Overly Protective Bees
Thursday, June 22nd, day 49 - field visit in the morning, because the drivers wouldn't be available in the afternoon. Loaded ourselves into one van and one small bus (there's only 25 trainees in this group, the others were around 50). Headed about half an hour out of town to the north west, driving parallel a sharp ridge of mountain. Then ten minutes into the bush on a narrow dirt road to a village.
The hives were in thick scrub. I'd describe it as like you imagine a jungle except the canopy wasn't terribly high above our heads. Short jungle.
The bees were badly tempered, coming out to fly angrily around us as soon as we approached. I think it might have been substantial because the owner had come out just before us to clear space for us, thwacking all around the hives with a machete. With the first group (we divided in half as usual) two participants started getting bees in their suit as soon as we arrived in the vicinity of the hives and had to retreat from the area.
Usually i remove the first few frames and then we let each trainee remove one frame until we run out of frames, but it was hard to prevent the owner of these hives from doing each frame, even after we insisted he would hold the tool, break the propolis holding it in, let them remove it, and then take it from them. I was a bit annoyed. Also i could tell he wanted to harvest unripe honey, and actually tried to harvest a frame of brood.
The hives actually had a fair bit of honey in them which we harvested. Once we'd finished harvesting honey, i always continue to pull out brood frames so trainees can see them, and also the attitude of just ignoring the brood is a big thing i try two combat. Owner tried to insist we not look at the brood. I got a bit snappish about this. We compromised and looked at a few of them. But altogether only maybe half a dozen of the trainees were able to get hands on experience due to the hive owner getting in the way of things a lot.
In unrelated news the protective case of my phone broke and was lost during this, now i need to buy a new one.
Back to the training room in the afternoon while lightning flashed outside and thunder rumbled.
The hives were in thick scrub. I'd describe it as like you imagine a jungle except the canopy wasn't terribly high above our heads. Short jungle.
The bees were badly tempered, coming out to fly angrily around us as soon as we approached. I think it might have been substantial because the owner had come out just before us to clear space for us, thwacking all around the hives with a machete. With the first group (we divided in half as usual) two participants started getting bees in their suit as soon as we arrived in the vicinity of the hives and had to retreat from the area.
Usually i remove the first few frames and then we let each trainee remove one frame until we run out of frames, but it was hard to prevent the owner of these hives from doing each frame, even after we insisted he would hold the tool, break the propolis holding it in, let them remove it, and then take it from them. I was a bit annoyed. Also i could tell he wanted to harvest unripe honey, and actually tried to harvest a frame of brood.
The hives actually had a fair bit of honey in them which we harvested. Once we'd finished harvesting honey, i always continue to pull out brood frames so trainees can see them, and also the attitude of just ignoring the brood is a big thing i try two combat. Owner tried to insist we not look at the brood. I got a bit snappish about this. We compromised and looked at a few of them. But altogether only maybe half a dozen of the trainees were able to get hands on experience due to the hive owner getting in the way of things a lot.
In unrelated news the protective case of my phone broke and was lost during this, now i need to buy a new one.
Back to the training room in the afternoon while lightning flashed outside and thunder rumbled.