A Beekeeper's Report from the Field
At the heart of Maasai Honey is beekeeping - an activity that encompasses a multitude of tasks, responsibilities, and knowledge. At Maasai Honey, beekeepers tend to around about 200 hives across 5 separate apiaries. These apiaries lie multiple kilometers apart, in remote corners of Ololosokwan Village. Each day allows the beekeepers a chance to visit one location. They choose either morning or evening hours depending on the weather patterns, traveling by motorbike through the Savannah forests to the distant apiaries.
With the hives located in various locations, it is extra important to record hive data while managing hives across different apiaries. All Maasai Honey hive’s are numbered, so when beekeepers conduct maintenance and inspections, they record important information about the hive and the colony’s health. Tracking this information over time is beneficial for long-term hive management.
We’d like to share with you our most recent beekeeping report from Aziz Zombe, which details the beekeepers’ work from the 14th to the 18th of December.
BEEKEEPING WEEKLY REPORT FROM 12/14/2020 TO 12/18/2020.
by Aziz Zombe
Beekeeping activities at our area of Ololosokwan village are going on as usually, as we know now there are raining season so some of plants species like herbs, shrubs, grasses, climbers and trees are starting blooming and this season in beekeeping calendar it known as Building up period.
In many honeybee colonies most of honeybee Queens are starting laying eggs after stopped due to the Dearth period, so number of workers bees and drones are increasing rapid and at the short many of honeybee colonies are become strong and ready for next season which is called Honey flow period.
After seen short description of activities of honeybee colonies and their seasons now we go directly on last week planned activities to see what we successful and what we failed and why?
Last week we were planned to visit our 3 apiaries for internal inspections, on Tuesday 15/12/2020 at Mairowa B apiary, Wednesday 16/12/20 at Sero apiary, on Thursday 17/12/2020 and Friday 18/12/20 was at Ololosokwan apiary.
A. First beekeeping activities was on Tuesday at Mairowa B apiary.
Members are Zombe, Parken and Nooloswash.
We successes visited this apiary at noon and we conducted Internal inspections for 4 beehives:
Hive no 171, this beehive has very weak colony because it has only 4 frames of bee broods and food apart from 10.
Also we inspected hive no 170 which has a very strong colony and all frames in the broods box were full of bee broods and food, also they building and stored honey in the deep super box, after inspection we harvested all 7 frames of honey combs from the super box and also added another shallow super box on the top of the deep super. Also during inspection we saw 1 frame which has drone brood at the super box we taken it and moved in the brood box.
Also we opened hive no 92, we saw that this beehive was empty so we moved out waiting for cleaning and rebaiting.
Hive no 81, this beehive has 2 shallow supers, but we got only 5 frames of honey, this is because their queen laying eggs also in the honey super. Also we remove 1 shallow super and replace it by a deep super.
B. On Wednesday we planned to go at Sero apiary but unfortunately there was a rainfall at the noon so it hindered has to complete our duty so we forced us to wait until on the next day to complete our mission.
C. So on Thursday Francis and mzee James went at Sero apiary to complete our mission of returned back in the cage all beehives which had colonies, this mission companied by two women from Sero, such Nalari and Nasaresaro. This mission was completed for beekeepers and women by taken back all 20 colonized beehives from the tree apiary to the inside the cage. After taken back all beehives they did internal inspection for few beehives because the honeybees were very aggressive. this internal inspection was done on 2 beehives, such beehive no 63 and beehive no 188 and the results as follows;
Hive no 63, this beehive was inside the cage and has two honey supers on the top, there is some honey at these supers but it still unsealed honey (unripe honey).
Hive no 188, this beehive was outside the cage and it has a single box that means it has only broods box, but it very strong so needed adding honey supers as soon as possible.
8 beehives are still outside the cage waiting catching new honeybee colonies.
D. Friday We completed our weekly missions on Friday by visited Ololosokwan B apiary by doing internal inspection and returned back all colonized beehives inside the cage and this mission was operated by Zombe, Parken and Selian. As usually we arrived at the site on noon and we started with internal inspections first for 8 beehives as follows, hive no 7, hive no 8, hive no 3, hive no 156, hive no 123, hive no 22, hive no 118 and hive no 11. And the results as follows;
Hive no. 7, this beehive has very strong colony and all top bars are full of food (pollen and honey) and bee broods. So after inspected this beehive we harvested 4 top bars of honey.
Hive no.8, this beehive also is very strong, has good broods pattern and we harvested 3 top bars.
Hive no. 3, at this beehive only 3 top bars were empty and we harvested 2 top bars.
Hive no. 156, all frames at the broods box were full of food and bee broods, so we taken an action of added super at this beehive.
Hive no.123, this beehive has strong colony so also we added honey super.
Hive no.22, has only broods box and only 4 frames are empty, so after honeybees completed all 4 empty frames it needed adding honey super.
Hive no.118, this beehives their colony was absconded so it was empty and we moved out of the cage for cleaning, rebaiting and hanging on the tree branch to catch new honeybee swarm.
Hive no.11, this beehives their colony was absconded so it was empty and we moved out of the cage for cleaning, rebaiting and hanging on the tree branch to catch new honeybee swarm.
The second task was to return back all 16 beehives which had honeybee colonies and still were hanged on tree branches.
Therefore the above mentioned activities were all conducted on past week on beekeeping department.