Backyard Beekeepers - Nature/Special
Airs Wednesday night at 8:45 following Doc Martin
Explore the exciting world of what it's like to be a South Florida beekeeper. Following Sierra Malnove of the Florida Backyard Beekeeping Association as she teaches beginners how to manage their own beehives, we learn how backyard beekeepers are helping the Florida honeybee population.
Sierra leads beekeeping workshop
Honeybees are very important: they’re the pollinators that man has chosen to do the busy work in agriculture. They pollinate 90% of the commercial crops and about one third of the food we eat in the US. In Florida alone, pollination—of blueberries, watermelon, peppers and avocados—is a $26 million industry, a vital artery of the state's $120 billion agricultural economy.
However, over the last half-century, the US honeybee population has been threatened by a combination of Colony Collapse Disorder, drought, viruses, and pests. But in 2012, Governor Rick Scott approved a law that allowed for people to have up to three bee hives in their backyards. Ten years ago there were 650 beekeepers in Florida, now there are 4,000. There may be an issue with bees, but there are 450,000 hives in the state, almost double from ten years ago.
Sierra Malnove, the Vice President of the Florida Backyard Beekeepers Association has a weekly schedule that revolves around bees. She’s either teaching beekeeping workshops, giving beekeeping lessons, removing hives, breeding queens, or making honey. She became a backyard beekeeper in 2013 and within a year had accumulated over 50 hives. She’s now considered a commercial beekeeper. Sierra says that with the growing awareness of honeybees, you have a lot of people who want to have bees in their backyard. But that comes with a lot of responsibility. She helped start the Florida Backyard Beekeepers Association to build the backyard beekeeping community and assist people in beekeeping responsibly.
Caitlin Gill, who’s an Apiary Inspector with the Florida Department of Agriculturesays that many backyard beekeepers grow into commercial beekeepers. It starts as a hobby and they end up falling in love and want more bees. She says that the biggest impact that backyard beekeepers have on the commercial beekeeping industry is by giving the honeybee a bigger voice. The more beekeepers there are in the state, the more voices we have speaking on behalf of the honeybee.
