Bee Jail and a new Tree "nuc"

One problem with all these bees around is you're bound to occasionally get that over zealous guard bee who makes it her mission to drive you as far away from the hives as possible.  Once they start buzzing you and hitting you, it's just a matter of time before you get stung.  And there's not much you can do to talk her out of it.  I've tried using a spray container of soapy water which somewhat works and is a good way to get soapy water in your eyes when the wind is blowing.  Usually they keep coming though.  So several weeks ago we had visitors to the Bee farm - a couple beekeepers and gardeners.  One of the beekeepers had a really cool method of dealing with guard bees on a mission.  She said she puts them into "bee jail" and explained that she uses a butterfly net to catch the bee and then lays the net on the ground and tells the bee she's in bee jail until she calms down. 

A honey bee serving time in bee jail

So I bought a butterfly net and sure enough one day I had one of those pesky guard bees trying to bully me around my garden.  One swipe of the butterfly net and I caught her and was she mad.  I watched as she did contortions in the net for awhile and I was able to get nice and close to her and explain she needed to check the attitude and calm down.  Then I put the net on the floor of the shed and went about my business.  She was there for an hour or so and calmed right down.  Eventually she was able to get out of the net and fly back to her hive.  At that point I was wondering if she would be out for revenge or maybe she was rehabilitated and back to being a productive honey bee citizen.  And sure enough she learned her lesson and I haven't had an encounter with a guard bee since.  Even while doing some gardening around the hives.  It's a great idea and it actually works !

A few weeks ago I did a bee rescue from a large fallen tree in a local park and ended up keeping the chunk of tree with the entrance to the hive.

Nuc using a natural bee entrance in a tree

Last week it was turned into a nuc and added to the apiary. The piece on top with remnants of comb is covered smooth with propolis and looked too cool to discard. Ought to be interesting to see how the bees like it.

Nuc built into a tree

Cinco de Mayo

The up's and down's of beekeeping

Earlier in the week I was quite elated with all the new bees that had unexpectedly showed up or were rescued.  It was a lot of work but seemed worthwhile.

I spent a day and a half building, caulking and painting new equipment for the bees.  However when I went to install the new hardware, I was greatly disappointed to find the rescued hive I brought into the apiary had vanished !!!!   Completely absconded.   There was a queen and they were mild mannered beautiful bees so it was a sad moment.

Why?   Well first off, it was stressful for the bees to have their home (a tree) crash down and then when I arrived, a chainsaw was used to get to the hive and the bees.  This made a big mess of sawdust that covered all the brood and a great deal of sawdust was vacuumed into the temporary base which was the bee vac base.  And the brood was pretty covered in dirt and dust.  But that was really the only way to get these bees out of the tree.  A trap out wasn't in the cards because the county needed the hive removed before the weekend as it was close to where people walk.

Also .... the nucs with the new swarms were different.  Only one Nuc had some bees remaining and it didn't look like the swarm that was there the other day.  Who knows what happened there.  Oh well, easy come, easy go.  I don't even try to figure it out any more.  They do what they're going to do.

And one of my other hives was queenless and not doing so well so I borrowed some brood from a stronger hive to build it up.  So many queens seem to unexpectedly disappear.

Today I'll put some bee swarm traps out at The Florida Bee Farm and try to re-capture some of these bees.  Maybe we'll get some of them back.

Making a stand, Honeycomb from heaven, and a busy bee month

What a month !  The Florida Bee Farm needed more room to accommodate all the new arrivals (3 swarms caught) and one split so a new stand was built and squeezed into the apiary.  A large Oleander bush and one papaya tree needed to be relocated and the ground needed leveling in the area of the new stand and it turned out nice.  Not as shaded as the other hives but there is some shade.

New hive stand and 2 of the 3 new hives at the Florida Bee Farm

New brood boxes needed painting and stands needed to be finished to work correctly.  Also bought several migratory covers to experiment with instead of the covers I'm currently using which seem to host more pests and ants than I care to deal with.  But I remember a couple old time beekeepers saying that migratory covers are best in Florida and they're probably right.  I'll probably change all my hives to use migratory covers because I'm tired of finding ants, spiders, frogs and lizards under the cover.

The tomatoes have really been getting most of my attention and have been producing quite a few delicious tomatoes.  Between many nice meals with them and multiple canning sessions, they are just about done for the season.  I learned a lot and picked up a few tips for next year when I plant tomatoes again.  This weekend we probably did our last canning of the season.   It's a bit of work but so very satisfying. 

Final tomato canning session of the year

My latest experiment that was started about a month ago is Hops.  I purchased a few starts from a company in Michigan and they're already 5' tall !!!  They're growing like mad.  It will be an interesting experiment and if successful they may be grown on a larger scale next year even though they're not officially a Florida plant since they may need cold to go dormant.

Honeycomb from heaven The Florida Bee Farm

More honeycomb from heaven at The Florida Bee Farm

The other day I was sitting under a tree and got up to do something.  When I came back, a 8" piece of honeycomb with some bees was sitting next to the chair.  Looking up, I couldn't see through the canopy of leaves to determine if any bees were up there.  Next day I walked by and there were two more pieces of fresh beautiful honeycomb on the ground.  Something's going on up in the tree but not sure what and why the comb keeps falling out.  Fresh made comb is quite amazing.  Very light, perfectly formed and just beautiful.

Finally, for the first time I did a split of one of the hives that was getting too large.  Stacking too many boxes on top of each other is too heavy for me to lift up high and it's also not good for the bees unless you add an upper entrance to the hive.  Because you don't want them coming in with their nectar and pollen and having to climb through a couple brood boxes and honey supers to drop off their load.  So I'm keeping my fingers crossed.  Another hive I was in this week may be in trouble as the brood wasn't looking good.  Possibly needs a queen. 

There's been an abundance of fresh vegetables, herbs and fruit on our table this month.  Delicious.  And the extra has been sold at the Indian Rocks Co-Op which has been a great group to work with.  A good place to get organic veggies, plants, and all sorts of things. 

Being there to welcome the new arrivals

There's nothing like being there when the bees swarm. You can feel their excitement and it's such a special moment to be there when they arrive.   The air is filled with thousands of beautiful honey bees flying around and around while their comrades fill the entrance of the hive to check out their new home.  The bees couldn't be any gentler in this state either.

The next morning it looked like there were no bees in the box.  No guards, nothing.  No foragers.  So I thought they were gone.  BUT a few hours later they emerged from the box and are there.

I guess they had a rough swarm and slept in.  I don't know.  Only thing I know for sure is more boxes need to be built and painted.  I'm running out of room at the The Florida Bee Farm.

Latest swarm we caught settling into their new home

Yesterday afternoon a friend called and said there was a swarm in an orange tree a few miles from me.  So I took advantage of that opportunity to re-populate one of my hives that recently disappeared.  The orange tree was full of fragrant blossoms which made it particularly pleasant.

Fortunately I was able to get these really nice honey bees between rainstorms. 

While sizing up the situation and figuring out how I was going to get the bees out of the tree, the homeowner and a bunch of his neighbors gathered to watch.  The only problem was when the homeowner walked up to me and smacked at a bee that was on my shoulder.  I told him that was the worst thing he could do.  The bees don't land on you to sting you ... well at least not unless provoked.  But I was able to educate them somewhat about bees and thanked the group for calling someone to remove the bees instead of calling an exterminator who would just kill all of them. 

I'm hoping they like their new home at The Florida Bee Farm. 

Bye bye bees : (

Over two weeks ago I ordered some needed equipment from Mann Lake Beekeeper supply and they still haven't shipped !  This is their busy season and it looks like I'll have to wait.  But unfortunately what I was waiting for would have prevented the loss of many thousands of bees from the largest hive I had.  I was going to split the hive but looks like the bees did it for me.

Yesterday when I was getting ready to leave the Florida Bee Farm, I went over to check on the bees.  And it was an amazing site.  My busiest hive emptied out and zillions of bees were flying around in front of the hive.  It was loud too.  From about 20 feet away you could hear all the buzzing and excitement coming from the hive.  This time of year large honey bee hives make extra queens to facilitate splitting the hive.  Sometimes multiple groups will fly off to form their own colony's.  As a beekeeper, you try to prevent this by doing a split for the hive.  But in this case I was too late and off they went. 

I can't help thinking that the bees were excited to head out and move into their new home wherever it is.  It's nature and you just have to go with it.  The video I took with my phone didn't capture the big ball of bees in the tree very well but you can kind of make them out.

Double rain barrel capacity and pests in the compost pile

The Florida Bee Farm has about 8 watering zones and each takes a good amount of water.  Up until now, our 275 gallon rain barrel system would run dry after only a couple runs. Plus the water recovery intake (the system that takes the rain from the gutters into the barrels) would lose water during heavy rain because it was undersized.  Not a problem on one of those days where it rains all day but quick heavy downpours would lose a high percentage of water.

New rainbarrel container (left) and new water intake system (top)

So this week the rain barrel system was revamped and water capacity increased to over 500 gallons.  Friends of our son were moving and had a giant bait tank container ... around 250 gallons I believe, that they needed to get rid of.  So it didn't cost us a penny.  All it needed was a coat of dark paint to keep algae from forming inside the tank.   This should supply enough water for most of the Bee Farm's needs.  While modifying the plumbing to accommodate the large tank I decided to completely redo the water intake system so it would branch out and feed into two tanks instead of one to accommodate heavy rainstorms. All the tanks are linked so this will be much more efficient. 

freshly planted seeds

It was graduation week for a lot of the little seedlings in the nursery and a new class of future seedlings was added to the greenhouse.  It's fun to keep adding plants to the Bee Farm and experiment with different seeds.  I get some of our seeds from the Safety Harbor library which has a free seed program.

In other news, don't wander too close to the compost pile. (click play below)

pests in the compost pile

Blueberries and Bees

Lately there's plenty of activity at The Florida Bee Farm around the blueberry plants.  And there's many different types of bees buzzing around the blueberry flowers.  Bumble bees, carpenter bees, honey bees from our apiary and a couple bee types I wasn't sure of.  While watching a large Carpenter bee on a bud I noticed a couple smaller bees buzzing the Carpenter bee and even bumping into it a few times.  There was plenty of blueberries to go around so not sure what the bee anger was all about. 

Some of the smaller blueberry plants even have unripe blueberries already.  It looks like we'll have a nice harvest of blueberries this year with over 20 mature plants.

Carpenter bee enjoying the blueberry buds

Blueberries formation

Radish's potatoes, mint and Elvis

Nothing says romance like Elvis impersonators at the State Fair

Being the sentimental guy that I am, our romantic valentines day celebration consisted of going to the State Fair and seeing the Elvis impersonators and Budweiser Clydesdale's.  Top that valentine.  The State Fair had many agricultural and 4H club displays.  At one display, the kids were giving away little plastic bags with cotton balls with some radish seeds.  Since my wife likes radish's, she gladly accepted one and gave them to me to plant.  That was several weeks ago.

sprouting radishes

radishes new home

So today while rummaging around the shed looking for something I noticed the little bag with the cotton ball.  Somehow it accumulated a few drops of moisture in the little bag and the radish seeds were starting to grow inside the bag.  So the cotton ball was removed from the bag and all the little seedlings were separated from the cotton and planted.

newly planted potatoes

Another new addition to the Florida Bee Farm and a long shot in my mind are potatoes.  I was recently at a Farmers market and talking to a guy selling organic potatoes.  He happened to have a few potatoes that were starting to sprout that he had under the display because he didn't think any customers would want them.  He gave them to me for purchasing a pound of good organic potatoes.  That worked out perfect because you need organic potatoes for planting because the ones in the supermarkets are sprayed with an anti-sprouting spray to keep the potatoes from sprouting eyes.   Another reason for eating organic.

The potatoes had quite a few eyes already sprouting on them so they were cut into many pieces that all had an eye.  And then placed in large pots with a small amount of dirt on top.  As the plants grow you're supposed to keep mounding dirt on top.  I've heard only a few varieties grow in Florida so this may or may not take as the guy at the Farmers market had no idea what type of potatoes they were.  Since I'm the lucky guy it's worth a try.

relocated sweet mint

While reading some gardening tips today, I noticed people discussing growing mint.  The consensus was that you should put mint in a shady location with plenty of water.  My mint was not doing well in a sunny area so our barely surviving mint plants were transplanted into pots and put into a shady spot after a heavy watering.  Must have mint for Mojitos.

Morning pictures

Since it's been much too busy to post a blog post lately I snapped several pictures around the Florida Bee Farm gardens this morning. 

Tomatoes

pineapples and blueberries

Newest growing area

The nursery with all the baby plants

Moringa, Fennel, strawberries, bananas, and sugar cane

Honey Bee Garden

Honey Bee Garden

Spoiled honey bees with shaded luxury suites in the apiary

Banyan tree

Everything's growing like crazy

Florida Green house

Irrigation barrels and compost tea

Bernard the watch lion

Retired battle droid contemplating life after the clone wars

eggplant

broccoli

Honey Bee and Gardening Talk with the Boy Scouts

My nephew Joey who is also a passionate gardener, arranged an event with his Boy Scout troop to visit the Florida Bee Farm for an educational tour and talk about Honey Bees and Gardening.  Joey and I planned the presentation so we would both talk about different aspects of Honey Bees and Gardening.  Joey was pretty knowledgeable about gardening and already knew quite a bit about Honey Bees from coming out to the Bee Farm with me.  I gave him a few "homework assignments" on topics he wasn't familiar with so he could also learn something and also pass it along and teach the other scouts.  Joey is a good teacher and mentor to the younger scouts. 

Visitors to the Florida Bee Farm

Talking about Honey Bees and langstrom Hives

While touring the gardens, one of the scouts was excited when he saw large eggplants hanging from the eggplant plant.  He said how it was one of his favorite things and how he loved eggplant so I broke a large one off and gave it to him.  He said he was going to ask his mom to fry it up as soon as he got home.

The morning was pretty overcast and cool so when we got around to seeing the bees, there were only a few brave bees out flying in the cool weather.  And a couple of shivering guard bees hanging out by the entrances.  The kids and adults were looking forward to seeing the bees so I was disappointed that the weather wasn't warmer so they could experience seeing zillions of bees zipping in and out of their hives along the bee superhighways in our yard.

A great group of scouts showed up

Honey tasting time

In charge of honey tasting

Just around this time it started sprinkling and then turned into a steady rain.  Between the shed overhang areas and the covered greenhouse there was plenty of space for everyone to hang out and stay dry.  The highlight of the day however was the honey tasting.  Several of the scouts were given a container of honey and a bag of plastic spoons to distribute to everyone for tasting.  They were able to taste all the honey they wanted and it was quite obvious that the honey was quite popular.   

All in all it was a very pleasant experience meeting some nice kids and parents and sharing the Florida Bee Farm. 

Pineapples, Peanuts and Paul

The projects are never ending at the Bee Farm which keeps me busy.  This weekend it was transplanting flowers and trees from the front of the shed area to the Bee Garden and the area around where the Honey Bees Live.  To make a green fence around them to define their space.  Kind of a separation between the garden and bee space.  Gives the apiary a more natural look.

Pineapple emerging

Yesterday while talking with a fellow gardener, she noticed that one of my pineapples was growing a baby pineapple.   Something I hadn't noticed.  After looking at all the pineapple plants I noticed several new pineapples. Also while looking at the pineapples I pulled what I thought was a weed from one of the pineapple plants.  Low and behold there was a peanut shell surrounding the root of what I thought was a weed.  These pineapple plants were in my front yard in an area where I would feed the squirrels and blue jays peanuts.  Apparently one of the squirrels hid one of his peanuts by the pineapple plant which was later dug up and brought out to the Bee Farm.

Today, the peanut plant was replanted into it's own pot and now we can try to grow peanuts on the bee farm.

Peanut plant buried several years ago by squirrels

The other major project that has taken so much time this weekend is the Honey Bee Garden.  It quickly gets overgrown and is difficult to maintain because I'm often not sure what is weed and what may be flowers coming up from seed.  Many hours were spent weeding and planting some daffodils and other flowers I purchased.  The goal is to spruce up the Bee Garden and make it a memorial in memory of our son Paul.  When I mentioned it to our other son, he thought it was a good idea and added "maybe we should throw a half dozen empty mountain dew cans in the garden for realism which was funny with our brand of humor .... and I'm pretty sure Paul thought it funny also.

Honey Bee Garden a work in progress

I posted in a local plant and seed swap facebook page that we would trade honey for flowers to build up the honey bee garden area.  And we already had someone come out with some passion fruit vines and had a couple other offers. 

Bottling Honey

Another batch of honey is bottled and ready for sale.  If you or anyone you know needs natural pure local honey call the number found on the main page of FloridaBeeFarm.com 

Or even better, if you have suggestions how or where to sell honey that would be appreciated.   

Wild honey bee party at the Florida Bee Farm

After doing honey extraction, you're left with a pile of sticky frames and a couple large plastic containers with a good amount of wax and honey that's dripped off the frames.  The best way to clean this mess up is to let the honey bees do it.  And let me tell you, they enjoy this work immensely.

Three minutes after laying out the frames there were 40-50 bees buzzing around as their sense of smell is so acute.  After ten minutes there were thousands of honey bees having one heck of a good time cleaning up the frames and containers.  It was nuts is the only way to describe it.

This happened all day long.  I also noticed that the gardens were loaded with honey bees busy as can bee.  Some were even on my tomato plants and it looked like they were chewing on the leaves or ??? I really don't know what they were doing.  They were in the soil of the pots and gathering wood fiber for propolis.  They were just everywhere which makes the Bee Farm so much fun to just hang out and observe nature at it's finest.  Today was especially relaxing and enjoyable.

However ......  the next day was like coming into a college dorm after a wild party.  The cloud of bees around the frames were significantly more active and the feeding frenzy escalated.  As I walked toward the frames on the long platform, a few bees buzzed my face and seemed a tad too defensive for what I felt like dealing with today.   Kind of like they had hangovers from a tough day of honey cleanup. 

So I'll wake up early tomorrow and put away the frames while the bees are still snug in their hive.  Before the sun comes out and it warms up.   The frames should be pretty clean by then anyway.

Honey extraction and uncapping experiments

After the swarming activity this week, it was time to pull some honey from the hives.  I believe the bees were becoming concerned with the packed honey supers and felt they needed more space ... thus the swarming.  The solution is to pull some honey and put empty frames in the hive giving them room to expand without having to move to new digs.

I really should have done this in November but there were too many things on the "to do list" and before I knew it, 2016 had arrived.  But I don't feel it matters with the weather we've been having as long as you leave the bees plenty of honey which I did.  The downside of pulling the honey this week was it caused a bit of a robbing frenzy among the hives.  It turns into a big free for all among the bees with all the honey smell in the air and it gets kind of crazy.  No big deal as they calm down a few hours after you button things back up.  I try to pull the frames as quickly and efficiently as possible to minimize the stress of the bees.

Also while in the hives I removed all the "penthouse" covers and replaced them with more traditional screened inner hive covers until I can transition to migratory covers.  The extra ventilation idea just wasn't as beneficial to the bees as expected.  Especially since they would seal up the ventilation screens with propolis.

Poolside honey extraction with Maxant motorized extractor

After pulling the frames, we brought them home to uncap and extract.  This time we tried a different uncapping method (unsuccessful) using an uncapping roller which just made a bigger mess, more work, and mutilated comb.  The frames that were uncapped with the roller needed to be extracted several times to get all the honey.  A real pain.  So finally we went back to uncapping with a bread knife which is also a pretty sad tool to uncap with.  Next time we will have a hot uncapping knife like most beekeepers use.  Another good lesson.

The extraction went well and we ended up with a nice amount of delicious honey.  The flavor is amazing.

Ventilated hive covers experiment over

Since it gets so darned hot in the summer around here a couple beekeepers I know and I came up with a different type of cover that protects the bees from hive beetles and wax moths while still allowing a good amount of ventilation into the hives.

What these covers consist of is basically a finely screened inner hive cover with a couple inch space and lots of ventilation holes.  This is then covered with a standard hive cover.  While this may have worked, I don't think the bees really appreciated the ventilation as they pretty much sealed the screening with their thick gluey propolis which negates the ventilation aspect.

Now the downside of these little ventilated chambers is they also act as a penthouse suite for all sorts of critters.  There have been black widow spiders in the past, lizards, and yesterday one penthouse suite contained three FROGS !!!.  In another penthouse suite I found many white eggs?? from god knows what.  I posted the picture on a very large beekeeper facebook group and received dozens of replies (guesses) but one person in the pacific  northwest was pretty sure they were wax moth cocoons.  Most people thought they were lizard eggs which is a possibility since I've found lizards up there also.  But the eggs seemed to be the wrong shape for lizard eggs and they were too small.  A couple people even guessed tic tacs : )  I wasn't about to taste one and find out.

mystery eggs in the ventilated hive cover

The next Florida Bee Farm project may be changing out the hive covers to more of a migratory hive cover or a hybrid inner cover with standard outer cover.  Will have to think about this some more.

New Moose, New Shed, New Year

New Moose

New roof for the shed

Something that was a big priority and needed to be done was a rebuild of the shed.  The metal panels that were used for the roof had just too many holes and places for water to seep in.  After trying numerous times to patch the leaks my son Jeff and I completely rebuilt the roof.  Not only did we replace the metal with plywood and shingles, we raised the roof a couple of feet to provide a better angle for the water to run off.

One of the benefits I didn't foresee was how much this would positively impact the storage space inside the shed.  Now the extra bee equipment and spare hives are easily accessible and in a nice dry place.  I also added windows for more natural lighting inside the shed.

New Shed for the Bee Farm

Finally during the long new year weekend Yvonne and I decided to bring our Moose (Bob) out to the Beefarm and let him watch over the vegetable gardens.   Bob was temporarily needing a new spot and the Beefarm was needing a moose so it worked out nicely.

Moose and new Window

We also had some cool looking lexan designer pieces that were leftover from a job site and we plucked from the trash.  They were perfect as a unique molding to surround the new window on the shed that my neighbor gave me.  And one last benefit of the shed rebuild is the better mounting and angle of the solar panel array.  We have more power than we'll probably ever need.

better angle and mounting of solar panel array

Garden is going strong and even though my hard lessons keep on coming, Yvonne and I actually shared (one) delicious strawberry this week.  We also had fresh green beans and eggplant which were also delicious.  Tomatoes should be turning red in the next week or so.

Garden