I had several hives in my Florida backyard for years. one thing I found out is all wild bees in Florida have a certain amount of africanized DNA and can become very aggressive. on one occasion when I was gathering a large wild bee hive at night one zipper on the suit was not zipped all the way and got a whole bunch of sting that very nearly landed me run hospital. I was lucky that a Walgreens was only 2 miles away and a handful of antihistamine pills helped fend off anaphylactic shock.
a couple things, get the best quality bee suit you can get, I have humble bee brand suite and jacket. the round hood is very good with the oval one you have to wear ball cap to keep the mesh far enough away from your face to prevent being stung. Florida bees can sting right through sheepskin gloves, ask me how I know, get a good quality stainless steel smoker right off the bat and find a place where you can gather pine needles and fill a big garbage bag, a little pry bar set from harbor freight is just as good as the expensive ones bee places
sell online.
there are lots of bee clubs in Florida and a whole bunch of helpful knowledgeable people.
building your own bee hive boxes is easy and cheap especially if you do some dumpster diving on construction sites where they are using
wood or have found a source for
local cypress or other lumber. cutting the sticks for the frames can be a bit tricky without a bunch of wood working tools and they are cheap and easy to get the frame sticks precut online. medium size frames are probably the best and most common size. get good quality excluder screens or whatever they are called to keep brood frames and honey frames separate
its not a lot of fun trying too get brood and larrvae out of honey and wax.
getting
free wild bees is pretty darn easy in Florida , just build a few small NUc boxes or a hive catching boxes and put a drop or 2 lemongrass oil, one on the opening and one inside, don't use too much.
or if you hear of someone saying bees have infested a place in their house or
yard you can go rob those hives and also there are lots of pest control people in Florida and a lot of them get calls to remove wild honey bees maybe make some calls to some of them saying you will come get the bees when they pull them out. bring lots of rubber bands to strap the chunks of honey comb and brood comb to empty frames.
I never did this but it is suggested do some research and find a good queen source and replace wild queens with domesticated ones.
that's probably enough to get you started
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