Beekeeping and Building Leadership Skills at Sankofa Farms

Janice Person — Wed, 05 Oct 2022 11:30:41 +0000

Have you ever considered beekeeping as a way to building leadership skills and tapping passions? Kamal Bell has been doing just that on his first generation farm in Cedar Grove, NC. As we sat down to discuss the farm, we found chairs and space in a hot tunnel surrounded by seedlings (beets, celery, turnips, etc) to be planted soon for fall/winter harvests.

A transcript created through AI is available.

Creating Sankofa Farms

Kamal started farming relatively recently and combines it with some of his other loves. Not having family who farmed commercially, he’s had to learn along the way and tap into resources that he discovers as he goes.

He bought 12 acres in “the middle of nowhere” and has slowly been turning it into Sankofa Farms. Learning as he goes is a big piece of it. In fact, he laughed telling me that every year he seems to find something else on the property. This year he had cut down a few trees making room for greenhouses he will be installing this winter. Recently, he noticed someone picking up pecans — that tree was now visible and Kamal will enjoy getting pecans from it.

Clearing land and making the heavy clay soils more productive by introducing compost is hard work. The rewards of seeing so much food harvested and making a difference in the community makes the commitment to growth possible.

Why beekeeping?

While we sat in the hot tunnel for the interview, occasionally gees and other flying insects came by. It was clear then that Kamal and I shared a fear of getting stung! My fear was left unchecked for years but eventually, I faced it visiting a beehive with a colleague who was an expert.

I had to wonder how Kamal had grown such deep beekeeping skills!

Kamal worked as a teacher for a while and decided to go back to graduate school and study agriculture. With a passion for teaching, he has found ways to incorporate that into the farm’s mission. One of the students in the academy he created to bridge in-school learning with personal development was captivated by honey bees and made a good case for having bees on the farm. Kamal says seeing how interested the guy was, he just had to do it. And there’s been no looking back.

As you study bees more, you learn about the role bees play in their community. How they take care of the community keeping it clean, defending it against outsiders and more. The lessons were a total fit for life!

The lessons are so interesting that they’ve drawn Kamal’s middle son Akeem in whole-heartedly. A short video of the younger Bell outfitted and beekeeping went viral on Twitter this summer.

https://twitter.com/SankofaFarms/status/1549121806572863489?s=20&t=6PC_vzKFdi38luwRnrnxBw

Learning about bees seems to be contagious. I remember taking Natasha Nichols (you may remember her episode on the We Sow We Grow urban farm) out to some beehives a few years ago when I had a day job. Kamal has seen that passion a lot and encourages it. In fact, he briefly mentions in the interview about the Bees in the TRAP experience he offers via Air BnB. Since the bees are entering their downtime, he’s not got openings, but the reviews show he’s got a great experience for individuals or groups. Betting once spring comes around I have some friends ready to get geared up!

What bees do what work in the hive?

Beehives have just a few kinds of bees in them and it’s really important to the life of the hive that each does their work.

You can find hives that are just one box or beekeepers can have a colony with several boxes stacked together. No matter the size, there will only be one queen in there. Even if there are bees in the tens of thousands! The rest are workers or drones:

Females are the workers who leave the hive for pollen, make the honey. All beekeepers seem to point out that women doing all the work seems more common than it should outside of hives too.
Male drones stay in the hive to mate. That’s it. They will create a cyclone for the queen to come through fertilizing so that the next generation comes along. But after that, drones die. They do nothing else.

The bee larvae is sealed in a waxy area of the hive. That’s in the wooden frames that are constant in beekeeping. You frequently see pulled out for demonstration or for a beekeeper to inspect when checking on hive health. It takes 21 days for a bee to come to life. The drones are bigger than females, they don’t have stingers, and look a bit different than we are used to. After all, we are used to seeing females only.

The Bee Love Doesn’t Have to Stop Here

Knowing how many friends and family are intrigued by bees, growing vegetables, etc. I absolutely encourage you to follow Kamal at @SankofaFarms on Instagram. He’s does an incredible job with how to videos as we discuss in the episode. You can also find Kamal on LinkedIn and the farm’s website, which offers CSA memberships and more. Kamal is also on Twitter as @SankofaFarms but as he said in the interview, he’s not there as much as he is some of the other places. And we’d love for you to follow Grounded by the Farm on social media too!

We discussed a bit of the other types of bees and how some have simple houses you can make yourself. This is especially easy since paper straws have become more common. My friend Fadra and her son made these bee houses years ago, the directions are clear and I love the photos. This bee house works for native bees.

Finally, a few quick clips from our visit… next time I plan to visit longer!

The post Beekeeping and Building Leadership Skills at Sankofa Farms appeared first on Grounded by the Farm.

There are so many lessons to be learned from bees and visiting a beehive makes those lessons come to life in a way that reading can’t match. People have differing reasons for wanting to take that on too. I love that Kamal Bell and I could talk about the beehives at Sankofa Farms.

As I mentioned in that episode, I have always been afraid, even terrified of bees. Growing up, I always heard that if dad got stung, we had to take him to the hospital, so when I got stung by honey bees and started swelling up like crazy, I was understandably scared. No way would I ever dream of visiting a beehive on purpose!

I let that fear impact all kinds of things which a lot of people never realized. Slowly I have learned my allergy to the stings doesn’t mean I can never be near a bee. And I don’t have to let them chase me indoors either. So a few years ago I visited beehives for the first time.

Why I Wanted to Visit a Beehive

Some folks would ask why I would bother challenging myself so hard. I’ve lived this long afraid of bees and I do have a very real health concern with their stings. But understanding the environment is something I’ve always wanted to learn more about and these bees are so important to us…. I’d hate to do without blueberries, almonds, and a third of the other foods I eat that depend on pollination!

Here are a few things I learned that I found really interesting:

There are 4,000 different kinds of bees in the US. – Honey bees are the only ones that are community builders. That makes them a great resource for pollinating lots of food crops. Without honey bees our dinner plates and grocery stores would look dramatically different.
Honey bees travel up to two miles from their hive to find nectar so they can convert that into honey and pollen which provides food for the hive and sweeteners for us!
The distance will really make you think…. to produce 150 pounds of honey, bees travel the distance that’s equivalent to 13 roundtrips to the moon.

What to Wear When Visiting a Beehive

The gear for beekeeping is way heavier and less airy than it looks, and many beekeepers forego some of it to make moving around easier and cooler. But since it is highly effective in keeping me safe, when I set my sights on visiting a beehive, I wore all of it!

The canvas coveralls are thick canvas since a bee could potentially sting it and the thicker fabric keeps the stinger from reaching my skin.
That hat/hood/visor thing feels SO STRANGE. It zipped to the coveralls and then there were velcro covers for those zipper connections. I was sealed up!
Thick leather gloves …. really thick and they went up to my elbow. Again…. very safe.
A small smoker to calm the bees down — very cool!
I wore my fauxpro to get some closeups. Now that I know the coveralls, etc I will position it differently next time.
Zippers and elastic on the pants legs made sure I was covered down there too. Probably should have worn shorts under it with the heat, but I thought my bee leggings send a powerful signal!
Another colleague recommended I wear my Chuck Taylor’s, I wanted to wear leather (thinking safety) so I did both!

Learning to Live Alongside Bees

Honey bees go out of the hive to explore, looking for pollen. That’s their sole mission. If you are like me & don’t mix well with them, here are some tips:

In general, bees are focused on the job at hand, only sting when threatened – very different from wasps.
When people swat at bees, the bee feels threatened. Their only defense mechanism is stinging you.
When I am going to be outside, I don’t wear fragrances. Bees are attracted to them, want to see what’s up, whether pollen & nectar are there and well, that freaks me out and I’m likely to swat at them. Which… is not a good idea. (See above LOL).
If bees seem to be buzzing around me, they are looking for nectar. They do that more in sunlight so if shade is nearby, I can wander over there and they usually leave me alone.
Plant pollinator plants in areas of the yard where people don’t want to hang out, that gives bees a place to go, so they are less likely to explore around me. Sunny corner of the yard works fine.

A Video of My Bee Adventure

I was hosting a Facebook live session for a project with work, so I was doing video for that and I had other cameras. The video is bumpy. You’ll see a combination of video here — my mobile, my faux pro and a teammate’s camera all!

Hope some of you take time to watch and I’d love to hear your thoughts!

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