We were told that if we went to Begawan (a small village just a couple kilometers from our house) we would find a hotel with a swimming pool that we could go for morning swims at. Trying to figure out where that might be, I learned that there are some very fancy hotels in Begawan ($1,000+/night!) and, randomly, there on Google was a place called "Begawan Bee Farm." Really? that seemed too close to home to not have heard about it before, but Tim and I decided to take the scooter out there to see what we could find. Much to our delight, we discovered that Begawan Bees is a real thing! (not one of those very common figments of Google's imagination that dominate the maps here). It is run by a really nice family and set up as an "agro-tourism" site with a gorgeous property filled with beautiful pathways, a myriad of bee-friendly flowers, and at least 40 hives of Trigona itama (plus a hive of T. thoracia, which was the first time I had seen that bee on Bali). The owners were really nice and not only let us walk around and see the bees but invited us to look inside an itama hive and even harvested some honey for us to try. We exchanged WhatsApp numbers and by the next day they had sent me the video below which they put together for me (and which is not loading properly, so just visit it on YouTube here).
They started the farm during covid when all the tourism money dried up and they were looking for something unique to do. Trigona honey is a lot richer in flavenoids and other phytoactive chemicals and is used like a medicine here in Bali. People will drink a small spoon of it every morning for health reasons. This is good because despite the fact that they can harvest every 6-12 weeks, they usually only get 100ml or less from T. itama hives and much less than that from T. laeviceps.
They started the farm during covid when all the tourism money dried up and they were looking for something unique to do. Trigona honey is a lot richer in flavenoids and other phytoactive chemicals and is used like a medicine here in Bali. People will drink a small spoon of it every morning for health reasons. This is good because despite the fact that they can harvest every 6-12 weeks, they usually only get 100ml or less from T. itama hives and much less than that from T. laeviceps.
T. itama (called "hitama" here in Bali) are an interesting bee. They are native to Sumatra (and up into Malaysia, I think) and are much larger than T. laeviceps which is native to Bali. Hitama build their nests in hollow trees and there is a business importing hitama-filled tree trunks from Sumatra to Bali. The two hives at the property that I am staying at are both hitama. Beekeepers like them because they separate their brood cells from their honey and pollen cells and if you place a box on the top of the colony's log, they will fill it with the honey pots, keeping all the brood "downstairs." Not all the cells in the upstairs box have honey, but at least none of them have larvae, making it easier to extract the honey. Plus, they produce more laeviceps (maybe double?) though that is still not much when compared to European honey bees.
I still haven't found a swimming pool, but this was better anyway....
The next day Professor Tirta purchased five boxes of T. laeviceps from a bee farm in Klunkung (to the south-east of Payangan) which were delivered in the morning for me to do some studies on. We placed two at Tirta's mother's property (just a few properties down the road from where I am staying) two at a strip of forest below Prof. Tirta's rice paddy, and one at the forested property owned by the Crown Prince of Payangan.