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.

Frames to construct

Last night the UPS guy showed up with 100 unassembled frames and 100 sheets of plastic waxed foundation.  Once I get some of the frames assembled, the two swarm lures I built can be baited and set outside.

Foundation (in the box) and some of the frame parts

The only challenge with making 100 frames (or at least half of them) is all the time required to glue, nail and square them up.  To do them individually would be a daunting task.  So off to my beloved youtube to see what types of jigs people have made to assemble their frames.

I finally settled on several different designs and modified them to use some of the scrap lumber I had laying around.  The end result worked wonderful and I was able to crank out the frames in no time.  Some of the designs I saw were for adjustable frame jigs that could be used for deep, medium or shallow supers.  Instead of an adjustable jib, I just made a little platform for it when making the deeps.  Mediums and shallows will work by just removing the platform.

Frame jig loaded with side pieces

After placing a half dozen frames and foundations in the traps/lures, some old brood honeycomb was added as well as a cottonball with several drops of lemon grass oil AND some bee pheromone bait was added (found on EBAY).  One swarm lure was placed in front of our home where bees seem to love it and the other was placed on our bee farm up against some palms.  It will be fun to see if we can attract a swarm.  We attended the Pinellas Beekeepers group last night and the consensus was the swarming may be starting earlier this year as their bees have been quite active already.  Attending the Pinellas beekeeper group was a great experience.  Very laid back group with some cool personalities.  The wife and I both enjoyed talking with everyone there.