In like another failed trasiago, out like a (hopefully) succesfull trasiago

Well I´ve had a pretty good week this week. It started out with another trasiago attempt. This hive was located in an old fallen mbocaja tree (coco palm to the unintiated). Super easy. However after busting the sucker open we found a doomed hive... Laying workers. (Laying workers means no queen and that means no new workers only lazy lazy zanganos). Another failure, however this one wasn´t our fault. We loaded up what bees we could scoop up and throw and the box and headed out. Before going to deposit out bees in the apiary we had to go pick up the trasiago the croppies got to do. Those so-and-so´s apprently had a super easy, superstar trasiago. Zero stings and one of them even caught the queen in his hands while she was flying away, and without hurting her. And insult to injury, they sweated up our suits.

The next day we had a feild trip to Asunsion to visit the university´s beekeeping program, a bee equiment store and a local food market. While I´m sure the university visit was informative, I didn´t understand a goddamn word. I did find out that it is illegal to import honey into Paraguay though. We arrived at the bee store on one of the 2 days a year when they make stamped wax, so we got to see that process, which was pretty cool. They had a huge barrel full of water sitting on a big fire and there was a smaller barrel full of melted wax inside (double boiler). Then they would take a pail and scoup up some wax and put it into another barrel. Then they would dip this board into the wax a couple of times then put it in water and the wax would harden and they´d peel it off. The market was a market. I don´t think i´ve been here long enought to appricate its variaty. OH and on the way home I saw alf cell... it was a store that sold cell phones and used alf (from the old tv show) as its mascot. I know where im getting my phone.

And finally, yesterday. Yesterday was our 4th ´dia de practica´. Me and my buddy Caleb have been doing a bee oriented dia de practica thing, which so far had been talking with a copule of folk. However the plan had always been to make a TBH and use it to do a trasiago with Caleb´s grandmothers godson. And yesterday was that day. When we wolk up in the mornging all we had was a dream and a bottom board. We managed to scrounge up some scrap wood from a construction site to bulid the sides with. Then we got some bamboo to use as top bars. Luckly after lunch Alberto came over and helped make the box. After it was done we terered and played cards untill 5 when we planed on doing the trasiago. At five johnathan (out tech trainer) and patricia (one of our language proffesors) rolled up and me, caleb and caleb´s mom hoped in the van, Jaha trasiago hape! (lets go to the trasiago) (oh by the way johnathan and patricia were only there to judge us). We got there, Alberto expertly hacked the tree open, in about 2 or 3 wacks and we began pulling out the comb and ataching it to our bamboo bar (which work awesome for attaching comb). We searched in vain for the queen for awhile (everybody helped with that), but once it started geting dark we decided to go for the crapshoot and just try to smoke ´em all into the box, which actually seemed to work. Me and Caleb are going back over there this evening to make sure they stuck around and also to move them to their new, perminate home. (by the way I also got stung in the nose durring the coarse of the trasiago. For those of you no in the know, a bee´s sting smells like bananas, so all i could smell was bananas for about a minute.)

Oh and one last thing some of the bulls here have these huge fat humps over their sholders and i´ve been dying to grope one. Today I got that chance... It was great also I got to fondle the bull´s droopy neck fat, ESSO!. I have pics of all this and more, which I will upload once I can get virus free internet access.