BEES – they are hated and feared for their stings and loved for their potential to help plants and produce grow.
They are kept as a relaxing hobby; farmed for their sweet honey and destroyed when they make a hive in the wrong place.
Street Beat is taking a look at a few people who are against the killing of the small, social insects. They told the team a little understanding goes a long way.
Tulsie “Brian” Sayersing was on the job in Belair, St Philip, earlier this week, removing a bee hive from someone’s property. He said too often people came armed with insecticide instead of smoke.
“We try to save the bees as much as possible because at the end of the day it’s about pollination. Without pollination, fruit trees suffer but we have some who exterminate the bees instead of collecting them,” he said.
Sayersing, the vice-president of the Barbados Beekeeping Association, was working with Sawh Beehiving Enterprises, which raises bees at their apiary in Haggatt’s, St Philip, and sells the honey.
As such, it is in their interest to keep the bees alive.
“Honey has a lot of medical properties, but people are conditioned to take a tablet when they feel sick,” he said.
But Sayersing said honey was just the beginning as he also created soaps and creams from the bee by product. He spoke on his bee-loving origins.
“I started off 11 years ago and fell in love with the profession. It was a learning experience and now I live an organic lifestyle. Working with bees is like nurturing a family, I have learned so much just by studying them,” he said.
Sayersing predicted more bee activity in the upcoming hurricane season which would mean more work for people like him, but he cautioned against people rushing to kill the bees.
“You will find more swarms now, but we want to save the bees as we don’t have enough in the island. When people don’t have the education or understanding they will kill the bees, but if you don’t trouble them, they will not trouble you, so if you have bees call a professional beekeeper,” he said.
Ricky Narine said his love of bees started in his native Guyana with the Rajkumar family. He said he came here in 2008 and now works for Sawh Beehiving.
“It’s a good job, more like a hobby to me. I enjoy showing people what can be done with bees,” he said.
Narine said business was “up and down” so they were trying things like honey wine, although it was not ready for sale yet. He said he would like to see people be more compassionate towards bees.
“I would like to see people try to save the hives more and help us to build up the population which will get more pollination about the place and result in more honey in Barbados to the point we may be even able to export,” he said.
Hemindranauth “Ben” Rajkumar is a member of that famous Guyanese bee family, which he said was the biggest honey and bee producers in the Caribbean. He came to Barbados in 2006 and continued his beekeeping ways, starting with local honey manufacturer Rudy Gibson.
“I came here looking for a job so I checked around and called Gibson. He was a big brother and a best friend to me, but we eventually went our separate ways,” he said, adding beekeeping methods differed between the Caribbean nations.
Rajkumar said he went into business for himself, starting Rajkumar Apiaries and Honey Works, but was temporarily out of the game now, although he still kept bees in his backyard. He said people did not understand bees, but he had high hopes for the industry in Barbados.
“Bees are like dogs; if you interfere with them, they will snap, but if you know how to deal with them, you can live with them. The bee industry in Barbados will kick up and I will always be there, it is not something I can get out of my system,” he said with a laugh.
Businessman Bret Tuleja is looking to turn both the bee and agriculture industries on their ears by starting a bee rental business. The California native came to Barbados in 1979, married a local woman and eventually set up shop, setting up R. L. Seale.
From there he branched off on his own, getting into roofing, pallets and canned goods.
“One thing leads to another in life so as the market started to shrink and the canning plant stagnated, I came across a beehive and started to study it,” he said.
Now, Tuleja has more than 60 000 bees as part of Bajan Bees and is seeking to start renting them to farmers to assist them in increasing crop production. He said he had a humane way to remove wild bees from people’s properties using a vacuum which would bolster his hives.
However, a major bone of contention is what Tuleja said was the practice of killing the bees first without asking a question. He said even professional beekeepers were practising this which was detrimental to the country, calling them bee killers instead of bee keepers.
