Bees turn into flies

Bees Turn into flies.

Wampiti Beekeepers Association has its roots in wampiti but it covers very many communities where members come from and we don't stop members from outside the community of wampiti to join WBA because we are interested in developing beekeeping and sharing knowledge.

Before I continue, let me take this opportunity to thank you very much for everything that you have done for us to see that our beekeeping truly move to a third stage of Beekeeping because we were on a second stage of bee-having! You have extremely changed our primitive beekeeping into modern beekeeping.

You know we have three stages of bee-human relationship ie; bee-killing, bee-having and beekeeping! 

Currently we are moving from bee-having into beekeeping!

Fun and Buzzes

Wampiti was full of fun and buzzes of bees as we were moving to different individual apiaries for inspections and practical trainings.

I read from the internet, i get ideas and notes from friends, this applies to other members who attend workshops, visit other members outside WBA and also read literature. We also have ambitious members who are too innovative in beekeeping practice.

So when i got to  in late January 2014 Wampiti, we all members of WBA agreed to pull the resources together so that we all benefit equally. And fortunately, members agreed to contribute money in pairs to pay to one of our members who is a tailor to sew bee suits and we also pay to make more smokers too.

All these were successful and we were able to get suits ready and the smokers. For the bee suits, pants were separated from shirts which have veils. 

Now we have enough suits and smokers for the members though they have to share but it is better than none. Members had veils but they were not confident enough to work with bees at any time of the day. And thorns could easily tire them.

We also didn't know that it is very important to smoke ourselves heavily so that the smoke can stick on our bodies and so that the bees don't smell us quickly! 

Teamwork is very important!

You know veils are less durable especially in our environment where there are hooky thorns which tire them very fast, in fact most members' veils were torn. Though veils are torn but at least some members had developed confidence through working with bees especially in late evenings and very early mornings and there has been less members going in bees during night hours.

Can you believe that we have been working with bees during noon hours (11:00 am to 4:00 pm)? And throughout the whole exercise only 20 people got stung and only about 60 bees stung people! And we also had one live incident where bees absconded from the rustic hive we were transferring bees from into a new top bar hive!

From that incident, we started covering beehives with a piece of cloth so that bees and especially the queen is exposed to less direct light.

We were training on job!

All members now know how to light smokers, puff and smoke themselves heavily before approaching a bee hive. They also learned that bees should be worked gently without hurrying and apply small smoke at intervals.

Members also learned how to transfer bees from old damaged rustic hives into new top bar hives, when they tie combs on bars.

Lemon grass was also considered as one of the best baits when you rub it in the hive, so members started using it immediately.

Members also bought wood which was taken to machines for making top bars and cutting the wood into proper dimensions so that they become easy for members to join. Actually every member got a new KTB hive.

I was so amazed with all what members were doing. Members had good harvest last November and that's why they happily invested in beekeeping.

Of course not all of them contributed equally, but all the equipments were distributed evenly because we agreed and formed groups where every group had to raise an agreed amount of money for their additional smokers, suits and for wood.

During practical sessions, most members finally discovered that working with bees in a humble way makes the bees docile. And the members finally said; "bees have turned into flies"!

We discovered vorroa mites in two separate hives at different apiaries; to discover mites, we rubbed bees in icing sugar (confectionery sugar, which members had read about). We were not sure that there could mites but we finally found them!

I recommended members to hold such practices every after 3 or 4 months so that they can learn more from each other deeply.

Every time we could transfer bees, we were supplying the bees with sugar syrup and this was very useful because there was no honey in the hives since this is a dry season (January to March). And some colonies didn't have brood and honey at all!

We also mapped calendars for nectar flow, honey flow, rainfall and colony build-up. This was very important because some members didn't really know when to go and check in their hives for honey.

We introduced an idea which seems to work perfectly; moving a hive that is going to be worked on into a shade and far away from its original location. When the old hive is taken, we would immediately replace the position with a new empty box to catch the forage bees that come back from the fields. And also some bees that fly from where we are working from would comfortably fly back to their original hive location. This enabled us to work with a few bees and the bees couldn't defend aggressively their colony from a new location. The place where we working from was chosen considering the following:- there should enough shade, no bee hives close by, should be closed from old hive location so that bees cannot easily locate where their hive is and ample working space.

We saw drones, drone cells, worker cells and only on our last day that's when we saw a queen moving around.

During this time bees are collecting cassava flour so much and water. 

However WBA has greatly improved and solved most of the challenges, there are; 

Many of our members don't have suits and smokers.

Members are not so much convinced that KTB hives are more productive than traditional hives because bees colonised log hives very fast than KTB hives, bees can easily abscond from KTB hives compared to log hives and many of them claim that they harvest much from log hives than from top bar hives!

Since all this is part of our experience, every member is will to improve on the production through improving the management skills.


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