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| At
another place high up in the forest we negotiated with a villager
for searching his hive. Erik Bjorklund and Michael van der Zee
were good at this kind of job |
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| Here
we also got a fungus, that was said to quiet down bees when put
in the smoker. We tried it at another place and it seemed to
work. |
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| This
colony was named M4. Erik Bjorklund is restoring the hive with
broodcombs and some food. |
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| The surplus honeycombs
were harvested in a bowl and the queen and some bees put in an
apidea mini nuc and shut and brought back "home". |
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| The Apideas were
put up in trees away from predators back home. I had bought sugar
locally and put in moistened sugar in the food chamber. The wax
foundation had been brought from Sweden, and this turned out
to cause difficulties. The bees didn't draw this foundation very
good at all, and when done a little, the queen didn't lay anyhow.
But when I took some comb from a top bar hive in the neighbourhood
and put those in the small miniframes instead, the queen began
to lay. When in Kenya, I thought maybe the bees didn't like the
smell from our wax. I saw that the cells in the combs taken from
the native hives were much smaller. Okay, the wax may have had
an influence, but as Frances G. Smith in the 60's had problems
with African bees and big sized cells on our European wax foundation,
I realize today that the cells on the foundation I brought were
too big for these bees and queens brought up there. When we left
for Europe, we dumped the Apideas near the airport after taking
broodcombs with eggs and wrapped in moistened toilet paper in
plastic bags, losely put together to permit some air flow. Back
home, they were put in a queenless and broodless colony. The
ideal would have been a broodless colony with a virgin not yet
laying. |
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| In the neighbourhood
where we were staying, they were keeping Kenya Top Bar Hives,
actually a part in an aid program. The bees in these hives were
mostly influenced from the Monticola, but some swarms came from
the upper hills, and mostly those were more difficult to handle
and the further down the hills you came the more difficult to
handle became the bees. The Monticola, then, is a resource for
the area to keep a stock of more easliy handled bees, for the
benefit of the people. |
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| When going high
up in the mountains we were not experiencing boiling water in
the radiator of the car, but boiling gas in the carborator, especially
in hot wheather and coming up close to 3,000 m (9,800 feet) on
a steep road. We then poured gas on a piece of cloth and put
it on the carborator to cool it, which it did very quickly when
the gas evaporated. We had to do this a couple of times. Then
we filled the carborator with gas from above and at the same
time tried to start the engine, to get it to take gas on its
own. After some time we were going again. |
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| The Old Lady needed
repeated services and Michael van der Zee was good at that. Especially
the starter engine needed our attention. We really didn't want
that one out of function. |
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| Out in the west
of Kenya where we were, not many white people were around, so
we really got attention. It was not difficult at all to get the
car covered, when a photo was announced to be taken. |
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| In Africa I learned
the importance of "bottle-time", a time of rest and
fellowship, and for needed fluid. For us, mostly Coke or Fanta,
even out here in these remote areas. Now, this time of fellowship
with whatever nice people were at hand, and with God, I learned
is actually what life is all about. It was enough with an earthen
floor in a hut, sitting in old furniture, holding something in
your hand (if not fresh water at hand even a bottle of Coke could
do) as a help for fellowship, to be able to sit and talk together
and feel the acceptance and appreciation from the others. That's
what we need a lot in our western world too, a lot of coffee
breaks for example. That's what we were doing sitting in a café,
me at the window without any glass. I was easily spotted from
outside, a rare white person. The schoolgirls were amazed by
my appearance and wondered, if I was as fragile as I looked.
So they came close from outside and touched my arm with their
fingers to see if they would penetrate my arm or not. We were
really exotic to them. |
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