[Pollinator] Shangri-la bee-keepers

[Peter Bernhardt]

There appear to be two kinds of beekeepers in Shangri-la county (within
Yunnan state).  There are people managing dozens of A. mellifera hives.
They sell their honey along the road.  The nectar is derived from some crop
plants but most comes from the alpine herb fields and forests.  That means
that nectar collected in early spring must come, in part, from the dozens
(hundreds?) of blooming Rhododendron species.

Ren and I are not interested in the A. mellifera story because Yunnan is
almost the only remaining place in China where people still capture wild
swarms of A. cerana and induce them to live in their walls and gardens.
Here is the little town of Haba (mostly Muslim) in Shangri-La.The nice man
in photo 1149 allowed me to photograph his drying shed for herbs and corn
.  Isn't that a wonderful wall of local stones, but look closely at the
three, tan circles.  Those are inhabited hives for A. cerana.  The hive is
a large, hollowed log sealed with cow dung.  There is a hole in the center
of the cow dung allowing bees to enter and leave.

We kept hearing the same stories from the bee-keepers in Shangri-La at
different elevations.  The A. cerana swarms do not stay in these hives.
Mr. Yong, who we came to see, insisted that, as the weather gets colder the
bees leave and return in the spring but this year two of this colonies
failed to return.  In most other cases the farmers insist that once A.
cerana leave it does not return.

Mr Yong's wife fried some intricate crullers  (looked like curly wings) for
us that were sweetened with A. cerana honey and they were good. The
following day Mr Yong gave new life to the uneaten crullers by offering us
some fresh A, cerana honey. It knocked my socks off.  Imagine a honey in
which you first taste the flavor notes of the flowers instead of the sugar
content.  I could taste the essence of at least three flower groups and
there was a slightly bitter undertone suggesting that the bees pollinated
buckwheat.  They are big buckwheat eaters up in the Yunnan mountains.

I am also offering two views of the mountains from Mr Yong's house and
courtyard.  The view over his takes you as far as a mountain gorge that
leads down into the Yangtze.

Peter
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