My background in bee keeping began in the interior of Guyana, South America where as a teenager some 45 years ago, I established an apiary of about 10 hives on our family ranch. This was in a dry savannah area with lots of good flowering shrubs, trees and considered a prime honey producing area by the local inhabitants who mainly gathered wild honey from the resident stingless bees. My first honey bees for my hives were brought from the apiculture department of the Ministry of Agriculture on the coast. I was then told that these were Italian honey bees, Apis mellifera. My hives were made of local cedar and were based upon the Langstroth design. It was a long road of trial and error before I actually managed to harvest my first honey and demonstrate that it was possible to establish honey bee hives and sell the honey to a very depleated market that at that time bought most of its honey from England. The political climate of the '60 s then forced me into exile in Costa Rica and I had to abandon my few bee hives to the local missionary where they continue to exist to this day managed by some local indian bee keepers.
In Costa Rica I did continue my interest with a few hives ... but with the invasion of the africanized bees, I had to abandon all my bee keeping activity within the urban area I then lived in. Now, with new approaches and managed apiary tolerances using the very same africanized bees, I think I can again rekindle the earlier passion and not only establish working hives, but save so many of the bee swarms that now we find abundant at this time of the year.