Beginnings of my bee internship

Roble de sabana (Tabebuia rosea)
along the road from Sapoá to Cuajiniquil.

I have been in Nicaragua two weeks now and have developed somewhat of a weekly rhythm. I spend half of the week in Ostional (pictured above) and half of the week on the lake side, staying with one of Paso Pacífico's rangers and visiting bee keepers in a scattering of communities west of Sapoá: Las Mercedes, La Calera, Sota Caballo, La Rejega and San Jerónimo.

The trip between Ostional and José Felipe's involves three bus rides, all in old Bluebird school buses. I depend on my bike for traveling between communities with bee keepers, so I've gotten hoisting my bike up to a bus attendant on the roof. The bus between Rivás and Sapoá is especially crowed— this past Tuesday there were fifteen people crammed behind the seats at the back of the bus, including a large inebriated man who would fall asleep and sway in all directions but didn't fall because we were packed in so tight.





Right now I am up to my ears in pollen samples. Most were taken from the corbiculae (pollen baskets) of Melipona beecheii, but some were taken directly from flowers, the thoraxes of M. beecheii or the corbiculae of other bee species. It is very much an amateur study, since our methods have not been standardized so far, but hopefully our findings will be enlightening in some way. Currently, it appears that the bees are relying heavily on poroporo (Cochlospermum vitifolium) for pollen.

It has been interesting to learn about Melipona biology from the campesino bee keepers. They are very attuned to the proportions of pollen and honey within the hive, emphasizing that late dry season is best for harvesting honey and that the harvest should be done before the flowering of cortez amarillo (Tabebuia ochracea). Some of the traditional knowledge is somewhat dubious: there is a belief that any relocation of a hive should be done on a Saturday night, because that is when the bees are all gathered within the hive. In a similar religious strain, people refer to the night-time humming of hives as the "praying" of the bees. Part of me wonders whether there has been some religious carryover from pre-Colombian times, since the harvest of Melipona honey by the Maya was accompanied by a special ceremony.

In the coming week Marcos and I are planning on modifying one of the producer's colonies such that we can monitor the age of the brood, which determines the best time to transfer brood cells to a box hive. We are also going to amp up our native bee sampling in order to get a sense of isthmus's diversity.

A flower of poroporo (Cochlospermum vitifolium).

I recently wrote a post about the meliponiculture project for Paso Pacifico's blog,  so you can read more about bee stuff here.

Marcos Calero Pérez, my coworker on the bee project.

A sprinkling of pollen samples.

Hot pepper pollen collected in La Rejega.

Pollen collected from the pollen basket
of a Melipona beecheii in Tortuga.

Shamelessly posing by a melipona hive in San Jerónimo
(at Marcos's suggestion).

Along the shore of Lake Nicaragua in Cuajiniquil, Cárdenas.

The bathing spot at Finca Guacamaya, Cuajiniquil.