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.