Waggle Dance Honey News

It was great to officially start selling Waggle Dance Honey the other week! The beekeepers in Kayenze and Malya are thrilled with their first real harvest and delighted to have their sales money which they are putting towards getting new hives made in Malya (soon in Kayenze) and getting more suits for the group!

We had the Waggle Dance Honey Day at our house, temporarily converting our house from a home to a shop. It was a fun day, welcoming a steady stream of people from the community! We had the honey table with the variety of different local honeys available. It has been fascinating to see the difference from not only the different villages (about 160 kilometers apart on opposite sides of Mwanza) but even from different hives in the same village. It all depends on what the bees are feeding on. We had some dark honey (which we think must be coming from the bees in the mango trees), some light (probably from the bees in the cotton fields), some runny, and some lovely creamy set honey!

Then we had a table set out with all the Upendo wa Mama beeswax products. They are really producing a lot from the wax they buy and clean now! We had Nyuki Stix (our own version of Wikki Stix), dipped candles and citronella tealights and the new Lotion Bars alongside all the usual beeswax balms and honey soaps. Word is continuing to spread, and this week we had an order from Dar es Salaam, which we were able to send, and soon after it arrived someone else smelled the lotion bars and placed another order. So we are all pretty excited in the Mamas Group!

The Upendo wa Mama Table

The new lotion bars

Kitenge BeesWraps and dipped candles

We also had a table outside complete with our new "Bee Bunting" (yes - a crazy last minute sewing idea!) with Louisa selling honey-sweetened lemonade and iced tea with lots of cake and cookies! We made batches and batches of honey-iced cinnamon buns, about six honey spice loaves and then lemon loaves and other cakes and biscuits! All the money we raised at the Honey Bake Sale went towards purchasing a honey press for the Beekeepers Groups. We are keen to establish a honey processing centre in town which will collect the honey from all the village groups to press, bottle, label and sell! So now we are about £60 on the way to pressing!

Setting up the day before

Ready to go!

In other bee news … Tim and John and I were able to harvest some of the honey from the bottom of our garden at the weekend. Unfortunately Tim managed to get a bee in his bonnet and got stung right on the top of his nose which rather altered his appearance for a few days. But pleased to have the honey! 

Tim with stings

Louisa agreed (for a fee!) to help me process the honey!

John is with the beekeepers in Malya tomorrow and they are keen to get their new hives made and hung! And on Friday, we are going together to a new village, Ngudu, where we are meeting Pastor Willfred who is keen to get a new beekeeper group going with training and hive hanging. So as you can imagine, we are thrilled to see things moving at better pace in the right direction!

And in case you were wondering …. 

What is the WAGGLE DANCE?

The Waggle Dance is a special 'figure-of-eight' dance that is done by the honey bee in its hive. By this, a worker tells the other bees in the colony where it has found a good source of food (nectar). Through the dance, the honey bee can communicate both the direction and distance to the best flowers. The angle from the sun shows direction; the duration of the waggle part of the dance shows the distance. Isn’t this amazing?!

And finally, if you haven't already seen it on other social media, here is a short video of some of this seasons work getting the first waggle dance harvest in!