After a week of non-stop action, today was a day for pure relaxation. Decided to give the goldenseal diet (supposed to make my blood taste bitter) another try because the bugs have been rather bitey recently. Likely due to the lack of rain this past week.
Every other week Robin's Bay Children's Bee Club is held here. Kwao, the father, went back to the hives with about 5 children under the age of 13. They extracted combs of honey from the hives and brought them back to the cabin. The combs of honey were in a sealed bucket, still ravishing on the inside and outside with bees. The children had to leave as it was getting late.
So, now I was left with the job of extracting the bees from the bucket. To do this, I opened the bucket and had to literally grab the bees by their wings and throw them as far as I possibly could, as fast as I was able to. Otherwise, they would just fly back into the bucket and I would make zero progress.
At night time almost all of the bees return to their hives. So after dinner, once the sun set, we set out on the mission of moving a couple hives. The main apiary was getting a bit crowded so we were going to move a few of them to a new location. I had to move one of these hives. Simply picking up the hive, containing no less than a few thousand bees, as well as pounds and pounds of honey, and carrying it to this new location, just hoping to myself I don't get stung and drop everything.
Luckily everyone made it there in one piece.
We don't use gloves for protection because it takes away from the genuine interaction with the bees.
To top off the night I watched a DVD on Top-Bar Beekeeping to reaffirm everything I had been learning these past few days.
As far as pictures go, the connection here is very shaky and I need to stand among the bees in order to have steady service... So the bulk of them will be posted on Facebook when I get back to the states.
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