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.
One of the keys to making plants happy is to put them in a place that has plenty of sunshine. As the planting continues, good sunny spots at the Florida Bee Farm are becoming scarce. While thinking about this and a few other upcoming projects I decided to remove all the plants in front of the rain barrels and turn that into a growing area. It's probably one of the most consistent sun spots at the Florida Bee Farm.
The papaya trees and corn plants were moved to add to the green fence around the apiary which has been a recent project. Several flowering bushes and plumaria flowers were then relocated to the Bee Garden which is another ongoing project. And after moving all the plants, I was able to start modifying the rain barrel irrigation plumbing which will undergo some major upgrades very soon. The irrigation system will be beyond amazing.
New growing table
After clearing the area a good size growing table was built and the top was painted. It's a nice solid table which will have a hardware cloth surface for drainage. Mulch and weed cloth was added under the table to keep the weeds at bay. This table will have it's own irrigation zone and should be prime real estate for growing stuff.
Networking with other gardeners is a great way to expand your garden in an economical and educational way. Because spending time with other gardeners can be a good opportunity to learn about plants you haven't worked with in the past.
I met a really good gardener the other day and was lucky to be able to walk through her garden with her while she showed me many interesting varieties of flowering plants. Many plants that bees and butterflies thrive around. I swapped some honey for seeds, plants and cuttings and also learned a lot. I only wish I took the time to take some pictures of her garden because it was beautiful. But I had my hands full, taking notes, juggling plants, cuttings and seeds and labeling baggies. The icing on the cake was she had four chickens that ran around while we discussed gardening. Interesting because I keep thinking that having chickens might be fun.
One of my favorite plants was her exotic balloon milkweed plant. It looked like a milkweed plant with a big ole balloon hanging from it. And the balloon was full of seeds. I planted about 40 seeds so hopefully there will be balloon milkweed in our Honey Bee Flower Garden before long.
Balloon Milkweed
Just about the whole day was spent potting seeds and cuttings. The nursery / Florida Green House was completely full so some of the Purple Cherokee tomatoes got to graduate out of the nursery. Stage II Tomato growing area is also filling up again so it's about time to build some more container plant growing areas.
It was to be a glorious event. Something we were looking forward to for some time now. A treat to tantalize the taste buds .... yes, our first red ripe tomato after months of nurturing the seeds and plants.
The holy grail of gardening
While working in the garden all day I kept glancing over at the red ripe tomato while it basked in the sun. I figured that it could soak up the sun all day and continue to ripen while I worked. And then just before I get in my truck to go home it will be plucked from the vine and become our first tasty home grown tomato.
But as every gardener knows ... victory can be elusive and deceptive. There are many ways to foil success in a garden, especially in Florida. And in this case I was once again foiled and the trophy quickly taken away after discovering a worm hole on the other side of the tomato.
foiled again
I guess it's time to mix up another batch of natural organic anti bug spray for the plants. And manually search through the tomato vines for the fat tomato worm that caused this tragedy.
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.
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.
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.
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.
