BY DAN HILDEBRAN
The director of maintenance at the Montgomery Center is in his third year of beekeeping and has rebuilt three hives after having one destroyed by a black bear, a second invaded by a parasitic mite, and a third in which his bees unexplainably swarmed away.
John Raimer said he had always wanted to be a beekeeper, especially since he is a backyard gardener and wanted the social insects to pollinate his crops.
“Bees and gardens go hand in hand,” he said. “Gardens need pollinators.”
Bees play such a critical role in pollination that some Florida-based beekeepers take their hives to California every year to pollinate that state’s almond crop.
“And then on the way back,” he added, “I think they’ll go through Nebraska and then some of them go through Michigan and then they’ll come back. They don’t make a lot of money per hive by doing this, but because they do it in volumes, they’ll make a lot of money.”
Going to UF’s Bee College
Raimer said that when he came to Montgomery, he discovered a hive on the property, but no one was caring for it.
“So, I joined the Clay County Beekeepers Association, and they assigned a mentor to me to help teach me how to care for the bees,” he recalled.
Raimer also attended an association Saturday course featuring a professor from the University of Florida’s College of Entomology.
The university’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Services, popularly known as IFIS, has a honeybee research and extension lab that hosts a weekend bee college. Raimer has attended the college once and has registered for the 2026 session in March.
He said he was surprised at the extent of knowledge required to care for the honey producers.
“I’m not an expert,” he said. “I mean, this is just my third year of being in it, but I have learned so much. I’m going back to bee college in March just because I think I need to learn more.”
Bees south of Orlando may be Africanized
This past winter, Raimer lost all three of his hives. A black bear got into one and ate all the honey. A second hive was infested with a parasitic mite: Varroa destructor, which hosts at least five debilitating bee viruses.
Raimer said he is not sure what happened to the third hive.
“They just left,” he said of the colony.
Raimer said that after erecting an electric fence to protect his hives from bears, he restocked his three hives from bees bought at Santa Fe Beekeepers in High Springs.
“There’s a place in the Ocala National Forest that sells them,” he said, “and then there’s one in Jacksonville, but I usually do business with the one in High Springs because it’s closer.”
Raimer said beekeepers in northern Florida do not get bees from sources south of Orlando.
“The bees there are more of an African heritage, and they’re more aggressive,” he said. “The bees that we have are European, and they’re a little more docile.”
He also said he gets his supplies locally, mainly from Ace Hardware.
“If something breaks on Sunday afternoon, I need a store,” he said. “I don’t need Amazon to tell me it will be here in three days. I need it in three minutes. Not three days.”
Raimer said some area beekeepers order their queen bees from Hawaii.
“When the queen’s getting old and she’s not producing, they’ll create a new queen to help take over,” he said. “Sometimes it happens, but occasionally it doesn’t. So, we will end up at times buying a queen to put into the hive.”
The Aloha State’s climate allows bees to mate year-round, and its isolation from the mainland keeps the Africanized bees away. The price for Hawaiian queens can approach $100. They are shipped in special containers through the U.S. Postal Service.
70,000 bees per hive, 300 eggs a day
Raimer said he inspects his three 16-by-20-by-10-inch hives once a week.
“Sometimes it’s just a quick inspection,” he said. “Sometimes it’s where we pull out all the frames and inspect everything.”
Each hive has 10 frames, and an average of 70,000 bees inhabit it.
Raimer said that while attending bee college, he asked the professor how they knew the population of each hive.
“I asked, ‘Do you have someone count them as they’re coming and going?’ which would be impossible to do.”
“The professor goes, ‘No. We just froze a hive and then counted all the dead bees.’”
Raimer said some beekeepers locate the queen during inspections, but he does not.
“I can tell by looking at what’s on those frames if she’s doing her job,” he said. “Her job is to lay eggs.”
He added that a queen can lay around 300 eggs a day.
Worker bees specialize in caring for the queen by feeding her, watering her, cleaning up after her, and keeping her cool.
Stung 40 times in the head
Raimer doesn’t suit up in protective gear, nor use smoke when handling the hives.
“When they know that you are there and they know what you are doing, there’s no problem,” he said.
However, on one occasion, Raimer broke one rule for approaching a hive and paid the price.
“My mentor told me not to work the hive from the front, which is where they come and go,” Raimer recalled. “And so, I just was brain dead one day, and I was working from the front, and I got stung in the head about 40 times.”
He said that since he is not allergic to bee venom, he did not get treated for the stings and regrets only that the bees stung him in the head instead of his knees.
“Bee stings are good for arthritis,” he said.
“They were doing what they were supposed to do,” he said of his attackers. “They’re supposed to protect the hive. So, from that point on, I worked the hives from the back.”
“And I’ve done really well,” he added. “I think this summer, and this fall, I’ve gotten stung like five or six times, and that’s it.”
In addition to honey and venom, which some research has confirmed reduce inflammation, swelling, and pain associated with arthritis, the colonies also produce propolis, which has purported antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, and antioxidant properties.
Raimer said his bees also bring him psychological benefits: relaxation, peace, and stoking his curiosity.
“I live close to the lake,” he said, “but I also put bird baths out over by my chicken coops, and it’s fun just to watch the bees in flight. You can actually watch them flying from the hive to the water and then back to the hive again.”
“Once you get your eyes trained,” he added, “you can get over by the side of the hive during pollen season, and watch the bees fly back to the hive. They have pollen pouches on their rear legs, and you can see the pollen in the pouches.”
Raimer added that observing the organization and operation of the hive is fascinating.
“The other thing that’s really cool about a beehive,” he said, “it is like an organism. That colony works together. They keep that hive at a constant temperature during the winter and the summer. During the summer, they cool it, and during the winter, they warm it.”
