I want to travel around the world (2): Bees in Shangri-La

Shangri-la has countless wonderful memories. The most exciting thing to say is definitely the experience of beekeeping: following beekeeping experts into the unknown secrets of Shangri-La, tasting fresh and rich wild honey, living in Tibetan mansions on the mountain, eating authentic Tibetan food, being bitten by bees and becoming the sexiest volunteer, meeting Zhou Xun in the mountains of Weixi, and doing a day of "photography" for "Duke Zhou".

The beekeeping project of Shangri-La Handicraft Center is mainly to help local farmers improve their skills, hoping to increase local economic income through beekeeping skills. Bee pollination is beneficial to the surrounding ecological environment and can make Shangri-La's natural environment better. The center has two beekeeping projects in Shangri-La, one in Dongwang and the other in Weixi. In addition, several boxes of bees were kept in the courtyard of Dukezong, the ancient city, for the high altitude winter test of bees.

Speaking of beekeeping projects, it is necessary to talk about two magical figures in the center-the beekeeping project manager "Brother Qing" and the beekeeping expert Katie from the United States.

"Brother Qing" is actually not a brother, but a girl with long hair with great personality. Because of her lovely personality and heroic Tibetan dancing skills, the volunteers in the center respectfully call her "Qingge". "Qingge" comes from Inner Mongolia on the other side of Yunnan. She used to be an office worker in a big city, doing foreign trade work in Shenzhen and Beijing. Playing "games" with all parties every day made her feel very tired and lost her soul like a robot. After 20 12 resigned, "Qingge" embarked on a journey. "Bamboo straw sandals are lighter than horses, and a misty rain lasts a lifetime." Unexpectedly, just like us, "Brother Qing" was deeply attracted when passing through Shangri-La. She lived in an old Tibetan-style house and became the librarian of Shangri-La Handicraft Center, where she came into contact with the work of beekeeping and found great pleasure from it.

Brother Qing once described to me that her dream is to have a big truck full of beehives, so that she can drive the truck happily and go to places with flowers, keeping bees and collecting honey all the way, which is beautiful and sweet. In recent years, she has been approaching this dream, learning beekeeping technology, becoming a beekeeper in the center, carefully managing beekeeping projects every day, and recently getting many opportunities to go to the United States for professional beekeeping training. She has become a professional beekeeper and can be independent. Now she is a beekeeper consultant in the center. It is really enviable to watch her step by step towards her life goals. If you want to worship this "green brother" when you go to Shangri-La, just go to Moonlight Square at night. She will definitely jump into the potted farm there, and she is the happiest one wearing a panda hat.

Katie, our "teacher", is a little fresh beekeeper who is younger than all of us. She was born in a beekeeping family in the United States, majoring in biology at the university, and her parents and brother both have their own beekeeping businesses in Texas, USA. She is only in her twenties, but she has been a beekeeper for 20 years and can speak Chinese. Now she is a beekeeping consultant, and her projects are all over the world, just like a bee, following the flowers all over the world. Many original beekeeping techniques of "Qingge" were learned from Katie. Brother Qing is our beekeeper, so in terms of seniority, Katie is already our teacher, although she is young. Katie has rich knowledge of beekeeping and likes to help people. She is a kind and brave girl. Every summer Katie will come to Shangri-La to give free technical training to the villagers here and teach them the knowledge of beekeeping from scratch. Although Katie doesn't work in the center now, she has only seen her in photos, but the volunteers have all heard her legend.

The experimental bee colony of Dukezong in Shangri-La is a good opportunity for volunteers to get in touch with bees. Every time brother Qing goes to check the bees, we will volunteer to follow. Under her hands-on instruction, our knowledge of beekeeping has increased a lot, including many interesting little knowledge.

Brother Qing said that we raised bees in Dukezong ancient city, not Xifeng. The main bee species in China are Chinese bee and western bee. The center is the local bee, which is the most common bee species in China, while the western bee is an exotic species from the central Mediterranean. These two kinds of bees often fight with each other for the source of honey. Xifeng is big and aggressive, and often kills the queen bees in the central group to occupy their hives. Although the strength is wide, the center is a local strongman with strong adaptability, so Xifeng has been unable to completely annihilate the center. The subtle relationship between them is like the relationship between the Saudi Coalition forces and the Houthi armed forces in Yemen. Although the Saudi Coalition forces far surpassed the Yemeni Houthi armed forces in military strength and financial resources, the war did not win for a long time because it was difficult to defeat the local strongmen. But the center has better luck than the Yemeni Houthi armed forces, because many local governments in China are on their side, banning the cultivation of western bees.

Brother Qing said when introducing the classification of bees that drones don't need to work, and the only job is to mate with queen bees. Male volunteers were surprised by these drones. Later, I read a book to know that in winter, in order to save food, bees will be the first to kick drones out of the hive and let them die in the ice and snow. After knowing the truth, I was really chilling for several days, but I couldn't get over it. It seems that I have to go back to warm Hong Kong for the winter. It is estimated that Brother Qing didn't tell us the truth because he considered the feelings of his disciples. It's really well-meaning.

Bees are different from pets. They are disloyal to their owners. Once unhappy, they will run away at any time and find another place to move in. Proper care will make the bees grow bigger and bigger. At this time, we can't be careless. Because the bee colony is too big, they feel crowded, which will lead to the phenomenon of bee division, that is, some bees will defect and establish a new "queen bee", which will lead some bees to leave home and establish a new home outside. Therefore, it must be noted that if there are too many bees in the hive, it is necessary to manually divide the bees, that is, move half of the bees to another hive and become two independent bees. The technical level of artificial bee sorting is very high, and sometimes bees that are not well sorted will return to the original colony. To make matters worse, the failure to divide bees will affect the original bee colony, and finally nothing will be found.

Sometimes the reason why the number of bees decreases may be that bees are sick. At this time, many dead pupae and young bees will be found in the hive. We've had bees get sick. At that time, Guaiguai Chai happened to have something to rush back to Beijing, so Brother Qing rushed back to Shangri-La from a distant village and took the samples of dead bees to the airport with Uncle Tashi's car. Before the plane took off, it was handed over to Guaiguai Chai, who sent the samples to the laboratory in Beijing for inspection. The whole process is as wonderful as a relay race. It seems that it is not easy to take good care of bees.