Central Florida Honeybees

2012-06-07T16:16:00.001-04:00

I finally got every thing back to normal after several attempt at catching the queen I was finally able to catch her and return her to the hive. I am just a hobbyist beekeeper and most of my experience comes from trial and era. I keep my videos as a kind of video journal, due to my brain injury I have short term memory deficits, and this is one of my prompts to help me to remember my mistakes.

2012-06-07T15:03:00.002-04:00

The other day I decided to put one of my hives on a new bottom board. Unfortunately while doing so the Queen got loose, I did dot realize this until I had layers of on the on my hive. Sometimes I guess I don't have enough to do or maybe I just don't know when to leave well enough alone.

Some closeup stills from the video. (And excuse my spelling, I wasn't paying attention. LOL)

On the Trail of the Dangerous Swarm, updated!

2012-04-04T21:04:00.000-04:00

I got this swarm Tuesday 04-04-12 with only netting over my face and a chain saw. It came from a tree that was being removed by a tree service about two miles from my house. The guy who found the swarm wanted me to give him some honey after I captured the bees. O rly? I was unsure if there was a queen, though the bees were not aggressive. I put a q-tip with some lemon oil on it in the hive and then just pulled the brood out by hand and placed it between frames in the hive, and added sugar water because there wasn't any honey. The process took all afternoon. The next morning when I went to the hive, I noticed the swarm was in a tree near the hive. Then I noticed a mass of bees on the ground next to the tree that they came in. I lightly smoked the area and to my amazement, found the queen on the ground. I put the queen in the hive and all the bees went in after her. What a blessing. I really felt the Lord blessed me with this. The swarm was fairly large, and I got a lot of bees, brood, and the queen. And only was stung 2-3 times. It was amazing watching their behavior in following the queen even with all the changes and threats to their situation. (Sorry the movie isn't longer but my battery ran out.)

tree trunk

hiving the swarm

Tuesday March 6, 2012

2012-03-06T22:31:00.003-05:00

newly mated Queen

uncapped Queen cells

This is one of my Queens that was produced using the Cloake board/ Nicot system. I was very pleased with the ease of this method and the results were some very nice Queens although it is to early to tell what kind of brood pattern or quality she will yield. I first spotted this Queen last week but she had not yet mated, she was only about half the size what she is now. The Cloake board and Nicot system will easily pay for itself. I already have additional Queens and placed them in nucs. This is a very easy way to make increases and the initial investment will quickly be recovered.

If someone is handy a Cloake board would be very easy to make, Michael Bush, a well know beekeeper, instructor and authur, has a very good photo of one on his web site Bush Bees, which contains a wealth of information.

strong frame

I did have one unexpected experience this week. I went out early to check a hive that was very strong and calm. I had thought of doing a split from it, but this time, for some reason, the hive became very aggressive. The bee's were relentless in their attack, and I was stung numerous times. I went back to the hive yesterday to see how the bees would react and had no problem at all. The hive was calm, and I was able to inspect it with no problems or aggression from the bees. I will will not make any splits or Queens from it for now until I can determine if it needs to be re-queened or I just messed something up while working with the hive.

March

2012-02-20T22:10:00.000-05:00

once supers, now nucs

My first attempt using Robos technique worked out pretty well and I ended up with six queens. I have started another crop already. I knew I would need to get some more boxes but when I looked up the price to buy cardboard or plastic nucs, and I decided that I would be better off for now to just rebuild some of my old supers that I already have. Since I am transitioning over to all mediums, primarily for the ease of lifting when they are full of bees and honey, it was pretty simple to just rip some of the deeps in half. There were some holes and splits in the old boxes, but I think it will still workout better than the cardboard or plastic and much less expensive in the long run.

12 nucs

We had already planned to get a few new queens this year so we made a trip to Miksa Honey Farm in Groveland, Florida to pick up four Italians and four Ontario Buckfast queen cells. Last year we got queens from them and were very pleased. Miksa is a highly reputable company that specializes in queens. I don't replace all our queens at once, but try to stay aware of when a new queen may be needed on short notice--it happens. I also feel that using new, quality breed queens along with my own breeding, has considerably strengthened my apiary because of the genetics. When I first replaced queens it was only when I lost one resulting in hives that were sometimes stronger and sometimes weaker; I didn't seem to have any control over it. When I started replacing some of the queens every year with queens from a decided genetic line as opposed to "mutts," the hives seems to be consistently stronger and withstand the winter with more vigor in the spring.

I like to open feed in half barrels filled with hay the bees don't drown and I don't know but I like think them crawl. I used to use primarily jar feeders, but this is not only easier but it prevents robbing and seems more natural. It's just my own idea, but bees naturally go out from the hive to feed. I do know that a lot more bees were killed in the other types of feeders I've tried, and this is very simple, cheap, and easy to maintain. I just procured this shelter from a friend, but before that the barrels just sat out on the lawn.

Bees are not the only things that sting in Florida, and it's always a good habit to look before putting your hand under something. This is a Black Widow spider I found moving pallets and empty supers. Snakes and scorpions are also seen around here frequently, so I have to really look at what I'm doing. It's probably made me less concerned about safety around bees than I should be. Getting stung on the face is always the worst to look at, but the fingers hurt the most.

The State of Florida now has a regulatory system for Cottage Food Operations that allows for the production of non potentially hazardous foods, including honey, prepared in a personal residence using home kitchen appliances. Annual gross sales cannot exceed $15,000 and your products cannot be sold on the internet, mail order or wholesale, which includes such places as restaurants and retail outlets. There are food labeling requirements, and the Department of Agriculture has the authority to investigate home-based food operations if there is a legitimate complaint and enforce penalties for non compliance.

These are examples of our new front and back labels we ordered for our 2 lb jars this year. We've never bothered having labels on our honey since we could only take donations. We tried once to make them, but the ink ran since we only have an inkjet and we didn't realize the labels had to be printed on a lazer printer to hold up to use. This year with the cottage food law, we started looking at labels to buy. What worked for us was a label made by Anne Turnham at Custom Honey Labels. Anne is a Minnesota beekeeper who started making honey labels for her bee club and is now taking orders from across the U.S. and Canada. She's got a wide variety of designs to suit whatever your image is, the prices are very good, and she pays personal attention to what you need on your label. Really a full-service business; it makes us feel important even though our orders are small.

Spring is a busy time in the bee business. Though I've been working all winter here in Florida, plants are starting to bloom and the daylight is lasting longer, so I tend to work longer days just like the bees.

Queen Rearing Project

2012-02-03T22:16:00.000-05:00

Queen cells

This week I have been working on rearing Queen's. I had attempted to do some last year with little success. I would liked to find some hands on training, but I live in a fairly rural area and the cost to go to one of the few special classes offered in Florida was just not feasible for me.

I came across ROBOS WORLD on the internet and was very interested in the way he was rearing Queens. It is a combination of using the the Nicot System and Cloake Board.

Nurse bees

So far, I have been very satisfied with the results. I have eight cells and when I checked today it appears that only one of the cell's is not producing a Queen. The instructions ROBO provides are accurate and easy to follow. The Queens should hatch around February 6.

Queen cells

I purchased the Nicot System and Cloake Board from Brushy Mountain, and I have always been very pleased with their service. They also host "webinars that you can watch online. They are a great source for information and a pleasure to do business with.

The aquaponics and BeePonic's continue to do well I recently started some collard greens and cumbers. The lettuce and chard are still doing well with the warm weather. I expect the tilapia will start to consume more food and begin to grow more rapidly. I would like to get some catfish in order to keep the tilapia population controlled, otherwise they will over produce and which will stunt their growth. The catfish will keep the fry population down and hopefully avoid any problem with overpopulating.

Early Spring Bee Report, West Central Florida

2012-01-25T10:31:00.000-05:00

overwintered frame

Spring is on it's way here in West Central Florida, and so far have we have had a fairly mild winter. We had plenty of honey stores left on the hives, and I have started to feed for the spring build up as well as making splits. The bee's did very well over the winter. The photo at the left is a frame of brood I pulled off other day. The temperature's are generally in the seventy's during the day and cooler at night but tolerable.

screened bottom boards

I have been making some bottom board's lately and I'm trying to keep my expenses down by getting scrap wood at Home Depot. I get the dunnage they use Home Depot to separate load's to make the bottom boards. They cost about fifty cents each for them. The metal strap makes a 3/4" grove in the wood fit will with the 3/4" plywood. I also buy 1/4" hardware cloth from Ace Hardware for the screened bottom board's; they're the only store that sells that size around here. My equipment is not as aesthetically pleasing as some but that's ok; I am just trying to make it affordable.

hay feed

I have been open feeding the bee's using hay in the bottom of a half barrel (the barrel came from my previous aquaponics set-up) with a 1:1 ratio of sugar to water. I'm not an expert on the subject, but I really like this way of feeding them; the bee's seem to do well and I don't have any with robbing or drowning which has been a problem with other feeders.

I have also have been able to make several splits already, which I was happy about after having a couple of hives swarm last year . I've been told it's natural, in spite of precautions, to expect 1-3 swarms a year which can be a disaster if that's all you have, but it happens.

chard

I also received three hives from William Mashburn of BeeHappy Honey in Crystal River. William has been a blessing to me as he has been working bee's for many years and is a great teacher and tremendous help to me every since I began keeping bee's.

Bee-ponics: I have been doing aquaponics for awhile now and the bees love it. Now I'm seeing improvements as the tilapia are doing better this year, they survived the limited cold spells, and the we were able to harvest some Swiss chard and lettuce (mostly for the ducks) over the winter.

and the heat is on...

2011-09-01T18:54:00.000-04:00

You can't beat summer's heat but alas Florida's saw palmetto honey has arrived.

saw palmetto

Saw palmetto is a small palm, scattered heavily throughout the south, that produces fruit once a year. The fruit is the size of an olive pit or a giant coffee bean. Saw Palmetto honey is a prized for it's extract containing 85-98% fatty acids and sterols which is used in a herbal supplement to treat prostrate enlargement. It's honey, though, is seldom tasted outside the borders of Florida. It is one of the honey greats just the way it is; never mixed with other honey or sugar.

bee's hanging on the porch

July and August are hard months to work outside in Florida, and it seems the bees do too. After about my third sting I try to knock off and go inside to cool off a little. I go back out about four or five o'clock to help with the animals and to see how bearded the hives are. Plants we have blooming now include black mangrove, cabbage palm, saw palmetto, and coral vine. So far it has been a good year. The Italian bees seem to be adapting great and are producing strong hives. I was able to make numerous splits, and the small hive beetles so far have not been a problem.

Other good news is that Florida passed the Cottage Food Law allowing us to sell some honey. In the past, we just ask for donations. Certain standards do apply for the cottage honey, including the labeling and where it can be sold, but I do believe this is a great step for the hobby beekeepers in Florida.

coral vine

One of the biggest question I hear on blogs and other publications is whether anyone rents extractors. Well, I have seen some advertised although not in Florida. I would recommend checking with your local bee club or to just do crush and strain if you only have one or two hives. Used extractors are few and far between. I know the feeling that times are truly hard and the experience of buying an extractor can be very difficult for the hobby beekeeper. I started out with crush and strain but it was a lot of heavy, messy work. The next year I was blessed to be able to borrow a four-frame extractor from someone I have helped. The work was so easy, I was convinced I would have to invest in one especially since I planned to increase the number of hives I had.

This year I was very blessed when I came upon mine and my thanks goes out to William Mashburn at Bee Happy Apairies for giving me such a terrific deal on equipment he no longer intended to use. It needed some minor repairs, but is very large (12 frames) radial extractor and and decaping stand, so I can do all my frames very quickly including clean-up. But there are some very good deals on extractor sets from the major bee suppliers, too. If you intend to have more than one or two hives, you will have to invest in extracting supplies. And even if you do have only a couple hives, an extractor makes the job so much easier and quicker, and allows the bees to get up and going sooner because they don't have to completely rebuild the comb, a small investment will be worth it.

Other blogs and info.
Beemaster's International Beekeeping
cottage food law
saw palmetto
bee math
Florida climate and beekeeping
saw palmetto honey
beehappayappairies Crystal River Fl.

labels: bees, extracting, honey, Central Florida, Citrus County, Crystal River

summer heat

2011-07-07T18:41:00.001-04:00

As summer gets into full swing the heat also tends to start creeping in on us. The extracting and inspecting along with the various other task must still be attended to, I feel blessed to be able to pretty much do all on my own schedule and try to arrange things according my needs though planing is still needed during summer time especially in Florida when it comes to heat storms in the afternoon and the possibility of huracanes. I now try to check hives one day and pull a couple of supers to extract.

Whoops, man.., dadgumit! Honey I spilt the honey :(

2011-06-26T17:00:00.000-04:00

Some day's things just don't work out. I had started off on Wednesday getting ready to pull honey on Thursday, set all my equipment up and spent time figuring out my best route to minimize steps in the process of my extracting the honey. I know it doesn't sound like a hard task, but when it comes to dealing with about 40 lb. honey supers and when you have your elbows full of cortisone just to be able to use them and have had two rotator cuff surgeries, you start to take every short cut you can to make the job a little easier. Thursday was hot and I got started a little late but endeavored in my task anyway: that was my first mistake. The supers came off fine with no problems and minimal stings. In Florida I wear as little bee protection clothing as possible when extracting or checking hives. My dad always said if your gonna be dumb you gotta be tough; besides, I only have 13 hives which makes it a little different than the big boys.

Everything went fine until late Thursday afternoon when, on my final task, I made the fatal mistake of trying to lift my extractor by myself. My wife was feeding the chickens and ducks, and I only needed to set it back on the stand. The next thing I knew--whoops, man..dadgumit! In that instant I watched about 60 lbs. of honey go from a bucket to the floor. Tipping the bucket back upright, I had to sit there a moment and think about what had happened and how to react.

A lot of questions and thoughts raced though my mind in that long moment, and in the end the scripture, "In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you," came to mind. Not that I was happy about dropping the bucket, but I also had the thought of when I came out of my coma and I couldn't walk, and how lost and dispirited I felt for any semblance of normalcy. I am so thankful for my life, my son, my Savior, and my bee's. It put my thoughts in perspective.

Hey honey, the honey is ready!

2011-06-05T18:40:00.000-04:00

There is much more to beekeeping than sitting in the shade watching the bee's fly back although that is one of my favorite part's. They are diligent in there work to produce the bounty that we anticipate with such eagerness. Our first year we purchased two hive bodies and a used but well kept honey supper's from a local bee keeper in our area. We had tried to read and learn all we could about bee's.
At that time we were on a one year plan, basically it detailed keeping the bee's alive. That year we seemed to have everything fall in place as the season's changed it was like opening a book we were able to see the season change from month as the bee's worked on the variety of pollens, and nectar they brought into the hive. We did not have a means of extraction so crush and strain would be our only option. At that were not ready or afford to make the investment of an extractor especially not knowing what the future held for our new endeavor. We did have a great year and made plenty of honey, I think we ended up with six honey supers by harvest time.
The second year winter was hard and long but we were still blessed with being able to add two more hive's and also making a successful split. That year I was able to borrow an extractor from a friend who had also recently started keeping bee's. This was a blessing because crush and strain is not only physically tiring the bee's do have to rebuild the all comb. My plan by now was to try and make it one more year without an extractor if possible and be able to have a better understanding of my goals and capabilities by my fourth year. My wife is my best and most helpful adviser as she keep's me grounded as far as my capabilities and disabilities, with my handicap I have a tendency to go overboard with most of my decisions and have tried to learn that I cant always trust my self in all the decisions I make. So far this year has started off great I did purchase five new queen's from Miksa Honey Farms in the past I had purchased nucs from Indian summer Honey Farms in Webster Fl they have Carniolan Cross queens and take their bee's to Michigan during summer for pollinating apple orchards. Although I have been very pleased with Indian Summer I thought a would try a native bee may more adapted to the summer heat in my area. I contacted Miksa Honey Farm's and picked up five Italian queen's. The new bee's quickly began to flourish and I ended up with making an additional seven splits. My inalienability to use numbers and problems with memory left me with colors white first year, green second, and yellow third, works for me.

My son, eat thou honey, because it is good; and the honeycomb, sweet to thy taste:
Proverbs 24:13