Touch the bee

Getting together for a few days wading the forest at Song Trem forest, before breaking up, engineer Phung Huu Chinh - working at the Hanoi Bee Research Center - gave me the Bee magazine of the Central Bee Research Institute. nursing. Of course, the magazine helped me understand a lot more about the bee from a scientific perspective.

Thousands of bees

Of course, there are many bees and bees that sting well because they secrete a kind of toxin that we often call venom. There are even types of bees that kill deadly like bumblebees. In general, all bees live on nectar but the most famous are honey bees in U Minh Melaleuca forest. According to engineer Phung Huu Chinh, this bee has the scientific name Apisdorzata, distributed in tropical and subtropical forests in Asian countries. However, their most ideal environment is still U Minh forest because of the attraction of melaleuca flowers. The bees are so interested in the world because their bile is a valuable source of nutrition for humans. Particularly for professional beekeepers, after taking bile to sell, the young bee is a high-class drinking bait that in us, who has ever tasted it, how its value.

Thanks to the scientists who gave the body to the bee to hit hundreds and thousands of traces so that we have interesting materials about the society of bees.

One of those brave people I was fortunate to meet was engineer Tran Quoc Thai, this year less than thirty years old. Thai is assigned by the Hanoi Bee Research Center to Song Trem Forest to study the experience of traditional beekeeping in U Minh follows a Dutch project. In the early morning, Thai runs a motorboat in the forest, sometimes wading along the elderly people in Doan Phong Ngan, sometimes working all day in the hives, running in the afternoon. Every day on the Thai people are full of bruises hit by bees. It is said that there were times when Thai were attacked by bees to the point of being taken to emergency. So far, it seems that Thai body has been soggy, Thai considers that the bees are just games, he even thinks that bees hit very hard because it can cure aches and pains. Many nights Thai told me about the social life of bees in a drunken manner, making me think that he was the same with the bee.

'Rule of law' of insects

Thai said, their social management bee has unique things that people need to learn from experience. For example, the beehive has seven or eighty thousand workers, but only the queen commander, no assistant, no deputy director, no administrative organization room, no accounting and finance department. service, human resources department, union . generally there is no indirect apparatus. Under the queen bee, there are only two specialized groups: male bees and worker bees. They do not happen to have an internal fight or a dispute, but there is no such thing as publicity, bribery or theft. Because of that integrity and solidarity their business is running in a fast way, always achieving high economic efficiency, never losing balance or losing money, not losing a single coin of silver coins. By a very professional management technology process, after twenty days of contracting, worker bees have built the nest and take honey to store full stock, and they take turns taking care of the queen, taking water, taking pollen for rearing larvae and changing fans to regulate the temperature of the honeycomb when facing unusual weather. During this time, queen bees were responsible for laying eggs and secrete substances to control the bees - which, according to humans, is management software. Every 24 hours, each queen bee produces 1,500 worker bees. By the time a generation of adult bees, queen bees choose a good day to lay young males and lords, prepare for the division season, establish a new business - which people call a member company.

Male bees do nothing other than mating - a duty and benefit of men. A very glorious task for survival, but also tragic, which means after a minute of glory . dead! But to be mated to a queen, they have to organize a very harsh competition: male bees follow dozens of hours on a thirty-meter altitude, only one of them wins, then all both died. Was also dead, not also dead! Perhaps sympathizing with the fate of male bees, the bees' wings never burrow, reprimand or review they only eat and not sit to attempt to sex.

Workers outside the task of economic development combined with national security, they are also very good in the field of art and culture. It can be said that each worker bee is a very talented dancer. Thai engineers say that each of their dances has its own language, for example, on the way to get bile, they dance tango; when melaleuca flowers are discovered, they dance slowly; when they meet people, they switch to lambada .

Mr. Ba Rang worked as a beekeeper in U Minh for nearly sixty years, this year he was nearly ninety years old, his back was cuffed and weak but he still did not give up his job. Even in the bee-feeding season, he left his home in the forest to build a hut, even though his children cried and pleaded with him to go home, he was still in his arms. Although the forest of his grandchildren has the power to give him a peaceful life, he is happy. Finally, he realized one thing: what he loved was not the honeycomb or honey, but the dance of the bee during the honey collection season. He said that they dance so beautifully that they kept watching and wading, forgetting even the cobra under their feet .

Bee raft, who guard?

I was invited to a conference of Doan Phong Ngan with nearly one hundred people working as beekeepers. Asking out, almost no one confirmed that the profession of beekeeping raises the family. But in the end, not only did they not give up their jobs but also devoted themselves to their descendants, even though they knew that U Minh's forest kept shrinking every day, Melaleuca flowers continued to be poor. During this conference, there were a number of international guests who attended and spoke about the profession of beekeeping, Mr. Vincen - an expert in beekeeping research of the world, representing the Scientific and Technical Committee. because the Netherlands of Vietnam is investing in the chapter The study aimed at improving beekeeping at the rafter in U Minh - said: the profession of traditional beekeepers in U Minh is a unique and unique profession both technical and artistic that the whole world does not have.

Listening to him, I tried to find out who was the ancestor of the beekeeping profession and why called Doan Phong Ngan. In the end no one knew, even the oldest was Mr. Ba Rang. Mr. Ba Rang only said that in the old days, a few hundred years ago, it was discovered that honey bees only nest on reclining cajuput trees like house rafts. That fact lays out the profession of beekeeping, then vocational training, experience accumulates over many generations to come to perfection as a technical process. In the old days, the forest was thick, people had to clear a space for the light to shine in and guard the rafter in it. When the bees scouted to find the place to build the nest, there was a gap with a tree lying on its side, there was no garbage grass, no spider's nest, they used a dance signaling the whole herd to fly. Twenty days later, when the beehive was full of honey and honey, the woodsmith came to use the torch with dry reed and fresh melaleuca leaves to smoke away the bees, they cut almost all the honey and half with the knife. young bee part. A few minutes later, the bees returned, workers immediately rebuilt their houses and took them to their reserves. Every time, the woodsmith collected 5 to 10 liters of honey per honeycomb. Each harvest is three times, divided into two seasons each year in two seasons of melaleuca cotton. In the past, forest workers could earn thousands of gallons of honey every year.

Unaware of any self-sufficiency, U Minh forest formed rafting association associations called Doan Phong Ngan. Each delegation is from fifty to seventy people. Doan Phong Ngan has its own law, although the law is not written, it is strictly followed, including regulations on the protection and prevention of forest fires. Perhaps more than anyone else, the Phong Ngan people are the most stringent forest guards without having to pay because they love forests like their own lives. Because of that, the 1983 forest fire, the Phong Ngan people cried like funerals, especially the elderly.

Each year, before the bee-feeding season, Doan Phong Ngan gatherings to make swine offerings, pray for heaven and earth, gods bless and swear to die. Mr. Ba Rang said that when he was still a young man, there was a man from the upper area who came down to join Doan Phong Ngan but had blood. Practicing less than a long time, he went to steal other people's hives. Discovered, he was expelled from the group. But before going, the group forced him to hand over all the numbers to the stolen people. The law of Phong Ngan is like that, the whole life of Ba Rut only witnessed a single case of breaking the law.

Now, back to U Minh, I met the elderly forest workers, asking about the old bees, and the narratives recited excitedly. But when asked about eating bees now, the exhalers are full of regret, eyes staring at the concave forest like leopard skin.

Vo To Nhi