Top-Bar-tendi in Action at the Hive

The best person to introduce you to all the honey and beekeeping action at The Hive is Bhatendi! Julian, (our Bees Abroad beekeeping trainer) nicknamed her "Top-Bar-Tendi" or Top-Bar for short! I am so going to miss Bhatendi and working with her! She is gutsy with a great sense of humour, has a beautiful heart for people and a prayerful sensitivity. We have had some crazy times together beekeeping; hard, frustrating, funny and fun times! She was over at our house recently making sure she learned how to bake bread and cakes (both in my oven and also in the wonderpot) before I left! Bhatendi is now managing the EI Beekeeping project, working with the current three groups of beekeepers in Malya, Ngudu and Kayenze and now starting training with a fourth on Kome Island. 

Wonderpot lemon cake and oven-baked banana muffins

It has been fun working with Bhatendi to set up and kit out the honey processing room! It's something we have dreamed of and wanted for quite some time and thanks to Andy Mayers, overseer of Sherborne St John Meeting Room Trust, generous funding has made it possible! Until now, processing the honey from the beekeeping groups has been done in my kitchen or in our container... and time seemed to be running out to get something in place before we moved out and before the honey harvest started! Words are somehow not enough to express how relieved we were to get The Hive up and running when we did ... even if it did get a little down to the wire! 

So in the middle of June, just a few days after the tables were installed in the processing room, two weeks before the Hive opening and three weeks before our flights to leave Tanzania, the honey started coming in! Malya beekeepers got on with the harvesting of their hives on their own (which was great), but then rather than bringing the honey to process, without any warning, they just put all the honey buckets on the bus and sent it our way! 

We became a little overwhelmed by honey buckets in the midst of the Hive shop set-up that was also going on at the same time! Trying to organize workmen coming to fit furniture or fix electrics was a little tricky when the Hive was sticky and literally buzzing with bees after honey! Amisadai came on board to help out! 

Amisadai put in the honey hours

Hive action!

When Malya reported they had more honey harvested, we made it clear that a member of the group had to come with the honey .. and what a joy it was to welcome Mathias to The Hive and get more honey going through the filters and presses and into jars! Mathias returned to the beekeeping group in Malya with the exciting report that they had delivered over 80kg! The biggest harvest yet!

Bhatendi working with Mathias! Happy faces!

And with the next honey that came in, Bhatendi worked on training Monica in honey processing. Monica loved it ... and is now resident Hive expert at filtering, bottling ... and cleaning up the sticky mess at the end!

Monica in training on the job

Honey jars filled!

After processing the honey, Bhatendi and I got onto processing the wax. After pressing all the honey out of the comb, the combs were washed and put in the solar extractor for all the wax to melt and drip through. 

In the ensuing busy days, the solar extractor got rather forgotten and it wasn't until midnight on the night before we flew to the UK that I went outside to take the wax out! It was a lovely bittersweet moment, listening to the night sounds one last time in the still darkness. All our beekeeping has been done at night, a red torch spotlight with the crickets backing soundtrack. I will miss that smell of the wax heated in the sun, and even the stingers from the dead bees pricking my sticky hands!

And so we hope and pray that in years to come, The Hive will help and support more EI beekeeping groups and other rural beekeepers to better process and market quality honey in Mwanza. We hope it can become a centre for honey and beekeeping in this region, that people locally could learn more about beekeeping and the honey process. We hope that new beekeepers will find information and training and equipment in order to support livelihoods in the villages from the income-generating through honey sales and crop yield increases through pollination ... and as well, the natural environment will benefit from the bees and be protected through more sustainable beekeeping! 

Top-Bar-Bhatendi is doing a great job ... this week she was asked by Bees Abroad to go with Monica to a Beekeepers Seminar in Urambo and be part of training in hive making and honey processing while Monica taught groups on making products with beeswax. Both of these women are fantastic!

With the beekeepers at the Bees Abroad training seminar

Monica teaches balm and candle-making to a group at the seminar

We still have hurdles to jump as we navigate government regulations ... please pray for favour as Bhatendi and the team work things out! But we hope that The Hive will flourish and buzz for years to come! 

Bhatendi shows our colleagues, Peter and Laura, her processing room at the Open Day!