TRADE ASSOCIATE MEMBER UPDATE

Charles Smith’s career can be traced back to a 1970s-era Sears catalog. “In 1979, my dad saw a beehive advertised in the back of the Sears Farm and Ranch Catalog,” Smith said. “He thought that would be interesting. Pretty soon, he was taking a bee class at a lady’s kitchen table along with a few other people. Someone said they made $20,000 on the side with bees. That was all he had to know,” Smith said.

Smith helped his dad with their fledgling bee business beginning when he was 16. In the decades since, he’s seen all the ups and downs of the industry. When the Smith men began offering bees for pollination services, they had about 400 hives and covered the needs of three Florida crops. They started the business in Miami, but Smith now is located in Central Florida.

Smith Family Honey Co. provides its bees with a stress-free, healthy life to minimize problems with diseases and parasites.

The company expanded over the years with more hives and more stops to help growers pollinate their crops. They traveled to Arcadia in late February for the orange trees, then south for palmetto bushes in LaBelle, on to the northern Keys and Homestead for mangroves, then back to northern Dade County and ending up in Miami.

All was great until the freezes in the late 1980s. “So many trees were killed in the orange groves that we had to change our strategy,” Smith said. Today, Smith travels throughout most of the state covering vegetables and fruits, including blueberries, watermelons and oranges. He continues to expand, hoping to have about 2,000 hives by next spring.

CAREFUL TO MONITOR FOR PROBLEMS

This month, university and USDA researchers announced the possibility that a virus found in imported bees and in royal jelly, a honeybee product imported from China, may be at least a partial cause of colony collapse disorder. Bees affected by colony collapse leave the hive and never come back, killing those bees left. A particularly troublesome parasite, the varroa mite, also is taking its toll on the bee population in several states.

“So far, I haven’t been affected by those problems,” said Smith, who has 1,600 hives ready for fall pollination and is all set to travel. He goes most anywhere in Florida that he’s needed.

Smith prides himself on giving his bees a stress-free, healthy life to minimize problems with diseases and parasites. “I have the bees on preventive medications. I monitor closely for mites and I only feed them pure sugar – no corn syrup. I think all that helps,” Smith said.

Growers who are interested in Smith’s services may reach him at (772) 633-1134.