LZ'S Bee Blog

Back to Guinea

Lloyd_Ziegler — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 14:20:20 +0000

Hi All,

Sorry for my infrequent visits to this blog…just can’t seem to keep up. I returned from a second visit to Guinea with Farmer to Farmer in March. It turned out really well; the people of Nialeya had really implemented the changes we introduced on the first visit. There is no doubt in my mind that this project will result in lasting changes to the ecomomy of the village, and I hope the whole region. I put a lot of videos on YouTube, viewable by searching YouTube with the keywords “Lloyd Ziegler”. They really show the tremendous potential of the region for beekeeping. If I were young, I would seriously consider going there and opening a honey packing house, buying the local honey and selling it here in the USA. How much would African Organic Forest Honey sell for in Whole Foods? If anybody is interested let me know, I can fill you in on some details.

Presently making divides for people,but it has been really slow due to the unusually erratic and cold weather here. I can only hope to fill the orders.

“Local” Honey?

Lloyd_Ziegler — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 23:27:06 +0000

I recently contacted a VERY big health food store in Tulsa (guess who?) in hopes of selling honey to them. HOW INTERESTING! I was informed that they had local honey. I was unaware of anyone in the area with a lot of local honey, so I inquired further….it turns out that they have a supplier who produces honey from as far away as Little Rock Arkansas, and probably East of Little Rock (since that is where a lot of big beekeepers produce their honey from Soybeans). THAT is considered local to them! So, beware…..if you want a local product, you better check your sources carefully. You would think that a big chain store like that, who has a reputation for integrity, would be more…well, integral…..
On top of that, they informed me that they have a 100% markup on their products! In other words, if I sell to them for $5 a jar, they sell that jar for $10!!
Nice markup if you can get it. And they do.
Add to that the legal hoops, like a million bucks worth of product insurance, and the local guy is out of luck.

Whole Paycheck!!

Guinea Beekeeping Mission

Lloyd_Ziegler — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 14:03:27 +0000

Got back from Conakry, Guinea a few days ago. Working with Winrock Int’l. I’ve been resting up as it was pretty tiring.
I was working in a village about 35km from Faranah, Guinea called Nialeya. Guinea is a geographically beautiful country, a lot of hills and low mountains. Infrastructure is still being built, and particularly upcountry is pretty marginal or nonexistent. Even people in more remote villages sometimes have a cellphone, though! And people are great, really good folks. A lot of Muslims, but absolutely no conflicts with Christians; they both get along great.
I really got a lot done this time; people previously had no protective gear in many places, so harvested honey naked, at night, with fire. The hives were destroyed. No other way to do it without gear. And, the hives were traditional basket hives hung way up in trees. Pretty tough, unbelieveably so for me. So now protective gear has arrived, and the KTB hive, and it is a whole different story.
Where I worked near Faranah is excellent bee country. We opened up KTB hives that were absolutely CRAMMED with honey, harvesting 50 pounds or more and leaving plenty for the dearth period. So the potential for income is great. I taught KTB basic construction, and management to further increase production and allow survival year to year; construction of the NEW Kamara basket hive which is affordable for all and has a seperate honey chamber; candlemaking (they had no previous use for wax); manufacturing protective gear; proper honey harvesting; and making various value-added products (like propolis tincture, etc). One of the biggest hurdles was improving the regular product, which was a murky honey so loaded with pollen that it even tasted different. It turned out that the problem was in the processing; they mashed the combs of honey so thoroughly with their hands that all the pollen got blended in, and after that it was hard to remove. So now they have cleaqr, delicious honey; I wonder how people will like that after years of cloudy stuff? But the market is probably relatively rich foreigners, mostly the numerous mining company executives who have come from all over the world to get a piece of Guinea’s riches. They should pay a regular price for good honey; the murky stuff sells for about 50 cents a pound, too cheap! Teaching marketing was actually a big part of things; these villagers get taken advantage of a lot, because middlemen know they really need the money; I guess that’s an old story.
Also made a homemade foundation mold that worked great, and we used that to put a guide strip of foundation in the KTB’s, to eliminate crosscombing. Also introduced a solar wax melter. One of the best things that happened was NOT finding the Tropolaelaps mite, which a previous volunteer had reported present.
I visited another beekeeping group who had a problem with chimpanzees. The chimps are now protected by law, and as a result are multiplying fast. Good, except they decided they liked honey, and got into the KTB hives that these people had borrowed money to buy. They eventually destroyed every one, about 80 of them. Chimps are extremely strong (despite their skinny arms) and simply tore the hives apart when the beeks tried to wire the lids on. I have dealt with chimpanzees before. The problem is, they eat everything we do, and of course are very smart. I love animals more than most people. But when you have people living on the verge of hunger every day, having the food supply destroyed is suddenly a very big deal. So, what do you do? Remember, for these folks ten bucks is a lot of money. Solutions?
Finally, wrote a short book for local beeks; that WAS a job!
So all in all I worked my buns off. But it was good. They really honored me at the end in Nialeya, a chief gave me a complete outfit; looks really cool; I’ll have to port a pic of me wearing it…Listen up home, I’m CHIEF! Yeah…

Back to Africa

Lloyd_Ziegler — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 19:12:06 +0000

I’ll be leaving tomorrow for Guinea, West Africa, on another beekeeping teaching trip. Expect to be back in a month…..should be interesting, since the people I will be working with harvest their hives naked, at night, with torches. I think protective gear will be changing all that….

A story for those who can hear

Lloyd_Ziegler — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 04:18:09 +0000

This will be a long post. I would like to tell you a couple stories, recollections of events that took place years ago.
The first took place in Sierra Leone, West Africa. The year was 1971. I had been living in a remote village in that country for a couple years, and as the time went by, was becoming more and more a native than a foreigner. I had a good friend who was a member of the Bee clan. He had only one arm, the result of an accident with a truck somewhere. One day, he invited me to go with him to harvest honey from a tree. We went out into the forest, and found the tree. It was located not far from a footpath often frequented by people. Dressed only in shorts, we began hacking at the tree with machetes and a small ax. Immediately everyone in the vicinity began screaming and running away as bees attacked them. Everyone but us. We continued hacking, and after awhile the tree fell. My friend then asked me to reach into the hive entrance and pull out any honey. I did so, scooping out handfuls of bees in the process, feeling around for combs. There was not much honey. After that, we went home. Neither one of us had been stung once.
These were African bees, Apis Mellifera Adansonii, noted for being vicious.I don’t know if you believe this story, but it is true even in the details. If you can believe this story, I want to go on, because you obviously can accept that inexplicable things do happen.
Now, another story. One day in that same village I was feeling pretty depressed. It had been a tough day, I had fought with a friend of mine, and it just seemed everything was pointless. I went to the local medicine man/herbalist and told him how badly I felt. I ended up actually breaking down in tears in front of him. He did some sort of ritual. It was incredible what happened next. Suddenly I understood everything about his belief. I felt my heart had completely changed. It honestly felt like I was a different person in my basic nature! He had summoned a spirit, and it had entered into my heart, and somehow replaced it. I wasn’t frightened. Rather, it felt as if I had woken up after a very long sleep, a sleep that had lasted all my life. And the things that I knew, that were somehow put into my heart and mind, were so true to me that I believed them with a knowledge so strong that it could not be doubted, because I was those truths, my heart had actually become them.
Now, tell me. Can you believe this story?
Some of you can, perhaps.
As I said, the first story is true in all the details.
But the second one is not. I lied about the details. I did so for a reason. I am hoping that those of you who find the second story believable will run a reality check on yourselves if you find the story NOT believable when I correct the errors. Because if you are one of those people, who cannot believe the following corrected version and yet belief the first one, you are in a box, a mental prison constructed by the hypocrisy of others, and you should set yourselves free at all costs.
Here is the true story. It happened in America, in my parent’s home. There was no medicine man. There was only me, with tears streaming down my face as I saw the shallowness and emptiness of the world. I did kneel down, and in despair asked for help from God, whoever that might be. And I was changed, and I was filled with knowledge that I had never had, and my heart desired truth rather than lie, love rather than hate, mercy over cruelty; in short the animal I had been was gone, and I was left a new person. And yes, suddenly everything Jesus said, which had always been totally unintelligible to me, made perfect sense. Maybe that is what they call being “saved”. I don’t know. I only know what happened to me.
And that is why I am writing this. Try and be free of the mental prison constructed from your experiences with “Christian” hypocracy and lies. Surely if the first version could be true, the second could be also. I meet people who can believe the first, but not the second. If you are one of these people, please, ask yourself: Why not?

Who took my Winter?

Lloyd_Ziegler — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 05:07:43 +0000

This is shaping up to be the Winter that wasn’t. Here it is early February, and the bees are bringing in pollen like crazy…there must be lots of flowers out there! I tried giving them some pollen supplement, and they didn’t even touch it. Elms are blooming, and a fisherman friend says that the crappie have eggs already, which usually happens in April. May be a strange year….

New Honey Harvest

Lloyd_Ziegler — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 23:30:00 +0000

It has been a really tough year for the bees, with the severe drought and temperature, but they manages to kae a small crop, about 400 pounds. This honey is really thick, dark, and excellent in flavor….I think it is about the highest quality honey I have harvested yet in Oklahoma. It was so thick we could barely get it extracted!

trapping bees out of a house.

Lloyd_Ziegler — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 04:15:35 +0000

trapping out bees from a house. This hive was West of Stillwater....it took about a month for all the bees and honey to be removed from this home. You can barely see the funnel up above the hive.

Bees in houses

Lloyd_Ziegler — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 04:00:53 +0000

This year has seen a LOT of people with beehives in the walls of their houses. We set up four more trapouts last week. Also a couple cutouts (see attached pics).
Honeycomb removed from the ceiling....about 60 pounds.

Wren removing honeycomb from ceiling of a home.

Honeybee Democracy

Lloyd_Ziegler — Wed, 25 May 2011 01:04:51 +0000

here is a great link a friend sent me (my webpage designer Bryan, actually) which summarizes why bees are able to reach 100% consensus on matters of importance. Unlike people, they have a system that results in complete agreement! Check it out: http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/05/24/136391522/natures-secret-why-honey-bees-are-better-politicians-than-humans?sc=fb&cc=fp