Sylvester Hill is one of those, as he calls it, old-days beekeepers. He doesn’t wear a veil during hive inspections and he uses a machete or screwdriver instead of a hive tool. He has all of the modern beekeeping equipment but prefers the old-days style of beekeeping. Sylvester is calm around the bees and moves methodically as if he is one with the bees. I know this because I have been on hive inspections with him before. His presence alone seems to calm the bees down.
This wasn’t always the case, in fact, there was a time when Sylvester would run away at the sight of bees.
I sat down with Sylvester in his home in St. Mary, Jamaica. He and his wife, Norma Hill, run a shop attached to their house. Every 15 minutes or so you would hear someone call out to buy something and Norma would get up to talk to them so that we could continue with our interview. We weren’t able to do a hive inspection today but we did talk beekeeping for a good while.
We start this story when Sylvester first started beekeeping. He said he started beekeeping at the age of seven. Having started beekeeping myself at 20 years old, it seems rather young to me.
Sylvester: “Yes. Young for me too. The reason for that I saw a strange thing on a young coconut tree. Coconut tree was young, just growing up, just start to gather a little trunk. This limb came out and hang down very low. So I saw it and I was curious and wondering what it was. So I went closer and closer and closer. And I look at it and then a bee or two came off and buzz around my ear. And I realize it was bees and I took off! 25 chains - that’s a little over a quarter mile - one run at top speed. I would say I was a boy but no, Usain Bolt was a boy to me. So I did it straight into the arms of my mother.
She say what is it? So when I cool down and explain, my father was nearby and my brother, they were curious to find out what had me beating Usain Bolt by lengths. So I explain, and I notice there was a smile on my fathers face. Good, smiling means something good.
He said alright, alright. Its bees man. We’ll send for Mr. Gordon.”
Mr. Gordon was the original old-days beekeeper and would serve as young Sylvester’s beekeeping mentor. He was the person to call if you needed wax or honey, and in this case, if you needed to capture some bees.
This was back when beekeeping equipment was not easily purchased, so everything had to be made from scratch. Sylvester told me that Mr. Gordon, “Knock up something fast.” He made a home-made box out of some extra board and nails and put a few frames in there with built out comb. It was somewhere between a nuc box and a regular sized Langstroth. This was the box that they used to capture Sylvester’s first bee colony.
About six months later, Mr. Gordon said it was ready to be doubled. Again, he made a home-made box and frames and put it on top of the other box. Every time Mr. Gordon would check on the bees, Sylvester was there next to him ready and eager to learn.
Sylvester felt a sense of ownership and pride in his bees. He said he checked on them almost every day. Then one day, he heard an unusual noise. The bees were flying around the hive and he started to cry, thinking his bees were leaving him. “Mommy, daddy,” he cried out, “my bees dem a fly away!”
When his father arrived, he told Sylvester that his bees were swarming. He called for Mr. Gordon and when Mr. Gordon arrived, he reassured Sylvester by saying, “Syl Syl, you lucky man. The bees dem a breed up. You have two now.”
They made another home-made box. “Board and nail always at the house,” says Sylvester. Then they capture the bees and just like that, at age eight, Sylvester had two bee colonies.
It was coming on to the honey season. Both of Sylvester’s hives were doing well. When Mr. Gordon came to help harvest the honey it was in the peak of honey flow. He told young Sylvester that it was time to reap some honey. They didn’t have a centrifuge or honey extractor, but they did have a knife and a bucket. Mr. Gordon would cut off the honey comb, put a piece into the bucket and give a piece to Sylvester. “Virgin comb was white and me would eat like the dickens,” says Sylvester with a smile.
When they were finished with the honey harvest, Sylvester felt a little sleepy. He says he was, “drunk on honey.” He went into the house and without changing his clothes he jumped into his fathers’ bed and fell asleep. After a full 24 hours of sleep, he woke up, stretched and yawned. He never felt more relaxed. There were family and friends outside and when Sylvester walked out, they all turned and looked at him. Mr. Gordon was there and he laughed and said, “See, nothings wrong with him!”
His first year of beekeeping, Sylvester learned a lot from Mr. Gordon. He got first-hand experience of the old-days of beekeeping. He captured two colonies and had a successful honey harvest. At the age of eight, he was hooked on beekeeping. Over the years he learned more about beekeeping and his apiary grew. At the peak of his beekeeping, Sylvester had around 150 bee colonies.
His dedication to beekeeping has led him to be a senior member of the St. Mary Bee Farmers Association, which is a subsidiary of the All Island Bee Farmers Association. He is also one of the 12 inspectors for the parish when it comes to responding to American Foul Brood (AFB) and other diseases. However, no matter how experienced you are, your bees can still get AFB.
Sylvester says that the biggest bee killer he has experience is AFB. Once you suspect that you have AFB, you report it to the senior person and other inspectors come to look at the hive. If they find out that it is infested then there are drastic measures that need to be taken. First, they will dig a hole into the ground. Then at night time, when all the bees are in the hive, they dump gasoline on the beehive (the gas usually kills the bees immediately), throw it in the hole, and light it on fire. All of the equipment must go into the fire: veil, smoker, hive tool, boxes, everything. Since AFB doesn’t affect humans, Sylvester says that the honey can be eaten before the hives are burned, but unfortunately there is nothing that can be done for the bees. Talk about bittersweet.
There is a first, second, and third inspection to make sure that the AFB has been effectively eliminated. Beekeepers are required by law to report AFB to the association. During the investigation, none of the equipment is allowed to be moved from the apiary. This process is taken very seriously. Sylvester claims that the first time AFB was brought to Jamaica, even the ship was burned in the Kingston Harbor.
Beekeepers are some of the most creative people I know, and being an old-days beekeeper, I learned that Sylvester has creative solutions to problems. When I asked him about red ants, which has been a problem for my friend Zuberi (described in an earlier blog post), Sylvester explained to me one of his solutions which is a trap made out of bamboo.
To make the bamboo trap, the first step is to cut a piece of bamboo with a joint on each side. Bore a hole about ¾ inch on each joint, something big enough that the red ants can crawl through. Then put a spoonful of sugar in the trap. Place the trap where there is a red ants infestation, like under or near the bee hive. Because inside it is warm, dry, and spacious, you are basically making a place for the red ants to move in. Check on it frequently, and when you notice that the holes are sealed up that means the red ants moved into the cavity. Take the bamboo trap, full of red ants, and remove it from the apiary. Boil some water and pour it into the hole, or throw the whole thing on a fire to kill the ants.
This sounds like a simple, yet effective, way to take care of a red ants problem.
When I asked him why he doesn't use a veil when beekeeping he replied, "when you put on a veil, you're hot in the head, you're hot around the face and the ears, you're hot in the back and you perspire a lot. When I don’t use a veil, I'm just cool mon.”
Sylvester says that he doesn't need to use a veil because he uses his smoker properly. He uses a smoker every time he does a hive inspection and never lets it burn out. First he smokes the hive entrance and then he smokes under the top cover. When he is lighting a smoker he uses just about anything he can find laying on the ground. Things like breadfruit leaves, mango leaves, coconut kaya, grasses and anything else. “Oh, the one that is very good is the cinnamon," he says. "When you use cinnamon with the rest it give a nice aroma, smells sweet and nice, encourage you to work. I think the bees dem love that too.”
Sylvester has learned a whole lot in the many years that he has been beekeeping. He is the man in the community that, like Mr. Gordon once way, you call up to buy honey or wax or help capture bees. He still has an apiary, but he is now more involved in the bee farmers association, training up the future generation of beekeepers.
Sylvester's final words of advice are, "Wherever you are in the world, do your best - your way. Allow the lord to inspire you. Most of our knowledge comes from above. I hope that whatever you get from my knowledge will be of some asset to you, so you can be a better beekeeper."
Follow this blog for an update on my next beekeeping adventure.
Fun Fact: Sylvester says that the piece of equipment he can’t live without is, “My two hands!”
This story was originally written 27 January 2020
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