So far, most of the bees have been backfilling the brood-nest with the sugar syrup we've been feeding them. Hopefully by ceasing the feeding, the bees will consume the sugar and continue on expanding without being artificially triggered to swarm. The majority of the hives are much stronger in population with new combs just being drawn out. The queens are laying tight patterns and there is an abundance of pollen-packed cells. We've been noticing white and bright orange pollen on the bee baskets.

Kwao cut the wood to size for hive cover frames. After hammering the frames together, aluminum sheets recycled from the newspaper mill in Kingston (these sheets are only used once then thrown out!) were then hammered on top. We need to ensure that the back end of the roofs are tilted up so the rain can run right off. My hands were pretty colorfull when we were done!

Kofi likes to play in wheelbarrows with blue tarps

Our usual daily delivery of june plums gathered off the kitchen roof by Joshua

a beehive flood, lopsided candle and coconut treats

after feeding the bees heavily, we've started fully inspecting the hives again and this particular hive was flooded out due to a faulty roof, we had to wedge a knife between the floor board and the end piece to drain out the water. the bees were doing great despite the puddle in their home.

a roll of wick

candle mold and dog nose

melting down that golden piece of wax we twice-rendered yesterday

pouring the liquid into the tightly bound candle mold with the tip of the wick wrapped around a spoon

we have a candle! 

a lovely lopsided candle

after the boys went to bed, kwao and agape shredded up some coconut and threw it in a skillet with honey  

after the honey-coconut caramelized beautifully, agape dropped the balls on a plantain leaf (a sustainable substitute for wax paper) 

words cannot explain how mouth-wateringly scrumptious this treat was

time doesn't exist, you do

bliss

kofi with a toy helicopter i found tumbled in the rocks after a storm 

pinky-toe flower

wenesday in a picture

pig cooling-resting in a gutter-ditch at the anatto bay vegetable market on friday

saturday's smoki kofi

our first experiment with using tweezers to pull out the de-capped brood to check for mites quickly ended with the conclusion that we need smaller tweezers 

the bzz are doing great, we're starting to see eggs in the drone cells and capped sugar-honey, the signs of an artificial swarm to be triggered, time to cease the supplementary feeding (joshua helped us until he got stung)

grounded

balanced

The past few days have been a blur of smoky dreadlocks, sea salt stars and dog-eared books. 

metal + wax

ackee to be trimmed

teaching

beveling

Our morning started off with the time-consuming process of trimming the ackee, the seed and pulp is poisonous and needs to be removed. After boiled, it makes a delectable treat. Some of the German folk who have been staying next door at Strawberry Fields for a yoga retreat came over to learn how to bevel a cutlass from Kwao and Melchizedek. Beveling can be lengthy process but it makes the blade last much longer. 

queen surrounded by workers

odd bee behavior 1

odd bee behavior 2

flat comb

We fed and inspected ten top-bar hives and noticed some interesting bee behavior from one of them. The clustered all around the top-bar, not fanning but just humming and watching us sort through their hive, looking for eggs and creating enough space for them to expand. These colonies are doing exceptionally well compared to the others that are 100 - 200 feet away. Agape's reasoning was that the other hives are closer to the road so the exhaust may be affecting them. I thought that it may be the sun since the ten hives are located in such a spot where they would receive direct sunlight during the hottest part of the day and shade in the morning and evenings. The hives closer to the road seem to be in a shadier area. Kwao thinks it's the genetics. It's most likely a mix of all. Some combs were flat on one side, having been pressed against the end where the bees were unable to build up the other side due to lack of space.

rainbow blessings after bee-tending

caribbean love