Letter

I made my first trial hive from broken box and filled it with non-embossed wax sheets. made the sheets by pouring about 50 ml of melted beeswax onto wet newspaper, folding the newspaper over to make a “Sandwich" and pressing out the sheet between the newspaper on a table,

I also shape sheets to fit inside my gourd hive, made from four dried gourds sewn together. By the second week the bees will have made about half the sheet into comb.

I made my honey extractor from 0.3 mm tin and the gear from hand drill. The combs are spun at about 300 rpm and the honey extracts well. Using thinner tin is cheaper but the extractor vibrates too much to be operable.

After reading the articles in B&D41 made the smoker (shown on the photograph). The smoker works well and dried papaya trunk serves as long lasting smoker material In previous years papaya trunk was worthless to me, but now can give it many lovely names!

I am so glad to receive Beekeeping Development to know that am not working alone for am working with encouragement from many hundreds of miles away: thank you for sponsoring me.

Abrham Tesfaye, Arbamich, Ethiopia