Beekeeping in Nigeria - Harvesting Honey at Night

0:00 May I have your attention, please? The following is not the real Jeff Fox release. If you have enough beeswax lip balm to last your family for 300 years, you might be a beekeeper. If you failed freshman science, but now teach honeybee enough, to be at your local bee club. You might be a beekeeper. If you buy bags of sugar, buy the pallet load and you're not a baker. Welcome welcome to Be Love Beekeeping presented by our good friends at Man Lake. Today we're traveling over 7 ,000 miles for a discussion with a beekeeper in Nigeria.

1:09 I know you may be thinking what does beekeeping in Africa have to do with my beekeeping here in North America or Europe or wherever else in the world you are, but I think it's fun hearing from our fellow beekeepers in other parts of the world. Their struggles and successes may be different than ours, but we all share a common love for these amazing insects. And maybe there are ways that we can help each other. Up front, let me say that we do have some language barrier issues and there are some extraneous noises, so please give him a little grace. It'll be worth listening closely. Hopefully we'll have some fun and we'll learn something. Before we jump into that, how about we catch up on more honeybee fun facts? Did you know that drone bees develop from unfertilized eggs? So they have no father.

2:01 They only have a mother and a grandfather. Speaking of drones, did you know that they don't have stingers? Only female bees have stingers. Did you know that worker bees, and these are all female by the way, the drones don't do any work around the hive. Worker bees have different jobs throughout their life, including cleaning the hive, feeding larvae, guarding the entrance, gathering nectar and pollen, and more. And lastly, did you know that bees collect pollen on their legs and use it as a source of protein? A single bee can carry up to 35 % of her body weight in pollen. Now, let's get with our guest and see what it's like doing beekeeping in Nigeria. I would like to welcome our very special guest today, all the way from Nigeria, Mr. Osida Unumene.

2:59 Did I say that okay? Unumene. Unumene. Thank you. Fine, that's good. Hey, tell me about where you live and what your farm is like. All right, I live in Nigeria. I live in the capital of Nigeria, Abuja. I'm a beekeeper. We're into modern beekeeping and honey production. We not only practice beekeeping, we also empower Nigerians to encourage people to come into this sector because we know it can alleviate poverty. It can... helped to create financial sustainability and alternative farming for Nigerians as well. So we started since 2017 and we've been practicing up to this day. So that's a little I can tell you about Salasita Farms. Yeah, that's fantastic. So you help new beekeepers get started as well as doing your own honey production, correct? Yes, very correct, sir. Do you teach classes? How do you do that?

4:11 Yes, I teach physical classes and I also run an online WhatsApp class as well. In that WhatsApp class, everything I do in the firm, I've been able to convert them into video formats, written, explanatory, detailed write -ups that people can read, videos people can watch, and as they replicate what I teach, they can also achieve the same results. Let's get down to some of the basics, okay? Yes. In the area where you're keeping bees, give us an idea of what it looks like. If you had a camera and could show around, are we looking at mountains or desert or rivers or what does it look like? Well, there are mountains around, but where I run my prairie is only five hectare land that is very plain. There are hills around, but not on. my apiary. But it's a very big land, and that's where I practice my agricultural venture. He was far away from my apiary. What kinds of plants and flowers are your bees foraging on? Well, we have cashew trees around, we have palm trees around, and we just have local plants that bring out flowers. I may not know their names. But I don't plant flowers because we just

5:41 have natural flowers growing everywhere around where my prairie is. Tell us a little bit about the kinds of bees that you have there. Here in the U .S. we're used to European honeybees, Italians, etc. Do you have stingless bees? Do you have some other kind of bees there? I have bees, Apis malifera. very aggressive kind of bees. In fact, we wouldn't mind if they are still called killer bees because they are very, very harsh. And that's why we always make sure that we are well protected before visiting our parry or doing anything that has to do with inspection. And as for stingless bees, I've not been fortunate enough to get a colony of stingless bees. But all I've been working with for these past few years have been apis mellifera, the aggressive African bees. So what are the secrets to dealing with those bees? Do you use a lot of smoke or just really good protective gear? Yeah, we use a lot of smoke and despite the protective gear too, understanding bee biology comes to play when they get colonized newly.

7:00 and have not started storing honey. Their level of aggressiveness is not like when they have already started storing honey or have already started honey production. Their characters before honey production and during honey production are a bit different. So we understand these stages and know what to do at interval. By the way, you have a YouTube channel, some pretty cool videos there. Thank you very much. One of the ones that I was looking at showed you harvesting honey at night. Yeah. That's something a little bit foreign to some of us. Do you always do it at night and how come? Yeah, we discovered that harvesting honey during the night, especially when dealing with apis malifera, kind of bees, they are usually calm. They are not aggressive.

7:54 like how they used to be during the day. So the night is very peaceful for Apis melifera. They can allow you, get in, do what you want to do, and they won't follow you around to a far distance, and they will all leave you alone. Tell me about what kinds of hives you use. Are you using mostly top bar? Yeah, we use the boat. We use the Langstroth hives and Kenya top bar hives. You say Kenya top bar hive. Is that different than the kind that I've seen before? Yeah, KTB hives. Oh, okay. So you're using a combination of both. Yes. How do you decide which ones you want to use for which bees? Okay, we don't decide which one we want to use for a particular colony. We just put them into any hive of our choice that we want at any given time. How many hives do you have? Yeah, so far we have about 72 hives at the moment. Oh that's awesome. Yes. Tell me how in a place like that do you obtain your bees?

9:02 Do you have a way to buy them or are you trapping them or how do you find them? Yes, funny enough we don't buy bees in Nigeria. What we do is we bait and wait for new colonies to colonize our hives. I've never seen where bees are sold here in Nigeria. We only bait new hives, and we've learned to, at Salasita Farms, we've learned to formulate our own attractants, very effective on that, that always gets almost all our swarm traps colonized within a very short period of time. What do you use as an attractant? Well, B -Wax is the major aspect of it. Then we use other Luka plants as well. Did you say Luka plant?

9:58 Yes. I'm not familiar with that. Is that spelled L -U -C -A? No, Luka, Luka. Or general plants that anyone can find around, like rose flower plants, lemongrass. We also use other plants, too, that we mix with it. That is just like a secret that we keep as lacita farms, because people buy from us as well. You don't have to tell me your secrets. It's okay. Thank you very much. One of the things that I've used is lemongrass oil. It works very well. Okay. What do your swarm traps look like? We use nucleus hive, the wooden nucleus hive. And we use the bucket's plastic bucket container too for it. Give me an idea of how that works. What does it look like with the bucket? Are you drilling a big hole or what do you do? Yes, what we do with the bucket swam trap is that we make a bigger hole or a big hole for the entrance. Then we now make other smaller holes at the bottom. and around the bucket for proper ventilation and if at any point there is a rainfall water can get into the bucket but will not stay they will all pass out under through the bottom of the bucket so it can still serve the bees to get it colonized. a conducive and

11:32 well ventilated container for them to stay. And within the space of one month, we can transfer them into a permanent hive. How do you use a nuc? Yeah, the nuc, we divide a hive into three parts or two parts. And then because it is very, very convenient for us to hang on trees and then keep them in different locations, very comfortable. And as soon as they get colonized, we also wait for the period of four weeks, or maximum five weeks. The wooden nook is very, very easy for us to transfer because you're just taking the bars with the bees and the combs, okay, straight to another sizeable hive. And all we just do is to turn the bees inside there. the nook into the new hive and we are done. But it is different with the bucket one because the bucket one we have to cut the combs and then attach it to the bars again. The plastic bucket is always good when we are using a Kenya top bar hive because we have to attach the combs to the bars with the aid of ropes and all that. Then that's how it's done here. Yeah, that sounds interesting and a little bit complicated. Yeah. What kinds of pests do you have there? We deal with varroa

13:04 mites and small hive beetles and various diseases. What kinds of things are pestering your bees? Yeah, the two major challenging pests we have, I have discovered, is the small hive beetle and wax moth. Okay, the wax moth is something that we take control of at every given time we do constant inspection. So we don't allow wax moths to infest our hive. But the small hive beetle is something one cannot control to an extent. But thanks to the kind of bees that we have here in Africa, they are strong enough to combat and withstand some certain attacks from. wax moths and hive beetles. How about varroa mites? Yeah, I've not come across varroa mites in all my years of practice. Yes. Oh, wow. I have not. Oh, you're lucky. Thank you very much. I hope you don't ever get them. I pray to. Tell me more about Salisita Farm. What is it all about beekeeping or do you do other things there? At the moment, it's all about beekeeping. We are so thrilled, we are so interested in not just venturing into it or practicing it. We're also interested in enlightening people, educating people, empowering people with our technical know -how to see that

14:37 beekeeping is one of the ventures many people can. actually take up. Because here in Africa, here in Nigeria, we are blessed with lands and vegetation. And farmers don't actually have good knowledge about modern beekeeping and honey production. Okay, so many of them have different plantations, cashew plantations, banana and plantain plantations. And after that season of production, they don't do any other thing with this farmland. So teaching them how to utilize this land, to go into modern beekeeping, so as to help them create alternative farming and alternative financial income is one of our major priorities. Yeah, that's a fantastic mission. Thank you very much. Way to go. Tell me a little bit more about your honey production process. So you're pulling frames at night. Yeah.

15:44 And what is your method for extracting the honey from the comb? Our kind of extraction is very, very simple because we have an extractor. We know so many people find it very difficult extracting honey, especially when they don't have an extractor. But at La Cita Farms, we don't have any challenge harvesting honey. Quick break to thank our presenting sponsor, Man Lake. I've found that Man Lake has absolutely everything I need to take care of the health of my bees. mite checks and treatments, beetle management, hive health and nutrition, pollen substitutes, food and feeders, and the knowledge base to help you know how to use it.

16:35 Including Bella, their AI beekeeping genius. Just look for her icon in the bottom right hand corner of your screen at manlakeltd .com. While you're there, don't forget your discount code MLBlove10, it's in the show notes, for $10 off your first $100 purchase. And the reason why we love cutting them all of it is because we're also interested in the extraction of bee combs for the production of bee wax. Do you just sell the beeswax in blocks by the pound or do you make candles or other things out of them? For the fact that I train people a lot, I always use the extracted them. combs we use for the production of bee wax. We formulate it as an attractant and also give it out to our students.

17:33 All right, that's all the questions I have. Just tell me some stories about beekeeping. If we're just old friends and we're just sitting around at night chatting and I don't know much about beekeeping, just tell me why you love it. Yes, and beekeeping is actually a very fascinating venture. because it has to do with the bees. And many people don't know that bees are like the cats you have in the house, the dog you have at home, the chickens, the mother hen, any other thing you can think of as pets. I see bees as not being aggressive in nature, but protective.

18:20 This is the message I go around telling people because when you tell them about beekeeping and it has to do with bees, some people get frightened because they feel bees actually can kill, they can attack, they are stinks, it's painful and all that. But I always give them this message that when you come close to a mother hen, you always see her reaction. Okay, that mother hen is not aggressive. she's only protective and that is how bees are too. When a stranger is coming to your home and your dog doesn't know that stranger, you kind of see a reaction from that dog letting you know that I'm not familiar with you. Bees also play or have the same characteristics too. When you're coming to a colony of bees or to a pier or to a hive where bees are, expect same reaction because they want to protect their colony, they want to protect their food, they want to protect themselves from danger. And if you can give them a shelter to stay, they can give you honey in return as a reward. This has been my message and it's always been my message.

19:39 Wow, that is a great way to put it. You're welcome. Thank you for that. I appreciate that. So one of the things I know that you've I know that you've listened to this podcast before and I didn't warn you upfront that I was going to ask you for a wild and crazy beekeeping story. But if you can take a minute to think about one and this could be anything that was either embarrassing or funny or painful or just very unusual experience that you had beekeeping. How about give us one of those? Okay, I have one of my staff working with me. We had a very terrible experience one fateful day, because as a beekeeper, it is very, very necessary and important that you check your bee suit, especially the facial net, because anytime it has a crack and you don't know, you will pay dearly for it. This staff of mine, we forgot to check his facial net thoroughly and there was an opening. Oh my God. He encountered a lot of bee stings because we had almost 20 bees that entered his bee suit. The veil? Yes, the veil. And he was badly stung. You know, we ran out of the apiary where I was trying to calm him down. I don't know how I'm going to put it,

21:10 if he ran mad for like 20 minutes. But we were able to calm him down, do what we had to do. And at the end of the day, everything was fine. So were the stings mostly on his face or all over? Yes, yes, just his face. because the net had a little tear and the bees went in through that place. Oh, poor guy. Yeah. All right. So it's one of the hardest lessons we've learned that you must check your bee suit thoroughly. Yes. That was somebody else. Have you ever had anything crazy happen to you yourself? Yes, yes, yes. I've had one experience too because in beekeeping we said... When you experience something going down your body, it can be sweat. It can be a sweat. But when you feel the sensation of something coming up, then just prepare your mind because it's a bee. Yes. So we had, I had that experience too, that a bee was crawling up into my suit.

22:26 And at the end of the day, I got stung. at the left part of my ear. I couldn't squash the bee, okay, because I know one bee won't sting. And I kept laughing all through because the bee kept tickling my nose, tickling my ear, tickling my jaw. While I was doing inspection, I was just laughing all through. Nobody knew I was laughing until I told them that a bee is right inside my suit. And it was as if that bee was... trying to make me laugh all through my inspection period. So that was my own experience. I love it. You know how we have our not Jeff Fox worthy talk about, you know, you're a beekeeper if I think that one fits in. Yeah, you know, you're a beekeeper if there is a mean bee inside your veil and you're laughing about it. Way to go. Yeah. The other thing I've learned from you today is If you feel something going down, it's sweat. If it's coming up, it's a bee. So hold on. That's true. And you learned about how fast your friend can run.

23:41 Yeah, yeah. That is excellent. Hey, Mr. Osita, you're doing great work over there in Nigeria. Keep it up. Thank you very much. It's good to talk to you and yeah, just keep it up and hopefully we'll talk again in the future. There's no problem. I look forward to meeting you on this. Thanks again for joining us here on Be Love Beekeeping presented by Man Lake. Remember right now to follow or subscribe and share this podcast. Also a quick shout out to Vita Bee Health for their support. Vita's Varroa Control range of products includes Apistan, Apigard, and now Varroxan, Extended Release Oxalic Acid Strips. Thanks guys.

24:27 And remember, if you're not just in it for the honey or the money, you're in it for the love. See you next week.