CALL US: 716-226-8550
EMAIL: happybeehoneyclub@yahoo.com
Happy Bee Honey Club
An Urban Bee Project
A non-profit organization dedicated to protecting and preserving the honey bee.
What we do
Bees are critical to the environment; their role focuses on pollinating fruits, vegetables, and flowers. Without them the food we eat would not exist!
Happy Bee Honey Club began in 2018 as an urban bee project with the focus on changing the perception and preserving the honey bee. We believe in the power of the honey bee on our sustainability. We want to help others understand how powerful these tiny creatures are.
Changing the perception means educating, creating awareness, and helping others understand these bees. To us, saving the honey bees means relocating or removing bees in a safe way, splitting hives to create more hives, or catching swarms - all which brings them to a new, happy home.
Happy Bee Honey Club has three honey bee sanctuaries in the City of Fort Lauderdale - one is in collaboration with the city and the other two are through the generosity of individual residents who love bees and want to help us save as many as we can. Our sanctuaries provide bees with a safe environment after they are rescued from unwanted locations. Bees are moved to our sanctuaries following rescue where they can thrive in an environment free from threats such as habitat loss, pesticides, herbicides, people (who may want to harm them) and disease.
"Many people are afraid of bees, unnecessarily, leading too often to swarms and wild colonies being destroyed. This will ultimately affect us all because they pollinate one third of all our crops. Our mission is to change this perception of bees and their place in the ecosystem. Instead of eradicating and fearing bees they should be saved and protected."
Evan McCarthy, Founder
About Us
ABOUT THE FOUNDER
In his day job, Evan McCarthy is an airline captain. In this time off, he makes honey bees his priority - he is committed to education, advocacy, removing, and relocating the bees.
Evan McCarthy founded Happy Bee Honey Club in 2018. Evan took up beekeeping as a hobby ...and as any hobby goes, the more you dive in, the more you learn. As he started reading about the honey bees he learned more about the complexities of them. And the more he learned, the more it went beyond just a hobby. Unfortunately, it also helped him realize just how fragile and threatened the honey bee is. That led him to start Happy Bee Honey Club.
Happy Bee Honey Club allows Evan to inspire other people to get involved in saving the honey bee. He loves to bring people together for the club - he knows it allows anyone the ability to make a difference in something so important in the environment.
Evan wants to change the perception that people have of bees - which often results in them killing bees rather than understanding how important it is to help save them.
If you want to read more about Evan’s passion for these bees - learn more about him (click on the link below)
Evan McCarthy Is A Pilot With A Passion For Saving The Bees - Fort Lauderdale Illustrated
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OUR VISION
The long term vision for Happy Bee Honey Club is to grow our bee sanctuary space, grow our education and advocacy initiatives, and continue collaboration with individuals, cities, gardens, and space throughout South Florida. We want to increase dedicated space to save the honey bees and provide honey bees with a safe space to thrive. By 2025, we hope to have sanctuaries throughout Florida from Fort Pierce to Tampa, and south to Miami.
Happy Bee Honey Club focuses on several areas:
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Removals and Rescues: Removing bees from a location they have invaded to a safe new home at the Happy Bee Honey Club Sanctuary
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Splitting Hives: Splitting hives creates an artificial swarm by splitting one hive into two. There may be an addition of a queen which is added for certain behavioral characteristics, and at times the new hive may make their own queen.
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Education and advocacy: Answering questions from the public regarding bees, pesticides, herbicides
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Catching swarms: Only 15% of swarms survive in the wild. Happy Bee Honey Club safely captures swarms and relocates them to the bee sanctuary; this provides them with a safe home to be successful
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Harvesting Honey: Harvesting honey is of course secondary to growing the colony but honey is harvested to offset costs. We have a centrifugal extractor that we use to spin the honey from the frames. This allows honey to be collected and bottled straight from the hive without heat or filtration.
If you have questions, feel free to reach out to us at HappyBeeHoneyClub@yahoo.com.
