Bees and a bit of Beston

A lot of hurry-up-and-wait at the moment, but I think it’s normal at this early stage of service. I’m waiting to hear from a couple of community presidents to see if I can start working with them. There’s a good chance I’ll meet with the president of Recinto de Pasachoa on Saturday. That community is pretty rural, and apparently some folks up there speak Quichua, which is exciting!

Yesterday, I had my first encounter with a bee colony here in Ecuador. My counterpart Rafael keeps several hives around Amaguaña, and he took me out to visit one in Cachaco. Last year when I had attended a workshop on beekeeping at the Pfeiffer Center in New York, we didn’t use any protective gear, so I was surprised when Rafael put on his jumpsuit, head net, and gloves when we went out to his hive. Apparently, most of the colonies around here are a mix of African and American bee species. The African bees produce a lot more honey, but they also tend to be more aggressive and defensive. So after tucking in my shirt and donning a head net, we were ready to head over to the colony.

It was a nice, hot day, so the bees were fairly active. They’ve been struggling a lot this rainy season, apparently, so it was great to see them so energetic. After setting up behind the hive, Rafael used a smoker (basically a tin can with a small, smoky fire in it) to calm the bees and warn them we were coming in. He then showed me the inside of the hive, which bees were which (drones and workers… didn’t see the queen), which cells were being used for what (eggs, honey storage, pollen storage), and things of that sort. After going through and checking the status of the hive, we closed her up and headed out. And nobody got stung.

The folks in Recinto de Pasachoa work with bees a fair amount, so there’s a good chance I’ll be working on a project that in some way involves bees. Vino de miel – or honey wine – also known as meade could be a cool value added product. Well, little by little Rafael is going to train me how to inspect a hive and all that, so I’m really excited. I’d definitely like to take some more workshops at the Pfeiffer Center in apiculture and have a few colonies when I get back to the States.

Que mas?

A little personal project I have for my PC service is to read/study a book called American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau, edited by Bill McKibben. It’s a great compilation of excepts and essays by American nature writers, including my favorite, Wendell Berry. I recently read a piece by Henry Beston out of his book The Outermost House. After being asked by some friends what he got out of an experience of living in a cottage by the ocean in solitude for a year, he wrote,

I would answer that one’s first appreciation is a sense that the creation is still going on, that the creative forces are as great and as active today as they have ever been, and that tomorrow’s morning will be as heroic as any of the world. Creation is here and now. So near is man to the creative pageant, so much a part is he of the endless and incredible experiment, that any glimpse he may have will be but the revelation of a moment, a solitary note heard in a symphony thundering through debatable existences of time. Poetry is as necessary to comprehension as science. It is as impossible to live without reverence as it is without joy.



I hope all is well Stateside!