I live in Pensacola, Florida, which is in the northwest of the state. The only African Bees are in the central and southern part of that state. I went to the location and found that a limb with Domestic Bees living inside had fallen, and naturally the bees were upset. Most bees will be agitated when they fall 15 feet to the ground. The people that were being attacked were the ones who cut the limb down in the first place. There is another colony of bees higher in the tree trunk, and the people wanted me to get them out of the tree before they cut the top half of the tree down to keep it from falling on a house.

As the bees were about 50 feet in the air, I declined. I needed a bucket truck and the money to rent it. As I do most of my swarm chasing for free, I couldn’t bring myself to spend money on a colony of bees that probably would not live through winter. This is one time that I just had to say no and go home.

There is a saying:

“A swarm in May is worth a bale of hay. A swarm in June is worth a Silver Spoon. A swarm in July ain’t worth a fly.”

The reason for the last sentence is because when you relocate a swarm in a box with just foundation, the bees have to make wax to build cells for the queen to lay eggs in and for the foragers to put their pollen and nectar in. They just don’t have time to do all that before winter sets in, especially if there is a drought and nothing is blooming. I really don’t want to feed in the winter unless I have to. I leave a super of honey on the colonies for their winter feed. If they run out, then I will feed until the first honey flow.

If you are a small, part-time beekeeper and if you have plenty of time, then you can feed a small swarm, but you also run the risk of them not having enough bees to help keep the cluster warm. The only thing you can do with a small swarm and feel confident that they will survive, is to combine them with another small colony, and they will then have enough bodies to keep the cluster and brood warm.

This kind of information is found in the Hive and Honeybee and the ABC & XYZ. These books can be found at most large bookstores or at a bee supply house. These two books can be read as stand alone books, or you can have both books in your library to augment each other.

Another good book is Honey bees and Beekeeping: A year in the Life of an Apiary, by Dr. Keith Delaplane. The Third Edition is the latest one.

Don’t forget the workshop in Chipley, FL, July 12. See you there.

I was busy though. I read the Bee Culture, American Bee Journal, and a few other books on bees. I have used the computer to do some research on the web and watched some bee related programs on DVDs. That is what you can do when you cannot visit your apiaries.

This bee stuff is an ongoing learning experience. Read, read, and read some more. Get with some of your beekeeping friends and discuss bees, honey, pollination, queens, and anything else you want to know about. Just remember, to have fun in this type of enterprise, you have to understand the nature of the beast. With understanding comes contentment.  Enjoy!

TUPELO BEEKEEPERS ASSOCIATION (Preregister by July 3)
Beginning Beekeepers Seminar
Cutts Honey House
1533 Clayton Road
Chipley, Fl. 32348

When? July 12, 2008. The cost for this is $15.00 each and $10.00 per child. You must register by July 3, 2008.

Preregistration is required to assure a quality/quantity lunch. If you register at the door, you will be expected to furnish your own lunch.

Make your Reservations with

Vernon Gwaltney
925 E. 25th St
Panama City, FL 32405
850-7634278
Email Vernon

The next Florida State Beekeepers Association workshop will be October 30, 31, Nov 1, 2008. That is the last weekend of the month. Will be held in Gainesville, FL at the DPI building. You do not need to be a member of the Florida State Beekeepers Association to attend.

I was there at 15 minutes till 7:00 am and I was immediately put to work. They didn’t even have the coffee pots started yet.

We had over 100 people there and at least 50 were new beekeepers or wannabes. Some had just one or two colonies, and quite a few didn’t even have wood for their hives, much less ready for the colonies to install in them.

We had classes just for beginners consisting of equipment needed for the beekeeper, wood for the hive bodies, and hands-on for the newbies to learn how to install packages, nucs, and swarms. All in all the classes were well received.

There were classes for the advanced beekeeper consisting of:Wax Working, i.g., candle molding, candle wrapping, making wax soap; Pricing and Marketing Honey; Rules Concerning the Uses of the Made in Florida Label.

We had three vendors set up booths. Jerry Latner and his wife, Joanne from Dadant Bee Supplies, was there to answer questions and sell bee equipment to the attendees. The ladies that gave the Wax Works class, had a booth to sell their wax candles, skin creams, and whatnot’s. There was one other vendor selling bee related goods.

We had a catered lunch of baked chicken, meat loaf, veggies, and a dessert made up of cake and strawberry’s. It was very scrumptious and well served.

I guess you would like to know who sponsored this workshop. The Florida State Beekeepers Association actually sponsored this workshop and the Orangeblossom Beekeepers Association hosted it at the Orange County Extension Center in Orlando, FL. For future workshop and important dates, you can go to: http://my.calendars.net/fsba/.

These workshops are put on for anyone interested in bees and bee products. There is a lot of great information given with the new and old beekeeper in mind. If you can, please plan to make one of these meetings the next time you get a chance. You will not regret it. To find an association near you go to: http://floridabeekeepers.org and click Local.

I started to scrape the caps off with a cap scraper into a bucket, then loading the frame of honey into the extractor. My extractor is a 20 framer and I decided to double up and put 36 frames in it by double stacking the frames. The idea was sound as that is the way it is done most of the time by beekeepers with radial extractors.

The problem was that I had loosened the tie-down straps when I cleaned the tank and forgot to tighten them back up. With the weight of the tank, motor, and the stand, I added the weight of the frames and honey. When the extractor started to spin, the stand started to walk and walked right off the 2×4’s and I had about 2 1/2 hours of humping and groaning and using ingenuity to get the whole shebang back in place and buckled down. I then continued to extract.

While extracting, there was enough wax knocked down in the tank that it stopped the drain pipe up and I had a time getting the wax broken up to empty the tank of it’s honey. Needless to say, I decided to just do 20 frames at a time from then on.

It still took me longer to extract than it should have. Heat, everything going awry, working alone, and being rushed for time to pack and get ready to leave the next morning to the mid-summer workshop in Orlando, FL. All in all, I did finish and got to go to the workshop on time.

I am sorry that I have no pictures at this time to show the extracting operation, maybe next time I can find the camera and do just that.

Until the next post; read books, watch bee videos, and have fun.

We looked at the bees and decided that only two of the eight hives could be used. We drove another 8 miles to another yard and found four hives we could use with ease and that had a good number of bees. After smoking the bees, we put screen wire in the opening of the hives and duct taped the holes and lids on. Then, using a two man hive lifter, we picked the first hive up and moved to truck. Upon setting the hive down on the tailgate, Ed said that there was a lot of bees flying around. Yikes!! We had picked all of the hive up except the bottom board. We had to go back with the hive and reset it on the bottom board then moved away so the bees would settle down. While they were doing that, we decided to strap all of the hives just in case.

After we had loaded the four hives, we went back to the first location to get the other two hives. Wouldn’t you know it!–one of those colonies decided to be cantankerous. After getting stung several times each (the son stayed in the truck), we finally got the hives loaded and strapped down to the truck.

The trip was uneventful and the off loading went without any more stings. I have never tasted Palmetto honey. I have been told it has a nutty flavor. I hope that I can collect some so I will know what to expect.

This is how you would go about getting specialty honey. Move the hives to the target area, make sure that the only honey they have is in the brood box, put supers with empty comb on them and wish the bees good luck! And good luck to you too. Have fun!

As we were coming home from Texas, I called one of my new beekeepers to help me on Monday. We made plans to begin about 7:00 AM. Remember, I had not seen my bees for about 3 weeks at this time. We went to the apiary to pick up the hives and found that they had completely plugged out the supers with honey. We then went to another apiary and found that the bees had plugged out all their supers also. Since I did not think to take any empty supers with us. That day was shot.

The next day, today, I went by myself to pull honey. I only took one super as that was all I had ready to go. I started by pulling the top super and checking the second for brood. I moved all the capped honey to the super to be put on the truck and placed all the uncapped honey in the super with the brood. Capped honey is ready to extract and the uncapped honey was still being processed by the bees meaning that there was still water in the uncapped cells of nectar/honey. When the honey has been sufficiently heated and fanned by the bees to evaporate the water, they will cap the cells. Sort of like making gravy. Add heat and stir until the gravy is thick.

Being by myself with the temperature in the high 90’s, it took me about 5 hours to collect 8 supers of honey. I had intended to extract tonight, but I was tired and decided to get some sleep and move bees in the morning and extract the honey tomorrow evening when the temperature goes down to the low 90’s.

By not planning and having some supers ready to replace the honey supers, I wasted all of one day and I could have used the help of the young beekeeper and got all that work done in half a day and possibly have extracted Monday leaving today to move bees.

Planning ahead and keeping the supers and boxes clean with good comb or foundation is just plain good sense. Try to keep on top of you homework and the bee work will be fun again.

Just when you think that you are making headway, Mother Nature throws you a curve. I do know that in order to have a good?! crop of honey, you have to make a simple schedule and visit the apiaries on a semi-regular basis. That way you can see if the colonies need help or not. That has been my downfall this year. The excuses kept coming up and I just didn’t make the choice to ignore them and go to the bee yards anyway.

I now have to start making plans for the summer. That is the time to start getting the colonies ready for Winter. In order for the bees to have a chance to get through the winter months, I will have to requeen with fall queens if I can find them or at least raise queens myself so the colonies will have young queens to lay eggs so that enough bees will hatch before the cold gets here. The young queens will not shut down their egg laying as soon as the older queens will. That means stronger colonies to go into the winter. The fall queens will also start laying eggs earlier in January and February. By March, the bees will be so strong that it will be necessary to put two or three supers on at the same time for the Spring honey flow just to help prevent swarming.

Maybe this is good for me, to kick start me into making good plans and executing them in a timely manner. But in the meantime, I need to get some honey ready to take to a customer and to my dad’s 90th birthday party Friday in Mississippi. Then the following week, I will bottle some quarts to take to Texas for my siblings.

Have a wonderful Memorial Day Monday!

The first two ways you need a fume board which is a cover made like a telescoping hive top but is the same dimensions as a super. It has a felt pad attached to the inside top of the cover. You sprinkle the liquid Bee Go or Bee-Quick onto the felt pad and place on the super felt down. You need the sun’s heat to activate the liquid. As it evaporates, the fumes will drive the bees down out of the honey supers. The temperature needs to be in the high 60’s degrees Fahrenheit and no hotter than 89 degrees. If it is too hot it could actually kill the bees before they could clear the fumes out of the hive.

The bee brush is time consuming and you have to brush each frame and put it in a super body away from the brush area so the bees won’t be tempted to get back on the brushed frames.

The bee blower can blow the bees out of the super fairly fast and it is easy to do. Stand the supers on end and blow the bees out then turn the super around and blow the other way. Always blow the bees toward the front of the hive so they will be enticed to go in rather than coming back to the super.

I have elected to use the blower because I don’t have to wait for 5 to 10 minutes for the bees to exit the super before I take it off the stack and I don’t have to depend on the sun to stay out of the clouds.

Just thought you might like to know this. I am getting ready to take one of my young students with me tomorrow to pull honey and he will like the blower. Since I don’t have many hives and only about 30-40 supers, the job will take only about 6 hours travel time included.

Now to get my extractor cleaned and ready to extract the liquid gold that tastes so good.

Back to the story. A big black bear had entered the area and just knocked my one hive over. Didn’t destroy anything and apparently lost interest and went on through another open gate into his yard. The owner said that the tracks were the largest ones he had ever seen.

If a bear finds a way into your apiary, then he will remember it for a long time. I hope that with the gate closed, he will lose interest in my location. There is 2 things I have to think about. 1) Do I keep my bees there any more? or, 2) Do I erect a bear fence with a solar battery? That is a question I will have to wait to answer. I restacked the hive and I am going to leave the hive there to see if the bear will come back. That is a good location for Palmetto honey. Five colonies are marked to be transported there in the next week.

Palmetto honey has a nutty taste to some people. I haven’t had the chance to taste it so I don’t know first hand. This will be my first crop. I will post again if I am lucky enough to harvest some.

Try to get several kinds of honey to give your customers a choice. It makes good sense and cents because sometimes they will buy two or three different types just for variety.