8/20

We started building our top bar hives today. We cut the woods from the lumberyard into the right sizes and nailed the parts together to build the trough part of the hive. We still have to finish building the roof. We also caught a swarm that Joshua spotted. We added a couple of brood combs to prevent the bees from leaving the hive. In the afternoon, I made cane juice with Melchizedek by squeezing the sugar canes that are growing in the yard with a cane juicer that Kwao had finished making. I was taken aback by its sweet taste when I first had cane juice, since it looks exactly like green tea and I had drank it expecting to taste the bitterness of the tea.  However, I have come to like the taste of the Carribean drink. I think it's a perfect drink to fight the hot weather here.

8/19

The boys took me and Emma on a walk. We went to Strawberry point, a rocky cliff overlooking the sea. It was a pretty exhilirating experience, walking on the ground covered in sharp rocks, putting my face into a blow hole, and watching the mighty waves crash into the shore with their powerful force. On our way back, we stopped at a ginnip tree. Joshua climbed the tree to get the really big ginnips at the top of the tree for us to try which was really sweet of him. Once I got back, I felt drained out of energy from waking up early the last couple of days so I took a really long nap. Later, Kwao took me and Emma to the lumberyard to get some wood so that we can start building our own top bar hives. At night, we made lemongrass scented soap. We first measured out the ingredients, which included vegetable shortening, rhye, lemongrass essential oil, vegetable oil, palm oil, and coconut oil. We first measured the vegetable shortening so that it could be melted while we measured the other ingredients. Once we finished melting the shortening, we cooled it by mixing it with a drill. While it was being cooled, we cut wax paper to line the inside of the soap mold with, and the rest of the ingredients were added into the cooled shortening before the the whole mixture was poured into the mold. Then the finished soap was cooled over night covered in layers of towels and blankets.

8/18

We worked with the bees early in the morning again. We went to a different upper apiary to inspect all of the hives there. They had not been inspected for over two months. When we inspected them, we noticed that many of the hives were spaced out too much and the bees were not using the empty combs very well. When Agape had last inspected them, it was still in the middle of the honey flow season and the bees had been growing too fast and they had even built combs on the outside of their hives. Thus Agape had spaced them out thoroughly, but immediately afterwards, the honey flow had probably ended and the bees were not able to use the extra space. During the inspection process, we harvested a good amount of wax from teh empty combs. We also gave water to the bees so that they would stop pestering their neighbors; we brought two buckets full of water and floated a wood in each so that the bees could land on them and drink from it. While we were up there, we also found a robbed hive infested with wax moths and cockroaches. The rest of the day, I hung out with the boys at the beach. We played push off the rock and swam against the current. Before coming here, I was worried about whether I would be able to bond with the boys. I do not have much experience with boys as I only have one younger sister and had not babysat kids in high school. However, after a week of being here, I think I have made some progress. Enoch and Kofi asks me to read books to them. They also like to tickle me and Emma. I really enjoy playing with them, but sometimes I have trouble understanding what they are saying. The older boys are a little harder to bond with, but they like it when you play rough with them. I wrestle with them at the beach and double cross them during water gun fights. Playing with the boys gives me a good excuse from having to act like a 21 year old. Last night, after the younger boys had gone to bed, Emma and I had held arm wrestling matches with the older boys. Emma and I also showedthem how to make Asian poop with play dough (Joshua thought it was a birthday cake at first). This time, I showed Joshua and Melchizedek a baby snake I had caught. They kept asking me if they could kill it. Whenever I ask the boys about school related stuff, they seem really uninterested, but as soon as I ask them about how many bullfrogs, snakes, scorpions they have killed, their eyes light up.

8/17

We woke up earlier than usual to work with the bees in the morning. However, our effort in waking up early were all in vain as we could not start working with the bees right away due to the rain; the rain makes the bees testy. While we were waiting for the rain to stop, Kwao told us about his beekeeping experience in Vermont using langstroth hives.

Things I learned from Kwao:

• In Vermont, people only work with the bees part of the year when it is warm, and leave the bees on their ownduring the long winter. In comparison, beekeeping in Jamaica is done all throughout the year because it is warm all the time.
• It is better for the bees to have a super cold winter rather than a warm winter. During warm winters, the bees can get confused and wake up from their hibernation and eat up all of their honey.
• In langstroth beekeeping, all of the drones are eliminated by killing them off and poking the drone cells with aneedle to make sure that all of the bees in the hive are worker bees. Langstroth beekeepers try to eliminate the drones because they serve less functions than the worker bees. While the worker bees collect nectar, pollen, water as well as nurse the larvae, circulate air throughout the hive, produce wax and build new combs, the drone just stay in the hive and eat up the honey. The primary function is to provide sperm for the queen. Thus one problem with killing off all of the drones is that it decreases genetic diversity and can lead to inbreeding.
• Beekeeping in the US can be very tough as majority of the pollen and nectar collected by the bees come from GMO plants, making the bees more prone to colony collapse disorders.
• In langstroth beekeeping, the combs are saved afer harvestug of honey and reused for many years. This prevents the wasting of honey to build new combs over and over again during each season, but it also creates a toxic environment for the bees as fecal matter, pupae skeletons and bacterias build up in the cells. In comparison, in top bar beekeeping, the combs are harvested along with the honey and the bees are obligated to make new combs every season.

After it stopped raining, we tried to move the bees in the smaller hive into the bigger hives that Joshua and I had cleaned out after they had been robbed. Later in the afternoon, we went to the upper apiaries again to transfer the swarm we had caught yesterday in to a small hive. We also strengthened the weak hives by increasing their population by adding combs from brood nest of other hives.

8/16

Everyone had a late start today because we were all tired from yesterday's bee fair. Emma and I made feed after lunch by mixing cane sugar with water in a 1:1 ratio. We need to feed the bees because it is dearth period right now and they are having trouble finding food. Then later in the afternoon, Kwao, Emma, Joshua and I took what we made to one of the upper apiaries to feed the bees and to inspect them. During inspection, we look to see if te queen is laying eggs, because if there is no queen, the hive will die out. We also add spacers in the brood nest so that there is enough space for the bees to keep building new combs. This prevents crosscombing, which happens when the bees draw their combs at wierd angles to the top bars, which then causes the combs to drop and break when the hives are opened. We also inspect to see if the population in any of the hive is getting too large. If the population becomes too large, the bees in the hive can make a new queen and warm. The bees in the upper apiaries are doing better than the ones in the lower apiary. Their hives have a lot more honey that are ready to be harvested and their brood nests (part of the hive with eggs, larvae, and capped cells that houses pupae) are bigger. This is partly due to the fact that there are more fruit trees higher up in the mountains. It is also partly due to the fact that since Kwao hurt his leg, the upper apiaries have not been inspected in a while, allowing the bees to keep their honey and use it however they see fit. During the inspection, Joshua spotted a swarm and we caught it in one of the empty top bar hives. At first I was afraid to disturb the clump of bees on the tree, but I learned that bees hardly ever stings people when they are trying to catch a warm because they want to find a new home quickly. On our way back, Joshua wanted to eat ginnips so we stopped at a ginnip tree to pick the juicy fruits off of it.

8/15

Today I went to a bee fair. It was a five hour long car ride each way, and we left really early in the morning. At the fair, Agape got a lot of people intrerested in starting top bar beekeeping by giving mini presentation using the demonstration hive that Enoch, Kofi, Amanda, Deja and I had helped prepare thte night before. From Agape's presentations I learned a lot about top bar beekeeping:

• Top bar beekeeping is more affodable compared to langstroth beekeeping because while a three story high langstroth hive costs $15000 to build, a five foot long top bar bee hive only costs $2000. Thus you can make roughly 7 top bar hives with the amount of money to make one langstroth hive.
• Top bar  beekeeping is more women friendly as it does not require heavy lifting that the langstroth beekeeping requires.
• More wax is collected from top bar hives than langstroth hives.
• A top bar hive tends to produce less amount of honey compared to a langstroth hive, but even if you can only collect 80% the amount of honey that you would collect from langstroth hive, you can build 7 times the amount of hives so overall, it leads to greater honey production.
• No foundation is necessary for top bar hives. Thus bees can produce more natural combes with the right sized cells, which leads to healthier bees who are more immune to diseases.

Overall, I learned that people in Jamaica are very friendly and nice. For a small fair, we were able to get a lot of poeple interested in top bar beekeeping. I also got to see other beautiful parts of Jamaica during the ten hour car ride.