The Casa Montessori Bee Rescue

Today was another interesting day, we received a call from Nelly at the Casa Montessori school in Rio Grande. The issue was a wild swarm had taken over an empty box inside of their garage.

Now this in itself would not have been so bad, but the bees were the more aggressive African Honey Bees, and the school has very young children within a close proximity.

So we gathered our trusty team and headed up into the rain forest. Today myself and Jose were joined by Marla, Monique and Scott. All new volunteers to our organization.

We quickly got to work lighting our bee smokers, we use coconut husks as they are readily available, not harmful for the environment, and work well.

After a few hours and some new initiation bee stings we were able to re home the bees and they are now on their way to a local organic farm.

After Hurricane Maria over 80 percent of the bees and agriculture were wiped out on the island. Two years later much has not bounced back. Sadly Puerto Rico imports over 90 percent of its food!

Our goal is to not only re populate the bees on the island but to help with the increase in production of food. Bees often increase the production of fruits and vegetables by over thirty percent. There are many trees and plants that will not bloom or flower if there are no friendly pollinators nearby.