The Florida Bee Farm" is a mini eco-farm located in Clearwater Florida and completely solar powered. Our eleven hives of pampered (spoiled) honey bees produce delicious local honey. We utilize organic growing methods with naturally made compost and tonics to repel pests. Irrigation system fed by a rain barrel collection system powered by solar electric.
Last week I took an incredible road trip to visit Debra from Mrs. Chippy's plant world and edible landscape design in St. Petersburg. She had a large diverse collection of beautiful tropical edible plants throughout her entire property. No wonder, she's a master gardener and practices natural organic permaculture gardening principles. This tropical paradise was loaded with honey bees feasting on all her flowering plants. The bee in the sunflower image below was completely covered in pollen. I wish I had a better camera to show the mess she was making.
honey bee completely covered with pollen
Debra sells red wriggler worms and was able to set me up with a nice worm casting / compost system. With this system the worms will make super food for your plants and provide a powerful compost that makes the best compost tea. Plus the worms multiply. More worms = more compost.
Getting up close and personal with my compost
I had purchased her worms through the Indian Rocks co-op but incorrectly placed them into my compost pile which I later found out was a very bad idea. Thinking it through, I quickly realized the mistake and dumped my two compost bins and manually went through all the compost looking for worms. Since it was the next day, three hours of sifting only yielded about 20 worms or so. They blend in so well. Debra was a great help and quickly set me on the right track to raising worms correctly.
In addition to learning about many exotic plants I traded honey for plenty of cuttings and plants to bring back to The Florida Bee Farm. It was a blast learning from an expert. Here's a few pictures of Mrs. Chippy's plant world.
Earlier this week I was in the Miami area on my way to do some kayak sailing and camping in the Everglades National Park. Part of the trip involved driving through a predominately agricultural area with plenty of bee hives set up throughout the fields. Something I probably wouldn't have noticed before getting into beekeeping.
The trip was originally supposed to be 5 days but some very bad weather came through at the last minute and we postponed the trip 2 days. Because who wants to sail in thunderstorms and 50 mph gusts. Especially when your boat has a 16' lightning rod. There were two groups of us and the plan was to meet in the middle and then sail back to Flamingo together. After the bad weather, everyone in my group cancelled except one guy who had to cancel the day we were leaving because he was feeling quite sick. So I ended up going myself to meet up with the other group.
The seas were quite challenging but well worth it being able to enjoy the beauty of the everglades park. Very remote with almost no people around. Headwinds prevented me from getting to my preferred destination on day one so I camped on mid-cape with a beautiful full moon. Only concern I had was a strong tide might come up and encroach on the campsite so I made sure to tie the boat to a tree just in case and was prepared to move the tent in the night if that happened. Fortunately the tide was no big deal.
Fellow sailor Martin going through gear
Day two I met up with the other group and hung out. A great group of guys and a gal. A perfect day. Our camping companion was a Pelican that walked among us and hung out between our boats. Completely unafraid of us and not a beggar either. At one point I got down eye level with him (or her) and had what I thought was an intelligent conversation (one sided). The pelican even took a nap at our campsite for awhile but finally flew off a few hours later. The pelican was the high point of the trip for me.
My Hobie Adventure Island boat
Another time I was sitting having lunch when I looked down at the water and saw a large shark cruising only about 3 feet offshore in pretty shallow water. Really cool. Someone thought it was a bull shark.
Another honey bee related coincidence was one of the guys on the trip was passionate about making his own Meade which is an alcoholic beverage made from honey. I've never had Meade before but may end up doing a honey / Meade swap with him. Could even save me from having to set up a stand somewhere to sell the honey I have.
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.
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.
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.
A combination of crazy weather and busy bees found me scrambling to make new homes for two swarms that left my hives. One went into a nearby Nuc and one was swaying in a palm tree. This was partially my fault as the hives were at capacity and the bees were expanding so fast they had to branch out.
This isn't a bad thing as I now have two more hives (be careful what you wish for) and the amount of honey I'm harvesting (in January) is quite large. But the bees will all have plenty of honey to hold them over until official spring. As busy as they are now and all the flowering going on, they'll probably continue to be fairly active.
Craigslist has all sorts of interesting things for sale or for free. This week we drove out to Lithia to get as many mature blueberry plants as we could fit in my truck and trailer. They were in 25 gallon pots that weighed about 75 lbs each which meant we could only fit 18 in one trip. And it's a good thing because the spot we had picked out for the blueberries exactly fit 18 plants. Their Blueberry farm had several thousand plants at one time but they were ready for a change in life and were selling the property and getting out of the blueberry business.
Blueberry farm
Blueberry plants take several years before they produce optimum amounts of fruit. The 3 small plants I purchased last year only produced a few berries last season so it will be nice to have a good harvest of blueberries this year. We eat several cups of blueberries almost every day. Blueberries also need bees for pollination which makes having these at The Bee Farm so convenient. Another synergistic benefit of having blueberry plants is the effect on the flavor of our honey. Blueberry pollen makes absolutely delicious honey !
Ready to unload the Blueberry plants
Blueberry plants in their new home
The plants were placed on weed cloth in a corner of the yard where there's plenty of sun. They were also added to the irrigation system to automatically be watered every day. However it's important you don't over water them so a controlled drip system was employed.
The Bee Farm is like a full time job for me. One that I get a great deal of satisfaction from. The to do lists are never ending and a lot of triage goes into the mix to determine which tasks get priority. And of course my attention deficit disorder (ADD) is always kicking in throughout the day to pick off other less important tasks. Oh and this will be my official excuse why I haven't blogged much lately. The ole too busy excuse. Hopefully there will be more time in the future for blogging because it's enjoyable going back in time to see how things progressed.
So the other day when I went out in the late afternoon to get a few things done at the Bee Farm. Then, I found a nice spot in the shade back by the butterfly and bee garden and just relaxed. Taking in the butterflies and bees of all types enjoying the garden flowers. Very relaxing, almost like meditation when your mind is calm and focused on the flowers, butterflies and bees. And then the most delicious smell in the world started wafting my way. The fragrance of wild honey / nectar from the hives. It's my favorite fragrance of all and it's hard to describe. It's heavenly. With a slight breeze blowing every so often that wonderful fragrance would put a smile on my face. So very grateful for all of it. Living life in gratitude is one of the best ways to achieve happiness and internal peace. It's so easy yet so many people struggle to find it.
Here are the views from where I took in the Bee Farm in this moment.
View in front of me
View to the left
View to my right
To top it all off, the morning was spent walking the beaches of the Gulf of Mexico and swimming with my beautiful wife. Talk about a perfect day. Just one of many reasons I often refer to myself as the "lucky guy".
Since the rain won't stop, it was time to bottle the honey from last weeks bee removal of Africanized Honey Bees. It's recommended to leave the honey to settle for several days to remove the air bubbles. We use quite a bit of honey in our diet and this came at the perfect time as we were running low. The flavor of this honey is out of this world. Absolutely delicious.
Delicious honey
Oh and one thing I forgot to mention about the removal last week. A few days later at the beekeepers meeting I was talking with the lady (Marti) in the bee removal video, and she told me that when she went to bed that night whenever she closed her eyes she saw bees swarming around her and it took her a long time to get to sleep. It's funny she mentioned that because I had almost the same thing happen to me. When I went to bed that night I told my wife I kept seeing bees relentlessly swarming around me when I closed my eyes. It was so strange but unlike Marti I was (thankfully) able to conk out in no time.
An unexpected benefit of beekeeping is that occasional smell of honey from the hive. A little puff of wind or slight breeze is all it takes and if you're lucky enough to be downwind, you're in for a treat. They are bringing in the nectar now and filling up comb.
Today I went to a friends who also has a couple beehives. His wife and him manage the hives together and so I was able to be there when they opened up the hives this weekend. There was a lot of anticipation because when they split the hives a few weeks ago, the one queen died. So they had to wait while the bees created a new queen from existing brood. And they were pleasantly surprised that both boxes had a fresh young queen. Unfortunately the boxes had way too many hive beetles. We manually killed at least 20 of them. Maybe more.
I still need to get the new home ready for the last swarm. Maybe tomorrow.
I'm kind of skipping over a lot of projects lately so there's a few things missing in the blog. It's been quite busy.
2nd attempt at a successful swarm trap
First thing is I'm reading a fascinating book called "Honeybee Democracy by Thomas Seeley. It is based on research by some of the top bee scientists / animal behaviorists that describe how the honey bees make collective decisions and how they communicate. It completely leaves you in awe. One chapter talked about all the experiments that were done to determine how bees choose their homes when they swarm. After reading this chapter I made several modifications to the swarm trap in front of our home and moved it up into a tree as well as changed the direction it was facing and made it more desirable to honey bees. Now we'll see how this works out. Only down side is if I catch a swarm I'll have to retrieve it with a ladder which will be a bit tricky.
Today we planted seeds in our miniature greenhouses we made from items bought at the dollar store. My earlier attempts at planting seeds were not thought out and researched as carefully as I should have. This time the seedlings will have a better chance. However it looks like we're running a takeout restaurant with these containers lined up on top of the rain barrels. The seeds will be more protected and controlled in that humidity and water delivery will be accurate. Not quite sure if I want to put them in direct sun as it may cook the seeds. Still working out a few details.
milkweed
milkweed (on the right)
Not long ago I was at a friends home who had raised beds with flowers that attracted monarch butterflies. There were butterflies everywhere so I inquired what type of plants they were. They were milkweed and the more I researched milkweed the more intrigued I became with this plant which is not easily obtained. But thanks to the internet, a dozen plants were located not far from where we live. Milkweed is also loved by honey bees and supposedly makes top grade honey which will be another benefit.
The raised beds are as healthy as can be and the plants are growing like mad. I cooked up a 55 gallon barrel of delicious compost tea for the plants and spent the other day going all around the yard feeding plants. A giant tea bag was made from a paint strainer bag and it was loaded up with compost and some rock dust. After dipping and hanging in the barrel, an aerator was added to keep the tea oxygenated. I used an electric pump to fill the barrel with rainwater from the rain barrel setup. The resulting bacteria in the compost tea needs a couple ounces of molasses a day for food. In the near future the plan is to hook the compost barrel up to a garden hose with a pump so it can be easily applied anywhere using a garden hose.
Tomorrow it's time to inspect the hives and see what's going on in there. Should be an interesting (and beautiful) day.
Monday Yvonne and I volunteered to help the Florida State Beekeepers association in manning their booth at the State Fair. Even though we're pretty new at this, it was a good opportunity to meet some experienced beekeepers and some nice people. We met several beekeepers who at one time had over 1000 hives. They all said it's not what it used to be with all the beatles, mites, foul brood disease and the disappearing bees (colony collapse disorder)
In addition to giving out samples of honey and selling honey, there were plenty of people to talk with throughout the day. Especially since it turned into one of those days where it rained all day which made the exhibits in the buildings even more enticing to fair goers.
Our booth had a display of live bees in a glass case. But what was real funny was the lone bee on the outside who wanted to get in with all the other bees. This bee must have flown into the building and found the hive because she stayed under the hive in a little space most of the day. A couple times she came out and scared some people tasting honey and I'll admit it was amusing to see people jump when a real bee came out from under the hive.
We worked for 7 hours and then planned on walking the fair and seeing other exhibits. It was a good thing we had our umbrellas because it was really coming down. Not many people walking in the rain and a lot of unhappy vendors outside trying to sell their crazy food which seems to dominate the State Fair. More junk food than anything else. But that must be why everyone goes to the fair. For some of that delicious pig butt on a stick. Make mine the soy version thank you.
