South Florida is graced with such a mild winter that it’s often advised to conduct a late season split if you have the honey stores to spare. Fortunately enough, each of my colonies currently has between 40lbs to 90lbs of honey stored up within one apiary, so they’ve got some food to spare. Unfortunately, all of my hive parts are currently occupied, so it seems we’re left with just growing fewer, larger coloines in early spring next year, but that’s not exactly a problem!
The Brazillian Pepper flow came and went with an abrupt pace this year, lasting only a couple weeks. By and large, it seems irrigated ornimentals have comrpised most of the honeyflow I’ve seen thel ast few weeks in Pinellas. At least three hives have crisp, white wax within the upper reaches of the broodnest, so something was coming in steady very recently. Now, if only the hives in Gilchrist could be in a similar situation.
Of the nine hives remaining up north, it seems I will need to feed to get them through winter. We’re about par with what the rest of the state has reported this year outside of irrigated communities; a honeyflow that’s just about non-existent. At least one hive in that apiary is at the edge of starvation, others are losing weight week-on-week. There really isn’t much I can do for it at this point, aside from feeding sugar to get them through this season and hope next year is busy. Fortunately, sugar is cheap. On the plus side, apparently BayerCropscience has an initiative to get organizations to plant wildflowers: http://feedabee.com/ So, I’ve submitted the paper work to partner with them in getting some more wild forage established on the property. To the extent that I can get at least an acre of forage established without watering or fertilizer input, this is will within my goals for the property development plan, and I’m pretty excited about it.
Also, in keeping with my agreement submitted, #FeedABee
Raptors Roost Farm 