Sunday, August 4, 2013

Raising bees at Gamboula

Timothy Chapman is an expert bee raiser, and here he is in the garb to prove it.  The box he is holding has a swarm of bees in it.  He set up a mosquito net on his back porch, and crawled under it with the bees.  He opened the box and started gently brushing the bees out of their swarm, using a regular paintbrush, looking for the queen, who apparently is easy to distinguish from the riffraff by her big red abdomen.  He even has a special plastic clip designed to pick up the queen without hurting her - that's what he's holding up to show y'all.   It turned out, though, that this swarm was an "orphan" one, no queen amongst them!   He is constantly on the lookout for swarms of bees, with the hope of getting them into his hives so CEFA can raise bees and honey!


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