The Bee Corner: Notes From Haiti

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Loudy at the hive entrance

Hey, everyone, it’s Tim here. Since 2012, I’ve been making a yearly visit to the village of Matènwa, on the island of Lagonav, off the coast of Haiti.  I began by bringing materials to the women of ArtMatenwa, a collective of artists in the village. For the past 5 or 6 years, I've also been bringing large donations of Baker Creek Seeds (generously donated by Heirloom Market in Old Wethersfield) to growers on the island. In early 2020, as a volunteer with Clowns without Borders, I had the great pleasure of performing in Matènwa and neighboring villages as well as in Port-au-Prince with my sister, Robin, who is a professional clown. 

During our clowning trip, I brought my bee-lining box and, with the help of some kid friends, began catching, feeding, and marking foraging honey bees in the hopes of locating some wild hives. This activity caught the attention of our adult neighbors, who began asking me more questions about bees, sharing with me what they knew about beekeeping in their community, and requesting beekeeping support for those interested. I connected with Jean Wesley, a beekeeper in the village of Bwa Nwa, friends brought me to visit a wild hive up in the mountains, and I led a workshop for adults interested in learning more about beekeeping. I also taught a few classes about honey bee biology to middle and high school students at LKM, a wonderful school in Matènwa.

Future beekeepers of Matènwa

I returned from that trip in late February, 2020, just in time for the world to shut down. While I was lucky enough to take a few short trips in ‘21 and ‘22, beyond visiting another wild hive with two friends Kervens and Loudy, and running into Jean Wesley at the market, I really wasn’t able to follow up with anything beekeeping related. 

Winter is a somewhat quieter time here at Huneebee, so I was fortunate enough to be able to take two weeks off in February to visit Matènwa.  Since I transitioned into a full-time beekeeping role at Huneebee this fall, I’ve got bees on the brain daily, so I decided that this year’s visit would be a good time to check in more deeply with the bees and beekeepers of the area.

My first stop was to visit Jean Wesley. The only problem was I had only been to his house once back in 2020, and had no idea how to find my way back. Luckily my friend Fransilya’s kids knew where he lived. When I stopped by her house, her son Kenly was visiting and told me about a wild colony in a nearby avocado tree. He was very excited about the prospect of transferring this colony into a hive box and took me to visit:

Avocado tree with wild hive

Notice the marks from a machete where someone has enlarged the hive entrance to facilitate harvest

I told him that Jean Wesley was just the person to help. Kenly knew where he lived, and took me there. While Jean Wesley was happy to see me and thrilled to receive the new veil I brought him, he was troubled, as a pest had been disturbing his hives.

Jean Wesley and his log hives

Jean Wesley keeps all of his hives in hollowed out logs. The colonies that build up in these hives tend to be smaller, and to swarm more regularly. Unlike the moveable frame hives we use here at Huneebee, the comb in Jean Weseley’s hives is fixed, limiting some of the management he is able to do.

A swarm recently took up residence in one of Jean Wesley’s hives.

Since my visit in 2020, a pest has arrived that chews the wood of his hives, disturbing the bees until they leave. He’s gone from 15 hives to 3. Losses due to pests seem to be a universal part of the beekeeping experience.  

The worms (which remind me somewhat of wax moth larvae)

And the holes they burrow into wood

One of the big challenges of beekeeping (and indeed much of life) in Matènwa is the lack of readily available materials. Jean Wesley keeps his hives in logs in part because they are easiest to procure. With no electrical grid on Lagonav, all lumber is hewn by hand using large, two-handled saws. Even getting nails requires both a financial investment and logistical planning (there are no paved roads on Lagonav; most transport is by motorcycle over incredibly rocky terrain). While Jean Wesley, Kenly and I brainstormed ways to re-hive the colony in the avocado tree, the reality was that any hive we tried to make would be a major investment/risk for them. I was willing to try to procure the materials, but Kenly’s 3-month old baby got sick and needed to be brought to the hospital, putting our plan on hold.

A hive abandoned due to pest pressure

I did go search for wild hives with my friend Loudy (pictured at the top of this post) but all the spots he knew about had been abandoned by the bees. Beekeepers like Jean Wesley are rare; hunting honey from wild hives in the mountains is the more common way people acquire honey. Unfortunately, the methods used (which tend include a lot of fire) are usually quite destructive to the colony. It’s also, frankly, unpleasant for the honey hunter.

There is a strong desire, therefore, among many in the community (adults and children alike) to begin beekeeping. The hurdle, again, is materials. With the ongoing violence on the mainland, getting supplies like beehives from the US would be a major undertaking. Therefore, one of my summer experiments this season will be to build an experimental hive in a 5-gallon water jug or “doum” as it’s called in Kreyol. A doum that is cracked beyond repair and no longer holds water should be fairly easy for an aspiring beekeeper on Lagonav to procure. This doum hive would be small, though I noticed that most of Jean Wesley’s colonies are small enough to fit in a doum-sized cavity. It would also need to be intensively managed to prevent swarming, which would require my leading more beekeeping workshops on Lagonav. It’s possible that the doum hive will be a complete failure, but I would rather shoulder that failure myself than share it with an eager new beekeeper in Matènwa. If I can build and manage a successful prototype, and share this success with my friends, then we’ll be one step closer to making beekeeping more accessible on Lagonav .

Check this space for updates on how it goes!