On Saturday night Pak Wayan sent a Whatsapp video of him extracting honey from his Apis cerana hive and also invited me to come by and help him harvest from one of the Trigona hives on Sunday afternoon. It was a bit tight because Tim and Kekai had just returned from a trip to Balian and Fahmi (from U. Teknologi Sumbawa) was on Bali for his English test (he's getting a Fulbright for conducting his doctoral work in Virginia) and was coming to visit us in Payangan Sunday morning. But, still it would work.
It turned out that not only had he harvested honey, he'd also harvested larvae (which on my first day of meeting him he'd told me how delicious A. cerana larvae were) and told us that he'd let us try them when we got there. Hmmmm......
It was clearly a big deal that we were being invited for larvae and everyone was really excited. Bagus immediately said he'd give Kekai a ride on his bike and was happy to be a part of the process.
Wayan's wife and father had been working on the meal for quite some time and it was obvious that there was a lot of preparation that had been made. We had rice and sambal and a main course of a salad-like dish that was made of green papaya, tumeric, ginger, salt, and of course, larvae and also a soup dish that had a bunch of larvae in it. I was pretty apprehensive.
Wayan's wife and father had been working on the meal for quite some time and it was obvious that there was a lot of preparation that had been made. We had rice and sambal and a main course of a salad-like dish that was made of green papaya, tumeric, ginger, salt, and of course, larvae and also a soup dish that had a bunch of larvae in it. I was pretty apprehensive.
Then, we got some A. cerana honey for our dessert
After lunch we went out to see the hive that had been harvested. He says he can harvest larvae every two months (although I was not sure if it was every two months by rotating between boxes or if each of his two A. cerana hives could be harvested that often)