Hive Hanging with the Cousins

The cousins arrived on Sunday morning! It was wonderful to see Tim's cousin, Ruth, along with her husband, Chris and their three boys. Yesterday they all joined us as we travelled the bumpy road to Kayenze on the shores of the Lake to meet with the happy beekeepers...

Pendo is delighted with the Kayenze group beeswax!

We began with Tanzanian chai which was either sweet milky spiced tea or sweet ginger tea served with two large chapatis. It was a lovely way to start the day with the group. 

Sharing chai together

It was also an exciting time to be with the group as we celebrated with them their recent honey harvest! It was wonderful that the group was able to finish the harvest completely on their own, and get all the buckets into town to process and sell. [Note to local readers: come quickly if you want to collect some honey; it is disappearing fast!] 

With their wax and honey processed, they have sold their kilos of honey and now used a portion of their profits to purchase three hives to add to their colonised twelve. After chai, Pastor Amon shared about unity and they had a good conversation as a group as to how they can work better together to move forward. Seeing how much they achieved through only four of their twelve hives, they are so aware now of the great potential and very excited about the future!  

Mama Meriziana and William delighted with their honey and beeswax

After chai and all the introductions and the meeting, it was time to head off to Samson's farm to bait and hang the hives. We very quickly had quite an audience!

Amisadai and Scott unload the hives from the roof

A small three-stone fire was started in the shade of the mango tree and pieces of the wax melted down in tin cans to pour into the grooves on the top bars. This will attract the bees to come and start making their honeycomb just where we want them to! It was all hands on to get the 75 top bars baited with the dripping melted wax.

Melting the wax on the three stone fire

Pouring wax into the grooves on the top bars

Then we headed across the shamba (field) to the mango trees to hang the hives. John's enthusiastic tree climbing skills were very useful here! And now we wait for the bees to come and colonise the hives and look forward to future harvests!

John high in the mango tree

We finished off the day with the cousins on the shores of Lake Victoria to kick a ball, play Molkky and watch the sun go down!