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This page is a look back at last year and our plan for the new year. |
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Were a home school family, that uses our business as an essential part of our children's education. We also believe, that beekeeping is a vocation that we have been called to. What this means is, through beekeeping and the way we run our business we have been given the opportunity to serve our Lord, and our community. Over the years, the complexion of our farm has changed many times. Sometimes by our choice and sometimes by influences that are exerted upon us by outside forces. In 1998, one of those outside influences was a fire that destroyed our Germantown facility and home. Insurance did come through and helped us rebuild, but the stresses of that summer were too great for at least one relationship that ended poorly and pushed us in a completely new direction in Florida. That new direction included the acquisition of South Branch our Fl. property and the foray into raising and selling our own queens the winter of 1999. Since that winter of humble beginnings with the help and friendship of our Serbian friends we have sold tens of thousands of queens to folks all over the USA and have had a lot of fun doing it. We have also gained a new respect for the scores of queen producers around the country who have and continue to supply this nations bee industry with high quality queens and bees. Their tireless hard work is truly underappreciated in my opinion, and in most cases the perception that is so pervasive in our industry is that there is something lacking in the dedication to quality and integrity by these folks is not only wrong but demonstrates how out of touch with the environment we live in today so many of us are. It's this environment that has most recently had so profound an effect on our bees and our farm. And led us to make a decision to make a change on our own accord this season. Over the last ten years we have seen a great reduction in the acreage of citrus due to freezes and disease. This has facilitated the acceleration of development , which has further reduced the available bee pasture available to our bees. The draining of wet lands has compromised even further the maple and willow we depend on for early buildup. The depletion of good bee forage in the area, along with the skyrocketing property values has led to the relocation of many thousands of colonies of bees away from this area to points further south and north. These hives played an important role in the production of drones for the mating of the thousands of virgins that were seeking tens of thousands of mates every week here in the groves of central Fl where we're located, along side two other queen outfits that have in fact been operating here longer than we have. As the new kids on the block, and as we have identified this potential problem, too many girls and too few boys, we decided to scale way back on the number of queens we produce and concentrate instead on nucs and cells. MID MARCH 2010 We have just come through the longest coldest cold spell anyone in central FL can remember. Our bees, the ones that did not succumb to CCD are finally making some quantum leaps thanks to the arrival of warm weather and just in time for a really promising willow bloom. The plan of attack we have taken to rebuild started with the idea of purchasing brood from fellow beekeepers in GA, that did not go well. The weather kept the bees in and the build south GA usually enjoys never occurred, at least not in time to help us. So we regrouped and are cleaning up the dead hives, spaying the combs with a 3% bleach solution, culling older combs, painting box's, in short we have the best looking dead hives of any operation We have been feeding mega bee patties and sugar syrup, as well as experimenting with citric acid, nozivet, and supplementing the syrup with vitamins and electrolytes. The hives are all in 3-4 story's now and almost ready to go into the orange, in fact with the rain were receiving now, and some continued warm weather we should see orange bloom in less than two weeks. We'll put as many cleaned box's on these hives as they can take and split every thing during the latter half of the orange flow giving some queens, and making others into 3 frame nucs that will get cells. We also expect to get some orange honey out of our efforts, how's that for optimism. April 2010 As many of you know and may have even experienced yourselves, we had a rough start to this year. We were down to only about 300 hives in January, where we would normally like to keep our numbers up around 2000. But the Lord has blessed us with a very productive season; the weather cold, and wet, as it was made for a late start, but we were late also so it did not affect us to the degree that it could have, had we been on our normal schedule. We were actually able to take advantage of the almost month late orange flow. Had it been when it normally is we would have missed it almost entirely. It is always better to see your glass half full rather than half empty. We did end up getting all the empty equipment from the dead hives onto bees in the orange. We were able to make over 1000 splits from these hives, draw 90 boxes of foundation, and produce 9 drums of excellent tasting honey. PRAISE THE LORD!
May 2010 First load of bees included, the truck of 288 nucs for costumers and a trailer loaded with 200 hive for apple pollination. We were set to arrive early Saturday morning May 1st. Lost a set of duals off the trailer load of hives going around Chattanooga. It was 88 degrees, and we had no time to deal with the trailer wheels due to the highly perishable nature of the nucs on the truck. the solution was to leave the bees on a farm in the woods north of Chattanooga. Drag the injured trailer behind and return for the bees Saturday night. We should all only have to experience a trip like this once. We had the bees in the apple orchard on May 1st but the bloom came early this year and it would have been better to be there a week earlier. We sent three semi loads of bees up to Wisconsin, all without incident. Watermelon pollination finished in mid June. June 2010 Black-locust flow was early and short this year. Most of the bees were not up to full strength and only made a marginal Locust crop. Junes weather has been spectacular, just enough rain, plenty of sun, and lots of warm days and nights. The Linden flow was also early but this time many of the hives were ready . We now have many suppers full of Basswood honey. White sweet clover has also started to bloom. The biggest news for June is that: Peter asked for and received my daughter Sarah's hand in marriage, two weeks later he purposed and she accepted!
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You are welcome to call us on our land line (352-429-0054 from 8am-8pm EST) or leave us an email here at info@indiansummerhoneyfarm.com with any questions or comments. |
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Thank you for visiting our site, there is a map at the top of the home page. Just click on our winter or summer address, we always welcome visitors on “terra firma” also! |
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e-mail:
info@indiansummerhoneyfarm.com Updated Jul-10 |