Honey bees wild and domestic perform about 80 percent of all pollination worldwide. A single bee colony can pollinate 300 million flowers each day. Grains are primarily pollinated by the wind, but fruits, nuts and vegetables are pollinated by bees. Seventy out of the top 100 human food crops — which supply about 90 percent of the world’s nutrition — are pollinated by bees.
Seeing the importance of saving the bees Aruba is not staying behind. We have many people interested in saving and protecting these bees. Many are practicing Apiculture which consists of saving and protecting the bees with the sole purpose to produce honey locally. One of these persons is the well-known on the island Luis Winterdaal, founder of Lui Bee Farm Aruba.
Luis Winterdaal was born and raised in Aruba on October 10th 1954 in the town of Savaneta. A person with great love for the nature and all animals, Luis started working with bees when he was only 15 years old. At that time there was no special equipment to use when working with bees such as face masks and smokers. Luis used to make his own face protection equipment from wired screens sewed to a t-shirt. He also cut out the legs of his jeans to use them to protect his arms and as smoker he used cookie cans.
11 years ago Luis met three young people who love bees and saw the importance that these bees have for humanity: Giles, Jourdan and Suyen. With much passion and all the patience in the world Luis taught these three youngsters everything they needed to know about bees. From there started the idea of the farm. To save and protect these bees. They all try to demonstrate and teach the people of Aruba the importance these bees have. Their vision is to save as much bees as possible from being killed. For more than 45 years Luis has been helping out people of Aruba to solve any type of bee problems at their homes. Luis together with Giles, Jourdan and Suyen have been all over the island bringing their passion and knowledge in order to save these bees.
Organic honey.
At Lui Bee farm Aruba they have special bee boxes which are filled with bees that were rescued from different houses and locations all around the island. Not always when rescuing bees you will find honey. Sometimes you will find the wax with only baby bees and if you are lucky you will find wax filled with honey.
The honey from the boxes at their location are not being emptied every time. Why? Because of the lack of rain on the island, most of the time it’s very dry and this can be very stressful for the bees. Why the stress? Because they have to make new wax and also in such dry period they use honey to feed themselves to survive.
Honey that they produce and sell at the farm does not contain any chemicals. Their honey goes directly from the wax to the bottles. The whole process takes place at their own facility. You will encounter all types of color of honey on the farm from light to black honey. Since they depend very much on the water/rain for these bees to survive the production of see is not consistent. Lui Bee Farm wishes to someday be able to produce enough honey to distribute to the whole island. Honey is very beneficial to your overall health and is very important for the human being. Honey products are daily used for as medicine and in many beauty products.
Most of the time bees rescued from houses are in swarm or have been there for years. Common places to find bees are: under the roof, on the roof, ceiling, in trees, in tires, on the walls, bird cages, under containers even in septic tanks anywhere you can think of is possible. They have even been called several times by hotels to remove hives from a bedroom or from the rooftop.
At Lui Bee Farm they know how important these bees are for our environment therefore when assisting at removing these hives they will stay there until they find the ‘queen’. She naturally is the most important for the production of the honey. Whenever they find her their job is done.
According to Luis bees in Aruba are not aggressive. If you leave them alone and don’t disturb them they won’t attack you. Therefore Lui Bee Farm kindly requests you to help the bees by putting water around the house. Especially during dry seasons. These bees need as much flowers and water as possible in order to survive. Please do not kill them! To Lui Bee Farm a world without bees is like a desert without water. q
For more information call them at +297 593-6694, email luibeefarmaruba@gmail.com or check their Facebook page Lui Bee Farm Aruba or follow them on Instagram @luibeefarmaruba.
