Sam's Honey Bees

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Sam's Honey Bees Beekeeper & retired veteran selling local honey from Ruskin & Lithia apiaries. Provides presentations or hands-on experience. Limited removals.

Apiaries: Circle Pond Tiny Community; Prakriti Farms; Seeds of Faith Community Garden and Lithia Springs Farm

Honeybee and Fiddler Crab kinda day. Had a good beekeeper fun day yesterday, first I helped inspect Tampa Bay Beekeeper...
10/11/2026

Honeybee and Fiddler Crab kinda day.

Had a good beekeeper fun day yesterday, first I helped inspect Tampa Bay Beekeepers Association TBBA beehives with new and experienced beekeepers, and added on extra supers for honey production.

The TBBA apiary is very close to the water and thousands of Fiddler Crabs were running around the beehives.

After having lunch with the TBBA members I installed a Trap-Out at a private residence before going home myself. Now we wait for the bees to give up and move into provided beehive. The homeowner and friends will send me regular videos and pictures. I look at the videos and pictures to determine if it's necessary for me to come back and fix something or take the bees.

The pictures have captions explaining the action.

Sam's Honey Bees

Gotta keep an eye on those Chickens at Lithia Springs Farm. I left my door open when setting up for a kids bee talk and...
10/11/2026

Gotta keep an eye on those Chickens at Lithia Springs Farm. I left my door open when setting up for a kids bee talk and one of the local residents wanted to check out the truck. This explorer was standing on the seat looking out the windshield when kindly asked to vacate the area.

Sam's Honey Bees

Valrico Trap-Out, removing a beehive located in a porch columnIn late June I was called by a Valrico renter who had a si...
10/06/2026

Valrico Trap-Out, removing a beehive located in a porch column

In late June I was called by a Valrico renter who had a sizeable Honeybee hive living in one of her front porch columns. Another column included bats, who were occasionally enjoying a honeybee lunch now and then (I don't remove bats 🦇). Shortly after our initial meet up, the owner gave me the approval to remove and save the bees, both the renter and owner agreed they were willing give the trap-out enough time to catch the bees.

Success took 48 days of monitoring to assure that all the bees were “trapped-out” and to finally catch the queen. After about 46 to 47 days the bees ignored the original beehive, no bees were coming out the cone, and all bee traffic was from the provided beehive. I went over after dark, quickly closed up the hive and moved them to the apiary. Their new job is pollenating veggies on Prakriti Farms and producing honey.

A trap-out is a cone shaped device put over a honeybee’s hive entrance, the bees exit the hive through the cone tip but can’t figure out how to get back in the hive and they become “trapped-out.” They gather on the cone’s base and try to get back into the original hive for days. Every time a bee leaves the hive, there’s no going back, unless they find another entrance which must be sealed up. If the bees are not forced to exit the hive through the cone or if they find another entrance, the trap-out won’t work. After the trap-out cone is installed, I hang a baited beehive next to the cone to provide new hive space for the trapped-out bees. After the bees give up getting back into the original hive they’ll start moving into the new beehive. The new beehive has a quick closure on it, so I can collect them when the deed is done and move them to the apiary.

The pictures have captions explaining the action.

Sam's Honey Bees

This morning’s farm and honeybee activities on Lithia Springs Farm. This is a great place for kids to interact with far...
10/02/2026

This morning’s farm and honeybee activities on Lithia Springs Farm. This is a great place for kids to interact with farm animals (lots of babies), see honeybees, and have a fun farm experience. Contact the farm, they have regularly options or can make arrangements for groups.

09/30/2026

How bees kill hornets, nice explanation and good video.

Today's Apollo Beach Garden Club & Community Forest Garden event for kids. They had a garden bug hunt, learned about th...
09/24/2026

Today's Apollo Beach Garden Club & Community Forest Garden event for kids. They had a garden bug hunt, learned about their pollination impact, picked some veggies, had some yummy treats, and of course a kids bee talk by yours truly. Since we were outside we got to light the smoker.

Two guest beekeepers explore beehives at the Seeds Of Faith Community Garden Apiary, located at the Bay Life Church.Evan...
09/21/2026

Two guest beekeepers explore beehives at the Seeds Of Faith Community Garden Apiary, located at the Bay Life Church.

Evan and Emmanuel (my latest guest beekeepers) are frequent customers at Foxtail Coffee, a Coffee Shop where I regularly sell honey, drink coffee, and enjoy snacks.

At the coffee shop I set up a couple of tables with honey, get myself a breakfast sandwich and coffee. Soon after setting up, my and the coffee shops regular customers file in for their morning motivation. I regularly invite honey customers to meet the bees or visit the hives, these two decided to take the plunge.

We met at the Seeds of Faith Garden Apiary at the Bay Life Church. Took them around back, they parked their cars and jumped into my truck equipped with four wheel drive to cross a big ditch and it contained the necessary bee equipment. I parked about 50 feet from the hives and provided them bee-suits/gloves and explained how to seal them up.

The first hive we opened was about halfway ready for honey collection (full but uncapped cells), lots of brood and workers, and an active queen. Another hive we open was struggling and the queen was missing and no brood. So, we ended up taking a brood frame from the healthy hive and giving it to the weak hive so they would have an egg or recent larva to create a replacement queen (I check back later, it worked). We went through the hives and I explained what we were looking at, what was good or was concerning and we accomplished some other maintenance work around the hives. I was totally surprised on how they reacted to the bees and stayed calm in the presents of about 40,000 bees. Some of which decided to check their bee-suits for openings.

Except for a small population of the bees, we all had a good time.

The pictures have captions explaining the action.

Sam's Honey Bees

Filled and donated the last of my small jars for ECHO Emergency Care Help Organization Food Pantries. This time Linda a...
09/13/2026

Filled and donated the last of my small jars for ECHO Emergency Care Help Organization Food Pantries. This time Linda and I delivered 30 jars to the Riverview and 45 jars to the Brandon Pantries. Sam's Honeybees has donated a total of 587 jars so far to ECHO. The honey is very popular, we watched a few jars being snatched up while finishing up the paperwork.

I'll be looking for more jars for future donations (small sizes or odd sizes that I don't sell).

Sam's Honey Bees

Phew, 800 jar order combined with a private market. I needed help and was lucky to find a hard working teenager from th...
09/13/2026

Phew, 800 jar order combined with a private market. I needed help and was lucky to find a hard working teenager from the neighborhood. He capped the jars and added labels while I filled the jars, it took us four hours. The small bear jars were a business employee give-away, the adjoining table was my regular indoor market set up. This retirement hobby can sometimes get busy.

Pictures have captions.

Sam's Honey Bees

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Creek Ridge Preserve
Lithia, FL
33547

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