Let's Build Gonave, Haiti!

Moving honeybees from the mainland of Haiti (Arcahaie) to La Gonave will be the longest movement of honeybees that we have even undertaken.  Currently we are researching ways to move the honeybees from the distance.  Logistically it is a major challenge due to moving the bees across water.  Simply put we see this as a challenge but one that we are very excited about. The hives could be several hundred pounds each.  Moving the bees have to be done at the right time of day, right temperature, and right weather.  We also want to make sure that we move the bees with the most amount of forager honeybees.  These are the honeybees that search for nectar, pollen, and water.  Without these bees, the hive will die.  Loosing a few isn't a big deal, but loosing too many foragers is disaster. So what is the best solution?  Moving the honeybees at night.  While this still has to be done with care, night offers cooler temperatures, honeybees are t...

La Gonave Honeybee Project hive building will be an opportunity for local woodworkers to build the hives.  This will allow for local experience in building the hives, but also will lower overall costs of building the hives.  The hives will be built using plastic barrels but many aspects of the hive will still be wood, such as the top bars. There will also be the traditional wooden hive boxes as well, which will require 100% wood.  Based on market prices in Haiti for wood, these types of hives may not be on a large scale production.  Still we hope to start the production of hives as early as summer 2016.  This will allow us to have the stock of hives ready for new beekeepers.  Our goal is to produce one hive per week.  While that sounds like a very small number, 4 hives per month will be more than enough to end out 2016.  We expect that the number of hives built each month to double starting 2017. Each hive will have everything needed for a hi...