Stuart Rowan
I recently saw a bumper sticker that read, “Yes I have a pickup truck, no, I won’t help you move!” Nothing seems to separate one’s true friends from the fair weather variety quicker than looking for help to move. Add to that a million or so stinging insects and the list gets pretty short! A commercial beekeeper reading the following account will scoff at the thought of moving bees as anything but another day at the office. Their whole operation is built on the premise of moving bees to make a profit. Hives on pallets, forklift loaders, large trucks, netting, all just tools of the trade. A backyarder is typically seeking advice on how to move a hive from one spot in their yard to another. There are many articles and much advice on this kind of move. But what about that space between those two options?
Recently my wife and I retired early to care for our aging mothers. This involved a pretty significant disruption in our “comfortable” routine. Unlike post college and early marriage moves, we were now able to enlist the services of professional movers and were able to dispatch those chores fairly easily. Albeit, after 36 years in the same location, we experienced a bit of sticker shock at the current cost of replacing the goodwill of “friends” with “professionals.” On the other hand, moving my apiary was not something easily delegated or sourced to others. The conversation was more nuanced and went something like this.
Me: I would like to hire you to help me move my business/hobby.
Them: We are your guys, let’s talk about what you will need.
Me: I am moving about two hundred miles, I will need a truck, and two or three able bodied folks.
Them: No problem.
Me: We will be moving overnight.
Them: Oh, one of those kinds of moves.
Me: Not exactly… but yes. I am moving 20-25 bee hives.
Them: (After a short pause) By bee hives, you mean empty bee boxes, correct?
Me: Well, no. All of the colonies I am taking are healthy and the hives should be full. A million or so…live honey bees.
Them: Doesn’t look like we have any availability around that time. Let me give you the name of one of my competitors, (one I don’t like much). Turns out, this was going to be a “MOVING EXPERIENCE.”
When I took up beekeeping about five years ago, my mom told me my dad had been a beekeeper when he was in high school, circa 1945 as part of the Future Farmers of America (FFA). When dad went to college, his father took up beekeeping and his apiary. On a side note, my grandfather worked for Florida Power and Light (FPL) for 49 years. He started in the early 1920’s, a teenager working as a lineman. By the 1940’s he was working as a supervisor of some sort and was regularly in the field. I have pictures, where it appears he is dispensing a jar of honey to someone out of the back of his FPL pickup. A practice I am told FPL would not approve today. With that new information from my mom, I am claiming to be a third generation beekeeper, albeit, in a very convoluted way.
This brings me back to the current situation. I was going to be moving my apiary from East Central Florida to North Florida. While much of the family farm has been sold and developed, several hundred acres still remain in managed pines. This meant moving from an area of known Africanized bees, to one that is still considered non-Africanized. (I am told by beekeeping friends in the North Florida area that is probably not true). However, in keeping with both BMR (Best Management Regulations) and BMP (Best Management Practice) I wanted to be as judicious and careful as possible. I certainly did not want to be thought of as the guy who introduced apis mellifera scutellata to North Central Florida. This meant dealing with both unknown source queens and drones. Had we been in a more Northern climate, this could have been simplified by timing the move to correspond with the natural “culling of the drones” as the colony prepared for Fall and Winter. However, in Central Florida, August-October continues with a strong nectar flow and brood build up. It is not uncommon to see a hive supersede well into December.
So for this move, we had to first, come up with a plan which included the removal of drones and the replacement of queens!
Secondly, we were going to make the move using “make shift” tools and equipment.
Thirdly, I had to consider timing in order for all of the pieces and parts to work together smoothly. I discovered that preplanning and improvising were equally important components to the process.
The “plan” we crafted called for implementing multiple steps.
- Preparing the receiving apiary. This was actually the simplest and most fun for me. I began this step about five months before the move. The property to which we were relocating is about 130 acres mostly covered in planted (managed) pines. There is a creek running through the middle of the acreage hosting a variety of trees and vegetation other than pine.
I was able to review aerial maps and surveys to find an area that was high enough to ensure it did not flood, but at the same time close enough to provide a reliable source of water for the bees. Contracting a forestry mulcher, we were able to clear a two acre area in about half a day. I was able to create a southeastern facing exposure that received maximum sun in the Winter, while providing some relief from the hottest sun in midday of Summer. I placed my hive stands to allow a tractor with a six ft cutter to clear between them in a single pass. - Food Source. This is where “local knowledge” is very important. University of Florida and the Bee Lab (also located in North Central FL), provide excellent resources including the Mellito Files Newsletter. Monthly, it highlights the variety and availability of various food sources.
In Central Florida, an ubiquitous source of nectar starts at the end of August and runs through September. The Brazilian Pepper Tree fuels a large honey bee migration by commercial beekeepers. Tens of thousands of hives are relocated to this area to replenish food stores and facilitate brood build up in preparation for January/February deployment to the California almond groves. Since I was planning to move my apiary at the end of August, it meant this natural replenishment would not be available. North Florida beeks also advised me that late Summer/early Fall often experienced a nectar dearth. Because of this, I made the decision to leave all honey in the hive, forgoing a honey harvest. I wanted to ensure there were no “weaker” hives, subjecting them to the possibility of robbing and other perils. I began in July/August to equalize resources across the apiary. This also meant moving the hives would be more difficult as they would be much heavier. A fact I wish I had given more consideration. - Clearing the hives of queens and drones: This one was a bit of a head scratcher. While I do everything (well, maybe not everything) in my power to maintain calm hives, there is no way to guarantee there is no hybridized stock. Queens in Central FL lay almost year round and are likely to supersede more frequently. Sometimes it is impossible to catch the transition. With the compatibility of mother/daughter queens, you can still have a laying queen in the middle of a supersedure. The hive can be calm and forty five days later you can have a fully Africanized hive given the right (or wrong) combinations of genetics. Some advised that people move hives around the state all the time without worrying about this. While this may be true, I made the decision to take this additional step. For several days we went through EVERY hive we planned to move searching for queens and excluding drones. Not sure how this would have been accomplished without the help of friends (thanks Suzan Bryant). On a couple of days we forgot to take a lunch break and Suzan persisted with me! The timing was critical since we had just a few days to be queenless before other problems are created.
- Actual move: This was the area where careful planning and improvisation do a delicate dance. As a small time keeper, 20+/- colonies, I have not invested in specialized moving equipment. More often than not, my pick-up is adequate to load up a couple of hives and transport between apiaries. For larger moves, multiple trips are easy. Moving equipment consisted of a ratchet strap and two strong keepers, one on either side. I have a small fourteen foot utility trailer I use around the house and apiary, but I had never planned on using it for a longer move. Suffering a breakdown in the middle of a move was not an option. Several weeks before the move I bit the bullet and did the work. New tires, replaced the wheel bearings, and a new set of magnetic lights. Several days before the move I serviced the truck and had a full tank of fuel. I called the Florida Department of Transportation (DOT) and clarified the rules for agriculture transport and truck weigh stations. Fortunately, I did not pass any agriculture inspection stations on my planned route and I was exempt from weigh stations. I also checked the day before to ensure there were no known detours or road closures. (NOTE: I checked for overnight road closures since we were planning to get on the road by four am.)
I also spent time the week before the move making sure I had enough straps to secure every hive we proposed moving. This meant buying additional straps and borrowing others. I precut entrance excluders from #8 hardware cloth and made sure my stapler was stocked. (I am glad I did! Had I not taken this step I would have been sitting at the apiary the night before with no staples.) Having done the best pre-planning we could, improvisation was still important. I found out hives full of honey and brood stacked three high are heavy. What we had planned to pick up and set on the trailer turned into getting the trailer close enough to drag the hives into place. Securing them meant using 2×4 lumber and a screw gun. Loading four wide turned into three wide when you factor in the extra width of the boards. This meant an extra row of hives throwing off our tongue to tail weight ratio; which meant moving the hives again; which meant… you get the picture. In the end, the trailer was loaded, balanced, secured and lighted. (I am certainly glad I had new tires and bearings!) We had planned to do most of this in the dark, with the aid of a full moon, however, when clouds obscured the moon we were left in pitch black, an eventuality we had not planned for. Fortunately, Suzan had a couple of red bandannas we were able to place over lights….great improvisation! - Requeening: A critical part of our plan was to remove the queens over a two day period before our move. We also needed to close and secure the hives the night before the move, load the trailer and be on the road by four am the next morning. This did not leave much time to pick up our new queens. I cannot say enough good things about Elizabeth Wessman and Bottomstungbees.com. When I was making my initial plans, Elizabeth told me she would have queens available. When I called her a week, and then the day before, she assured me she had the queens. As I was trying to work out how to pick them up she offered to meet me at an interstate exit near her house and on our route. I calculated we would probably be at her exit at five am. Without hesitation, she responded she would recognize my truck since I would probably be the only one with a trailer load of bees! Beekeepers are… (for the most part) a great bunch of folk. It felt a bit clandestine, when we met in the parking lot of a Dunkin Donut at 5:00 am, exchanging a wad of cash and taking delivery of an orange package. My wife went in to get coffee stating she wanted no part of the optics!
- Repopulating the new apiary: Thankfully, the least eventful part of the trip was the actual over the road transfer. The plan was to arrive by 8:30 am to insure heat was not an issue. Fortunately, there were some clouds that shielded us from the early morning Florida sun that can be quite warm. We immediately began the process of unloading and placing the hives on stands. With the exception of one small mishap there were no casualties. One super had slightly turned exposing frames. Fortunately there did not appear to be a mass exodus from the hive. The problem was corrected when we placed the hive on the stand. All in all a fairly uneventful trip.
- Requeening: By the time all hives were unstrapped, screen excluders removed and bees had begun reorienting to their new location, we were pushing close to seventy-two hours of being queenless. While I did not notice a difference, my unloading helper, a local beek, was concerned that these were the most agitated bees he had ever worked with. I took this as confirmation that we had done the right thing and needed to begin the process of requeening immediately. Conditions were favorable and within the hour we had inspected all hives with queen cages installed.
As a beekeeping mentor, one of the most common misconceptions (at least in my opinion) is that it is the job of a beekeeper to try and figure out what the bees need to do. For instance, “how do we get the bees to accept a new queen?” My experience is that bees know a lot more about beekeeping than I ever will. I have never had good success getting them to do anything. Rather, I find the most success when I will listen, watch and learn what it is the bees want and need. When the bees tell me they are queenless, all I really need to do is make a queen or resources available. Once that is accomplished, they will figure it out, without much help from me.
Unfortunately, I was not able to stay at the apiary and returned to Central Florida later in the day. When I was able to do an inspection some two weeks later, all queens appeared to have been successfully released. One hive had absconded, but the apiary had done a good job appropriating any remaining resources. I was also pleased to see that despite my fears, the bees were finding sources of pollen and nectar, bringing it into the hive in high volume.
At twelve weeks after the move the regional bee inspector had scheduled a visit to the apiary. Inspection revealed brood in ALL of the remaining hives in all stages of development. This was in early December and it also appeared food supplies in all the hives were remaining constant or had increased. At the time of writing this article I had not yet followed up with a mite count. I was depending on the brood break as the most efficacious treatment at the time.
While a Northern beekeeper would roll their eyes when I use the term “overwintering,” here in North Florida, there is definitely a decline in outside hive activity in the January/February time frame. We will sometimes go three or four days in a row where the high temp will not climb above 50 degrees. Fortunately, highs in the 60’s are much more common and at the time of this writing we had not yet experienced a significant freeze and diminution of foliage. All in all, the learning curve for the bees seems to be a lot shorter than that of their keeper. Turns out, this moving experience was also a great learning experience.
Stuart Rowan is a third generation beekeeper (sort of). He was also president and founding member of the South Brevard Beekeepers. Stuart is a Master Beekeeper and manages his new apiaries in Columbia County, FL.
