I trust all of you have gotten your hives all prepped for winter.  Here in the South, we don’t get much of a winter, but I still had to make sure all of my colonies had enough feed to make it until the spring.   Fortunately, this year the fall flow was excellent.   None of my colonies will require supplemental feeding (at least based on present conditions).   I’ll look in on the colonies again at the start of December, and I reevaluate the feed situation then.   This pattern of monthly checks will continue until the early part of February, when I’ll be starting into spring colony managements.

I spent this weekend at the annual meeting of the Florida Beekeepers Association, which was held this year about 40 miles from my home in Dothan,  Alabama .  Compared to Maryland and Alabama, Florida beekeeping is huge.   Florida has about 3200 registered beekeepers, and about 390,000 hives live in Florida at least some of the year – that’s about 16% of the total US count of registered hives.  About 300 of the Florida beekeepers are full-fledged commercial operators; these are the folks for whom beekeeping is their primary business.   These are also the folks who send truckloads of hives off to California for the almond pollination.

Speaking of almond pollination, we did hear a tale in the continuing saga of pesticide companies vs. beekeepers.  Dimilin® (a.k.a.  diflubenzuron) in a class of insecticides called chitin inhibitors; in a nutshell they work by preventing a juvenile insects outer skin from hardening after the insect molts.  The juvenile insect then dies.  Adult insects (including bees) are not impacted because they are finished with molting.  If Dimilin® is sprayed on almonds while they are in bloom and bees are in the orchard, the colony will look healthy when it is removed from the orchard.  However, it will not be able to raise any more brood and the colony will be dead in a month or so.   Instead of owning up to the problem and revising their label to not permit application during a bloom, the company that manufactures Dimilin® (Chemtura) has elected to rely on their tests on adult bees and keep their present label saying the product does not harm bees.

So what does this mean to folks who don’t send bees to the almonds?  Many Montgomery County beekeepers have hives in (or within easy flight range) of orchards or other crops that may be treated with Dimilin®.  You might want to ask your local farmers if they propose to use Dimilin® during a period when the crops in question are in bloom.

Also featured was a presentation from Florida State Wildlife on how to deal with bears.  Fortunately, I haven’t heard of a bear problem anywhere near me in Alabama, but the population of bears in Florida is growing and bears are not known for respecting state lines.  The accepted solution to a bear problem is a carefully built electric fence, and we all got a CD describing how to do the job right.  By the way, most bear vs. human problems involve household garbage.

So much for the bad news; I promise to be more cheerful from now on.  We also got a brief tour of the website www.extension.org (often referred to simply as Extension).  Go to it, type “bee” in its internal search engine, and your will get a pile of articles, videos, and other useful material that is all written by recognized experts in the bee field.   The “Bee Health” topic is especially good.

Another bid of good news: Africanized bees have not made any noticeable spread in Florida for the past few years.  To get an idea where Africanized bees are established in Florida, they are south of Interstate 4.  North of I-4 is the domain of European bees.

On to Alabama news: Also going on this weekend was our local fair, which we call the National Peanut Festival.  Dothan, Alabama is in the middle of the biggest peanut producing area in the country, and the next time you use peanut butter there is a good chance its peanuts were grown within 50 miles of my house.   At any rate, the Peanut Festival also has a Honey Show.  When I first entered it back in 2007, only a few folks entered and one could win a blue ribbon almost by default simply because you were the only one to enter a class.  This year, our Honey Show came into its own with a good turnout of contestants and high quality entries.   This months’ picture shows our Honey Show display for 2013.

And for those who are curious, this year I entered 5 categories, and finished with two first places and three second places.

The Maryland State Beekeepers Association honey show will be on Nov. 9.  I encourage all of you to go, and to make entries.