Growing Chicks

Jon has posted some videos on U-tube if you want to check progress - latest video is day 7.

Posts (I think) at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6b4loTkf1ME

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b38dpuRvdAs&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkljAqlXQI4&feature=related

Bee-keeping the Tanzanian way

Today I got to see Frank's bees.  They are incredibly small - smaller than a housefly in the UK and non-stinging. They live in boxes about the size of a UK nuc box and don't have frames to draw combs down from so its relatively natural.  The only problems arise when you try and try the honey out of the hive as you have to damage the hive to do it.

The hive (note small entrance bottom, centre)

Prizing open the top

Lifting the lid

Once the hive was open it was really interesting to see inside.

The nest

Close-up

Honey sacs

The next step was extracting - in our case with a large spoon - and filtering.

Industrial filtering

Manual filtering

When also then tried to melt the wax but the comb seemed to be so satured with honey this proved very messy !

Gloopy wax - we couldn't separate the wax types - there seems to be two ?

A few days in Mbeya

Mbeya is very dusty !

The Mbeya office

Had a few days at the Mbeya office - a four and a half hour journey by car - not too bad of itself but we did have to listen to Dolly Parton's greatest hits for the duration !  Mbeya is in the south west corner of TZ, very close to the Zambian and Malawian borders and the agricultural heartland of Tanzania.

10 new black and tans

While I was away one of the chickens decided to hide some eggs from us.  We decided to let her keep them and she managed to hatch 10 out of 12 of them all in one go !

Visit 2 to Tanzania

Central Lodge

On the second leg of my work in Tanzania and back in Irina for a few weeks.  Staying at a different hotel this time - more basic (washing is with a bucket of water) but its much quieter.










Also managed to get a bit on entertainment in at last.  A local restaurant/ craft workshop held a show last night with dancers and traditional food, lovely.

Sambura dance troop

Local version of the trumpet

An unusual band

Maasai

Our First Honey

Start with warming the honey and drying the jars after sterilising them

Then un-cap the wax from the frames

Extracting with a radial extractor, 4 frames at a time

Opening the extractor and pouring the honey through a filter

Bottling



The final result - 21 jars of honey