Hey All! I'm headed back up to my village so I'll be out of contact for a month. But keep sending e-mails and letters! It makes my day brighter to read what you write! I'll miss you all while I'm in the bush!
Get Excited!
-Ashley
Thursday, April 30, 2009
IST
Here are pictures of beekeeping at our In Service Training Last Week!
Smokin' out the bees: (The smoke induces the bees to gorge themselves on honey, to protect the stock in case there's a fire. This makes the bees lethargic and slow moving, so they don't get as aggressive and are easier to work with. And we work at night because that's when the bees are sleepy!)
It has to get really smokey:
Breaking into the hive to do some bee management:
Tools of the trade: Knife, brush, gloves, bees
Honeycomb, Honeycom, Me want Honeycomb! This is a comb with about 1/2 capped delicious honey, and 1/2 uncapped nectar. The nectar will be evaporated by the bees until the moisture content is between 7 and 11%. Then it will be capped and become honey!
Annie displaying the comb.
Cutting the comb off.
Matt looks on.
Continuing to manage the hive by removing and manipulating combs and top bars.
Cutting off the comb.
Into the bucket with the delicious honey!
Annies head is covered with bees!
From the hive level, there are tons of bees!
At the end we got to eat honey right off the comb! (Actually we ate the comb!) It's super good! Now you know where your honey comes from!
Tammy and Suzanne in bee suits.
Smokin' out the bees: (The smoke induces the bees to gorge themselves on honey, to protect the stock in case there's a fire. This makes the bees lethargic and slow moving, so they don't get as aggressive and are easier to work with. And we work at night because that's when the bees are sleepy!)
It has to get really smokey:
Breaking into the hive to do some bee management:
This is where we check the combs looking for honey comb, brood comb and empty combs. We also look for things like cross combing, where the bees make combs across several top bars. 
Tools of the trade: Knife, brush, gloves, bees
Honeycomb, Honeycom, Me want Honeycomb! This is a comb with about 1/2 capped delicious honey, and 1/2 uncapped nectar. The nectar will be evaporated by the bees until the moisture content is between 7 and 11%. Then it will be capped and become honey!
Annie displaying the comb.
Cutting the comb off.
Matt looks on.
Continuing to manage the hive by removing and manipulating combs and top bars.
Cutting off the comb.
Into the bucket with the delicious honey!
Annies head is covered with bees!
From the hive level, there are tons of bees!
At the end we got to eat honey right off the comb! (Actually we ate the comb!) It's super good! Now you know where your honey comes from!
Friday, April 17, 2009
Gambian Sunset
Time Lapse of the sunset from Bakau Guesthouse last night.
The fish market is right below us.
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