“When the good ship James from Gravesend, England, anchored off the mangroves at the mission station on the 13th of March, 1839, the housekeeper accompanying her missionary brother brought with her something very special when she disembarked.
You see, her brother loved honey, and the mission church could certainly use some beeswax candles. So amongst the meagre household belongings she managed to take on the voyage, she had included two skeps, those woven straw hives that were common at the time throughout Europe.
And inside the skeps was something truly remarkable: two colonies of honey bees that had miraculously survived the six-month journey on a sailing ship all the way from England.”