Interested in being a vendor or part of the entertainment? Email: alma@sarasotahoney.com to receive vendor/entertainment packet. Sarasota Honey Company’s The 1st Annual Honey Bee Festival A Total Success!!! The Lab Has BEEN FUNDED!!!! Thank you to all that attended this fun event, see you March 18th for our 2nd Annual Honey Bee Festival! In partnership with Sweetgrass Farms Benefiting the creation of the Florida Honey Bee Research Lab to Save the Bees Overflow Parking will be located at the Medical Plaza at 8451 Shade Ave, Sarasota off of the north side of University Pwy. We will be providing a bus to transport people to the festival. Cost for bus ride is $1.00 per person. Saturday, March
Apply pesticides in the evening Many pesticides are extremely toxic to honey bees and other beneficial insects. Honey bees are attracted to blooming flowers of all types. If at all possible do not spray blooms directly with pesticides. If the bloom needs to be sprayed, apply the pesticides in the evening hours. Honey bees forage during daylight hours when the temperatures are above 55-60°F. As the sun begins to set, they return to their hives for the evening. Thus, spraying pesticides in the evening hours can greatly reduce honey bee mortality because the bees are not in the fields. Choose the appropriate formulation The appropriate choice of formulation is another way to avoid honey bee pes
Pesticides are substances used to eliminate unwanted pests. Insecticides rid us of unwanted insects. Unfortunately, honey bees are insects and are greatly affected by insecticides. There are several ways honey bees can be killed by insecticides. One is direct contact of the insecticide on the bee while it is foraging in the field. The bee immediately dies and does not return to the hive. In this case the queen, brood and nurse bees are not contaminated and the colony survives. The second more deadly way is when the bee comes in contact with an insecticide and transports it back to the colony, either as contaminated pollen or nectar or on its body. The main symptom of honey bee pesticide kill
Yes, they make your lawn look pristine and pretty, but they’re actually doing the opposite to the life in your biosphere. The chemicals and pest treatments you put on your lawn and garden can cause damange to the honeybees systems. These treatments are especially damaging if applied while the flowers are in bloom as they will get into the pollen and nectar and be taken back to the bee hive where they also get into the honey—which in turn means they can get into us. Pesticides, specifically neo-nicotinoid varieties have been one of the major culprits in Colony Collapse Disorder.
Contrary to popular belief, a lawn full of clover and dandelions is not just a good thing—it’s a great thing! A haven for honeybees (and other native pollinators too). Don’t be so nervous about letting your lawn live a little. Wildflowers, many of which we might classify as weeds, are some of the most important food sources for native North American bees. If some of these are “weeds” you chose to get rid of (say you want to pull out that blackberry bush that’s taking over), let it bloom first for the bees and then before it goes to seed, pull it out or trim it back!
Gardeners can help counter the decline in pollinator populations As an avid gardener, I’m fortunate to have Russell Devino as a neighbor. Russell is one of the Vermont’s top beekeepers, and though he has his own apple orchard and garden, I know his bees consider my garden their real home. Summer mornings my yard is humming with activity. The poppies are bent low under the weight of the bees that crowd every blossom. Bees blanket the thyme and oregano. My “lawn”, which has more white clover and dandelions than grass, has to be traversed with care. And when the asparagus fronds are in bloom, they vibrate with bees. Honeybees are abundant in my garden, and I thank Russell for that. But I know f
Spring and Summer Bulbs Purple flowering onions (Allium spp.) Golden crocus (Crocus x luteus) Bishop Series dahlias* (Dahlia) Winter aconite (Eranthis hyemalis) Grape hyacinth (Muscari armeniacum) Siberian squill (Scilla sibirica) Perennials and Biennials Anise hyssop (Agastache foeniculum) Butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa) Lesser calamint (Calamintha nepeta) Cornflowers (Centaurea spp.) Gas plant (Dictamnus albus) Purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) Globe thistles (Echinops spp.) Fireweed (Epilobium angustifolium) Blanketflowers (Gaillardia spp.) Cranesbills (Geranium spp.) Fall sedums (Hylotelephiumtelephium) Knautia (Knautia macedonica) Forget-me-not (Myosotis sylvatica) Russian
Bees are losing habitat all around the world due to intensive monoculture-based farming practices (large farms of one crop), pristine green (but flower-barren) sprawling suburban lawns and from the destruction of native landscapes. Just planting flowers in your garden, yard, or in a planter will help provide bees with forage. Avoid chemically treating your flowers as chemicals can leach into pollen and negatively affect the bees systems. Plant plenty of the same type of bloom together, bees like volume of forage (a sq. yard is a good estimate). Here are a few examples of good plant varieties: Spring – lilacs, penstemon, lavender, sage, verbena, and wisteria. Summer – Mint, cosmos, squash, to
We should help save honey bees because while grains do not require honey bees to flourish, virtually all of our non-grain foods are dependent on honey bee pollination to a large degree. Worldwide, there are 90 different food plants that depend almost exclusively on the honey bee. In the USA honey bees are considered critical pollinators of many fruits, nuts and vegetables. Many of the animals we eat are also depended on the food bees pollinate. Your own diet will be changed dramatically if we lose our honey bees.
Colonies that have been exposed to pesticides may recover if proper steps are taken. If a colony has lost a majority of its field force but has plenty of honey and pollen it will usually recover without any help from the beekeeper. If brood and nurse bees continue dying, the pesticide is present in the hive, probably in the pollen supplies. The colony will continue to die as long as the poison remains in the hive. In these cases the combs must be cleaned or removed. Soak the combs in water for 24 hours. Then wash the pollen from the cells and allow the combs to dry. Another method is to remove the wax comb and replace it with new foundation. To help colonies recover from bee poisoning, feed
Our nucs are made from overwintered survivor stock, includes 5 fully clean drawn combs with a proven quality queen, brood in all stages, honey and pollen.Cost: Our nuc are available April to mid fall and sale for $125.00 with a $10 deposit fee per box to be refunded or can be used towards bee supplies when the nuc box is returned to us in good condition. Depending on your location for additional minimal fee we can deliver the nuc to your location, assist with determining the best location for the hive, install the nuc into your equipment, and give you a quick overview on hive inspection.
A Nuc (mini-hive) is the best and more secure way to start hive because your colony will be off to a much better start than a colony started from packaged bees. A nuc is incentually a small working hive, where as a package bees are a box with bees with a queen. When buying package bees you have to supply the bees with their new home. You may run the risk of the bees rejecting the new home provided and take off else where. Nucs come with frames filled with brood, honey and pollen provided by the queen and bees of the nuc. The frames are well covered with enough bees to keep the brood warm and to take care of the small hive. A healthy, young, laying queen is also included with the nuc. A nuc w
What is a “Trap-Out”? The trap-out works by allowing the bees out of wherever they’ve chosen to nest, but not allowing them to get back. A wire cone is placed over the entrance so they can crawl along it and out of the open end. At the end of the cone we place a mini hive box with baby bees. The bees wiil be able fly off to forage from the original hive and when they return they will not understand why they cannot re-enter. As night approaches, bees will all go inside the new hive. If they had only been in the tree for a few days, the process maybe done within 3 or 4 days. Unfortunately if has been almost two weeks or more, the bees may have built comb and the queen has probably started lay
Varroa mites are external, parasites of worker (female) and drone (male)honey bees. Varroa mites are visible to the naked eye and look somewhat like a tick. They feed on the blood of adult bees and the developing brood (baby bees). The reproduction cycle of the mite takes place inside the cells. Female mites enter the brood cells of last larvae stage just prior to the cells being capped. There she will deposit five to six eggs over a period of time while feeding on the brood.The eggs hatch and the young mites begin to feed on the developing pupa. Symptoms of Varroa mite damage can be evident on newly-emerged bees which is due to the mite feeding on the immatures within the cell. The newly-em
Welcome to the world of beekeeping! Sarasota Honey Company is proud to support the beekeeping community of the Florida Suncoast! We provide all the beekeeping supplies and equipment to meet the needs of the hobbyist to the commercial beekeeper. Our wide range of products are specifically for beekeeping in the Southeast United States climate. We understand the frustration a new beekeeper may have in deciding what equipment to purchase. We only carry products that have proven to be most successful in our own beeyards. If you have any questions Sarasota Honey Company has friendly and knowledgeable staff waiting to help you. Phone orders are welcome. Please email: alma@sarasotahoney.com for our
“ “Planting for Bees from Backyards and Up” by Jessica Swenson The honey bees are dying off at an alarming rate. Over 100 United States crops rely on the honeybee pollination to grow and survive. The honey bees are slowly losing their natural environment, which is drastically causing the species to die. With our help, they can strengthen in numbers. We must re-create their habitats by making our neighborhoods and homes more bee friendly. It is common knowledge that bees collect nectar and pollen from plants for food and then make honey from the nectar. However what few are aware of is pollen is their sole protein source that is critical for the survival of their young. In addition, one of th
What Causes Honey Bees to Swarm? When warm weather and plentiful supplies of flowers and pollen such as our citrus flower blooms in Florida stimulate the queen to lay more eggs. The resulting large numbers of young bees causes overcrowding in the hive, impeding both the queen’s desire to lay eggs and the worker bees’ ability to add more nectar and pollen. Due to these circumstances the colony will start to raise a princess to prepare to swarm. At the right time the queen and 1/2 of bees will leave the colony (swarm) leaving the remaining colony for the princess to reign. The queen and about half the colony will swirl from their hive and group together in a holding pattern on a tree branch, m
Sarasota Honey Company has Proven Florida raised Italian VSH Queens ready for spring honey flow! They are selected from the best bee hives based on their honey production, personality, hygienic behavior and brood patterns. To ensure the best queens are sent to our customers, our queens are not sold until they have capped brood and have a good laying pattern.
Why Rescue? To save the bees …surprisingly, many people are not aware that without bee pollination, much of man’s food supply would not exist. We do not exterminate! ….when rescued, the bees are safely transported to our Bee Sanctuary. The bees are then monitored, cared for, and fed to re-build into strong and healthy hive populations. Once inspected, many of our rescued bee colonies enter our “Host – a – Hive” Program.
The differences between raw and pasteurized honey are substantial. Raw honey is an alkaline-forming food that contains natural vitamins, enzymes, powerful antioxidants and other important natural nutrients. These are the very nutrients that are destroyed during the heating and pasteurization process of commercial honey.In fact, pasteurized honey is equivalent to and just as unhealthy as eating refined sugar.
