Beekeepers Friend

The last two days of vacation, my visitors from West Virginia, asked if they could clean my back yard. They had done all they had planned and were without something to do. I was happy to say “YUP! And I will supervise.” Now you have to understand, I have over 300 supers, deeps, mediums, shallows, and nucs that needs to be cleaned. But before I could do that, I have to be able to get to them. Various reasons as to why the yard got in bad shape. I also had some trees with long limbs swinging down onto the stacks of wooden ware. I welcomed the help and with 2 adults and 4 children working, it got cleaned up and now I have a work area large enough to place a 10′ x10′ canopy up to have shade to work and, if it rains, I can still be dry.

I also have 2 new beekeepers that I am to mentor this year through next Spring to help me do that cleaning. This will be good experience for them. The cleaning will consist of: scraping the wax moth cocoons out of the boxes and off the frames, removing the old wax comb and replacing with wax or plastic wax coated foundation, cleaning and building screen bottom boards, and painting the hive bodies for the new year.

Now that I have told you where I get my help on occasion, you can look for your own form of help and get some of your work done. You can also trade your labor in return for labor on your equipment.

Until the next time, keep reading and learning, and attending your local bee association.

I finally got to go to 3 apiary locations. I had two dead outs. One was due to starvation and the other was from beetles. I didn’t get to my yards very much during the last 4 months. Reasons: Workshop, rain, cold temp, hot temp, visitors, bee college, more visitors, and just plain lazy. Some were unavoidable and then there was procrastination.

You should have been in your hives by this time and know what you have to work with. The spring wildflowers are still blooming, but some of the target flowers are just beginning to open up. Such as Gallberry and Tupelo. They will be making nectar within the next 2 weeks. If you want a single source of honey, then you should be getting your supers ready. Take all the honey supers away from your bees and move the colonies to the Gallberry patch and put clean wax comb supers on, or at least put new foundation on. That way the only honey in the super will be your target honey.

I will have another post or two next week and I am getting ready to mentor a new beekeeper Monday which will be another post. I will stay with him for a year. He will be working with me in my apiaries and I will be helping him in his. Be sure to check with your state to see when your state beekeepers association will be meeting and attend. Lots of good information can be gained there.

I thought that by now I would have been in the bee yards checking to see what I needed to do for or to the bees. Alas! I have been entertaining visitors, all family, for the last two months, going to the bee college, more family visiting, getting ready for some friends from W. Virginia, and collecting swarms from tree limbs, and out of a building to be demolished.

The swarms were from two of my hives. I made a split from one hive and it swarmed three times since. Only one was a true swarm and I think that the other two were mating swarms. However, the last two have made good nucs. The parent colony is still strong and has a queen. Go figure! I think that I need to use that queen as a breeder queen. It seems to be a survivor and is a strong colony. That will be a separate post since I, as of this time, have not attempted to make queens.

I regret that I did not have my camera with me when I removed the colony from the building. It was a beautiful 10 comb hive about two feet by three feet in size. I got a five gallon bucket of wax comb and a five gallon bucket of combed honey. Most of the comb was dark brown to nearly black. I can only extract the honey and melt the wax as I would not eat the dark wax and will not sell it as comb honey.

I did get two honey customers during the extraction and there were 5-8 people taking pictures with cameras and cell phone cameras. I had an opportunity to talk bees and honey to the spectators and possibly will be invited to a school to give a demonstration.

Now I have to build a solar wax melter to melt all that wax as the one I did have has expired and I had to tear it down and throw the rotted wood away. I also need to try my hand at building a wax press to extract the honey comb. If I succeed, I will write about it.

By now you have started a good honey flow for Wildflower honey. It will be just a few weeks and the Palmetto and Gallberry will be blooming and you can get some specialty honey. The Tupelo will be blooming at the same time for those of you that have a Tupelo site in the Apalachicola swamp area. Now is not the time to sit back and relax. Just keep plugging along and you will be able to rest during the Summer time. Until next time, keep on enjoying your bees.

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 the exercise with the colony. There were 6 stations where 6 individual students were asked to explain how to smoke and enter a hive, find eggs, queen, drones, and look for pests and diseases. Then we went into the lab area where we were given a test on identifying various parts of the wooden-ware associated with a hive. Also, we were to identify some pests and tell why they were in the hive and what we could do to prevent them from getting a disabling toehold on the colony.

We had a lunch break on our own and then had some more classes that afternoon. We then had a two hour supper break and study time. We were told to report back at 7:00 pm for a 2 hour test. Then the next day, we were to choose what classes either in the beginners’ and/or advanced that we wanted to attend.

That night at the banquet, we found out if we passed the advanced tests of the previous day by receiving an Apprentice Beekeeper certificate.

Saturday we had more classes and labs to dissect honey bees to see Nosema and Trachea mites. The beginners, instead of the lab, went to the bee yard and were shown the hives with instructions on what to do. There was information for everyone on their level of knowledge.

Now you may think that this is a snap. Well let me tell you that just ain’t so. We have computer homework, books to read, community services to perform, and we also have to keep records of what we do in our bee yards. We have to document everything we do, which includes: signed statements for the community service, photos of our work in the bee yards if we can, show where we get our queens and when we requeen, and…well, you get the picture.

I just can’t wait to go to school next year. That will be my Advanced Beekeeper rating. The following year will be Master Beekeeper, and the final year, if I last that long, will be Master Craftsman Beekeeper. That is all for now.

The next blog will be on what’s going on in the bee yards.

Well, the workshop was a great success even though it started off all wrong. As the chairman of the workshop committee, I was responsible for all the wrongs that happened. All the rights were given to all my helpers and co members of the committee. There were about 69 people in attendance.

To start off, I forgot the schedule of the classes. We had to just start off with the pledge and invocation and then changed to a mass classroom at the beginning. By the time that was over, my wife arrived with the schedule and we just continued on as planned and caught up as we progressed on through the day.

The people were very happy with what was taught and were happy with the program. Along with the classes, we had food catered by the FFA students and a yard sale of extracting and hive equipment. At the end of the program, we had a drawing just for the preregistered. The winner received his admission fees returned.

Most of the people from out of area and state asked to be included in the notification of the next year’s workshop.

We have already contacted some of the speakers for next year. Hopefully, we will be able to get advertising into several bee magazines and papers for next year. If you would like to be included for next year, you can contact me on this blog’s comment section.

By this time in northern Florida and southern Alabama and Georgia, the spring honey flow is underway. I hope you were ready. If you have any unfinished cleaning of boxes and frames, then you need to do that now. Time to get ready to check the hives for high thresholds of Varroa Mites and Small Hive Beetles.

AT LAST! I can relax for a while. The Workshop was held on March 1, 2008 and was a great success. We had 69 people attending and had Bar-B-Cued chicken and home made pork and beans using bacon strips. Delicious!

The day started off with my not having the schedule, so we just went ahead and winged it with our tongues in our cheeks until my wife could print some copies and bring them 45 miles to get us back on time. Dr. Jamie Ellis, Entomology Dept. University of Florida at Gainesville, FL, was supposed to give a group power point talk on African Bees and How to Cope at 11:15 to noon, but he suggested that he could give it at the beginning so as to delay the actual start of classroom instruction. By the time he finished, we had the schedule in hand and proceeded without a hitch.

Dr. Ellis then commenced to give his regular class on Colony Collapse Disease. He and all the speakers had to give their presentations 6 times that day.

Dr. Amanda Ellis heads the FDACS-DPI researching Varroa control and her subject was on Pests and diseases. Mr. Doug Corbin, our state apiary inspector of Northwest Florida talked on Florida’s Compliance Agreement.

The above classes were inside classrooms. The rest of the classes were outside and consisted of Mr. Laurence Cutts on Queen Rearing, Elmore Herman and Randy Hamann showed how to do splits and equalizing hives, and Walter Miller, who also cooked the pork and beans, showed how to look for pests and diseases in the hive.

The classes were about 40 minutes long and the participants had 10 minutes between classes. The comment I received most was that they liked the way they could stretch their legs between classes and that the classes were not so long as to get to be boring.

We also had an area set aside so the people could bring their unwanted equipment and buy, sell, trade, or give away. There was no equipment that went back home with the same person. That, I would say, was a very successful event.

You remember that this workshop was jointly sponsored by the Baldwin County Beekeepers Association of Robertsdale, AL, and North Escambia Bee Association of Molino, FL. We will have another committee meeting next month and decide whether to have another one next year and to ask for volunteers to form a new workshop committee. I’ll keep you posted as to the results of that meeting.

Now is the time to be checking for pollen and nectar in your hives. Pull all supplemental feed from the hives and add a super. Also check your hive bodies and replace as needed. The bees will be going great guns in just a very very short time. Here in NW FL, the Ti-ti is blooming and so are the pear trees along with sundry other blooming plants. HAPPY HONEY FLOW!

I just put the last 10 gallons of honey in the honey heater. That gives me just shy of 20 gallons to use for the remainder of Winter and the first part of Spring. By the time I sale or use this up, I will be ready to pull Wildflower honey the last of April. I still have nearly one barrel left that I can tag for bulk shipping, or use for retail if I do run out before Spring extraction.

I have told about heating honey for 8 to 24 hours. That is correct except!? — when the weather is below freezing for several nights and the honey is outside, the honey will granulate faster, and even Tupelo, that does not granulate, will thicken to the point that heating will take some extra time. You need to use common sense and check the honey every so often to see what the status is. It may take two or more days of heat to thin the honey to straining viscosity. I suspect that I will need to leave the honey in the heater for at least 72 hours.

When checking the honey, I use a small paint stirrer and a 1/2″ variable speed drill to stir the honey slowly to keep air bubbles from mixing in, then let it heat some more. This I may have to do several times to make sure the crystals are all gone.

Once the honey is heated and strained, I put it aside until I need it, then all I have to do is heat it again until it is warm and pour into  my bottling bucket so the bubbles will rise to the top halfway quickly. Nothing is wrong with the bubbles being in the honey, but it is more attractive to the customers without the bubbles.

Something else you can do at this time is read books and check your retail containers; 12 oz. bears, 1 lb. jars, 1 1/2 lbs. pints, 3 lbs. quarts, etc. Always have some on hand for customers on the spur of the moment orders.

For those of you who retail your honey, there is another way to peddle your goods. I was at the barbershop today and I could have lost two retail sales because I didn’t have any honey in my truck when I went to get a haircut. It just so happens that the two customers are barbers and they will be there until 5 o’clock this afternoon.

I am at the house now bottling some pints and quarts to place in my truck to keep with me. If there were some barbershop customers who wanted some honey, then I would have lost some retail sales.

I have tried to keep pints and quarts of two or three kinds of honey in my truck all the times for just this reason. You need to be ready to talk bees, honey, pollination, and insects in general. There will nearly always be someone that will ask questions when it is made known that you are a beekeeper. You never know when someone will ask for a pint or quart of honey. BE PREPARED!

I have cut out and put together a gift pack made of wood that looks like an old timey apple crate. It has 2 kinds of honey in salt and pepper shakers that look like pint jars with handles. I also put into the pack 4 candles, 2 molded and 2 wrapped with foundation. All this is set on a bed of Easter Egg grass. I put a description card on the outside of the box then, using food grade plastic Cling Wrap, I enclosed the whole box. Makes some nice Christmas gifts. I sell these for the different holidays.

There are several ways to make money with your products. For this one item, I made it big enough that a person can use the box for audio tape storage and can be used in the car. I have one in use as a medicine container. I have one customer that lined the inside so she could use it as a jewelry catchall.

When it comes to Gifts for Women you can change the contents any way to make different gift packs. Use beeswax soap, homemade lip balm, scented candles, or a mixture of these. The possibilities are open to your imagination.

This would be a good time to make a list of what you would like to try in the future. Place the list on the fridge so you can add to it.

I pulled a five gallon bucket with about four gallons of honey out of the honey heater and took it to the strainer with the intention of getting it ready to bottle. The strainer was already set up on top of a five gallon bucket with about two and half gallons of honey in it. I scraped the wax that had settled to the top of the heated honey. I then proceeded to strain the honey and was concentrating on the process when I looked down and saw honey flowing on the floor. “Oh Man! What’s wrong?” I had poured about two gallons of honey on the floor.

I had forgotten that I had put a lid on the bucket of honey and then placed the strainer on top. This happened about a week ago and I did not check to make sure that everything was ready to strain. Now I had a mess to clean up. This has happened only three times in the eight years I have been bottling honey. The first two times was while I was extracting into five gallon buckets. This time was the first time for straining.

I scraped all the loose honey up, then I poured hot water on the floor to help dilute the honey. After waiting for about 30 minutes, I got my shop wet-vac and vacuumed up the water, then I used hot water & soap and started mopping up. It seems that when I have a mess like this one, I manage to spread the sticky stuff everywhere.

Cookie sheets are good items to place your buckets and bottles in when straining and bottling honey. It keeps the over-spills in a contained area, but as you can imagine, cookie sheets didn’t help in this case. There will be times that every cautionary measure that is taken will not be enough for stupidity. Only when one thinks before starting a job, will the spillovers and accidents be held to a minimum.

Experience is a hard teacher. It gives the test first, and the lesson later.