BeeCAUSE Alliance with Charlie Linder (361)

361 - BeeCAUSE Alliance with Charlie Linder

Chuck Cook: Hey, everybody. It's Chuck Cook. I'm a sideline beekeeper in Jacksonville, Florida, a master beekeeper with the University of Florida, and run a small YouTube channel, Chuck's Honeybees. Welcome to Beekeeping Today podcast.

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Jeff Ott: [music] Welcome to Beekeeping Today podcast presented by Betterbee, your source for beekeeping news, information, and entertainment. I'm Jeff Ott.

Becky Masterman: I'm Becky Masterman.

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Jeff: Hey, a quick shout out to Betterbee and all of our sponsors who's support allows us to bring you this podcast each week without resorting to a fee-based subscription. We don't want that, and we know you don't either. Be sure to check out all of our content on the website. There, you can read up on all of our guests, read our blog on the various aspects and observations about beekeeping, search for, download, and listen to over 300 past episodes, read episodes, transcripts, leave comments and feedback on each episode, and check on podcast specials from our sponsors.

You can find it all at www.beekeepingtoday.com. Hey, Chuck Cook, there in Jacksonville, Florida. What a wonderful opening, and you got a little advertisement in at the same time. [laughs]

Becky: I can hear our listeners looking on their YouTube app and checking out his site, so fantastic. We're going to have to check it out ourselves, too.

Jeff: We'll go check it out. Thanks, Chuck. Really appreciate that. That's a wonderful, personable opening, and good luck with the YouTube channel.

Becky: We appreciate it. Thank you.

Jeff: Becky, it's the end of November. How are your bees? I know you were out in the bees earlier today.

Becky: Just taking a quick peek, finishing up the winter wrapping. I do it in components, so I'm not quite done, but they're looking good still, which is always exciting.

Jeff: What kind of beat do you use with your wrapping?

[laughter]

Jeff: Sorry, that's so bad.

Becky: That's funny. It's funny that we call it winter wrapping, too, and it's like putting a box over them, but I guess it's a wrap.

Jeff: Describe your wrapping process.

Becky: Again, I put on a really good beat. No, I'm kidding.

[laughter]

Becky: I'm just going to go with your wrapping process. Early on, once it starts getting cool at night, I'll put on a moisture board on top of the colonies, and it's amazing that that will wick up moisture like crazy. I get that working right away.

Jeff: Back up, sorry. What are you using as a moisture board?

Becky: I'm sure some of it is used to BuiltRight. BuiltRight is actually no longer made, but it's a fiber board. It's not a super sturdy material, but when you use it once a year or for a few months of the year on a colony, as long as the mice don't get to it, it actually will withhold its shape, no problem.

Jeff: Where are you placing that?

Becky: That goes on top of the inner cover. You can buy it from beekeeping supply stores now, but it's harder to find without a black covering in the building stores now. If I do use one with a black covering, then I'm scoring it so that moisture will wick up through those scores, which it's cool, you can see it. The moisture board goes over the inner cover because if you put it over the top deep, the bees will try to get rid of it and so it gives it a little space. I do that, and then I will put black cardboard wax-covered wrap on them or Bee Cozy, depending upon what I'm doing. If it's a single, they get a Bee Cozy. I've got some double Bee Cozies that I'll give to maybe the colonies that aren't bursting with bees.

I like to wait because some of the colonies, if you have so many bees in there, they're generating all this heat. I like them to cool down without the advantage of being insulated at all or heated up with the sun with that black cover. I always learned, and I always say now that those covers are really helpful once they start raising brood, because it can help them with the brood nest a little bit the temperatures. I'm not as concerned this time of year as far as getting them on because the bees do so well in the cold, and so I'm good with that.

Jeff: Becky, this week's question comes from our listener, Chris Nelson. She's listened to us talk about extracting or selecting for varietal honeys. I know that this is something that you're really keen on. You found a great way to keep your honey varieties separate. Let's listen to Chris's question, and then we'll come back and we'll answer it.

Chris Nelson: Chris Nelson from Willamette Valley, Oregon. I have a question about extraction. In several episodes, you mentioned harvesting by flavor and season. How do you do this? For backyard beekeepers and hobbyists, extraction is a huge process, from removing the frames and the bees to setting up your honey house, to extraction and cleanup. When you harvest by season, are you removing frames and storing them until extraction at the end, or are you extracting seasonally? Please describe your process.

Jeff: That's a good question. Varietal honeys is an important part of selling honey. How do you keep your different floral sources separate, Becky?

Becky: It is a really good question. I think the way I do it is a little different as far as how maybe somebody with fewer colonies would do it. I literally do it because I do not have enough honey supers to make it through a Minnesota summer. When I look at the number, when I do the math at how many honey supers I would actually have to buy, and what that massive pulling of honey would actually look like, I'd need a honey house too. What I do is I just start extracting, and I don't stop. I have 9 different yards, and so I will pull honey, and I might get anywhere from 2 supers of honey to maybe 10 supers of honey, maybe a few more.

I will bring those to my dedicated location. I will extract them, and then I will load up those supers that I've extracted from wet supers, and I will go to my next yard, hole my next set of honey, and then put those supers back on those colonies. I'm moving supers around. As a result of me not having enough equipment, I am able to know when I'm extracting my honey, and I'm able to basically-- I'm doing small batch honey because I'm doing it by location and over the season. I'm able to taste the different varietals, whatever they are. I get a really strong basswood flow. Anytime I taste clover, I pull that out, I bottle that separately.

Jeff: Why is that? Just because--

Becky: Because I hate clover honey so much.

Jeff: [laughs] I thought, "Oh, here's a neat technique. There must be something very cool behind this." No, I hate clover.

Becky: I have a special label, Bridgit Meddler, and I wrote an article once called Clover Fixation, which I love the name of it. She then designed a label, and so I've got clover fixation honey with a very specially designed artist-designed label. Anyway, then I know anything that has that clover or it can even be a wildflower variety, but if it's tainted by clover, that's my clover fixation honey, and it's quite popular. What I'm doing is, I'm extracting, and I even shared that I am using different colored buckets so that I can more easily track because I've always marked them, just tape them as far as date, location, and then if I can distinguish the flavor.

Sometimes it's just wildflower, but if I can distinguish the flavor, I'll put that on there. One of the ways you can do this, if you have a smaller operation, is you can just literally mark your frames and make a note on your frames or mark your honey supers when they were filled. When you go to extract, then you are extracting a smaller batch because you're going to keep it separate from the entire harvest. Just extract it in separate sections, switch out buckets based upon either your frames or your supers, and keep track that way. That's another way to do it that maybe makes a little bit more sense if you're going to harvest once a year instead of the entire year.

Jeff: The key to your process is that you're extracting by yard and so you know the time and the date, and the location of that honey. That helps you identify what variety it may be.

Becky: That's definitely one way to do it. You also have to be really familiar with what each honey tastes like. It might mean investing in some of your local beekeepers' honey, that is a varietal so that you can get a sense of that taste, because sometimes it's really interesting. Sometimes I'll get a huge haul of alfalfa, which literally tastes to me like sugar water or sugar. It's really sweet. You just have to identify the taste and then go figure out what it is. Then you can be more sophisticated, and then you can send in a sample. You can send in a sample.

If you get to know your area, you can find out what your predominant flavors are, and then, if you're able to harvest them separately. The last couple of years, I've had buckwheat honey in a Minneapolis suburb, which is so crazy because usually that's a varietal that people will plant, and then when it blooms, they will put on brand new supers on their colonies in order to pull in just that buckwheat and have that be the overall predominant nectar that the bees are collecting. It's weird that I get it, but I taste it, I get it, I make a note of it, and I'm going to sell it.

Jeff: Real quick, do you ever sort your frames by color?

Becky: I have done that before. I did that before when I worked at the university. It's just so much fun to be able to look at those differences. If it happens that you're seeing different color honeys, and that's a little bit harder. Usually, with us, it would be the later-season goldenrod. You can see it's just a little bit darker, but it can be a little bit more difficult to do. It's definitely something that people do. You can have the same color honey, but different flavors too, right?

Jeff: Sure. I've always found it fun when I'm pulling frames and having a frame that looks like a pinto. There's a dark side and a white side, and it's just like, "That's really cool." Then, when you uncap it and then you're just like, "That's nice."

Becky: You can uncap that separately. You can literally if you want to. Especially with buckwheat, it's really overpowering. You don't want it to mix with maybe other flavors, and so you can extract part of the frame, and then uncap the rest. It's a little tedious, but sometimes it's worth it.

Jeff: If you're doing small batch, that's a definition of tedious. No. That's just...

Becky: Oh, come on.

Jeff: [laughs] Just teasing.

Becky: I will say, though, I've gotten really good at harvesting honey, so that it's not a big deal to go and pull. It's a dedicated part of my house that I'm using, but I don't bring any bees in. That's how I keep my husband happy, I think.

Jeff: I think it's very important. We've talked a lot about it in the past, but the importance of making it stand out is important to getting a good dollar for your honey and being able to separate it out, so that you can say a different floral source or varietal is so key. We've had many guests come on and support that, so I'm just teasing about being tedious.

Becky: I will say, what I have done though with my labels, because I don't know from year to year what my June harvest is going to taste like. I have labels that accommodate that. I've got a June, a July, and an August harvest, and different colored lids. We've already talked about this, but different colored lids based upon the label and the month it was harvested, so I can keep track of it. Then I can sell that variety to people if they want really one of my season harvests. Then I don't have to be stuck with if my basswood didn't come in, and then whatever happens in June, then that doesn't impact my label.

I'm just calling it wildflower, but I will be able to tell people what the predominant taste is. Right now I've got minty, I've got just a sweet floral, and then my late season's a little bit tangy. That's what I'm working with this year.

Jeff: Well, thank you, Chris Nelson, for that question. We will be sending you the HiveIQ tool that's co-branded with the Beekeeping Today podcast logo, along with HiveIQ, who we appreciate joining us on this promotion and helping us answer questions for our listeners. Coming up right now, we have a guest who's a return from an earlier visit, Charlie Linder. Charles Linder will be here to talk to us about BeeCAUSE Alliance right after these words from our sponsors.

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Jeff: Hey, everybody. Welcome back. Sitting around this great big virtual Beekeeping Today podcast table is Charlie Linder. Charlie, where are you? I can't remember now.

Charles Linder: I'm in Illinois.

Jeff: Illinois?

Becky: Close to me.

Charles: It's a cold Monday, 70 on Friday.

Jeff: [laughs] We have Charlie Linder sitting in Illinois. St. Paul, we have Becky, and I'm out in Olympia. Charlie, welcome back to the show. The last time you were on, it was January of 2024. We talked about how you started as a backyard beekeeper and now a commercial beekeeper. Today we're going to talk about the organization that you've been associated with. You started, or part of the grassroots starting of this organization, BeeCAUSE Alliance. Welcome back to the show, and we'll get down into the weeds here soon.

Charles: Thanks for having me.

Becky: Nice to see you again, Charlie. I just remember from the last time we recorded that Charlie's really, really smart. He's a good beekeeper.

[laughter]

Charles: I have a face for radio and a voice for silent movies.

[laughter]

Jeff: I appreciate you being here. For those who haven't heard that episode from January 12th, 2024, just give us a quick background of who you are and your background in bees, and then we'll get into BeeCAUSE Alliance.

Charles: I'm a retired engineer, built manufacturing plants for General Motors, Case, Mercedes, Toyota, a couple of others, anyway. Got into beekeeping again as an adult, as a retired guy, and just got a little carried away.

[laughter]

Charles: Started with just a few, and now we're running 5,000 to 6,000. We originally started doing about 1,000 hives for honey, and then the wholesale honey market went downhill.

[laughter]

Charles: We switched to pollination. We've grown and grown and grown. The demand for pollination in my region has outstripped the supply by a long ways. There's a lot of middle-sized beekeepers have just aged out or vanished over time. There's not a lot of people who want to do this anymore. I happen to live in an area that's really heavy in produce. About 10% of the produce comes out of our little region. We happen to be 2,000 miles from Florida and 3,000 miles from California, so nobody wants to drive out here.

Jeff: What's the primary produce that you're pollinating?

Charles: Probably 60% watermelons, 20% cantaloupes, about the 30% or 20% pumpkins. Then we do some almonds and cranberries thrown in there, and some canola, a couple of the little things, but predominantly watermelons. Lots of watermelons.

Jeff: Your honey production is not so much, or it's still there?

Charles: Horrible. This year, we didn't pull honey at all. Last year, we averaged 14 pounds.

Becky: Is it enough to feed the bees?

Charles: That's predominantly what we focus on. Part of that is because we do pollination. We may have a few sections where we may have 300 or 400 hives within a mile of each other. It's really hard for those kind of hives to make honey. Sometimes we'll have hives that are far away that are down in the bottoms, and there's only 12 of them there, and they'll do pretty. We end up taking some of that honey and putting it elsewhere most times.

Becky: I'm just wondering if you're not super disappointed in the fact that you don't have to pull all that honey and extract all that honey and then sell that honey. [laughs]

Charles: There is some disappointment there. There is a little bit of fun in that, but it all depends on the price. That is offset by my joy of being up all night moving bees all summer long.

[laughter]

Jeff: How many years have you been doing that?

Charles: We're on the eighth year of running 3,000 plus. The demand just keeps increasing every year.

Jeff: Let's talk about the BeeCAUSE Alliance. When did it get started?

Charles: We actually got started a couple of years ago. We had a loosely formed group of people who had all been board members on other groups, and there were some things that just weren't getting addressed. Not for any fault of those groups, or trying to pick on anything, but there's just so much work to be done. Some of the issues were just getting glazed over, so we decided that somebody has to take some of these issues on. The issues that we picked are all politically charged issues. They're not easy issues to fix. There's nothing simple about them. If you're going to try to serve a year or two on one of these other groups and make a difference, it's not going to happen. These are 5 and 10-year projects.

Jeff: What issues were you seeing that need to be addressed that weren't being addressed?

Charles: The AAA Labs prevention is one of them. The pesticide issues. When I say pesticide issues, I'm not talking about trying to ban all pesticides. I'm talking about the simple issue that we cannot even get oxalic acid from your local hardware store and use it in your hive. Simple things like that are not easy to tackle because of the paperwork and regulations, and understanding involved in that, but they're also super important.

As beekeepers out here, I would venture to say that 99% of us are in violation of federal pesticide rules. If you use a little bit more than the label says, or don't use it exactly like the label said, or you bought it off the hardware store, or you decided to put something in on your own, because you read about it on the internet, you violated a federal law. Some of that's perfectly safe and not a problem, and some of it's just ridiculously silly.

Oxalic acid is a perfect one that has been tested and tested and tested and tested, and cannot harm the bees, the hives, the honey, or any of that. You can wash your counters off with it. You can bleach your table with it. If you put it in with your beehive with the intent of killing varroa, you have to buy it from the only two approved sources that there are in the country. If you bought it at the hardware store, that's a federal violation.

If you picked it up off eBay, even though it's exactly the same as the approved program, you violated federal law. That applies to almost everything we do. If you put a banana in the top of your hive with the intent to kill varroa, that's a violation. Now, if you did it because your girls like bananas, great. [laughs]

Becky: That's good. That is interesting too. I also hear people in California saying, "We would just like the ability to legally use any kind of oxalic acid in our colonies, because that's not allowed in California." I understand it's complicated, but are you going to help out those people in California, Charlie?

Charles: We have a proposal. Let me back up just a second. Our new group is the BeeCause Alliance. We just came up with that this year. Although we were working on this stuff, we didn't have an official name, and we hadn't put up a website, and we were talking to the EPA and other people. A really good friend of mine, she's actually one of my clients who happens to live on the Hill in Washington, DC We asked her this spring to get us a meeting with some important people, and she said, "The first thing you got to do is you got to get your website up."

We're like, "What?" [laughs] She says, "Everybody on Capitol Hill in the congressional offices is a 20 or 30-year-old something or other. The first thing they do is they Google search you, and if you don't come up, you don't get the time of day." We're like, "That's not what we thought."

[laughter]

Becky: All of our experience-- [laughs]

Charles: That's one of the things that was frustrating for us. We got that accomplished. We hired a really good video guy, and we made some really cool videos. I don't know if you've actually seen them or not, but on our website, there's a really nice video. We're trying to actually change the image of pollinators, and that's a change. That is something as an industry that we haven't done. Amongst ourselves, we talk to each other as beekeepers all the time, but we don't spend much time talking to the other 377 million people in the United States.

We've got to figure out how to do that better. When those people think of beekeeping, they think of a jar of honey or the bee they stepped on when they were barefoot.

Becky: That was really a wasp.

[laughter]

Charles: Could have been, or a bumblebee. They're really bad. The reality is that's what people think of. The crazy guy down at the end of the street who sells honey at the farmer's market. They don't think of the produce in their grocery store. As a result, we're not really important to them. We've got to figure out if we want to maintain this as an industry and a business. We've got to figure out how to change that story just a little bit. That was one of the key things of our group.

The founding members were myself, Jay Miller, Kent Pegorsch out Wisconsin, Richard Coy, and Tim Wilbanks. Between all of us, you got 100 years of history there and experience. We're really an old-time crew just trying to come up with some of the bigger issues, and really, actually get a footprint in Washington.

Jeff: For our listeners who are sitting here saying the beekeeping industry is so small, and there's already two large organizations that exist. Before forming a third group, did you try to work with the other organizations, and can the beekeeping industry financially support three large organizations?

Charles: That's an excellent question. Here's the reality behind it. We're not successfully financing two. That's the truth. AHPA, American Honey Producer, has done a ton of good work, and they use their money to try to increase honey prices. They do a great job trying to do that. Whether they're successful or not, we could argue for years. ABF, at the time I was on the board, was having some financial difficulties. It's a membership and convention-driven fund, but there's not a lot of money there. PAM, for example, goes through a lot more money in research than we ever dreamed of.

Becky: Project Apis m.

Charles: Yes, project Apis m. I think they've spent $13 million. I shouldn't say spent. Let me give them full credit. They have raised and invested $13 million in the bee industry, but they didn't get that money from the bee industry. They went outside the industry, which is also what we're doing. We've decided that beekeepers are broke, and there aren't enough of us to fund a national organization. We've got some other things in the works.

Jeff: That's great. That's an approach I hadn't heard before.

Charles: We're not really bragging about it. [laughs] We haven't got it accomplished yet either.

[laughter]

Jeff: It's a good goal then, right?

Becky: Yes. I think you'll find there are a lot of Fortune 500 companies that, if you can get on the radar of their foundation, they might be willing to invest.

Charles: Here's the reality behind it, and as a director, I can't get into the numbers of any of the groups, but I'll tell you this without any doubt. A million-dollar donation will change our industry completely. If we had a million dollars to spend on lobbying for things that would actually help us, this whole industry would change overnight.

Becky: I thought recently that we are not engaging the entire beekeeping cohort, our backyarders, our side liners, and our commercial beekeepers to engage with their own representatives enough. I just think that if we all coordinated, that could really pack a punch.

Charles: We can. Here's the thing that we addressed a little bit differently, a bunch of us. There was like 12 of us. We went to Chicago. I actually called one of the other big groups, Almond Alliance. I asked them, I said, "How do you do what you do? How do you get to be a national organization with real impact?" I got some really good answers. The first thing they said was, "You get together and you talk about a 5 and 10-year plan. Don't talk about what's going on today, talk about where the future is."

We did exactly what they told us to do, and that worked out really well. The five-year plan came up with some real interesting ideas. What we realized is that we're not recognized as a group. We had a few people talk about all the bee losses a few years ago, but I asked the question, and everybody here should answer the same question. What is it we wanted? What is it we actually needed? We spent a lot of time talking about the bee losses, and we continue to without asking what do we need to solve it, fix it, address it? We're hoping somebody from Washington comes out and hands us an answer. That's not the way Washington works.

Becky: That's not going to work.

Charles: It's a great dream, and it really is.

[laughter]

Charles: The way it really works is, you come up with an ask, and then you go convince them you're not crazy, and they let you do it. We sat down and we came up with about seven different asks to be honest with you. We condensed them down into something you can put on one page, and a politician, and it has a real request. It's not, "I want you to fix the honey prices," it's "I need you to do the X, Y, and Z so that we can do this." That's harder than it sounds. [laughs] That was our first step is, what the heck is it do we want? What do we need to do? Our very first ask was a change to FIFRA.

Jeff: Can you explain what FIFRA is?

Charles: Everything we do in the EPA and the FDA is controlled by FIFRA. We'll call it the Constitution that those two groups work under. It's the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act. Originally started it back in the '20s, modified very heavily in the '70s, but it's still the controlling document. There's a lot of flaws in this. It's like the old constitution. It was written long before we know what we know now. What we know about chemicals and pesticides, and herbicides in 2025 is so far from 1970, it isn't even funny.

Basically, what we said was we'd like the EPA to be allowed to make special rules for beekeepers. We actually fit in a bunch of categories. Minimal use because all the beehives in the country don't come up to what they consider to be a minimal use, but they're not allowed to make special rules for us. Even though we've tested and proved and showed that oxalic acid cannot harm honey in any way, doesn't stay in residue, doesn't stay in the hive, doesn't hurt a darn thing, they can't approve oxalic acid because there's no special rule or category. They can't figure out if some other group, say, the honey ham guys, how it might hurt them.

Jeff: I'm sorry, did you say the honey ham?

Charles: Ham, yes. Sure.

Jeff: Oh, okay. All right. Coming into Thanksgiving season. I just want to make sure--

Charles: If you're in the EPA and you say oxalic acid is safe, then the way FIFRA is written right now, that means it's safe for everybody and any way you might want to use it. Obviously, they don't want to do that. I don't blame them. [laughs] I don't really want them to. It should be okay. We asked special permission, "Will you put it in writing that says it's okay to use in beehives?" The answer was, "No, we can't do that." We said, "Okay. Let's change the rules so we can." Seems simple, straightforward, but it's pretty powerful in the end if we can get it accomplished.

Jeff: That's one of the goals of the BeeCAUSE Alliance.

Charles: It is. That is one of our first goals, first things we started to work on. You guys all know Randy Oliver, I'm sure. Randy and I worked on trying to get verbal approval from the EPA for two or three years, and it was difficult. In the end, they said ee can't. No special category. FIFRA says you can't be different. We said, "Why not?" If you think about it, what's really interesting about this is the entire tax code is written this way. We write a blanket code and then we go make a bunch of exceptions to it, so why can't we be an exception?

Seems simple and dumb, but it would be very valuable to us as an industry. That was one of our founding type of issues. Right now we're also very, very, very concerned about invasive species. Tropilaelaps and yellow-legged hornets are scaring the bejeebers out of us, and they should be. During the summer here, I'm sure most of the listeners saw the report out of New Jersey; the tropilaelaps was found on a ship offshore. That is very disturbing for us. We've had a lot of research being done. Sam Ramsey, Geoff Williams, PAM, Project Apis m. has done a ton of great work on how we're going to handle tropilaelaps when we get here.

I'm a little bit different. I'm irritated, [laughs] actually. It's sitting here and saying, "We're working on what we're going to do when they get here." Why aren't we working on something to prevent them from getting here? I started asking questions, which I'm really good at and annoying people, and it turns out that we have a group called APHIS, Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service. APHIS, as soon as tropilaelaps is identified on our shores, they will spring into action and solve everything.

I started asking a few more questions, and it turns out that that may not quite be how it works. [laughs] They will spring into action. For anybody who's paid attention to varroa in Australia and the catastrophic failure that that was, APHIS is on the same plan. They've got this little bit of containment.

Becky: Let's back up for the listeners. I know we've covered it before at the podcast with Liz Frost, but basically, I don't want to say it, but it was like a kill zone for any honeybee colony in order to prevent the spread of varroa, which did not work. So many people had a mandatory kill of their colonies until they let that policy go, and then it just became managed, right?

Charles: There was no indemnity program, no compensation, shall we say, call it whatever you like, for those beekeepers. There was not a whole lot of incentive to cooperate with that program. There was a whole lot of incentive to load your bees up and get the heck out of that area as fast as you could.

Becky: Move varroa.

Charles: That happened here in the '90s. It happened in Australia, it happened in New Zealand. It's happened over and over. Why can we not look at that and go, "We need a different plan"?

Becky: I want you to back up again a little bit more. Let's just talk about swarms and ships. Could you share a little bit more about what you know? That's one of the main ways they think it could come in.

Jeff: You referenced the ship offshore with tropilaelaps.

Charles: There's only a couple of ways for tropilaelaps to get to North America. I'm going to say North America, not the United States. Ships and bees imported are the main two things. Tropilaelaps is not a particularly durable insect or arachnid pest mite. It's very specific to a couple of species of honeybees naturally. It does hit Apis mellifera. It's devastating. If you haven't seen what it does to a hive, you need to watch some of the PAM videos. Don't listen to the words. Just look at the hives. Those are hives that you couldn't sell; you can't make honey on. They're just horrible-looking hives.

Asians, they typically run singles and take a frame or two of honey out a dozen times a year. They don't run bees like we do here in the US. That aside, Apis dorsata is a migratory honeybee of most of Southeast Asia. We believe this particular swarm landed on a ship somewhere around India and came to the Suez Canal. The swarm itself was collected; it looks like somewhere around Portugal, but forget about where it was at. Just understand that it was about five days away.

There were apparently live tropilaelaps on that swarm. It very well proves that a swarm can and will land on a strip and make it to the Suez Canal and across the pond. That's a very real risk now. We've speculated about it. Of course, I've had several port people say, "Oh, that could never happen. It won't happen." Here's a report. Not only can it, will it, it almost did. I strongly believe, this is my personal opinion, that we just got lucky. This swarm, as I understand, it was on a walkway that people had to see it. I think if it had been on container number 27, row 6, I don't think anybody would've ever noticed it.

Becky: Oh, there are so many spots for a swarm to hide, aren't there?

Charles: Yes.

Jeff: Let's do this. This is a scary-

Becky: Oh, boy. [laughs]

Jeff: -point to leave our listeners, but we need to take a quick break. We'll be right back. During the sponsor spot, you can ponder the question of swarms on ships and see if you can see that 10 times fast. We'll be right back.

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Becky: Welcome back, everybody. I'm just not going to say anything. Charlie, if you just continue with swarms on ships. I think that everybody wants to hear what else you have to say.

Charles: The swarms on ships is interesting for a couple of reasons. Obviously, as I mentioned, that was five days out, which for a swarm of Apis dorsata is not a big deal. Apis dorsata, for those who don't know, migrates on a regular basis. Migrations up and down the mountains take up to a month. Tropilaelaps has somehow figured out how to do that. We know darn good and well, they can and will on dorsata. We also expect that they live on Apis florea. Several colonies in the last few years of Apis florea have been found in the Southern United States. There's some concern there.

There's two other areas of concern we need to talk about. Apimondia was this year, and there were people at Apimondia who bought queens. Some of those queens got put in pockets and brought back.

Becky: No.

Charles: I'm afraid so.

Jeff: Seriously?

Becky: They wouldn't do that.

Charles: I have a lot of frustration over that. I don't know whether it's contempt or ignorance, but it did happen. I'm sure they're not the only ones. There are people who go overseas specifically for that purpose. The other risk for us is is we feel the Canadians, they still buy packages and queens. Now CFIA is doing a pretty good job of keeping track of which countries have tropilaelaps, but talking to the world renowned Maggie Gill, she is an expert on tropilaelaps and she will tell you that tropilaelaps has been spotted by beekeepers in countries where it hasn't been confirmed yet because these countries are taking a year, year and a half to finish the paperwork.

Tropilaelaps can be in these areas, established and imported to another country, long before we ever start to recognize it. There's significant risk here. Again, I'm not trying to pick on the Canadians or the bee industry. The reality is swarms on a ship versus healthy packages prepared, it's kind of a wash. They bring in 40,000 to 60,000 packages a year, and we bring in 40,000 to 60,000 ships. Odds are one way or the other, those are going to come in. The Canadians have 570 ports and 70 port authorities.

In the United States, we have 360 ports and 4 different port authorities. We also learned this summer that some of those ports have been handing out swarms to-- I'm not picking on hobby or small-scale beekeepers, but to sideline or small-scale beekeepers. Basically, they just swarm in a port, and they say, "Hey, can you come pick these up and go move them somewhere?" That is strictly against the code. They are supposed to be destroyed, and rightfully so, but there are quite a few people out there who think that destroying those swarms is a really bad idea, and it's not a risk.

Becky: Then also Mexico, because that's how Africanized bees traveled up through South America. That's definitely a way in.

Charles: It is a black hole in our knowledge, and we need to really get really get our hands on things here before it gets carried away and to continue the trend. All of this came together on my desk in June and July of this year, and it's, "Oh, darn." [laughs] That wasn't my first expression, but I'll use that for radio. Deep concern. A lot of pieces coming together, saying, "This is not a far-off crazy dream that 10 years down the road, after I'm long retired, is going to get here. This is one mistake, and everything changes." Keep in mind, it only takes one mite. She's bred. She reproduces at a rate that is phenomenally scary. It just takes one, and that's disturbing.

There's another factor in this. I'm sure all of us heard about the killer hornets in Washington a couple of years ago. They did a great job. They went out there, they found a couple of nests, and they got them eradicated, and apparently nobody's seen one since. At the same time, we got the yellow-legged hornet in Georgia. Now the yellow-legged hornet is a much smaller hornet. It's not as scary. It's not as big, but it's going to be every bit as devastating, not just to US beekeepers, but to all pollinators.

There are a lot of research papers out there out of Europe right now that says this thing is decimating. A 30% reduction in pollinator visits in Spain was the last paper I read after the invasion of yellow-legged hornets.

Becky: Lewis Bartlett explained to us because once they find a nest where you've got insects flying out of it, they use that nest as a food source. That's how they can depopulate and impact, not just honeybees.

Charles: Lewis is key on this, but Lewis is at the mercy of the Georgia Department of Ag and South Carolina Department of Ag. What happened here is a cautionary tale for us. If you look at the paperwork now, you can see that the area of these hornets is expanding. Common theories from the researchers I talked to say that it's probably out of control at this point, but they also concede that maybe if we get our act together in the spring of 2026, we still stand a little bit of a chance of getting a thumb under it.

Basically, what happened here was the hornet was identified. APHIS jumped down and said to the Georgia Department of Ag and the South Carolina Department of Ag, "Whatever it is you need, we'll give you." Sounds great, right? The problem is there are a lot of limitations on that. The Georgia Department of Ag is up against manpower limitations and time limitations. In fairness, in support of them, this is not easy. These are swamps, and these hornets actually live way in the top of the trees, not on the ground where you can go find them easy, and they're not the size of hummingbirds so that they're easy to spot. [chuckles] This is a difficult task, but they're also handcuffed.

There are a set of rules that they have to follow. They can't use pesticides that are not approved for yellow-legged hornets. Now, understand this, this is a Larry, Curly, and Moe moment for me here.

[laughter]

Charles: We don't have any pesticides that are approved for yellow-legged hornets because yellow-legged hornets don't exist [crosstalk]

Becky: Are not established in the United States. [laughs] That's the whole label law. You have to follow the label. You're not allowed to spray something if it's not part of the actual label.

Charles: That's correct. I was informed the other day that there is an agreement in place to help expedite that thing, that process. Here we are three years later, and I talked to one of the leading researchers who's planning on going to Guam to test a potential new hornet-killing insecticide. He's going to Guam because he can't get an experimental use permit from the EPA in the United States.

Jeff: Is there a reason given? It seems to me, a regular backyard beekeeper, that, boy, this makes just all the sense in the world. Why wouldn't you want to support this and prevent the spread of this? Why just say, "No, we don't have it. Next."

Charles: It's crazy. Of course, Georgia Department of Ag has to follow federal rules. They go to the feds, the feds say, "No." They go, "We'll make do with the best we can." I made a comment to a friend of mine the other day, is on this project in both Georgia and South Carolina, we've got some good people. What we needed was the Marines. We need somebody who's going to go in, break things, tear things up, kill every wasp and hornet in a three-mile area. As far as I'm concerned, this is me, kill them all. The paper wasps, the red wasps, whatever.

Becky: To protect the rest of them.

Charles: Yes. The natives will move back into this five-mile zone in a couple of years, but that's not what the EPA and other people want to do. They're like, "We'll find each nest and we'll catch some of the adults and we'll try to track them back." It's failing, but let's be 100% honest here. The system set up and the system being followed, despite the efforts of some good people in Georgia and South Carolina, is about to catastrophically fail.

Now these hornets, if France and England and Spain and Portugal are any key, these hornets are going to be spread throughout the Southeast, probably across through Texas and into California within 5 to 10 years. These hornets are devastating to not just honeybees but all local pollinators.

Becky: Just to explain, the huge urgency is that when you have something that comes in that is introduced and it's not in its native land, they do not have the exposure to their natural predators or pathogens that might control their populations. Instead, they are in this really healthy space, as long as they have enough genetics, as far as what they need to, to prevent any inbreeding. They are in this great, healthy space where they're not actively being preyed upon, and they're having their way with not just our honeybees, but other pollinators.

Charles: Yes. It's disturbing to me. I looked at some of the rules they have for backyard monitoring, things like that. Then I look up yellow-legged hornet traps in France, and I find four or five different options. I'm looking at these going, "Why didn't we order 10,000 of these and why aren't they hanging on every tree in that county?" That's the kind of mentality we need to get in place very quickly for the yellow-legged hornet. We also need to get the same type of leadership and mentality in place for when AAA Labs is here.

Jeff: We just touched on two things, the oxalic acid use and the invasive species angle. I'm sure the alliance is doing a lot more.

Charles: We only have one other project, predominantly for commercial beekeepers. It won't affect a lot of your audience. It's a replacement for the ELAP program or an assistance to the ELAP program. We decided not to pick one for--

Becky: That's the Emergency Livestock Assistance Program, everybody. [laughs]

Charles: Sorry.

Becky: Charlie, you are going to do so well in Washington because you've got those acronyms down [crosstalk]

Charles: [crosstalk] Right now, beekeepers when they have major losses are compensated for a portion of those losses. We'd like to see that changed into a compensation for live hives. You can call it welfare program, you can call it whatever you like, but it's basically a program like the row crop farmers get if you're successful. That's not going to be a big issue for small-scale beekeepers. We get that, but we do think it will keep the industry alive. We're actually really hyper-focused on these three issues. We understand that the other two organizations out there are working on the other things.

You asked a question earlier, Jeff, about competition and can the industry support it? Again, we're reaching outside, but the real key here is that there is enough work to go around that we can accomplish things, AHPA can accomplish things, PAM can accomplish things, ABF can accomplish things, and we can all work towards the same goal, which is better bees. We also have the Pollinator Stewardship Council out there. You got One Hive Foundation. There are a lot of groups working on different aspects. That's not a problem. It's not an issue. As long as we just respect each other and support each other, moving forward, we'll be more successful.

Jeff: I think that's a good message.

Becky: I've got a couple of things for follow-up. I know that we're running out of time, but first of all, good lord, Charlie, do you have anything good to say as far as good news? Can you leave us with something that's a little bit bright? Even a good--

Charles: Spring is three months away.

[laughter]

Charles: That's a great point. Somebody told me the other day, "You're always negative."

Becky: I get it.

Charles: I'm not. There's always something to work on. I'm enjoying this. I enjoy the experience, but that doesn't mean there isn't something positive to go work on and go forward and jump on. There's always the next issue. That's what society has done. That's how we've got cell phones and space travel and fancy cars and everything, is because everybody in human nature is to strive to solve a problem. That's what gives me a mission in life. There's lots of good stuff out there, spring, little snow.

Becky: I'm going to let you off there. I will also say that, like I said, I had a couple of things, but one, I just can't imagine with you fulfilling all your pollination contracts, all these conversations you're having in the cab or your truck, working on policy over speakerphone, but there's also a membership option. If you've inspired some beekeepers out there, they can become a member of the alliance. Is that correct?

Charles: Technically, it's supposed to be something that you considered a little bit of a business, so if you're selling honey on the side, that's our rules. We are a 501(c)(6) so that we can lobby Washington. It's not a charity write-off. We can accept donations, and if you know anybody in politics, please ring us up; we'd be glad to talk to you. It's really important.

Jeff: Is there a size restriction or any beekeeper who's interested in the projects you're working on?

Charles: You just have to consider yourself a business to be official. That's really the guidelines.

Becky: Regardless, a lot of people can benefit by just taking a look at the website, but if they do qualify.

Charles: Just so you know, for anybody who's interested in the AAA Labs issue, we are starting this week. It's not live yet, but it will be shortly. Maybe by the time this comes out. We will have a petition for online to ask the House and Senate Ag Committee and the Secretary of Agriculture to sit down and have a serious conversation with us on invasive species because that conversation is not happening right now.

Jeff: That would be good to have. Charlie, it's been wonderful having you back on the show. I look forward to frequent updates from you about the alliance, about the projects, and anything else that comes up, we'd be happy to have you back.

Charles: I appreciate the chance to talk to everybody. Thanks, Jeff and Becky.

Becky: Thanks so much, Charlie.

Jeff: That about wraps it up for this episode of Beekeeping Today. Before we go, be sure to follow us and leave us a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts or wherever you stream the show. Even better, write a quick review to help other beekeepers discover what you enjoy. You can get there directly from our website by clicking on the reviews tab on the top of any page. We want to thank Betterbee, our presenting sponsor, for their ongoing support of the podcast. We also appreciate our longtime sponsors, Global Patties, Strong Microbials, Bee Smart Designs, and Northern Bee Books for their support in bringing you each week's episode. Most importantly, thank you for listening and spending time with us.

If you have any questions or feedback, just head over to our website and drop us a note. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks again, everybody.

[00:55:47] [END OF AUDIO]