Here's Chico heading down our road toward the viewpoint, and where the road goes into a trail.
All went well for about 20 minutes until a bolt backed out on a hinge pin retainer and the pin backed out a bit. He had the machine repaired by the afternoon but he didn't continue digging. Progress made before the trouble was about 80 feet through the narrow path down to our future driveway entrance.
Power outages happen often enough here, maybe once every two weeks, and could last 15 minutes to an hour, but this one lasted most of the day. We're told reliability will increase once the power poles have been changed out to the hurricane resistant composite poles, but we're going for off the grid solar for our dome so we don't have to deal with it. Thursday night we had strong winds and rain hit the island and knocked power out around 12:30 AM Friday morning. Our power was out until around 2:30 PM the first time. It came on for about 30 minutes then out again for a few more hours, on briefly, and finally on around 7:30 PM. Kent has a manual transfer switch for the generator so I had that hooked up and the house running during the outage. He's on oxygen 24/7 and has a large 3000 PSI oxygen bottle so we decided to keep him on it until commercial power came on to maintain a constant flow. Once we were confident it would stay on we switched him back to the electric oxygen generator. We had plans to help a friend serve food at a wedding reception so BJ came over and stayed with Kent in the evening while we were gone. He kept Kent entertained until we made it back up the hill.
Chico did show up to dig Friday morning. He got to work on clearing the driveway switchback when the big part of the storm came through. That was another 15 minutes work but the winds and rain drove him away. We're in an area that's at least 50% rock and water drains through before it pools, but the area would get too slick to risk washing a dozer down the hill. Here's Chico as he was starting on the downhill side of our road towards our driveway.
Today, Saturday morning, and try three for excavating seemed promising with only a few showers expected and decreasing wind. Chico started cutting the driveway and was pretty happy on how easy it was going to be. The large rocks were breaking apart and the soil was easily pushed. He got about 40' of the driveway created when he was attacked by bees. The honey bees on the island are not your standard bees. We've got some Africanized bees that can get a bit aggressive when you disturb their hive, but in general leave you alone. They swarm around the Christmas palm seeds and other flowers or fruit and don't care if you get right in the action. Disturb a hive with rocks rolling down the hill from the excavation and you may have some trouble when they go into defensive mode.
While working at Sejah Farm we met the Honeyman, one of the islands bee keepers. I called him up this morning and he was able to come out and help us identify the hives location. At first all we saw were the Jack Spaniard wasps. (Those are the nasty wasps that are about 5 times as bad as your standard paper wasp throughout the US. I was stung on the elbow Thursday and had some pretty good swelling. Yvette from the farm told me to put bleach on the sting as soon as possible. I did around 20 minutes after the sting and the pain and swelling were minimal, although it did ache until around noon today.) Chico came back out and started the excavator while the Honeyman, Denise and I watched for the bees. After a few minutes they started to swarm.
The Honeyman put on his suit and went down the hill below the excavation site and found the hives location. Here he is waiting by the dozer for the bees to calm and go back to the hive. What the picture doesn't show is the 20+ bees swarming and attacking him.
He found the hive at the base of a tree in a hole that may have been a broken off branch that rotted away. Large rocks the size of a carry-on suitcase had fallen against the tree years ago causing it to lean down hill a bit. This angle allowed the bees to create a hive that extends up the hill in the root. We discussed ways to remove the hive and it seemed like a huge process so I offered to get in his spare suit and tackle it together. He grabbed a bee box, pick ax and smoker and I grabbed my chain saw.
The bees were really attacking when we first started working. Our plan was to save the hive instead of killing the bees by cutting the top of the tree off and extract the combs and queen. Yeah, that didn't happen. We started by digging around, and breaking apart the rocks that were leaning against the tree. We were trying to gain access to the trunk for the chainsaw, but we couldn't get down far enough since the hive opening was low on the downhill side. Next we took the chainsaw to the hive opening and he was able to remove some of the comb. That's when we discovered that the hive had extended into one of the roots on the uphill side. I grabbed my phone to get a quick video.
After we used the chainsaw to enlarge the opening, the bees had calmed down and went back to daily life. Worker bees were returning to the hive and stayed on the trunk around the opening but did not enter. They didn't care about us so the Honeyman took off his hood to demonstrate how calm they could be.
Due to the depth of the hive into the hillside we had to look for another option since we'd run out of daylight soon. Denise and I had talked months ago about having some beehives on our property due to the amount of fruit trees and endless flowers on our property. When we first met the Honeyman we had a conversation about working with him when the excavation was complete to get some hives started. Our last option today was to kill the hive. If we couldn't move the hive today Chico had agreed to wear the suit while excavating until he was past the area that disturbed the bees. Sine we determined we couldn't move the hive the Honeyman would place a bee box by the hive, and another near the viewpoint up the hill. Our hope is the bees will try to expand the hive in the spring and we can move the boxes to another area on our property that's out of the way and seal off the original tree hive. I called Chico and he changed his mind saying he wasn't comfortable wearing the suit and hood while excavating due to visibility issues. We talked a bit and he decided he'd try it Monday morning. I talked with Denise and I decided I'll put the suit on tomorrow and try to dig out the hive myself for a better chance of saving the hive and being able to continue excavation. If I can expose the root then the Honeyman can come back and move the bees. Attempt number four will be Monday morning.
Here's Denise at the top of our driveway.
Here's looking down the driveway.
And now we return you to your regularly scheduled National Geographic VI adventure.
If the bees weren't enough, today we had some adventure in the house. While waiting for Chico we had the front door open and a pearly eyed Thrasher flew into the house and killed himself when he slammed against the glass door. He became breakfast for the hermit crabs along with a mouse that was caught in a trap last night. Here's a large crab that's been hanging around.
While outside the other night we had a visiting grasshopper on the head of a mop. He was about 2 1/2" long.
We also have a new spider with a cool web above the front door at the gutter.
That's all for now. Hopefully Monday I'll have an update on the bees and the excavation.
Kevin & Denise
