I was on vacation for two weeks with my wife and siblings. When there was a lull in the festivities, I had plenty of time to think about my bees. I had decided to move bees when I got back. I wanted to move 6 hives to a Palmetto location where I have an apiary […]

I did go to the apiaries to pull honey with my young beekeeper. I was expecting about 30-40 supers of honey and only collected five. I have two more that I can pull when I take an empty super to replace the full ones. This one hive is very strong. I split it one time […]

There are actually three ways to clear bees from honey supers. (1) Use Bee Go which is very smelly and can keep everyone out of your truck for 2-3 months, or use Fischer’s Bee-Quick which has hardly any smell at all, (2) use a bee brush to brush the bees off each frame, and (3) […]

This was the first Beekeeping College of this kind in Florida. It was held on March 13-15 in Apopka, FL. Thursday 13th was for the experienced beekeepers. We had some lectures and then we went to the bee yard and had a test on lighting a smoker and keeping it lit for the duration of […]

After the state convention, I spent couple of days with my son’s family in Orlando, FL. We played golf until about 1:15 Monday afternoon. That’s when I started back home to Pensacola. I had already planned to pull honey on the way home. I spent the night at a friend’s home in Chipley. Tuesday, I […]

There are three honeys that I want to talk about. Wildflower, Gallberry, and Tupelo. The reason is I get the question quite frequently, “How do you know what is what?” The answer is simply that I help the bees decide what nectar to collect. Each hive will work on one nectar source at a time. […]

The one caste I have not talked about is the drones. They are the only ones that can go from hive to hive without worrying about being stung to death. They are just like children, everyone puts up with them. There are over 2,000 drones per hive. They do nothing for themselves except walk and […]

Sometime between the cooks and guard bees, the middle aged bees are called upon to make wax to repair cells and to build new cells. The older bees cannot make wax anymore and the newly hatched bees are not mature enough. I would guess that 2 to 4 days are spent at this job then […]

The question was raised, “How long does it take house bees to graduate into Nursing?” The answer is : I don’t know. According to one source, the first 3 weeks are spent doing household chores. The last 3 weeks are spent in the field force foraging for pollen, nectar, and water. I made a statement […]

The life of all honeybees starts as an egg, about the size of a comma “,” which is laid by the queen in the bottom of a wax cell in the brood area of a hive. A worker egg hatches after 3 days into a larva. Nurse bees feed it royal jelly at first, then […]