Bee keeping

I (Jo) had the opportunity to go with Richard Odell (another expat who has lived here for 40 years) to visit a small community who have natural rock bee hives near their houses. INF is running a program set up to encourage the community to market the honey, comb and wax to exclusive markets with the idea that it will provide them an income.

They live in a small village that as the crow flies is close to Pokhara but it still takes over an hour in a jeep firstly through a wide river then up and over a hill using a 4WD road. Before long the village will be cut off from Pokhara due to rain and slips.

Driving through the river!

The hives are protruding out from large cliffs. In Spring and Autumn the beekeepers light a big fire under the hives, the bees are smoked out and a man tied to a rope (there are no harnesses or hardhats) is lowered down with a long pole and another rope he pulls the hives out with the pole and uses the rope at the end of the pole to lower them to the ground. It's very dangerous as the person holding the rope can't see or hear what is happpening due to the river, the fire and the thousands of angry bees flying around.

The other thing I found fascinating was that the hives moved - as you looked at them you would see what looked like a  Mexican wave of bees moving up them, then there would be no movement for a while until another wave would run up the hive! Unfortunately the video is too big to put on the blog due to our slow internet.

The rock face in the centre of the screen is where the hives were.

The cliff where the hives are - they are the black hanging things, on the right there is also an old one which is white.

The day we went we were seeing if they had used the money they were given to spend on training - unfortunately they had spent all the money on vegetables and wanted more for the training which we weren't so keen to give. We had a look at the hives and then bought some old honey comb from the ground back to the house which we cleaned a little, boiled it up and then left it to drip through a muslim bag. This then hardens and the wax is separated from the water allowing them to make candles - a commodity needed a lot in Nepal as electricity supply is so variable.

We also encouraged them to look at packaging what is available to sell the honey comb in as well as labels to make it attractive for tourists etc that will buy it. Again they appeared excited about the project especially when we said that this can produce money for them - we will visit again in three months to see if the momentum has been maintained.

 Richard with an old piece of comb that the locals thought was worthless which we took back....

 the comb being cleaned up.....

cooked up to turn the wax into a molten state (next to the dinner)

 Hanging out the wax to let the wax and water drip through and dry to separate. What is in the bag can still be used as ignition for the fire that they cook their dinner on (that is in the photo above) and the wax in the pot can be used for making candles.