Staying Connected: Honey Bees at Mike and Carole Adams' Saturiwa Conservation Area

Land Stewardship continues! In an effort to maintain connections with and between landowners during this time of social distancing and remote learning, this series will feature a brief highlight of activities happening on private lands. This week's feature is a new honey bee operation at Mike and Carole Adams' Saturiwa Conservation Area.

Since 1989, Mike and Carole Adams have owned and resided on a 94-acre forestry/longleaf pine restoration/wildlife/education operation. They call it Saturiwa Conservation Area, named after a powerful local Timucuan Indian chief. The property was certified as a Stewardship Forest in 1995.

The land is strategically located on the St. Johns River between St. Augustine and Palatka. It is embedded in an overall larger conservation lands area of about 7,000 acres owned and managed by St. Johns County, St. Johns River Water Management District, and Jacksonville Port Authority.

By Mike Adams

Carole has been interested in bee keeping for several years. This year she decided to start an experimental hive and hopefully honey production. After only two weeks, with a single hive and several thousand starter bees, they documented the workers returning to the hive with a pine forest and river swamp pollen payload. If everything goes right, they look forward to their first sweet honey harvest later this year.


Learn more about Saturiwa Conservation Area in Family Forests: Portraits of Private Lands Stewardship in Florida, available at http://ifasbooks.ifas.ufl.edu/p-1433-family-forests.aspx

The UF/IFAS Honey Bee Research and Extension Laboratory’s (HBREL) “Two Bees in a Podcast” released their first episode in January 2020. In the podcast, the HBREL discuss research updates, beekeeping management practices, and advice about beekeeping from our resident experts, beekeepers, scientists, and other program guests. The podcast is available on many platforms, including: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Anchor, Podbean and others.

By Mike Adams

For this and more offerings of the HBREL see http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/honey-bee/