2026 · Central Florida
The 2026 Central Florida bee year
Climate, plant communities, and bloom time split Florida into three bands. North Florida runs from the panhandle through Alachua, Levy, Putnam, and Flagler counties. Central Florida is Marion County through Sarasota County. South Florida is the rest, including the Keys. Orange, Osceola, and Seminole counties sit in the central band, so an Orlando hive follows the Central Florida table of the UF/IFAS Florida Beekeeping Management Calendar, not a northern winter-break curriculum. This board is dated 2026 and highlights the month you opened it.
Queens here can lay almost any month. Brood through the warm year means Varroa destructor never gets the crash that a frozen brood nest would give it. The calendar is a starting point. When a colony needs a pesticide, the current product list and the legal label live on the the Florida Beekeeping Management Calendar page.
Climate, plant communities, and timing of floral resources differ significantly between the three main regions in Florida.
- Three Florida bands
- Brood and nectar around Orlando
- Month-by-month work
- How to use the live calendar
- Questions
Three Florida bands
UF/IFAS built the management calendar on that north, central, and south split because forage and pest pressure do not travel with a state line. Florida Beekeeping Management Calendar says the tables cover feeding, parasite and pathogen work, and harvest timing, and that keepers should ask a local UF/IFAS office or an apiary inspector when a hive does something the month does not cover.
Keeping Bees in Florida puts numbers under that climate. As of December 2022 the paper counted nearly 5,000 registered Florida beekeepers, about 85 percent of them backyard, 0 to 40 colonies, and more than 650,000 managed colonies that produced 8 million pounds of honey in 2021, citing USDA NASS Southern Region Honey, 2022. Long, hot, humid summers and mild winters let bees fly when a Michigan colony would be clustered.
Brood and nectar around Orlando
Florida Honey Bee Plants uses the same three bands. The Central Florida bloom table is the plant list for these pages. Citrus, orange, trifoliate orange, and mandarin types sit in March and April. Gallberry is listed in April and May. Maple is an early-year pollen and nectar plant in January and February; willow runs January through March. Spanish needles (Bidens) work vacant lots through the warm months and again late in the year. Cabbage palm and saw palmetto are major nectar shrubs of the flatwoods; FDACS lists both on Plants for Bees.
Keeping Bees in Florida adds the ridge story: cultivated citrus, loquats, and kumquats can pay in this part of the peninsula, and mid-summer is generally a time of colony decline, with starvation a real possibility when few plants bloom. A possible late flow from Brazilian pepper appears on some Central Florida September notes. That plant is invasive. Leave it off a planting list. If a wild stand already blooms, that is a field note, not a landscaping plan.
Month-by-month work
What follows is a Central Florida reading of the Central Florida table, in journal words, with plant cues from Florida Honey Bee Plants. Treatment names, sampling methods, and labels stay on the cited pages.
| Month | Brood and stores | What is in flower |
|---|---|---|
| January | Feed if the colony is light. Colonies can starve. Pollen supplements if forage is thin. Watch Varroa. Woodenware repair belongs here. | Maple, willow. |
| February | Still a starvation month if the box is light. A warm week is not a reason to skip a mite count. Queen trouble shows up as the colony tries to grow. | Maple, willow. |
| March | The colony wants space. Queens, brood, and the first serious swarm impulse arrive together. Splits and supers belong in the plan. | Citrus begins. Willow still in play. |
| April | Swarm window. Give room or take a split. Primary nectar work for this band sits here. | Citrus, gallberry. |
| May | Still swarm season if April was ignored. Keep sampling mites. A strong May hive is a gift and a swarm risk in the same box. | Gallberry. Palms coming. |
| June | Varroa populations begin to climb. The main flow is slowing. Ventilation, mite counts, and a harvest decision live here. | Late spring leftovers; dearth arriving. |
| July | The flow stops. That is the Central Florida note new keepers miss. The yard looks green. The hive can still go light. | Thin forage. Spanish needles in waste ground. |
| August | Feed if the colony is light. Colonies can starve in August in this band. A dearth plus mites plus a weak queen empties a spring success. | Spanish needles, odd lots, little surplus. |
| September · now | Feed if there is no flow. Some Septembers, a Brazilian pepper bloom can appear. Keep watching mites, Nosema, and beetles. | Possible pepper (invasive). Fall weeds starting. |
| October | Stores, Varroa, Nosema, beetles. Fall nectar in many parts of the state includes aster, goldenrod, and Spanish needles. | Spanish needles, goldenrod, bush aster. |
| November | The same work as October, with shorter days. Feed if light. Beetles do not leave Florida in November. | Late fall weeds where they still open. |
| December | Stores, mites, Nosema, beetles. Keeping Bees in Florida notes that a queen may begin laying for spring, if she ever stopped, as early as December. | Pennyroyal, red maple, and willow as they open. |
Small hive beetles have their own paper: Small Hive Beetle, Aethina tumida Murray. Swarm prevention for keepers who already have hives is Swarm Control for Managed Beehives.
How to use the live calendar
- Open The Florida Beekeeping Management Calendar and open the Central Florida table.
- Match the month you are standing in. Feed if the box is light in January, February, August, and through the fall if stores are thin.
- Sample Varroa. The Florida Beekeeping Management Calendar and the 4-H apiary book both treat 3 mites per 100 bees as the point to consider treatment. How you sample, alcohol wash or sugar shake, is described in the mite count, How to Quantify Varroa destructor, and in the Honey Bee Health Coalition sampling notes the Florida Beekeeping Management Calendar cites.
- If a pesticide goes in the box, read the current label on the live calendar. The label is the law.
- Cross-check bloom with Florida Honey Bee Plants. A plant list is not a harvest promise. A single yard tree is a scout map, not a flow.
- Ask your county UF/IFAS office or an FDACS apiary inspector when the month does not cover what the hive is doing.
Questions
Is Orlando in the same year as Gainesville?
Gainesville sits near the north/central split (Alachua is named as the southern edge of North Florida on the Florida Beekeeping Management Calendar). Orlando is firmly Central. Use the Central Florida table.
When does citrus actually pay?
Florida Honey Bee Plants lists orange in March and April for the central band. A city lime is still worth a scout dance. A surplus crop is a grove-scale event, and spray schedules belong to a conversation with the landowner.
Can a hive starve in Florida August?
Yes. The Florida Beekeeping Management Calendar's Central Florida August line is blunt: feed colonies if light. Colonies can starve. That is also the July and August dearth Keeping Bees in Florida describes for much of the state.
Sources
- Florida Beekeeping Management Calendar. Ellis, Bammer, and Kern. The Central Florida table is the band for Orlando.
- Florida Honey Bee Plants. Bammer, Kern, and Ellis. Central Florida bloom table.
- Keeping Bees in Florida. Ellis, Bustamante, and Bammer. Climate, pests, plants, USDA honey counts.
- USDA NASS Southern Region Honey, 2022. Cited by Keeping Bees in Florida for 2021 Florida colony and honey figures.