Michael Mahar: Rethinking Frames, Varroa, and Bourbon Honey (396)

 

Michael Mahar: Rethinking Frames, Varroa, and Bourbon Honey (396)

 

Kelsey Chapin

Hey there, I'm Kelsey Chapin.

Derek Pedaway

And I'm Derek Pedaway. We're here at the Tri-State Meeting in Fargo, North Dakota. We're hobby beekeepers and welcome to Beekeeping Today podcast.

Wonderful. I like it. It's like I've heard it a million times.

Jeff Ott

Welcome to Beekeeping Today Podcast presented by Betterbee, your source for beekeeping news, information, and entertainment. I'm Jeff Ott.

Becky Masterman

And I'm Becky Masterman.

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Jeff Ott

Hey, a quick shout out to Betterbee and all of our sponsors whose 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 episode transcripts, leave comments, Comments and feedback on each episode and check on podcast specials from our sponsors. You can find it all at www. beekeepingtoday. com. Thank you, Kelsey and Derek, for that wonderful opening from the Minnesota State Beekeepers Meeting and the Tri-State Conference in Fargo.

Becky Masterman

It was in Fargo, yes. Yes, I just I just saw you last week. That's pretty exciting. I loved meeting them so much and especially talking to Derek about how he's got I think he has eleven hives now, but he's on to like twelve hundred and I bet he's gonna get there in a short period of time.

Jeff Ott

And you know what, you know, he said he's heard that opening a thousand times. That means he's listened to the show. Each episode two or three times.

Becky Masterman

That is fantastic. No wonder he's such a good beekeeper. But it was fun to meet him because he's learning and he's and he said he uses the podcast. He uses the podcast to learn. So That just I kind of made my day out of it.

Jeff Ott

It did. It is very fun and to hear that we're helpful and as a resource for other beekeepers. That's great. Speaking of resources for beekeepers, we need a couple questions. I have a slew of these HiveIQ tools that need new homes.

Becky Masterman

I bet somebody has a question.

Jeff Ott

They should be pulling honey now, thinking about getting their bees ready for winter? I mean it's August. We're thinking about winter bees already and or you should be.

There's got to be questions out there about that. So if you have a question for us, please let us know. If we use it on the air, we will send you a hive IQ stainless steel tool.

It has great beekeeping today podcast logo on it and the hive IQ logo. It's a great tool

Becky Masterman

Excellent. Excellent. I look forward to those questions, and then you and I can kind of figure out how to answer them.

Jeff Ott

Today's guest is Michael Mahar of 21st Bee. I met him first at North American Honey Bee Expo. You met him earlier?

Becky Masterman

I did. I met him when I spoke to the Arkansas Beekeepers Association meeting at the meeting and he was he was the only vendor there, which was fantastic, and he was selling his product and I first met him there and so but then I followed up when I met him again at NAHBE and boy he's just a smart beekeeper with uh a really interesting background and management that's different than mine and I think different than yours, but I love to hear his reasoning and science behind his strategy.

Jeff Ott

So Yeah, and we'll get into this with Michael, I hope, but he has a treatment free approach that I don't subscribe to, but He has a very rational and methodical approach to it, which I think as long as someone approaches it from that angle, I think it's a good thing.

Becky Masterman

We're kind of doing a big hint here. But I think A tease, is it a tease? Yeah, let me I'm just gonna I'm just gonna say it.

But he manages Varroa differently in his colonies. and he has different theories. And I think that's it's such a hot topic and we're all quick to judge.

But I think depending upon where you keep your bees your management strategy is going to be different. And so I think that it is something that we should all talk about because we can learn from each other and what Michael does may not work where I am, but what I have to do to keep my bees super healthy, it might be more than what he needs to do where he is. So

Jeff Ott

As with all things, beekeeping it depends and location, purpose, and approach.

Becky Masterman

And let's be nice to each other.

Jeff Ott

Absolutely. Kindness is important. We'll talk to Michael right after these words from our sponsor.

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Jeff Ott

Hey everybody, welcome back, sitting around this great big virtual beekeeping today podcast interview table. We have Michael Mahart down in Arkansas and Becky in Minnesota and I'm out in Washington State. Hey Michael, welcome to Beekeeping Today. Hey, thanks for having me.

Becky Masterman

Michael, I've been looking forward to this conversation because after we had a smaller chat at the expo. I just knew that our guests would love to hear all your secrets.

Michael Mahar

Hopefully it's not too boring or I'm not too boring.

Becky Masterman

No, this is great. Thank you so much for being here.

Michael Mahar

Yeah, and you want to qualify that you're beekeeping secrets, right?

Becky Masterman

Oh no, I think we should just keep going. No, I and I think I met your dad too and he confirmed. I said, wow, that was an impressive conversation I had with Michael. And he's like, he's a great guy. He really is.

Michael Mahar

Yeah, he lies. He puts up

Jeff Ott

Yeah, that's great to have that validation. Well, Michael, for our audience and for those who don't know who you are or who 21st Bee is, why don't you give us a little bit about your background, how you got started with Bs? And um how you got started with 21st Bee?

Michael Mahar

I've been beekeeping about 14 years now. So I'm kind of the audible beekeeper in the area. I tend to do everything differently from everybody else. So don't hate me, but first couple years I was the standard, did everything the standard way, Italian bees, just what they teach you in the clubs. The last twelve years I've been breeding Russian bees and I'm a completely small cell treatment free beekeeper.

Becky Masterman

Oh my gosh, we're gonna have to end this interview. I'm sorry, Michael. I'm kidding.

Michael Mahar

So I so I'm went to school for zoology, so I've always liked animals and insects and bugs and things. And I'm a bee I used to be a big gardener, s not the time for it any more. But I just basically I got tired of getting up every morning and hand pollinating my squash and zucchini plants with a little paintbrush before I go to work in the dark. Because I basically had like no bees around me anywhere and went to a um there used to be these things called book and CD stores.

I went in like a box of CDs and up on a corkboard there's a poster from a local club for a class and went to it and just kinda snowballed from there.

Jeff Ott

Boyat brought back Tower Records and all the other uh record and city vinyl Hars was called the Hastings book and C D's

Becky Masterman

Now I'm that old, so pretty sure we beat you.

Jeff Ott

Yeah, well let's not talk about age. Well that sounds really interesting. You went all the way from hand pollinating squash and pumpkin you said to raising your own honey bees. Do you maintain colonies today?

Michael Mahar

So I used to run multiple out yards just, you know, within ten or fifteen minutes worth of driving and friends like farms and places. With work here, we're so busy. This year I brought everything home so it's nice and convenient in my backyard.

Clouded my garden under and turned it into a full apiary. So right now I think I have 25, 27. I usually I don't go past 30.

It's just that's kind of the max for my area. But I don't twenty to thirty on average, depending on the year and how busy I am and how much I neglect and going outside and looking at them. Twenty thirty, it's not so much the area, it's available hours in a day, I think.

You have to take off work specifically to go home and work to be so there's never actually a day off.

Becky Masterman

Plus you're traveling too to get to conferences.

Michael Mahar

Yeah, this time of year, so the 21st Bee is part of my family's bigger business, it's more of a product line. So this is busy season for the rest of our business. And now it's time to go to conferences, so it's fun juggling everything.

Let's talk about 21st bee and what you do there. Kind of some backstory. 21st Bee is a product line, kind of a product division.

of my family's overall business in Mahar Manufacturing. We've been manufacturing since 88. Parents started it.

We primarily do like school furniture and some pet stuff. So we do everything in-house from injection molding, welding, cutting, powder coating, just the whole everything in-house. You know, went off to school for zoology, came back.

had the itch to play with animals and I accidentally got into bees and you know I've always been somebody who likes to tinker and make things. And you know, at home you're making your own things with your saws and your own boxes and frames and that kind of evolved into I hate building frames and I hate fixing frames and wiring frames. So I looked into plastic frames and what was available, I just didn't like them for different reasons.

And I was like, well, hey, you know, we've been molding for all these years. I wonder if I could figure out how to make a better mousetrap basically. And I kind of went down that road experimenting and 3D printing my own samples for years.

And then I finally came up with this and convinced dad that I knew enough about what I was doing to drop a bunch of money into all the equipment, molds. And uh so yeah, so now along with doing all the other stuff here, I'm also the only beekeeper who gets Every email, every question, every bee related, everything along with everything else.

Becky Masterman

Because if you sell bee equipment, you also sell Or no, you give away bee knowledge for free, right?

Michael Mahar

Yeah, lots of people like to try call and want to talk, and I just can't talk during the day. I'm too busy. So I go home at night and answer lots of emails. Email me, I'll answer you for sure. It just may take a day or two.

Becky Masterman

You just asked thousands of beekeepers to email you, Michael. What are you doing?

Michael Mahar

Well, after they hear me talk for a while, I don't I don't think I'll have to worry about it.

Becky Masterman

I don't know. I know I really enjoyed your philosophy, so You manufacture frames, plastic frames.

Michael Mahar

My version of the better mousetrap was I wanted to build a frame that I would never have to fix and assemble. And um I went down the rabbit hole of plastics and I taught myself CAD, did all my own CAD designs, finally found a design I liked, got all the patent work done. Um we do all the injection molding.

So basically our frame designs are basically made for me what I would prefer in a frame. And then I hope enough other people will like it and see the value to eventually pay off all the bills. I've made process.

So they're not designed to be um to run the fastest and be the least expensive they can be. They're built for what I want, which is I never ever want to have to replace them for the rest of my life. And I just kinda went down that rabbit hole.

Jeff Ott

When you were designing your frames and you're comparing them to wooden frames and available plastic frames What were the specific design differences that you wanted to incorporate? What made a perfect frame for you?

Michael Mahar

So first I wanted to mimic what bees would naturally do in my beeswax foundation. in terms of the way they like to chew openings and make little tunnels and passageways through the centers. So that's how I kind of got into making my openings and my and my designs.

I'm in Arkansas, so hive beetle country still. Nasty, nasty for that. So no, I got rid of all the openings to put that hive beetles can get into.

I didn't want to have to worry about tabs breaking off, so I kind of reinforced my design. And with plastic and even plastic foundations, if you get those hot, they'll warp and twist and bow on you. I like myself when I clean frames, I like to take a turkey fryer or boiling water and just dunk them.

So I design I design my frame where I can just dunk and clean them. Solar melter, steam, power wash, you're not going to knock them out of Trove. They're going to stay flat.

You can abuse them. I've left them outside in boxes in full sun for six months at a time. Pick 'em up or true.

Intentionally? Or is that just by mistake? No, just intentionally.

I've got a I've got a short on my page where I left some comb frames out all through the winter where they got ice and snowed on and I picked 'em up sort of beating on the cinder block with 'em They're good, just as good and ready to go. So I'm just like I say, they're built for me. I don't want to have to baby 'em and touch 'em and fix 'em.

I just want to be able to slam them around. I've had customers tell me they've driven over 'em with their tractor tires by accident. Pick 'em up, shake 'em off, throw 'em back in the hive.

Everything we build, we kinda over engineer it with the idea that we don't ever want there to be a problem down the road. I mean, if you're gonna pay good money for something We want it to last as long as it can possibly last.

Jeff Ott

No, I would imagine they stand up well to all the mechanized de boxers and uncappers and the whole production line of a big honey house

Michael Mahar

Yeah, so that's everything with plastic frames. A lot of them, the end bars tend to be a little bit more narrow. I modeled mine after a standard wood frame.

So externally the dimensions are the exact same thing as a wood frame. So you can use every piece of equipment you already own. You can intermix them with wood and get all the exact same bee space.

You don't You don't have to buy or do anything special. Just run them like any all over frame. They'll fit in every extractor out there.

You can really just swap them out over time and not have to do anything to them.

Becky Masterman

It's not just the durability though, because you also added different cell sizes to your inventory. Can you talk about that process a little bit?

Michael Mahar

Yeah, so I was trying to make You know, it's beekeeping. We all do everything differently, depending on region and size and style. So I wanted to make something flexible enough that no matter how you keep bees, we would have something that would work for you.

And me being a small cell person, I've always had to hunt down small cell wax foundation because hardly anybody made it. There's no plastic version of it really. So I did that for those people.

You know, I did your standard 5. 4 for the just the everyday beekeeper. Just that's what everybody mostly uses.

And drones. And being such an important part of your apiary, you know, incorporating that in, I had to make sure and do a drone, and I do a larger drone Because I want the bees and mites to be able to see that cell volume difference. So my drones are 6.

6. I mean they're really on the big end. And then you know, there's like I've always done little bits of foundation I must be keeping.

So I have a medium frame that's foundationless slash cut comb. And most people use it for cut comb. There's nothing to insert into it.

It's just the frame. The wedges, the starter wedges are already built into it. So it's as simple as drop it in because everything we send out comes pre-waxed with triple coat.

You can use it all season, dunk in your boiling water to clean it, and the next year rewax it and pop it back in indefinitely. No pieces to lose, nothing to break. Just nice and simple.

Becky Masterman

Plus you can clean it in the turkey fryer. Is that true?

Michael Mahar

Yes. With water. With water.

Get the water hot enough to melt wax and just dunk it and hold it for a few seconds. If you need to drop in and leave it for a minute, it's not gonna hurt it. I wouldn't leave it all day long, but yeah, you can just go to town.

If you have some uh like if you get really pollen bound, you know how pollen's hard to get out sometimes. You can dunk them in that boiling water to soften it up and come back for a bristle brush or a sprayer and just blast it right out and it's good to go. Slap some wax on it and use it again.

Jeff Ott

Looking at your frame at the show, one of the big draws for me was that you already and you mentioned this, you already incorporate the communication holes in the foundation or in the frame itself. And that's something that I've always thought was really important to have. I mean I've been known to take a 38 inch drill bit and drill through frames and foundation just to make sure that those accesses were available for to the bees. I really like the fact that your frames incorporated.

Michael Mahar

Yeah, I mean, so you know, I keep Russian bees, so watching mine over all the years, it's amazing how much bees will use those tunnels if you just really pay attention to your frame. Like in our in the brood frames, those never get filled in. They're constantly going in and out of 'em, which it makes it more fun if you're not very good at spotting queens.

'Cause that's an extra few spaces for a dip and dive. So you know, especially if you're not marking them too, you have to get a little better at looking at 'em, but You know, it gives them a place to be able to move pheromones and air through the hive. And if you're somebody that likes to run um Langstroths, they can move left to right and right through the box without ever having to go around.

So it makes it a lot more efficient for the way they move

Jeff Ott

That's really good and I had put mine in the corners, the lower corners. I had never considered putting them in the in the middle of the frame like you have on your frames that I saw on the website.

Michael Mahar

Yeah, on the on the deeps. So like the mediums we have one in the center just because the area to reach to go around the frame isn't as far, but on a deep, we've got the two s the two holes that are offset at about a third and a third. So ideally, like in the wintertime, you get a little extra cold snap.

In theory, that cluster is never more than a third of the way from somewhere to be able to get to the other side without having to go around, whether it's a center hole or a corner. So that my thinking was they could stay in cluster and conserve heat as they kind of slowly melt through the hole. And as they do that, they're also heating up the plastic under them instead of having to completely break and go around a top or an in-bar.

Just to try to help us. One that might be a little on the small side to just get through that extra little cold snap. And it's not going to guarantee they make it, but it sure, you know, gives them a little extra help there.

Becky Masterman

Michael, do you ever see them filling that hole up?

Michael Mahar

The times that'll happen, it's more in the supers. On the initial draw when they're just laying down wax heavily and fast. Sometimes they'll go over it.

And generally it's when You it's time to add another super and you don't get out there in time. And then they're looking for every maximum space. So what I do is I keep a little mini um hive tool in my sleeve.

It And if I find one, I just poke the center out and kinda ream it. And after I do that once, generally they leave it alone. But you will come across the hive every now and then that no matter what you do, and after I do that two or three times and they refill it, I just That's how they want it and I just let it go.

Becky Masterman

So you've got the usually honey frames on the edge and then pollen and honey. They're leaving those open.

Michael Mahar

They're moving the I guess they're using them as little passageways to go end to end. Um even on the outer two most frames that are just honey, you know, by the end of summer, most of the time those are left open even in the brood chambers.

Becky Masterman

Oh, that's super interesting.

Michael Mahar

Or at least um it might it might be as anyway.

Becky Masterman

But still that's th you've got a lot of a lot of data just because you've been using your frames for a while now. And so yeah, that's interesting. I want you to talk a little bit about cell size and varroa.

I first met you in Arkansas when I was talking at the bee meeting there and then the second time I met you I had to apologize because the first time there was a panel discussion and There were three of us, I think, on the panel and somebody asked about cell size. I quoted and we all agreed that the data generally don't support that cell size is helpful for Varroa But then when I went to write an article for bee culture, I apologize for this really long introduction, but it there's an apology in there.

But when I when I when I went to write an article about bee culture, I looked and there was some newer research that was more of You know what?

We've actually found both. We've found that it doesn't make a difference. We found over here that it might make a difference.

And so it's not as black and white as I think we gave everybody the impression that it was And then I proceeded to have a lovely conversation with you after I apologized for stating that uh the data just don't support it because I think some data do. And I think you and I talked about how it might just depend. But with that Apology and question.

Could you talk a little bit about your understanding of the biology and why you use it and your recommendations?

Michael Mahar

So there's not a lot of research out good research, you know, and like I say, I'm from a science background, so I like my research papers and my data to a point it really varies. And it's hard to t it's a long conversation to really get into. I mean you can get into the weeds on it But basically the gist of it is I don't like the way a lot of studies are done.

Just there's so many variables the control for, it's really hard. A lot of the ones you see, like For instance, you know, I'm a treatment-free person that uses small cell and I use it for that purpose. But I can't you can't just drop small cell into a hive and it fix everything.

It's part of an overall system and it takes time. It's a long process. And if you're somebody whose entire business pays the bills by making honey, that might not be something that you can afford to do.

It's all up to your situation. Like I say, I don't treat, but anybody that needs to for their situation, you do what you need to do for your bees. That's, you know.

I'm Luckily, I don't have to pay bills off honey, so I can afford to have my bees make 10% less honey than the next person because I'm not paying bills. So I can play at the genetics and I'm selecting for survivability. So I incorporate small cell more based off the host parasite equilibrium kind of concept.

I think it's called the uh the Red Queen hypothesis. It's kind of where I come from. Basically the way I do I go about it is I use small cell.

And I run 10 to 20% drone frames year round, no freezing. I let them hatch constantly. So and that's part of why I made my drone cells so much larger.

So mites can see that cell volume difference to differentiate between worker and drone. Because you know, mites are looking for drones because they have the largest food source. the longest time in the cell to reproduce.

Well, and the way I do it, it's small cell bees, and I've kind of tracked this myself over time, and there have been people who've been doing it for years, like um Bush and Lesby and people But my bees hatch about two days faster because the difference in the body's volume, every stage of developments a little bit quicker, and that all adds up. So I just naturally get a couple days less time overall, which means less time for mites to reproduce. It doesn't stop mites It just kind of shifts that might build up down the road a little bit to give you more time.

If you're going to do something about it, you can intervene on your own schedule. But I also run drones without freezing. Because you know, as drones make copies of themselves, the mites that select for drones will naturally go to those drone frames I'm leaving in and reproduce.

In my thinking, if I keep removing those, all I'm leaving behind are the mites that select for worker brood, and those are what's going to reproduce in the higher numbers. I'm trying to put selection pressure by running drones that way, which is also part of the reason why I don't do mite counts. I don't do harbos because they're not gonna tell me anything because of the way I run bees.

My best hives have had mite counts and a three hundred count I've had mite counts on like the 72s, 74s, not like eight and nine, like seventies. Okay, and I because I'm purposely breeding them, but I'm using my drones to take most of that damage. I'm assuming I have a high viral load because of that.

I'm assuming I don't know. I don't know if my bees have adapted to it because I do all my own breeding. I don't buy queens from anywhere else.

I open mate, so all my everything I have now is locally mated from my original Russian stock. And I don't have uh there's not a lot of beekeepers around me. I'm not next to like a big commercial operation.

So I just happen to be in a nice little spot that I can do this. And I do run a few hives of standard bees too, just because I need them for pictures and videos and things for the website. I haven't ran standard bees since like 2014 until like this last year.

And I run them the same way, the same treatment free with my drones. They don't do quite as well this year, the ones I've been looking at, but they still do better. They still get that nice shift over to the drone cell But they s they aren't doing as well as you know my normal ones.

But it's about size, uh volume, and it's about numbers. You wouldn't think that you could get a lot more bees on a frame being small cells My small cell is 4. 9 and the standard is 5.

4. That equates to about 3,000 cells per deep frame So my single deep box has thirty thousand more Bs in it than my standard deep box.

Becky Masterman

Three thousand more cells per deep frame.

Michael Mahar

Per frame.

Becky Masterman

Because okay, because a standard would be about sixty nine hundred, right? Well I'm Wait, are you including are you including pollen and

Michael Mahar

Honey or no, I'm just saying potential, potential cell opening. Total.

Becky Masterman

More.

Michael Mahar

Yeah. Wow. So you can have up to you know that much potentially.

I run a deep plus a medium brood chamber. So I'm probably floating up towards that number. But I have a lot more B's to be able to take a viral hit or my damage.

So I can have a higher percentage gear. get affected by the mites without seeing such an upfront immediate effect from it.

Becky Masterman

If you are kind of on like a land island, the viruses could be settling out to the kind of a less harmful that's possible. where I am, there's just constant there are beekeepers all over the place. And so it would be really hard to keep out incoming Varroa because my bees can get into trouble for sure if they go and steal anything. Y you could also be you know, you could be doing selection on a number of kind of fronts and so it'd be interesting to know. Don't you wanna know?

Michael Mahar

Yeah, that's part of it. So like when all I don't know a lot of the studies are done They're not really going to be keepers like me that have been doing it for a decade plus. Because like my losses, my average winter loss is five percent.

What combination is accounting for that? I really don't know. I tell people if you're just getting into bees and you want to go the small cell and treatment free and all that route, learn how to keep bees normally for two or three years, learn the basics.

Learn how to make bees because you're going to lose a lot of bees doing this. You've got to weed out the genes that just don't like the program So I lost eighty to ninety percent of everything for two or three years until that kind of balanced out. So I guess hey, if you're paying bills of bees, you can't afford to do that.

It's very much a hobby geared kind of a fun thing.

Becky Masterman

Well and like a lot of clubs I think that are trying to impact the genetics, you have to if you've got bees around you, you have to also impact their genetics so that it you're not having that I do have beekeepers around me so that's why I run partially why I run so many drones.

Michael Mahar

I want to flood their queens with my genetics and hopefully eventually get some of it back to me. That's why I'm not buying purebred queens or anything because I'm going to let it get watered down instantly. So I've done it enough years that I hope I'm getting some of my own stuff back, but I really have no idea what's in there.

I just know that I have my origin I'm breeding from my original queen strain. And outside of that, there are mutts on who knows? Who knows what's in 'em.

Jeff Ott

Let's take this opportunity to take a quick break and we'll be right back after these words from our sponsors.

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Becky Masterman

Welcome back everybody. Michael, thank you so much for sharing your management. Thank you for talking about kind of the different ways that beekeepers use different cell sizes.

Now I want to get into a topic that is very impressive. And if anybody out there likes whiskey, they're gonna kind of love what we're about to talk about. But you do something very special with some of your honey, right?

Could you talk about your bourbon barrel process? Don't give away too many secrets, but just give enough away so that people get inspired.

Michael Mahar

Yeah, so basically I take my honey, make it taste like liquor, and then people like it and buy it.

Becky Masterman

And it's it is amazing. It's amazing. It is amazing. It is so amazing.

Michael Mahar

There's so it can be as simple uh or as complicated as you want. So most beekeepers I know who do bourbon honey. We'll get a used bourbon barrel, put the honey in.

Most of them don't fill up a full barrel, so they make like a little roller so they can go out and rotate the barrel every day. They give it about three months and pour it out and that's it. That's finished product.

So know some beekeepers that use bourbon like imitation flavoring. They call it essence of bourbon. Just like vanilla flavoring and add it to it and it's bourbon.

Like everything else, it has to be complicated. And picky. So and you or using a barrel if you're not in a really warm climate and that crystallizes inside.

Have fun.

Derek Pedaway

Yeah.

Michael Mahar

Getting that thing and getting it out. They leak, the barrels dry out Uh there's honey dripping over the place. It's a mess.

So getting into it, I was like, all right, how do I fix this mouse trap? How do I make a better one? So trial and error, I kind of developed my own weird way of doing it.

I make bourbon barrel and I'm actually making rum aged barrel and smoke and some other things right now. I do it in five-gallon buckets and I actually use bourbon wood, the oak woods and bourbons to almost infuse into my buckets, so it's a way more controlled process. So for instance, if you're not a bourbon snob, bourbon tastes like bourbon.

I like bourbon. I have lots of different kinds of bourbon. I mean I it's everywhere in my house, way too much.

Becky Masterman

A bottle here and a bottle there.

Michael Mahar

Literally in in my bedroom on the desk, I have a computer monitor and there's like three or four bottles and brown bags behind it. There's bottles and drawers that are still wrapped. These aren't all open. Here's when I go to shows, I find things I can't find here.

Becky Masterman

I love it.

Michael Mahar

I buy them like that would make good honey later on. And I store it and they've been sitting there for two or three years.

Jeff Ott

Between the cushions on the sofa. I can see it now, Michael. In the garage, behind stuff on the shelves.

Michael Mahar

Literally, it's everywhere. So, you know, it's hard to get access to good bourbon barrels that are wet. They call them wet because they're freshly dumped.

The wood hasn't dried out yet. Like good Jack Daniels, you know, barrels that were gonna go to their good customers, breweries, higher-end places. So a lot of beekeepers, you get what you can get.

Well, I wanted to do it with good high-end stuff that I like to drink So I figured out a way to you can buy um wood oak spirals and staves like for flavoring wines and beers and whatnot. So I'm taking really good bourbon because I can buy it by the ball and a premium for it, but I can get it.

Becky Masterman

Oh my god.

Michael Mahar

And I pour it in the glass mason jars and I soak all my spirals and staves in it for many months at a time. That way I can select what charred toast levels I want, really fine-tune it. So in the garage I have mason jars full of all these different things.

And I usually take my bourbon honey in my buckets and I use like a base bourbon. Like this is a nice mellow, just normal blank canvas. I'll give it three or four months to get a base down.

And then I taste everyone to my palate and go, what do you need? Do I want some more nuttiness? Do I want more of this or that?

And I know what bourbons taste like what? And I start pulling spirals and staves, adding to those buckets, give it another month. Taste it again.

It could use a little bit more toast. That's a heavier toast. Go pull that one.

So the last batch I did had like five or six different bourbons in it with different kinds of toaster levels in that one batch just because of me tasting and tweaking. And a batch can I think the fastest I've ever made a batch is like seven or eight months. I can have that just go for a year.

Wow.

Becky Masterman

Okay, first of all, you're not charging enough after I just heard more about this, but I didn't mean to interrupt you though. Keep going.

Michael Mahar

Oh you're fine. Um, so yes, uh so I'm doing that. And then I'm also trying to, if you know anything about bourbon, the way they age it, and rickhouses it gets hot and cold, so bourbon moves in and out of the wood.

Well I'm putting a little extra taste in my wood. So once it's in my honey, I actually use bucket heaters and I'll heat for multiple days and pull them off for multiple days to get that heat and cold effect so it'll transfer through the wood better. I like buckets lined up down the hallway with different stages of things on them.

And I know people ask, okay, so when you add bourbon things into it and it leaches into it, you're adding water. So what do you do about water? And I want all ages to be able to consume it too, so I really don't want alcohol in it.

Where if you're dumping out of a barrel, you're just getting straight alcohol in it. In the process of heating and cooling with that those um bucket heaters over time, the water and alcohol vapor condensate on the lid, so I can carefully peel it back and wipe it with a rag. And by the time I get it to where I want, I pretty much flash the alcohol out of it and the water levels back down to like 17%.

It's good to bottle and go and anybody can have it. So I having the extra time helps me get it all good and dry too But it is, it's a process, it's an expensive process because I have all the alcohols and woods and everything into it. But I'm basically using the same woods and techniques that you would get out of a barrel, but just in a very controlled process.

Becky Masterman

So I have to ask, once you soak the wood, can you still drink the bourbon?

Michael Mahar

It's super woody. Is it like it's super dark, super woody. So I c I can use them for a couple of batches and then it's pretty well done.

Becky Masterman

Okay.

Michael Mahar

And I gotta pour it out.

Becky Masterman

Okay. You're really you're transforming the actual alcohol or the liquor also.

Michael Mahar

So what I do after I've done a few runs of my bourbon honey, I will take those spirals and pieces that have been soaked in bourbon and honey I'll pull them out and I'll put them in a separate jar of rum, and then I'll make a bourbon oak rum age that I'll soak and that'll go into honey. And I'm using rum that's already been bourbon barrel aged for a couple years on top of it. So my rum honey is actually bourbon rum and with all the ever will goodies from multiple batches put into it. So it's an experimental project I'll probably have done. I'll probably have some done for NAHBE this year.

Becky Masterman

Oh my gosh.

Michael Mahar

Unless it's really awful. I don't know.

Becky Masterman

Have you ever brought it back to the company that produces the bourbon and said, here taste this

Michael Mahar

No.

Becky Masterman

Cause don't you think that they would think that was amazing?

Michael Mahar

You can buy some honeys that companies would do like that, like blends, makes a bourbon honey and I've had other beekeepers who've tried they tell me they've tried lots of different bourbon honeys and they're like I've even had that stuff from the distillers and I like yours better it just tastes so much better. I think it's just because I go through all the extra time and steps. You figured it out.

Everything is done to my taste. I mean, there is no formula. It's I think this, so that's gonna go in it and let's see what happens.

Jeff Ott

Can you taste the difference between an expensive bourbon and your less expensive bourbon?

Michael Mahar

You can. It comes down more to the proof So originally I thought, okay, if I use a low proof, it's not putting a lot of alcohol in, it won't make it taste too bourbony, and it had a good bourbon kick. So then I use some really high end high proof stuff.

And what happens is there's a in bourbon when you drink it, there's a lot of really minute flavors on the back end that you really pick up when you use the higher proof they're oil soluble flavors. So when you use that in your honey, your honey picks up all those really fine flavors. to where using the low proof just you don't get that.

It's just bourbon. Whereas this last batch I did, you pick up some of the citrus notes on the back end and some of the foils out of the honey. And then your honey is different batch to batch too.

So it's is it my spring white clover and wild blackberry honey or is it my summer everything in the yard honey? And you have to take that in consideration with what bourbons I'm using, what notes it's going to add to it I mean at worst it's gonna taste not how I want. I'll feed it back to the bees, but I'm trying not to do that.

Jeff Ott

My other question was whether the honey that you're using makes a difference, but it Obviously it does. And do you have a preference to which honey you use?

Michael Mahar

Um what produces the best result? The wildflower, the summer honey. stands up to those really higher proofs with all the different flavors in them.

I have to be really careful on the light stuff because there's not a real strong honey flavor there. It's more just sweet. So I have to be a lot more delicate with the amounts of toast and chars and things I use, or I'll just overpower it.

My personal favorite normal honey in general is goldenrod, and it's hard to get the bourbon to cut through that goldenrod taste. So I try not to use it at all. It's mainly just a spring summer honey that I that I work with.

But yeah, I prefer the summer honey just because I can use the higher end stuff with all the extra little flavors in 'em But there's only so much of that to go around.

Becky Masterman

So you are sold out on your website right now. Do you have a waiting list?

Michael Mahar

I haven't even put it on the website. People just go and know I have it and they'll just message me and text me and say, Hey, can I get ten bottles shipped to my house? And I'll hook them up because I don't have enough to put it on the website yet.

When I do So the plan is to ramp up and do enough to be able to offer it on the website seasonally. And yeah, I'll post about it and it's first come, first serve. Just dive in there.

So the I use those little looks like a little liquor bottle, like you would see behind the counter at the gas station. Everybody knows what that shape is. So I do I say five gallon batches, but I have to have room in them for mixing and moving things around.

So I get about seventy of those bottles out of a five gallon batch. So they go fast. I can take a hundred bottles to a conference and come back with nothing.

Oh, no doubt.

Jeff Ott

So who do you have to know to get that?

Becky Masterman

Wait, you've been you've been very generous and full disclosure, you have shared three bottles with me. It's amazing. So amazing.

Michael Mahar

It's one of those. If I'm friends with you and I know you want some, I'll hold some back I have some held back right now. I have some from all my batches held back at home for me. Sitting in the cabinet for a rainy day, so somebody's really hard up.

Becky Masterman

I just love now your house is full of bottles, buckets, jars There are some there's some honey in there too, some bottled honey.

Michael Mahar

There's a cabinet. If you open them in my cabinet and you look up the top shelf, it's nothing but honeys, creamed honeys, hot honeys, bourbon honeys, friends of mine's honeys On the counter, there's like 30 bottles of friends of mine's honeys from NAHBE. From parties, there's and there literally is bourbon Everywhere you turn, I'm sure my wife is sick of looking at it.

Becky Masterman

Oh, you know, I wasn't gonna ask the question, but I assumed you weren't married after this disclosure.

Michael Mahar

Oh no, I weren't married to a saint. I'm married to a lady who does not like doesn't touch bees, doesn't drink bourbon, hates the taste of it I t I took her to a distillery tour with me and she was brave and did a tasting with me and that was fun to watch. Oh yeah, she just tolerates me.

I don't think she's been in the backyard since I put bees back there all those years ago. She's just it's not her thing. The oldest son, uh, he's almost twenty-one, he doesn't do bees.

My youngest one's almost fourteen, and when he was younger, he helped me out with them. But He's very much a techie computer kid, so I'm doing all my bee work alone and all my bottling alone and extracting alone and Your beekeeper friend Jack.

Jeff Ott

Yeah. What is your favorite bourbon of choice to work with? Hmm.

Michael Mahar

You know, at the moment, so I like a lot of the hard to f to find stuff, but just everybody the stuff you can find. I'm an old Forester guy. I like Brown Foreman company stuff, so Old Forester barrel strength type stuff is good for honey.

There are a lot of local like regional producers. I'll pick up stuff from them, small-scale distillers. I try to use their stuff when I can, so if it turns out well I can say, hey, this was in it.

I'm a I like sweeter bourbon, so I'm more of a weeded bourbon guy. So that's kind of where I tend to go. But really it's hard to pick a favorite.

I mean, they all lend so many different things to your honey that they're all great in their own way. And really, I don't really eat honey that much. You know, it's always around, so I hardly ever touch it.

So when I do, you know, I'll try different kinds of my bourbons on things, but really I can have a bottle of honey open in my cabinet, it'll last two years. I look at it, it's you look at it so much, it's just you just get tired of seeing it sometimes. That's why I had to do something to figure out how to get rid of some of it.

That's why I got into playing with a bourbon, just to get it out of my house to get it gone. I'm there I'm there with the play of the bees, not so much to make the honey.

Becky Masterman

Well, I'll tell you I like honey a lot more when it tastes like bourbon, so I can't say enough good things.

Jeff Ott

This has been really educational and interesting. I mean, not only I think this has been one of the most widely diverse discussions we've had, Becky, we've gone from cell size and plastic frames to bourbon flavored honey in the span of the last Just under an hour.

Becky Masterman

Yeah, it's pretty fun. So thank you so much.

Michael Mahar

I'll tell you for people that are just starting out doing little farm stands and little shops with their honey. If you can get good at making bourbon honey, that's a good way to move it. There's a good premium for it. More so than even comb honey. So if you're on that small scale, it's something fun to play with to try to maybe see if you can get into that market.

Jeff Ott

If you can leave us on one thought, what would be the standard retail price of bourbon honey?

Michael Mahar

I sell mine, some of my little liquor bottles, I think they're a like oh they hold like a eleven point eight ounces. No, ten point eight ounces. I sell those for twenty dollars a bottle and I can make seventy bottles out of my buckets So that's you're talking fourteen hundred dollars a bucket before your costs come out. And I'm buying no high-end liquors and things, so it probably cost me a couple Hundred at least a minimum of a hundred plus dollars a bucket to make it. There's there are good margins that make it.

Becky Masterman

And you've basically figured out how to make your bourbon purchases tax deductible.

Michael Mahar

No. Just when I was at this recent show, I look at the local uh liquor stores and go, they might have something regional and I just go hunt and I pay full price and taxes and Drag it back home in the suitcase.

Becky Masterman

And you don't give the receipts to your accountant?

Michael Mahar

Accountant. Family business. We're the everything, so who you're gonna give it to yourself?

Jeff Ott

Oh very good. Well Michael, it's been a great pleasure having you on the show today to talk about 21st Bee, the frames as we were talking about, which I think are really exciting. And the bourbon honey, which is I know what I'm getting for Christmas presents this year, I think. Thank you. Yeah, thanks for having me here.

Becky Masterman

Really appreciate it, Michael. Thank you.

Jeff Ott

I'm gonna have to try to Find some of his bourbon flavored honey next time we see Michael.

Becky Masterman

Yes, I can tell you from experience that it's quite amazing and I haven't met anybody who's tried it because I share it a lot. I haven't met anybody who's tried it who doesn't think it's pretty special. So

Jeff Ott

Well the process of making it was a lot more involved than I even imagined.

Becky Masterman

It's definitely Intense, right? But I like that about Michael. He's very he might have different management techniques, but he's got a biology background And he uses his biology for both his bees and for his honey making. So it's pretty fun.

Jeff Ott

And also the manufacture of the frames.

Becky Masterman

Oh yeah, that too. That too.

Jeff Ott

And 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.

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