I had a young man come by yesterday to buy a nuc of bees. He is a novice and is very excited to get started in the bee business. He wants a hobby right now and getting his honey for free doesn’t hurt either. Little does he know that nothing is free. ha ha. He will have to work for it, but it will be pleasant work.

I told him that I sold 20 bees for a buck apiece the day before and he was amazed that I got paid for each bee. I really don’t know if I am high or low on the money, but if a person wants them at the quoted price, then he will pay. Also, the bees will die when they are used to sting the recipient and I lose the honey they could have made. So I think I got a fair price for them.

I also told the young man that you can sale everything in the hive and make money. You just have to read and get to know another beekeeper who is willing to share his knowledge about those things and you can make money.

This young beekeeper had a box made of a material that I am not familiar with. I told him instead of buying two nucs, just experiment with one until we know if the treated material will be accepted by the bees. That way if it dies, he will lose only the price on one colony. If the bees accepts the box, then he can get some more nucs to go in his other boxes made of the same material. I am sure that we will stay in contact and he will be tapping on my experience to further his education.

Today, I had the time to go to a friends house where I had taken some boxes to be cleaned. Together, we cleaned about 14 supers and deeps. Most of the supers had some good comb from last year. Some of the supers had questionable combs. These I will use as an experiment. I will see if the bees will repair and add to the combs and store honey in them. I will know in about a month. I have to have some of the supers to replace the honey supers that I am to pull in two days.

I have a young beekeeper that wants to help me pull honey in exchange for me helping him extract his honey using my extractor. He will also get an education. This will be his first time to extract. I will try to give a more detailed account in a later post.

Right now, I am planning how to visit all my apiaries, pull honey, use powdered sugar to dust each colony, and extract all the honey in one day while I still have a helper. That will still be a long day even with the help.

I will be getting ready to build screened bottom boards in the very near future so that all my hives will be sitting on screen. Then I will be making new top boards to replace the bad ones I am using now. I will also be making screened bottom board for my nucs.

I just learned the other day that we should be using screened tops for the colonies that are being moved to releave some of the stress of colonies that are being transported to an other location. That will be different than when I first learned how to move bees. We just had solid top at that time. Always learning something. Ain’t that good. If we learn something new each day, then we are growing. Otherwise, we get in a rut and stagnate in our tracks.

The first Spring honey flow is over and the specialty honeys are now. More work involved, but it is worth it. The next Florida State Beekeepers Association midyear meeting will be Saturday June 13, 2009 at the Polk County Extension Office in Bartow. For information contact [email protected] or call 863-644-6944. Plan to attend as there will be a lot of information that you just might not have.