Bye Grenada & Hello again Minnesota

Sadly I have not updated the posts here as I hoped I would have. I've been home now for 6 weeks and will try to do better of updating here and on  another blog I will be writing on for my new position, which I will also write about.

Below was written my last week of service while still in Grenada.

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My year in Grenada is finishing up this week I am finishing projects, saying good byes, and packing up. I do not think this is the end of Grenada for me. I really enjoyed this island. And heard or was told that in the lower Caribbean, it truly is one of the friendliest and nicest island.

In this past year I was able to:

• Meet with 50 established beekeepers and 30 people interested in beekeeping, assessed their knowledge and resources to understand feasibility of needed trainings, equipment and appropriate technologies.
• Documented known 86 beekeepers and kept a contact list of 31 interested people for the Association and others use.
• Offered assistance to all and worked one-on-one with 16 beekeepers trouble shooting problems, learning and sharing best practices and using appropriate technology and techniques for the limitations of the island.  
• Monitored and evaluated skills and advancement over the course of working with each of the beekeepers.
• Supported the Ministry of Agriculture extension agent with visiting beekeepers to assist them in their ventures. Knowledge and expertise was shared in terms of exporting, value chains in Grenada and importing of goods beekeepers would need.
• Created and implemented course curriculum specific to the island of Grenada: Introduction to Successful Beekeeping: What you need to get started and Bee Pests, Disease & Integrated Pest Management: Understanding and Identification. Training 25 people over all these 2 courses given multiple times and locations to make it more available.
• Created, managed and communicated through Facebook page, Gmail and WhatsApp application to keep beekeepers, interested people and public aware of events, classes and information.
• Through further research and fieldworks, capturing of information from beekeepers and other people on the island Ms. Wannarka correlated, designed and wrote 160-page electronic book “Honey Bee Plants in Grenada, Eastern Caribbean:  Nectar, Pollen, and Propolis source plants” to assist beekeepers, interested people, farmers and others conserve and increase bee plant fodder and knowledge on the island. The book was sent via email, WhatsApp and the Facebook page to beekeepers, interested people and other contacts made through the past year.
• Attending monthly was able to attend the St. George’s University Bee College in May 2015 and there met 14 other beekeepers from the Caribbean and Florida University that she kept in touch with and shared information with.
• Assisting Belmont Estate, an Agro-tourism historic plantation. Specifically helping with their Goat Dairy project one day a week with communication from a U.S. based manager to the Belmont estate office handling the payroll, encourage staff and oversee overall process. This allowed Ms. Wannarka to see and understand the financial and payroll process of a business on the island. Working with the staff of the Goat Dairy Project and Belmont estate was a pleasure.
• Liaisoned with other organizations on the island to share her expertise and knowledge with. Grand Bras Estate is a historic 100-acre farm that employs 20 people for year around vegetable production. Through discussion using bees for pollination was found to be possible and helpful to improve the vegetable crop in a few fields on a trial basis.
• Attended community meetings such as GRENED, Grenada Education and Development Programme; SADO, St. Andrew’s Development Organization and Grenada Creole Society Meeting and Lecture in Concord, St. John’s. Ms Wannarka also participated in a panel for STEM Opportunities in the Peace Corps Webinar for Western Pennsylvania to share Peace Corps and Response experience

There is no comparing this service to my last in Senegal, West Africa. There are many cultural similarities, but everything else now looking back at it with a month+ perspective is good. 

Making of a region specific bee fodder plant list

Isn't that a mouthful?! And is what I've been doing for the last 3 months specifically for Grenada. I've been gathering for most of the year, finding little gems (like actual island specific plant books-which are very hard to come by on the island due to all the libraries being closed after hurricane Ivan due to damage and $$). And talking to many beekeepers to get their knowledge on paper. I'm sure I'll still miss a few plants but this is a good start.

While doing parts of a very tedious, monotonous job I listen to podcasts. One specifically (Min 16) with Derek Sivers, reminds us to "document the process" not only for ourselves but for others to be see how the "how the sausage gets made"

So without a due...here's what I've done to create a bee fodder plant list in Grenada:

My time in Senegal I was able to stumble upon Plants for Arid Lands which happened to have a list of Bees and Honey in the Exploitation of Arid Land Resources, written by of course well known honey bee researcher Eva Crane.

Also the Senegal Peace Corps Agroforesty Manual also had a list of trees listed as bee fodder, not all of them are "true" but also no one could tell me where the information had come from even though the author was still on staff. And Trees and Shrubs of the Sahel is a awesome book for the West Africa region in general.

Trees and Shrubs of the Sahel, luckily the copy I found was in English not French

So between these two lists I combined them and started adding the local names I knew in Wolof, the local language I had learned and worked in. Senegal has 36 languages (per Wikipedia) but Peace Corps Senegal trains volunteers in one of 9 languages (Wolof, Sereer, Mandinka, Malinke/Jaxanke Fulakunda, Pular, Pulla Fuuta, Pular du Nord,French, Bambara)

Senegal Honey Bee Fodder List

This list is currently 171 species using only 4 references (see below). Luckily I had great agriculture volunteers with wonderful language ability to help fill in some of the names as much as they knew. Sadly though this list has never been used for more than personal use. The idea was to create a simple identification booklet for beekeepers to learn terms and identify plants. Similar to this below

Booklet from Mali to teach French vocabulary to beekeepers

 References:

Crane, E. (1985). Plants for Arid Lands. In Bees and Honey in the Exploitation of Arid Land Resources. International Bee Research Association.

Sidibe, D., Djitte, C., Constant, A., & Blass, C. (2012). Peace Corps Senegal Agroforestry Manual (Second.). Theis, Senegal: Peace Corps.

Traucht, M. (2009). Working with Bees in The Gambia. The Gambia.

Von Maydell, H.-J. J. (1990). Trees and Shrubs of the Sahel. Weikersheim: Margraf.

After I came home November of 2014 after my Peace Corps service was finished I kept looking for honey bee fodder lists. Not all lists would be pertinent as there are multiple breeds of honey bees and they are location specific. For example, African bees that were in Senegal, can not survive in my native Minnesota due to the cold, but also African bees are 10% smaller than Apis mellifera we have in northern climates, therefore some of the plant fodder might be different too.

Apis distribution map via Apimonda (@apimondiabees)

twitter September 17, 2015

So each list needs to be looked at from a location and Apis breed to see if a world bee fodder list can be made, which from what I can find has not been made, documented, updated, or put online. Which with all the technology we have there are many applications for this information.

Currently I have 49 literature reference sources for nectar, honey dew, pollen and propalis sources that I have started a new list specifically for Apis mellifera (honey bee) with around 2800 plants. Now what to do with the list.

Spring of 2015 I traveled to Grenada to work with beekeepers and kept my eyes open for any references specific to Grenada/Caribbean that I could find on bee fodder as well as what the beekeepers could tell me of plants. Many names are in local common names, not Latin/scienctific names. Also what do I do with all this data which is plant nomenclature, which changes over time. So my list might have duplicates due to name changes from having references sources from 1945 to present day.

Again I was luckily to stumble upon Entomological Society of America's 2015 conference that did a wonderful job of putting all of the sessions online. At the beginning of the conference Entomological Collections Network presented for the first day. The stress was putting your data sets online so they can be found, used and added by others. I contacted a presenter for more information, but since it was entomology not plant based it only pushed me to do more research.

Encyclopedia of Life website screenshot

Somehow I had a link from Encyclopedia of Life, I believe was from a conversation from the Bee College from May of 2015 when it was mentioned. Luckily I looked around and figured out that the website not only has common names in multiple languages the entire site is very easy to use with information pulled from various sites, integrating information.

Day in my life updating "the list" follow me on @mayhemmadness5 Instagram

Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) is very handy to make ever changing plant lists in and also check the most correct name. Currently I'm almost through the 2800 plants I have in my list with updating the taxonomy. Next I'll cross reference my list with the 4 books I have been able to find on the island with Grenada flora to see how many actual bee plants are here.

What I would do without books but these specifically have been wonderful!

Once I have my short list of plants, I'll design a small pamphlet to be used by beekeepers, farmers, and other interested people to identify bee plants but also to encourage preservation, conservation and plant more of them through out the island.