 Welcome to the program, Agriculture on the Move. My name is Filipe Sidney, your host. Today we will be discussing apiculture in St. Lucia. And of course, we are also looking at, first time in St. Lucia, we will be having a national honey show. You'll hear more about it with the persons I have in studio, which is next to me is Mr. Richard Mathias, who is the president of the Ainola Apiculture Collective. And next to him, everybody know Giles Romulus, who is the national coordinator for Jeff, UNDP, SGP, here in St. Lucia. He will tell you all about the acronyms after. Welcome to the program, gentlemen. Thank you, Sidney. Thank you. Jeff, I remember Romulus, we had Knowledge Fair. What's about three years ago? About two years ago. And that went very, very well. I must say it's a huge success. I know we have been trying to see whether we could have had it. But of course, COVID, of course, constraints. However, I'm very happy to know that there's something coming. And I need you to tell St. Lucia one. Since you have been looking at apiculture in St. Lucia, it's a thriving industry thus far. I need to know, we need to know more about it. But from your organization point of view, tell us about that program. Thank you, Sidney. Thank you for welcoming us back on your set. It's always a pleasure to be here with you. I think taking care of the nation through the quality and the quantity of food that we produce is always important. And just to go back a number of years, I returned to St. Lucia in 2011, 2012, to set up the Small Grants Program in St. Lucia. And you wouldn't believe it, Sidney. Within a month of setting up the structures, the very first ministry that came to me was the Ministry of Agriculture. Two of your senior officers, the Anthea Joshua, been one of them, came up to me and said, apiculture is suffering. How can you assist us in revitalizing the apiculture industry? When I explained to her that we work through civil society organization, she mentioned Milaflora. And she brought two gentlemen to my office, and I'll never forget this gentleman, Mr. Cheddy and Vavan. Those two gentlemen, I think we have to continue to recall them. You owe them, we owe them, and they're deceased, but wow. They're deceased, but they came and sat down in my office and told me about apiculture in ways that I never knew before. I already knew that we could fund apiculture for a biodiversity focal area. And after speaking with them, I went down to the Mabia Valley in their context and understood what they were talking about. And apiculture became, were part of the first two projects we funded for Saint Lucia in 2012. One was some Milaflora, and the other one was with the Disabled Honey Producers of Chouazale. So the very first introductory projects in Saint Lucia were apiculture projects. Since then, we have funded in excess of eight projects, nine projects in Saint Lucia, at planning grant and full grant phase, over $1.4 million of investment. We have helped to really revive a renaissance of the apiculture industry has occurred between 2012 and the present. Only this afternoon, I was on the phone of the Horizon Brothers. They're getting the final approvals for the solarization of their processing plant in Greece. So I expect to see invitations going out to the minister very soon from them to come and see the first solarized rural apiculture processing facility in Saint Lucia. And since then, we've worked with a number of groups. IAC came on the board, perhaps, we catalyzed the existence of Mr. Matthias. I think they came on board and we have been a lifeline to them in many respects. And what is exciting is that we have farmers who are at the primary production level. But what IAC and Richard and his group has done is to take us up the value chain to the precious production level of such things as propolis and epitoxins and so on, that can go from $30 to $300 a gram internationally. One of the points that one of the principles driving our program in Saint Lucia is to ensure Saint Lucia's own that value chain. Let's learn the lessons of the banana industry from the sugar period. Let us integrate research and technology into the apical chain industry so we can gain and we can benefit a lot more than we have had before when we had crops like sugar and cotton and bananas. The first issue, how do you get that involved in this? Ah, fantastic question. Why? After, I think it is, Richard, who brought up this idea to us. We were designing, continuing to invest in Saint Lucia and we thought that as part of our knowledge fair, which you mentioned at the beginning, you might have remembered we introduced and pioneered knowledge fairs in Saint Lucia two years ago. You remember we occupied the whole of the William Peter Boulevard, the Constitutional Parliament as well. Parliament as well. So this year we were hoping to have, and I must say that the administration at the time rarely lauded us at that. And we had the encouragement to do it again. So we were hoping to do the same thing, but COVID came along and we had to downsize. And Richard recommended the Honey Show as a way of building standards, lifting standards, promoting Saint Lucia as a center for apical chain new years, yes. And also helping us to promote the message of research and innovation of technology and so on. This would be a means of doing it. So what we have done is to integrate the Honey Show as part of our second knowledge fair. So in December, on the 9th and 10th, you're going to have basically two for one. You can go to the Town Hall, City Hall, where you have the Honey Show in full display and on Constitution Park, you would have 20 books displaying various aspects of apiculture, but some innovations as well. In fact, the first smart fad will be displayed for the first time in Saint Lucia using satellite technology to tell us about our fishing in our coastal zone. That is a separate program, but I'll leave you in one there for the time being. Until you sit on display. Is that the beginning of a continuation of Star Trek? Yeah. We are going where no one has been before. Not even before. Stay tuned. Not the final voyage, you know. I'll take you in voyage of the Starship and the Press. Well, as I move to Mr. Mathias, Giles and myself, and of course, we want the rest of Saint Lucia, to congratulate Mr. Mathias on his qualification as Master Beekeeper. I think that is about... About, about, about, about. Richard, tell us about this, this program, you know. I think you got it from the University of Dukone, right? Yes. It's an 18-month program, which integrates every aspect of agriculture, harnessing your skills in the craft, as well as zooming in on technology and how you can identify diseases, different techniques you need to look at, basic honeybee biology. You also need to look at food and nutrition. Reviewing the diet that bees eat and seeing what the importance of having a diverse diet for the bees, so that they can have the building blocks that they need for their dietary needs. So it's a quite intense, comprehensive, detailed and comprehensive program. You know, it was very intense at moments. You know, you had a nice, sometimes two or three-week focus on a particular subject, and then you got a very intense testing period on the subjects that you just covered. So it was quite an interesting 18 months. 18 months? Yes. At the end of it, I kind of missed it. Can you imagine? So what's the equivalent in terms of a degree? Is it a degree course or what it is? It's, I would say it's a degree program. It's something that it will guide persons to be able to function in the agriculture industry at a professional level, so that you can communicate with fellow beekeepers at a proper extension kind of level that you have the full knowledge of what diseases, what issues that they may occur with, and also how to help them to guide to run their business as well. It's also an important component of the program. So it's very specific to agriculture. It zooms in a lot of very detailed subjects that I could talk about. So moving forward, I mean, OK, are you going to keep that knowledge to yourself? Are you going to be engaging the municipal agriculture and farmers potential beekeepers in that regard? Yeah, well, I mean, prior to me doing that, I know that agriculture collective has always been working with beekeepers in the community and trying to assist them. I think 2020, we did our queen giveaway. We gave over a couple of hundred queens away to different beekeepers across the island. We've done a couple of sessions on colony expansion, how to guide beekeepers in how to expand in our colonies they have, queen rearing. So we've done a few programs, prior to me even completing that program. One of the things that we've done now, we've also been working with Mr. Robinson Jeff and the Jeff SGP family in the region. We have a regional project that's going on right now where we are helping the development of other beekeeping other islands as well as St. Lucia. I just came back from Anguilla and Tiga and St. Kitts doing some exploratory work with the beekeepers in those areas and to help them get move forward as well. So we're not only just through Jeff and Mr. Romulus. The ISC is not just a St. Lucia entity. We're a regional entity working in different islands with beekeepers across the region. As far as South is Trinidad and Guyana and as far as north as Anguilla, so far. Okay. You want to add anything on this? Your involvement? Oh, yes, definitely, definitely, Sydney. I wouldn't miss that opportunity at all. You might have recall, Sydney, in previous programs I told you we wanted to take St. Lucia to become the center for apiculture in the ISC. I made that very clear, this is my goal. This is the point at which my sites are set on. And for us to do that, we needed to support persons or individuals or groups that are pushing that boundary. We're no longer happy to stay at the low end of just harvesting honey from hives. That's not good enough. And we have to push our farmers to get involved in the science, get involved in the science. If we stay at that bottom, we're going nowhere. That's right, that's right. And that is one of the reasons we have supported ISC, continue to support ISC. And if this continues to progress, we will continue. Because what is happening there now, Richard has illustrated to us what can happen when you are sufficiently ambitious and you want to make the sacrifice and have the discipline of 18 months of hard work and so on. And therefore, at Cornell University, as you were telling us before, St. Lucia is the only one there if a daughter did. You know, I went first normal prize winners, why not first master beekeeper? And I want to laud him for that. Our country is moving, we have the potential. So we want people to rise from slumbering and emulate what he has done so that our industry can move forward. And that is the only way we can move from primary to secondary to tertiary level production. And that is our goal. We will continue to do this as long as we have. OK, we do for our break. You're watching Agriculture in the Move. Stay tuned. We'll be back soon. It's buzzing from the 9th to December 10, 2021, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Castries Town Hall. Hewanora National Honey Show, under the distinguished patronage of the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries, Food Security, and Rural Development, Honorable Alfred Prosper. The National Honey Show categories are honey in a jar, beeswax, baking with honey, art, and photography, and the Best in Show Challenge Cup. The head judge is Sue Carter from the London Honey Show. This event is sponsored by IANOLA Apiculture Collective, Caribbean Youth Environmental Network, Ministry of Agriculture, GF, SGP, UNDP, SLHTA, and CCC. For more info, call 452 for 900 or 717-000. This is an activity of the GF, SGP, UNDP. See you there. Welcome back to the program. Agriculture on the Move, of course, as you have heard, we are talking apiculture. Those of you who don't know what is apiculture, we're talking about bee production, honey production, the raring of bees. And of course, it's a big thing in St. Lucia, and we will make it bigger and better with Jeff on our side. Yes, yes. As you heard, we are having our first honey show in St. Lucia, and that is organized and funded by Jeff. It's called the Iwanora Honey Show. And of course with me again, of course, is Mr. Matthias, the master beekeeper who is the... You're supposed to be the manager of the show, right? Yeah, I am the show manager. Okay, tell us about the show. We stole the tale. The Iwanora National Honey Show was a brainchild that we thought of, I think dating back to when we had the Congress. We wanted to include it in the Congress, but because of the initial phases of the craziness, we weren't even sure how we were going to... We were able to do the first virtual Congress at that time, which was quite an accomplishment. But anyway, we wanted to have the honey show then, and we couldn't do it. So what we did is that we started the wheels in motion to generate that interest and to generate the interest in the island. Displaying honey and putting it on show is something that is an international thing. It's very big in North America, Europe, any of the big honey production, honey producing countries. There's always a honey show where beekeepers show their honey quality and the different nectar tasting sources and to see if that can woo the crowd, woo the judges and get the bragging rights. I got the best honey for my region or country. And it's something that has been missing in St. Lucia and definitely the wider Caribbean that there hasn't been any honey show to speak of on a consistent basis to really encourage the beekeepers and have some event that the beekeepers could galvanize themselves behind. So we thought of that and it's not just a honey show. This is the schedule. It's not just about honey. We've got other areas of interest within the show. You've got, there are four different categories of honey judging. You've got light amber, medium amber, dark amber, which is the color of the honey. And you also have comb honey, which is a jar like this with a slice of comb inside of it. We have honey around it. So everything has to be matching. So if you do one jar, you have to have a matching jar. So you have to be identical in comb and presentation and the color of the honey. That level of sophistication. And then we've also got wax. Wax is something that is very important part of the hive system. So we have a competition where they're judging a block of wax between one pound or one and a half pounds in weight. They look at it for consistency, color, smell, and no debris or little dots in it. It's going to be perfectly clean block of wax. We also have candle making. There's a lot of people in St. Louis that make candles from bees wax. So two matching candles. It could be a plain candle. It could be a scent. No, not scented. Just plain bees wax. You have the what I think is going to be my favorite is the cake. We have the honey cake competition where we have a set recipe, which is on our brochure. You follow the instructions and you bake the cake to the instructions and we're looking for the best representation of that. So is that open to the public? It's open to the public. Anybody can go into that. So how would you get contact or what? I mean, you could call the Jeff office and register at the Jeff office. We have been doing outreaches. Outreaches. We just got our Creole English and Creole Advertisements out special thanks to Mr. Andrew Haynes, your A.K.A. That was really good, man. Yes, man. Yes. So we've got those out there and persons. There's a call to action. There's a telephone number you can pick up the phone and you can call it or you call me directly 717 or the zeros. And we can get email or registration form to straight away. But I really think the cake area is very good. That's interesting. You also have the baked goods. The baked goods is also another baked good with honey. So you can create anything you want. It could be a cookie, it could be a cupcake, as long as it has honey in its ingredient. And you can present the recipe for your creation to go with it. It could be anything you want, but it must have honey inside of it as part of the ingredient. That's an open. There's no set category. There's no specifics other than you present the recipe and it must have honey in it and it will be judged on its taste. We've got Chef Orlando, who will be leading the team on that one. OK. And I forgot to mention, most importantly, we've got from the London Honey Show in the UK, which is the most prestigious honey show in the world. We have Miss Sue Carter, who's coming in to be our head judge. So it's not we have somebody of international prestige and talent who knows what they're doing, what they want to look for in honey. So if we can create this relationship with the London Honey Show, over time, I think, you know, next year, I would love to see competition from Saint Lucia go up to the London Honey Show and enter the international category. There we've had successful participants from the Caribbean in the past, from Trinidad, from Grenada, Dr. Valma Jessamy. She's she won it three times in a row and was able to keep the cup. So it's something that we really need to encourage our beekeepers to to up their game and get to the next level. You know, it's all well and good selling on, you know, your bottle of honey in a Campari bottle. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's see. We need to move me on that, man. Yes, yes. So we need to. And through the Honey Show, it hopefully be a catalyst to do that, especially one of the categories we have is best commercial product. So how you actually sell your honey to the general public, it'll be judged and it'll be judged based upon that you meet the Bureau of Standards criteria for selling honey. So, you know, say it's very important that not only do we have the competition because anybody who ends the competition, this is a competition glass jar. You would just have it in you prepare your you come you do your registration, you pick up your glass jar. And in the day of competition in the morning from eight o'clock, you come and present your honey to the show secretary and the stewards, they will receive it and they'll pass it on to the judges for judging. So you have to come register and get your jar from from the office. Now, it's so it's very important that when you're into the commercial category, as I was saying, is that the commercial category is how you would sell your honey to the supermarket, to the drug store, to the general cut, to the general public. And there are rules and criteria per Bureau of Standards and the Ministry of Environmental Health, the Environmental Health Agency that you should align yourself to meet those criteria because remember, honey is not just something that, you know, it's a, you know, every boy is a historical thing, but it's a food product. And it should be handled with care and attention as a food product. So I think what we are hoping to do through this program is to really raise interest in the honey, raise interest in the byproducts you can get from the hive and also raise the general standard of honey production in St. Lucia that it's we are cut above the rest of the Caribbean. You know, so it all starts at home. And, you know, if you want to, you know, everybody says they want to sell the honey in America or they want to sell it in England. But, you know, you've got to beat the standard. Yes. And if we have a honey show of great calibre, it will help people to reach the standard. And it'll be very easy for them to make the transition to the international market. Great. Tell us about our patron. Yeah, momentarily, just a number of points. Yes. Those containers have been ordered by the project. OK. When people register, they get the containers. So you cannot come with your own container. Right. Yes. So it's part of the package that we offer. The next point I want to make is that you don't have to be a big keeper to participate. If you're an excellent cook, which is the point you was ready. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Yes. So if you work at Amar or Manees or at Kadas or wherever and you can make a cake and put honey in it, you can participate. OK. And if you can make a turkey. You can participate. Yes. Yes. So you see the diversity of possibilities that there are for people to participate. It would have been a good thing that the schools were in full, full. You forgot to. We missed out on one of the most art and photography. OK. So there is an art and photography section where you have to capture some subject matter related to beekeeping. So it could be a bee on a flower. It could be a beekeeper at work or just a picture of an apiary. There are three categories you've got for the general art. For the youth under 16 category. So a person is under 16 at the time of the show. They can enter a piece or painting or photograph of their own creation. And then for the fellows, the guy, everybody over 16 years old, we have the general competition where you can enter a nice exhibit of painting or rendering of your choice. And then we have the photography section where you can take a nice picture, which is open to all age groups. And you know, if you've got a really nice picture that you think that could capture the prize, go for it. So it's not just it's not just it's very diverse. And you know, one of the things from being in the beekeeper, I'm always out in beautiful environments. I'm always out in nice nature and atmosphere. And it's important that you encapsulate the honey is encapsulating the flavor of your country. The beautiful flowers that you see, the little resins, the bees captured to make the wax and so forth. It's all part of the ecosystem around you. And it's very important that, you know, your honey is a taste of your country. Participation, yes, at the show. Who are the persons that will be in terms of booths and being in the Constitution Park and also in the Town Hall? That's a good one for this one. The Constitution Park will be primarily grantees. But we also have other groups that will participate. Ika will be there, for example, the Department of Forestry, the Department of Fisheries will be there. We'll have groups from around the country. The Exports Solution will be there. So I've always come to the college because we are also integrating the research and innovation theme into the mini knowledge failure we are having. And all of those persons have confirmed the participation. The patron. No, no, no, I have to tell you your favorite booth. Two years ago, you know, which is what is his favorite booth? The Jameson? Aquaponics, man, you have to be not backing away. I know, I don't want you to tell me. I want to make Aquaponics a volume. You're right, I don't myself every day. Yes, man. And I was on the phone with Jameson this afternoon and he confirmed that he's going to be there. Beautiful. So I put a question to him. What if the fish finish where he got off? Yes, like the last time. Like the last time. Bring more fish. Bring more fish. So yes, I don't know where he got off. I was a lot too close though because we had just more time up in his left. OK, the patron, yes. We want to thank the Honorable Minister of Agriculture, Honorable Alfred Prosper for agreeing from day one to be the patron. And we want to thank the Ministry of Agriculture for contributing to this event. Not only the Ministry of Agriculture contributed by the Cassius Constituency Council under a worship... Ms. Lendo? Yes, Ms. Lendo. We want to thank the SNHDA, Nourany Aziz and his team up there for contributing. We want to thank CYEN, Caribbean Youth Environment Network. We want to thank IAC for contributing in a major way. We have other persons, the grantees that will be participating and so on. The Royal Ministry of Political Affairs will be helping us in security and so on. And I want to tell everybody that the Chief Medical Officer has signed off on, has signed on through the program and she has approved it. Oh yes, you're going to be... Your temperature will be... Of course, we'll have sanitizers at every booth. And the social distancing, that is crucial because it's the first time when you show. So people will want to... Yes, we're going to have notices everywhere and we limit the number of persons entering the auditorium at the Cassius Constituency Council and so on. So we will be controlling all of those things and so on. So, I mean, we can talk for the rest of the week if you want. Good things will come to an end. So we are at that point now, Mathias, I won't even ask you to say anything because we have reached there already. And like I said, it's on the 9th and 10th of December. What time it starts? 8 o'clock in the morning. Beautiful. Thank you gentlemen for being here. I am looking forward for this and I'll do some as you see my aquaponics and honey. Thank you for being here, Mathias. Thank you for being here, Mathias. You've been watching Adreculture on the Move. Thank you for viewing the program. And remember, agriculture is our business. Eat fresh, St. Lucia's best. Honey is better than breast. Oh, God. Time is up. Time is up. Goodbye. Adreculture on the Move. Adreculture on the Move. Adreculture on the Move. Adreculture on the Move. Adreculture on the Move. Adreculture on the Move. Adreculture on the Move. Adreculture on the Move.