plant

Anyone know what this plant is? It was hanging in the restaurant where we had lunch today. Nin, the only local attending Ross University this September happens to be assigned to my orientation group. Each orientation group consists of 6-12 people and is organized by where we live. Since his family lives so close, his mom offered to take us into town for vegetable shopping with her this morning!

It was quite the VIP experience, she took us down the isles and explained all the different fruit and how to eat them and how to know when they are ready. Then we stopped in to this resaurant for a fresh guava juice. Then we went to her studio downtown (she's a painter) where she has had two colonies of bees set up shop in her roof. One of them is quite friendly and Nin was able to cut out a part of the roof and cover it with plexiglas so you can watch the bees making honey.

Brittany (roommate), Will (her fiance), and Rosie (Nin's mom) watching the peaceful bees

In the other room however, Rosie has an angry colony. She thinks they must have some kind of disease, because they also have a high mortality rate. Every morning she has to sweep dead bees off her gallery floor. These bees refuse to be contained, and so have become a little bit of a problem for customers. Nin was there this morning removing the honeycomb to harvest honey, but also to try and reduce the number of bees by taking the young larva too.

Nin trying to calm the bees with smoke. It didn't work very well...

 Tonight we invited our orientation group to our house for coconut cocktails from the trees in our yard. Nin came over and brought us a little of the honeycomb. It was delicious, even though it did have a little hint of smoke to it :)