Ghana Day 5
Yesterday in the morning we discussed the previous day's adventure, and proper personal protective equipment and then how to hygenically harvest and process honey. And then we went out to some hives again!
This time we were just going to look at some hives "to give people some rest from yesterday." So we didn't take the bee suits or anything. We drove a few miles north of the town of Walewale, the countryside was mostly little clusters of buildings and what looked like hand tilled agricultural land. It had rained heavily the night before so there were some inundated areas. We pulled to the side of the road and got out. We being a pickup truck and a small minibus. We got out and started cheerfully walking along the trail between fields and through the occasional thicket of trees. After maybe half a mile we came to a place where we had to go through a bit of ankle deep standing water and mud to get to the other side of a low point in the trail. I've always had a bit of a horror of standing water in Africa on account of the African parasites I've heard of so I hope I'm alright.
Just on the other side of that people were gathering under some large trees, and they pointed to where there were three beehives under some other trees just across the short paddock of yam mounds. I proceeded over there with some others and we were looking at the hives, not touching them or particularly closely, but after only a few minutes the bees began to sting us. The others fled. I walked around to take a photo of the hives from another angle and then began to walk away. Ahead I saw teh group begin to flee in every direction, and more and more bees were attacking me (I was by now by far teh closest person to the hives). Soon my face was covered with stinging bees, I took my glasses off so I wouldn't knock them off while wiping bees from around my eyes, and began to run -- which is a big deal, I almost never ever run from bees it's extremely undignified, but please understand I was covered with angry stinging African bees at this point.
After running maybe about 200 meters I seemed to be bee free. No one else was in sight and I had run the opposite direction from the return to the cars. I saw a trail leading to the road from here though and followed that. Fortunately I had a bottle of water because it was quite hot and I was still going as fast as I could so that I could rejoin everyone before they started to wonder where I was. Also this whole time I have my backpack on my back with my laptop and stuff in it.
Finally returned via the road to our starting point, where peopel were already gathered. No one quite knew if everyone as back yet, nor did anyone know exactly how many people we had had. But it didn't look like everyone and in particular I didnt' see our two photographers, so I headed back up to the Front.
Arriving by where the trail crossed through the muddy water I could see tehre were still a few people on the far side. That place was too close to the angry bees to be used but some people were crossing at another point further away. I went over there, crossing more yam fields and a mud bring wall to find in this place the water was deeper and muddier, and while several had crossed successfully there, there were still three people including the two photographers on the far side who didn't seem game to cross there. Some of the people at this location were calling encouragement to them to come. I set off to cross the mud to join them on the far side, the people who had been calling encouragement now urged me to please don't go, its dangerous there's deep spots, but I felt determined to lead the people on the other side out the other way I had used. The mud sucked my flipflops right off, though I was able to recover and carry them. Again, recall, I have my backpack on with the laptop in it, which seemed funny at the time as I slogged through this deep mud in the African bush.
Finally reached the other side, and the now four of us over there went across the yam paddocks on the other side to go around to the road and rejoin everyone over there.
Finally everyone was accounted for and back at the trailhead. I had received many many stings on the head and face, about which some people were concerned, but I've been stung by so many bees in my life that being practically immune to bee stings is sort of my superpower, I experienced no swelling or undue discomfort.
Then the beekeepers returned to their hostels and Arne and I returned to our guest house to conduct some ongoing research we've been conducting on Ghanaian beer. We'd sampled "Club," and "Star," before, and this day we tried "ABC" and "Gulder." Interim findings are that Club is best, followed by Gulder. I think there may still be one or two more to try though.
Photographers Samuel and Nadia return to the trailhead
Lessons taken from the include having an accurate count of the number of participants on any outing, and always having at least the "blue smock" bee veils which are very compact and easy to stuff in a backpack. Also they're starting to convince me that their bees really are even meaner than African bees I've worked with before, and it may indeed be a danger to others to open the hives during the day unless they're really far from anywhere.