Beekeepers Friend

This week has been tough on me. I had to go to town and get some items both for the house and the apiaries. Going to Walmart in this town is a nightmare, at least to me. They have been changing up the display isles and shelves. Where they used to have something, now holds something new. Only in the grocery part of the store, the meat, milk, and frozen coolers are still the same. If you want a certain item, then you have to go down each and every isle and look on all the shelves, and even then, I sometimes overlook the item that I want. All this is to say that it takes me 3-4 hours just to shop a little bit. I am very tired when I get home.

Then I had to go to a little town in Alabama, about 45 minutes away, to a bee meeting just to finish up the last workshop business, and while I was there, they asked me to field some question about managing bees. After the meeting, I was delayed going home because of all the questions one on one. That is okay, but the day was a very long day and I needed to get home to my bed.

The next day, I had to catch up on home work. You know, mow the jungle in the back yard, weedeat the weeds that the mower missed, then pull up all the weeds that were too big for the weedeater.

I am getting ready to take a new beekeeper out to my apiaries in the north part of the county Saturday, and mow more weeds and to number hives. I spent most of yesterday going to several hardware stores to get enough numbers to mark the hives. In this case, I am using metal plates with numbers punched into them so when a hive body needs to be replaced, all I have to do is move the colony into the new box and unscrew the numbers from the old box and screw them onto the new box. The colony is the same, just the wood is replaced.

This way, I can keep records on each colony no matter what box they are in. Records are good to have so you know what has happened to that particular colony over the life of it. When you split it, re-queened, medicated, why, and what the results were. Then you can tell what the weather was like when you did all this. Also, you can know how much honey the colony made, what the amount of propolis each colony produced, how much feeding of honey, syrup, sugar water, and pollen substitute you have fed.

Also, by numbering the hives, when you move them, you don’t have to place them in a certain order to keep them straight, the numbers will be the identifiers.

Now I have to go to sleep so I can get the lawn mower, weedeater, fuel, and another brood box into the truck in the morning. Now you ask me why didn’t I do that tonight? Well, for one thing I was asked to go to a man’s home tonight to collect a colony of bees that he has had for eight years in his back yard. The box is in bad shape and all the duct tape on the truck couldn’t keep the bees inside. They were mad. I didn’t want to make them madder by throwing a lot of equipment into the truck and making them decide that they could fly at night. I will just have to be easy in the morning when I do load the remaining equipment. We will set the colony at the new location and after cleaning the yard, we will transfer them into the new brood box and add a super.

I’ll tell you how it went tomorrow night. Good night.

For the last couple of days, maybe 3 or 4 even, I have been collecting honey jars, buying more caps and rings, washing jars and, well I am getting ahead of myself.

I had in the past, inherited some jars from various sources and put them in storage until now. They collected dust and grime. For the last 4 days, I have been washing and sterilizing them. I had to buy more canning caps and rings to keep the jars clean on the inside. I uncap the jars as I need them.

I have already bottled Tupelo into 12 oz bears, 1 1/2 lb pints, and 3 lb quarts. I then proceeded to bottle Gallberry in like amounts. When I am through, I will have bottled 5 gallons of each kind of honey including Wildflower. Sometimes, I bottle 1 lb bees that have painted eyes, noses, wings, and stingers. I use these for festivals as a novelty eye catcher.  Now I have enough on hand to be ready for at least two festivals. If I run out, then all I have to do is bottle more.

The process of bottling honey is not hard nor difficult. When bottling different honeys, start with anything that is not Wildflower honey. I usually start with Tupelo. I clean my bottling bucket and dry it completely between each specialty honey. That way the honeys will not be mixed and can be labeled as such. When all the honey is bottled bottled, except for Wildflower, I do not have to clean the bucket before bottling, because any honey that is left will be mixed with the wildflower honey which is a mixture of all the different honeys anyway. I only clean when I want to say, “This is a specific type of honey”, other than Wildflower.

Aside from enjoying the bees, I also enjoy selling honey and talking about my bees while showing the observation hive.

I haven’t tasted all the different honeys, but I have tasted several that are prevalent to this area/state (FL.) and some that were fermented. The latter is because the water content was too high and the honey soured. That is what you make meade out of, but that is another story for another time.

The question I get a lot of, besides, “How many time have you been bitten?” is, “Is there a difference in honey tastes?”.

Yes, there is a difference. Let me explain. In the Spring, there is a wide verity of flowers blooming at the same time. This is what we call the Spring major honey flow. Flowers blooming all over the place. Normally each colony will work only one type of flower until it is depleted for about a two – three mile radius around the hive.

We have several hives in an apiary and we don’t know which colony is working what flower. So all the honey we collect is put in the same barrel and we call that Wildflower. It is a mixture of all the different honeys. It has a strong, mildly pungent taste and is of a dark amber color. I use this honey for cooking, using it in my cereal, sweetening tea and coffee, and sometimes, I drip some on my ice cream the same way I use chocolate and strawberry toppings. It just gives the ice cream a different taste.

Gallberry is a bush that is kin to the Holly family. The honey is a milder taste and is lighter in color than the Wildflower honey. I use it for table honey, you know, biscuits and butter, toast, grits (I like mine with sweetener and milk), and I like the taste of honey on my sausage. I also use this honey to glaze my meats while cooking.

And last but not least, Tupelo. This is a tree that grows in the swamp area in North Florida. This honey is much lighter than the other two honeys that I have talked about. It is a very light amber, but not water clear as some of the clovers, and has a velvety taste that does not linger as an aftertaste that some of the other honeys do. This is strictly a table honey. It costs too much to cook with.

These are the only honeys I deal with at the present time. I have worked Privet, Orange Blossom, and Palmetto. There are hundreds more types of honey that I don’t know, such as Cactus, Sourwood, Basswood, Clover, Alfalfa, Sunflower, and the legumes.

To keep the honeys separated, I have to take the honey off the bees and move the hives to the target plant and put clean honey supers on at the beginning of the flow. Then, just as the target flow is diminishing, I take that honey off and mark it, move the hives to the next target flower, and put clean honey supers on. This way each type of honey is separated to keep it from becoming mixed. When extracting, all the equipment must be cleaned between each type of honey. This is why the specialty honeys are more expensive than the wildflower. More work is involved to keep them separated.

Now is the time to start planning for the next year. Do I want to expand my apiary. If so by how big? Do I have enough equipment? Do I need to replace any equipment and am I going to repaint this year? These are question that must be dealt with and plans made to implement them.

In the extraction room, there is a 33′ long piece of equipment that will pop the honey frames from the honey super and all the operator has to do is slide all the frames forward to a chain driven feeder. It automatically feeds the frames one at a time into the decapper which cuts the caps off the sealed honeycomb.

After the decapping, the frames are deposited on a long slide over a drip pan and lined up for a hand crank to slide 30 frames into the extractor which is, instead of an upright radial, is laying on its side similar to a barrel laying on its side. Once the first rack has been filled, then the operator rotates the basket so the empty rack is in line with the frame slide so the other 30 frames can be loaded. Then the operator starts the extractor spinning.

While the honey is being slung out of the combs, the operator starts decapping again. About the time the frame slide is loaded with decapped frames of honey, the extractor has slung all the honey out of the first 60 frames.

On the far end of the setup next to the extractor, there is another slide setup to receive the extracted frames, but, this is the neat part, the operator doesn’t have to hand unload the extractor. As the frames are hand cranked into the decapper rack, the new frames pushes the old ones out onto the receiving slide. Then the slid is shifted on rollers to line up the second set of receiving rails with the extractor.

The frame boxer places a honey super under the extracted frame rails and lifts up around 10 frames and pulls a loaded super out and sets it on the hand truck ready to go to a stacking room. Like I said in the last post, you have to see it in action to really appreciate the operation of this wonderful tool.

I attended this past Saturday, a workshop sponsored by the Tupelo Beekeepers Association. It was held at Laurence Cutt’s honey house in Chipley, FL. There were 150 registured participants and I would guess about half of them were new wannabee’s and about 1/4 th of the remaining were new beekeepers with one to three hives. The rest of us were called upon during breaks to talk to those one on one to explain what they didn’t understand or catch during the classes.

I personally had a couple there that is/was from my list of honey customers. They were very attentive and I think they had a positive impression. I have not had the opportunity to talk with them since the workshop. I personally have had a chance to be a student this time and do some class attending. Most of the workshops, I have either been in charge or I have been put to work and have not had the opportunity to listen in class except for the Master Bee College.

They had 3 classes with one of them divided into 2 sections that you could only attend one. It was the class on queen rearing. One group was for commercial queen rearing where the beekeeper(s) raises from 20 to 1000+ queens for sale, and the other part was for the part time or small beekeepers raising queens or queen cells for their own personal use.

One class was hands on for splitting and swarm control. This is where you take a parent colony that is overflowing with bees and taking half of the frames with brood, honey, pollen, and and half the bees and putting them in another brood box and starting another colony. In this colony a new queen or queen cell must be placed to continue the bees.

The process is the same for both splitting and swarm control. The reason for both is, the hive has become over crowded and there is no place to lay eggs nor to put any more nectar. That is when the bees begin to make preparations to split on their own and relieve the congestion in the hive.

The third class was for the extraction and let me tell you, there is an extraction setup I would love to have. Here, words are not enough to describe. Pictures would be better, but unfortunately, I did not have my camera that day. Perhaps I will be able to go back for a visit and get some photos of his extraction room. When I do, I will write another post and explain each of the equipment that he utilizes.

Until then, just keep you equipment clean and in good repair. Now would be a good time to make a list of the equipment that you need to put together for future use. Read more books, or maybe go back and review some that you have already read.

There are people who believe that the only way to raise bees is to put them in a 10 frame hive. There are some people who believe that a 9 framer is the best. Then there are those people who cannot physically maneuver 9 or 10 frame boxes. It is the latter that I am going to discuss this time.

If you are unable to pick up a 10 frame brood box, then you might want to think about an eight frame box. It has been cut down to fit only eight frames into it. The weight has been reduced so one can pick it up fairly easily. You can also get supers the same size so they will fit the deeps. I have several friends that have gone that route and have been very pleased with it.

You can put eight or nine frames in a 10 frame box, but the weight will be heavier than using 10 frames. The bees will pull the combs out further and this allows them to put more honey in them. The extra honey is what will add to the weight.

At the next bee meeting, you can ask some of the beekeepers to help you in understanding the mechanics of the weight of honey.

I had a call yesterday to come get some Killer Bees out of a tree. The caller said that the bees were attacking a bunch of people and that a dog down the street was killed by those bees.

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 this 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 have been almost frustrated with the rain lately. I have not been able to check my bees since I pulled honey and extracted. There have been things come along to keep me occupied such as; mowing grass here at the house, getting the inside of the house straightened up for company the week of July 4th, getting the chemicals gathered up to clean the pool, and then trying to get them into the pool. BUT—the rains came and just as I thought they were through, the rains came again and again.

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!

Here is the next beekeeping workshop in Northwest:

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:

Florida Farm Bureau Group

 www.ffbic.com
5700 SW 34th St, Gainesville –

. You do not need to be a member of the Florida State Beekeepers Association to attend.

At the same time and place, the Master Beekeepers Program and Bee College will be held for those who have or want to keep bees.

Announcing a New Date for Apprentice Beekeeper Training and Examination

October 30, 2008
Florida Farm Bureau
Federation, 5700 SW 34th Street
Gainesville, Florida

The University of Florida Master Beekeeper Program (UFMBP) announces a new opportunity for Florida Beekeepers to achieve the rank of Apprentice Beekeeper. On, October 30, 2008, the day before the FSBA Annual Convention, we will host training and examinations for only the Apprentice Beekeeper Level.

Now is the time to make plans to attend. Contact Mike O’Malley at [email protected] .

I finally got off to Orlando. I was tired after extracting the honey. I didn’t get off as early as I had hoped, but I still got down there about 7:00 pm. I found the meeting place so I could go to it fairly easily the next day, June 13.

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.