Previously published in Space Coast Living Magazine, 2021
Have you checked the price of honey lately at the grocery store? Satisfying that sweet tooth has gotten expensive. And to think, some people get their supply of honey for free. A growing number of people in Brevard County are turning to backyard beekeeping as a hobby, and for some, a source of income
Beekeeping has been popular for sometime, but the year of lock-down from Covid-19 prompted some people to turn to their backyards for an opportunity to get away from the daily dose of bad pandemic news.
There are two beekeeping clubs in Brevard County. The Brevard Backyard Beekeepers in Cocoa, and the South Brevard Beekeepers in Melbourne. Between them they have several hundred members who tend to their hives in their backyards or at communal locations.
Florida’s beekeeping guru is Dr. Jamie Ellis of the University of Florida. He says across the state there are over 600,000 bee colonies. The bee population is healthy and expanding. Ellis attributes this to our warm weather, abundance of flowers and pollinator-friendly vegetation, an
d the growing milder climate due to climate change.
According to Ellis, there is money to be made with marketing the honey, and the start up costs are low. He says a typical backyard operation has two hives to begin with, and costs about $1,000 to set up. This includes buying the hives and the initial colony of bees. There is little essential equipment, mainly protective bee suits.
Brenna Sorensen and her husband Lew Kontnik have a single hive in their West Melbourne backyard. “We started when we lived in California, and picked it up again when we moved to Florida,” says Brenna.
They have registered their hive with the State Agriculture Department ($10 a year) and get plenty of honey, which they share with neighbors and friends. They have somewhere between 20-thousand and 30-thousand bees in the hive. Each, according to Brenna, produces about a half teaspoon of honey in their short 6-week lifetime. Every now and then they have to buy a new queen ($25-$30) but generally the bees do their own thing without a lot of maintenance. Brenna and Lew estimate they spend, all told, one day a month on the hive.
The biggest headache for hive owners is the Varroa hive mites. They penetrate the hive and spread viruses among the bees, according to Dr. Ellis. They are controlled by traps installed inside the hive, and an ingenious method used by Brenna…putting a Swiffer sheet inside the hive. Mites get trapped in the sheet and die.
One of the local experts is Clifton Best of Cocoa. He’s the leader of Brevard Backyard Beekeepers, Inc., a non-profit, and one of the bee clubs in the county. Clifton is a professional bee wrangler, the guy you call when a swarm shows up on your property. He’s also the official beekeeper for the Brevard Zoo, and gives lectures at the zoo for time to time.
The cost for removing a swarm of bees is $200-$400, and Clifton gets to keep the bees, which are sold off to start new colonies. He cautions against calling pest control companies because “they kill the bees.”
“The important thing is to have a healthy queen,” says Clifton. He says queens can live 2-5 years “and lay 500-thousand to a million eggs in their lifetime.”
Clifton knows his way around a hive, and usually works without a bee suit. “They aren’t normally aggressive.” He even goes so far as sticking his bare finger in a hive to point out the queen. A fellow beekeeper, Ed BrittaIn of Cocoa, is more cautious. He suits up when working his hives. Ed uses a smoker when tending to his hives. “It keeps the bees calm”.
Twice a year Dr. Ellis holds a “Bee College” at the University of Florida campus in Gainesville. Dozens of beekeeping enthusiasts gather for the latest on how to start, grow and maintain their backyard hives. Brenna Sorensen went to the college. “I’m not an expert but I know enough”. She and her husband have a healthy colony.
According to Dr. Ellis, most backyard beekeepers start out with one or two hives. Typical hobbyists have 3-5 colonies, and commercial beekeepers may have 100 hives or more.
Many commercial hives are migratory. Some professional beekeepers move hives around to different states and locations to pollinate plants before the growing season. One month they may be in Florida, then to South Carolina, and even as far as California.
There has been a lot made of “africanized” bees in recent years. They originally came from Africa, and now are common in Cuba and South Florida. Every now and then some of them occasionally end up in Brevard County. They are not considered a threat in the area.
But a serious threat to backyard bees is the use of pesticides. When sprayed on flowers and other pollinating plants, pesticides can be fatal to bees and the whole hive. Bees can forage up to five miles, according to Best. That’s a lot of territory to become exposed in.
How to get started? Clifton Best encourages people to join a local bee club and get educated on how to maintain a healthy hive. According to Clifton, 80% of the backyard colonies are lost in the first year. “If you don’t know how to manage them, they’re going to die.” He says diseases spread by ticks and mites are the main cause of hives dying off.
According to Dr. Ellis,”many folks find backyard beekeeping to be a wonderful hobby”. Several hundred beekeepers in Brevard County will agree with him.