Beekeeping in Jamaica: Capturing Bees with Carpie and Vince
- treecitytraveler
- Dec 27, 2020
- 5 min read
Beekeeping in Jamaica is exciting, there is always something cool going on. My friends Carpie and Vince invited me to capture some wild bees with them, or as they called it, “robbing bees”. They told me that there was a bee colony in a big tree just down the road. Who wouldn’t want to see how Jamaicans catch bees?
The two of them live in a community, far up in the mountains of St. Thomas, called Hayfield. The community is right where the Blue Mountains and the John Crow Mountains meet. There is 360 degrees of breath-taking views of mountains covered in lush green jungle with the ocean off in the distance. This is one beautiful place to be a beekeeper.
The only problem is getting there. The 7km road to Hayfield was cut straight into the mountain, winding back and forth all the way up to the top. Only half of the road was paved with asphalt, and the other half was badly eroded away and made me think of a dried up river bed of rocks and stones. But the taxi driver was skilled, having driven this route multiple times a day for years. One side of the road was a steep drop off, and on both sides of the road there were farms. I saw coffee, coconuts, breadfruit, ackee, and mango, just to name a few.
I arrived at Carpie's house around 9am. Vince was in the front yard building a bee box. He had a wooden pallet that he was taking apart and building a home-made bee hive out of the board and nails. It was a small little box about the size of a nucleus hive. It made me think that this is something my friend Sylvester said Mr. Gordon would have done in the old-days of beekeeping (read about the old-days beekeeping here).
Carpie came from around from the backyard carrying a chainsaw. It looks like this was going to be more work that I thought. I have never used a chainsaw to capture bees, but Carpie reassured me that he has done it before and it will be an easy thing.
I don’t have any beekeeping equipment with me in Jamaica, so I usually will borrow an extra one from the beekeeper or just go without a veil. There were two veils here, but Carpie was going to use one and Vince would use the other. It looks like I’m going to go without a veil this time, no problem. We gather all of the things we need: the chainsaw, home-made box, smoker, machete, lighter, two veils, and a bucket. Then we start walking down the road.
Carpie took the home-made box and the machete and walked in front. Vince followed him with the chainsaw and a lighter in his pocket. I put the smoker in the bucket and grabbed the two veils and followed behind.
We walked past a few houses that were on the side of the road and then we were on the part of the road that had the farms. We walked for about 15 minutes and then we came to a trail and turned off of the asphalt road onto a dirt path. We walk down the trail for another 20 minutes or so, passing through dense brush and trees of mango, cedar, and many more that I couldn’t identify. Even though I had the lightest items, I was struggling to keep up with these two. It was clear that they have walked this trail many times before.
We finally stopped next to a big tree. I could hear the bees buzzing along with their daily chores, completely unaware that their home will soon be disturbed. We put down the supplies and got to work. When I say “we” I really mean “Carpie and Vince”. I just watched and talked with them as they told me what they were doing. The bees were in a cavity in one of the tree branches. So the idea was simple – cut down the branch and catch the bees.
Vince was in charge of the chainsaw and Carpie was on fire duty. Carpie lit a small fire down the hill of the tree where the branch was probably going to fall. There were lots of leaves on the ground and the area was still wet from the morning dew, so there was a lot of smoke and low flames. Then he lit up the smoker and got it smoking.
They both put on their veils and I tied a bandana around my head (it's better than nothing lol). I got to a safe distance, but still close enough to watch and take pictures. Vince climbed up the tree and Carpie handed him the chain saw. The whole time the two of them were yelling back and forth in Patwa, the local language. Vince started up the saw and then began to cut. The bees started to fly around in confusion, and about 30 seconds later the branch fell off of the tree. The branch crashed onto the ground and slid down the hill, feet away from the fire.
The bees were confused from their house crashing into the earth and disoriented even more by the smoke. I was confused too, but mostly amazed. Did Vince and Carpie calculate the branch to fall perfectly next to the smoke fire... or was it pure luck.
Bees were flying everywhere. Vince turns off the saw, hands it to Carpie, and climbs down the tree. The two of them grab the box, bucket, and the machete, and then slide down the hill to the exposed hive. Without gloves on, they pulled out the comb with bees and brood on it and used a wicker vine to tie it to the home-made box. They scooped as many bees into the box as they could. All of the honey comb was put into the bucket that they brought.
In the middle of the whole process, Vince grabs a piece of the honey comb and walks over to me. He hands it to me with a big smile on his face, and then turns around and goes back to the bees. It was some of the sweetest and purest honey I have ever had. While I enjoyed the sweet honey (and dodging the stray bees) I watched the two of them finish up.
They put the cover on the box half open and rested it on top of the branch next to the old hive. Then they grabbed the bucket, smoker, and machete and came back up the hill. We collected all of the equipment and started our walk back up the road. There were some angry bees still following us, but we soon got rid of them.
We stopped walking when we got back to the asphalt road and sat down to take a rest. The two of them had robbed quite a bit of honey from the bees. They told me in a week they would go back to the box and see if they were successful in capturing the bees.
We picked up our equipment and walked up the road to the community shop. There was a little bamboo bench there and we sat down and each drank a red stripe and ate some honey. It was a pretty awesome experience. I hope that the bees will take to the new home and start making more honey because it was some really tasty stuff!
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This story was originally written 3 February 2020.
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