Category Archives: Bees

Removing Africanized Bees from Walls in Rincon Puerto Rico

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On our last trip here in May/June we managed to get ahold of someone from the University of Mayaguez to help us remove the bees that were in the walls of the upstairs bedroom in the wood house (you can read more of the Bee Backstory here). In summary, we found out that there wasn’t just one hive of bees, but FOUR! So our new university bee friends were able to remove one of the colonies, but couldn’t get the other three. When we came back for this trip we really wanted to get the remaining three hives out of the walls.

We tried calling our bee guy, Jose again, but he apparently didn’t have time or didn’t want the work, so we thought we wouldn’t be able to get the rest of the bees out this trip. Then we lined up the plumber to work on the sink in the studio cabana (we’ll write about that later) and just happened to tell him about the bees in the house. He said that while doing plumbing he often runs into bees in the water lines/boxes and knew of a guy who loved bees and could easily remove them for us (for a fee).


Staying away from the bees-at the beach

And so that is how we met Enrique. Enrique definitely does love bees and was enthusiastic and ready to remove all the rest of the
three hives right then and there. He went in to do the job with no bee suit, no gloves or any protection. He apparently just tore down the wall panels where the bees were located, grabbed the queen with his bare hands and the rest of the bees followed into the cardboard boxes. He made really quick work of it.

He told us they would be agitated in the move and that we might want to leave for a few hours to avoid being stung.  So in that time we went down to the beach and hung out, got some food and came back. In the same time it took the methodical, cautious and precise Jose to remove one hive, Enrique took out three! We returned and there were a lot of bees still buzzing around but Enrique assured us that it was safe to go into the house to see his finished work because the remaining bees wouldn’t sting if they didn’t have a queen to protect (I was still a little freaked out by all of them buzzing around my body).

He had removed all of the bees from inside the walls as well as their honey and comb. He offered us to keep the honey and comb, but we weren’t sure what to do with it. We did get to taste it, and it was really good -sweet and waxy! Britton managed to take a little video of Enrique showing us the removal and the honeycomb afterward. We are definitely relieved to have the bees gone and hopefully by tomorrow all the orphaned ones will realize their queen is gone and they will scram as well.  Although we are a little sad to not have all the thousands of little pollinators working on our fruit trees. Maybe someday we’ll get a hive of our own…just not inside our house 🙂

 

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We Have Arrived in Rincon!

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We got into Aguadilla at about 1:30am last night (local time).  The flight was uneventful to Newark and from Newark into Aguadilla.  We got our rental car and headed for the property.  It was pretty dark and traffic was light (obviously).  We got here and vines had covered up the front gate.  I got out of the car and started tearing them off by hand.  I got enough of them off, so that the gate would slide open and drove on in.


Rental Car This Morning

The weeds appear to have grown quite a bit in 8 months.  It’s about what I expected to see though and isn’t too bad.  We were able to drive the car right in over top of the ‘weeds’ and park.  I went into the small cabana not exactly knowing what to expect.  It looked about the same except the paint on the ceiling had continued to flake off, so there was quite a bit of paint chips on the bed and floor.   A quick sweeping took care of that.  We dusted off the bed and got out our covers/blankets we stashed from the last visit.  Other than a few weird noises we went to sleep pretty easily.

The Concrete “Cabana”

I feel that the first order of business will to be to get a trimmer and maybe some paint / paint supplies from the store.  That way we can start to carve out a nice spot for ourselves, then expand the spot as we move along.  We also want to get some plumbing done and maybe some more bees removed while we are here.

The bees that were removed on the last trip have stayed gone, so that’s a good sign that it won’t be a futile attempt.

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Coffee Beans in Colorado?!

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Schnoodle with some of the various tropical plants in our house -coffee tree is furthest left

Coffee Tree
A Healthy Coffee Plant has Nice glossy dark green leaves

We have had a small coffee plant for the last few years.  In the summer we put it in the humid greenhouse and it grows well. Then in the winter we bring it inside, where it lives..but doesn’t exactly thrive.   But this year we watered it a little more and… it started to bloom.

Cassie played the role of the honey bee and pollinated some of the blossoms by hand by touching the pollen from flower to flower. We hadn’t thought much of it until just the other day when we saw….Green coffee berry beans!


Colorado Coffee Beans

We will continue to let them grow and I doubt we’d have enough even for a single cup of coffee, but it’s still fun and having tropical plants around us invokes thoughts of Puerto Rico.  Of course the coffee plants in PR are a hundred times more fragrant and bigger!  Perhaps if we have enough beans/seeds we will try to grow another tree or two here in CO.  When we get to PR we might plant a whole acre of them!

Coffee Flowers
Little pom-pom white scented puffs of flowers soon turn into the berries

This is a coffee bush in Puerto Rico (makes our Colorado coffee beans look silly)

UPDATE: Click on links to see the red coffee berries turn into beans and new coffee plant seedlings.

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Killer Bees in Puerto Rico?

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Well this episode of our Puerto Rican adventure is coming to a close.  We fly out tonight and head back to Colorado.  It’s simply an indescribable experience to go thru what we have.  We’ve basically started our life’s movie back up.  In this movie there are new characters, new adventures and new challenges to overcome.

When we bought the house we knew that wood wasn’t desireable and put our offer in with the intent of tearing down the house that current sits atop the property.  We have gone back and forth in our minds if tearing it down or fixing it up is the best idea.  Being here for a few weeks we’ve seen some of the issues with a wooden house.  They aren’t the safest place to be in a hurricane, they are more prone to pest issues, the wood doesn’t last very long in comparison to cement. 

It was kind of a suprise when we saw bees living in the upper bedroom walls of the house.   Not something we had planned on. 


Bees on the outside of the house trying to get in (click for larger view)

Cassie and I had taken a bee keeping class in Colorado so we do have just a small amount of information about bees.  Here in Puerto Rico the chances are very good that these are the African interbred version -Africanized bees- also known, by the less-informed, as killer bees.  In our classes they had informed us that “killer bees” are more aggressive towards European hives and attackers.  They are more likely to leave their hive and form new ones as well.  But their stings are not more deadly or anything like that. They are pretty much the same just more likely to survive/thrive in tropical environments. For traditional bee keepers they are less desireable because they are not as docile and in Colorado it’s just too cold.  If they abandon their hive they have less food to make it thru the cold and they die.

Cassie called the university (Mayaguez) and got ahold of a local bee keeper.  Jose came out to the  house and assessed the situation.  Apparently there are 4 separate colonies of bees in the walls upstairs!  LOL.  Cassie and I were kind of shocked.  I mean, we knew there would be unexpected problems but we just hadn’t thought of bees.  Lizards?  Sure.  Cockroaches?  Sure.  But bees? We hadn’t thought of THAT!

This is apparently a problem with the wood houses.  These bees have been living there for a very long time.  One of the colonies has ~30,000 bees.  We spoke to the previous caretaker and he said that Kathy (the previous owner who passed away in the house) lived with the bees and wouldn’t move or kill them.  He said she was a “hippy”..lol.  I can believe that she didn’t have much of an issue with them.  We were in the bedroom several times and they just went about their honey business not really minding us at all.  Still though….I’d want them gone if we were to try and live in the wood house.

Jose (the bee guy) turned out to be a really cool guy.  Very friendly and energetic.  We even went to his place of work where they do agricutural research for the University of Mayaguez:

He gave us about 30 mangos and we bought a few trees there for the property.  When we got back home we planted them.


We’re excited to see how big these grow when we get back!

It was a lot of fun to learn about new plants (which we are constantly doing) from people who live here.  Katrina Kruse has been helpful in sharing her experiences with growing various plants/fruits.  It’s very different than home and we feel like little kids asking what everything is.  “What’s that?” ,”What’s that taste like?” ,”What’s that called again?”

Well back to the bees…. We weren’t sure what to do but we figured even if we tear down the house, the bees would have to be removed.  Well Jose and his friend Moses came over to start removing them because they wanted the hives!  It was quite an experience.


Moises and Jose in the beehive part of the house and outside

Once the got the wall opened up here is what there was:


Cassie is smiling but was actually freaking out because a bee was crawling on her leg at this moment

Since they’ve removed the hive we’ve been stung a few times.  Before that we didn’t have any problems.  I assume they let out the pheromones that let the other bees know the hive is under attack.  The remaining bees are picking up on this.  Bee stings hurt!


After the bees have been removed


A piece of the comb

We have so much more to write about.  We found out more from the caretaker about Kathy, we have more stories about the bee keepers and a few other side adventures!  This will take another week to really try to explain! We’re really enjoying life here in Rincon even with all the unknowns and are not ready to come back! This has been a kick (or is it sting)!

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