Maintaining feral hives

[LoriBurris]

Help! (please)
I know almost nothing about bees, but now have two feral hives that I would like to maintain. The first hive is about a year old. I put a second box (old wooden mailboxes with 2" holes drilled in front) about 10 feet from the first when I noticed a large group on the outside of the first box. Yesterday the bees swarmed to the new box. VRY COOL!
My thought is to build a more suitable hive before the next swarm, but let them keep the honey and let mother nature nurture them. I live on 1+ acre in a developed area in South Florida. I have natural habitat on about 1/2 of it.
Are there inherent pitfalls to benign neglect?
What type of box (boxes) should I build?
How often do they swarm?
Should I provide food in the winter?
Is there a beek in Southeast Florida that I could visit for some hands on?
Many thanks for any advice. I am headed to the library.

[Josh Carmack]

While I only lived in Florida for a year, I cannot speak for the beek laws there. I know in TN if you have a feral hive that you have not moved or otherwise tampered with, it is perfectly legal to keep. Although, if they are intentionally kept in in man made structure, it is illegal to keep them in anything that does not have removable frames for inspections. Note that TBH qualify as the TB's are removable. I'm willing to bet with the invasion of AHB in FL you might be facing the same regulations. So, if you want them to natuarlly like the place and fall within legal boundaries, just make your swarm traps in a TBH style with removable top bars. that will allow removal for inspection and re queening in case of AHB supercedure.


While I will probably treat next year for better production I do not currently treat. All of my colonies came from unmolested natural habitats and were perfectly healthy aside from one fairly new colony that had a decent load of SHB. Unless I see heavy mite loads or other unaviodable problems, I do not intend to regularly treat.

I would personally build Langstroth hive bodies and supers. They are the most popular, and will be the easiest to purchase accessories for. There are plans on this website, or you can watch my poorly made video to get an idea of what is involved.

They can swarm several times in one year if they are crowded, and there is a strong flow.

In south Florida, unless there is drought I doubt they will need any help in winter, as there should be some type of flow almost year round.

Locate the local beekeeping club in souther florida. Pay the 10 to 15 dollars per year to be a member, the networking, and advice from one meeting alone is worth it.

[GRIMBEE]

I would be worried about africanized bee genetics mainly where you live.

[LoriBurris]

Please tell me more about Africanized bees in Florida. Can my docile honeybees "bring in" africanized bees? Should I be looking for some warning sign?

[Duck1968]

You might try contacting your state or local beekeeping association they could help you out with the local laws and someone to help you out.
http://www.floridabeekeepers.org/

[sqkcrk]

Once you have hived them they aren't feral anymore.

[bilhat]

West Palm is the closest Bee Keepers Club. Bud Grant is the state inspector for Martin County where I live and he is verry helpful. Your Inspector is Jerry Crews 772-788-7254 or crewsj1@doacs.stste.fl.us
Bill

[DiverDog]

I know what your intentions are and felt that way myself. At first I just wanted to provide them a place to live and help them out a bit if need be. Kinda like building bird houses. I didnt want to go all out just let nature work its way but help out too if needed. You may as well just take the leap and build some legal removable frame hives and call yourself a beekeeper. You can do it with minimal work or interfering with them. You already said that you dont mind feeding them if they need it so I would just go for it. Contact the bee club and go to a meeting, I'm sure they will let you sit in after you explain what you want to do. You can start relatively cheap if you buy the absolute necessaties and non of the fancy stuff we cant resist buying. Read a book or two about them, and b4 you know it you will be addicted like the rest of us and wanting to have a hundred hives. Good Luck!

[LoriBurris]

Many thanks to all. I will join the WPB group and learn a bit more. I am intrigued with the whole idea. The front of my new box is still covered with a thick layer of bees. I don't know if they're getting it ready or still checking it out, but they are still there.

[habutti]

LoriBurris, I must warn you, this is a highly addictive art, and you may find yourself investing long hours in the process of learning and caring for your bees. Good luck and welcome to the club.

[bilhat]

http://www.beekeeperspbc.com/ Link to Palm Beach Beekeepers I just started my hive with my 13 year old daughter in May. The next meeting is first Friday in July? I could not go last month but will try this month.
Bill

[Josh Carmack]

Can my docile honeybees "bring in" africanized bees? Should I be looking for some warning sign?

We are going to assume that the colonies you have are EHB currently. It will remain that way until the old queen leaves, dies, etc. without your knowledge. Now lets say the old queen swarmed and left a virgin queen in her wake. (The most common way of losing the original queen). The virgin queen will attempt to mate in a mating flight. So, she goes out on her mating flight and becomes bred by AHB drones. Now you have a queen that will throw off AHB workers and EHB drones. The workers are the stingers, so they will be pretty hot. That's probably the most common type of AHB invasion. Which is why you must have removable type frames in a hive. That will allow you to remove and replace the queen in this case.

One warning sign you will get is a hive that starts to get hotter and hotter as the original brood is replaced with AHB. While you will have to wait several weeks for them to cool off, you can should be able to re queen a hot hive if FL will allow that.

[tecumseh]

lorriburris writes:
Please tell me more about Africanized bees in Florida.

tecumseh:
anything south of interstate 4 should be highly suspect. other clues to look for may include excess swarming, swarming into very small cavities and establishing nest extremely close to the ground or open air nest.

just causally it sounds like 'your' feral hive somewhat complies with several of these 'clues'. I would most definitely suggest you have a sample tested for africanization. the downside is any state bee inspector ain't going to like the idea of someone maintain a hive without removable frames.

[LoriBurris]

I am concerned that the signs are there. What makes me think that they are EHB is that I can work under the hive and, while they will buzz around me a bit, I have never been stung.
I hope that I am not being naively optimistic.

[fish_stix]

Lori; the FL Dept of Agriculture has a circular out on maintaining EHB colonies to lessen the advance of AHB. Try calling them at 352-372-3505 extension 28 and have them email or fax the circular to you. In general I'd say that if you can stay near that colony without harm then it's probably a EHB colony. I live just north of you in Palm Bay and have caught approximately 15 swarms since starting back in the business in February, including a very large one in Port St. Lucie where you live. No problems with AHB so far, but they are definitely lurking about! We requeen our swarms with EHB queens soon after capturing them. The state maintains a large trapping operation around the major ports where AHB is known to have arrived so hopefully our problems will be minimal. :)

[Sarge]

If all you want to do is provide a home hang some duck boxes with reduced entrances.
As long as you don't try to manage them you are no different than the hundreds of people who put out food for deer and boxes for bats.
HOWEVER, beeks feel driven to stick their noses in the hives. And most are sure that the way they learned is the best. You will get alot of suggestions that all point to managment in some form or another.
Best of luck.