Beekeeping

Meet the Mascots of Advanced Air

We’re the bee’s knees when it comes to AC and heating service

Live from the hive:

Common FAQs

What are some fun/interesting details about the hive?

In Fort Myers, the beehives you might come across are busy collecting nectar from a variety of local plants. This results in what's known as Wildflower Honey because the bees aren't just focusing on one type of plant, like Orange Blossoms.

A typical beehive structure includes a large box called the brood box at the bottom and several smaller boxes stacked on top, known as supers. The brood box is the queen bee's domain, where she lays a staggering 1,500 to 2,000 eggs daily. On the other hand, the supers are where the bees store honey. The queen is kept out of these boxes, ensuring they are used exclusively for honey storage. This makes the honey extraction process much easier and cleaner.

A fully mature hive can house an impressive 20,000 to 35,000 bees, with the number varying depending on the season. Most of the bees you see are female workers. The male bees, known as drones, primarily exist to mate with the queen.

Each healthy, fully-grown bee colony can produce about 100 to 200 pounds of honey annually. We typically harvest honey twice a year, in June and September. Between Fort Myers and Sanibel, our hives collectively produce around 3,000 pounds of honey each year.

When did Advanced Air founder Bill Blaze start beekeeping?

We started beekeeping in 2015. These are our first hives.

How did Advanced Air get its bee logo?

Our passion for beekeeping started as a small hobby, but it quickly grew into something more. We enjoyed it so much that we began sharing the honey from our hives as a gift with every air conditioning installation. In 2017, we decided to embrace this unique aspect of our business by adopting the Billy Bee logo as our mascot and adding it to our trucks.