The State of Honey Bee Health: A Tri-States Expert Panel (397)

The State of Honey Bee Health: A Tri-States Expert Panel (397)

Shane Davis

Hi, this is Shane Davis from Bluenville, Arkansas, and I have 15 hives and first time at the Honey Bee Expo and just wanted to say welcome to beekeeping today.

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

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Thank you, Shane Davis, down there in Arkansas for that great opening. From the North American Honey Bee Expo way back in January.

We still have a few more openings from North American honey bee Expo. To use. This is fantastic.

I like it.

Becky Masterman

Wow, they really gotten us through most of the year, along with the Midwest honey bee Expo. Do we have any of those left?

Jeff Ott

Yes, we have a couple more of those coming up. And just recently we used our one from the Tri-States and Minnesota State Beekeepers meeting too.

Becky Masterman

Ah North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota.

Jeff Ott

You know about that meeting, don't ya?

Becky Masterman

I I know a lot about that meeting. Yes, yes. It was so nice to have you at that meeting, Jeff. It was really nice to be able to to see you in person, even even if I was a little busy throughout that It was over three days, but about two full days of programming.

Jeff Ott

Yeah. It was really fun and a great group of people and beekeepers there that I got to meet and rub shoulders with and listen to. And this episode today comes from that meeting.

Becky Masterman

We put ourselves to work because we always like to have a panel. Panels are great at meetings because then you you really get that exchange of ideas. You are able to take advantage of of people with different backgrounds answering the same questions so you have multiple pers perspectives and so you know who moderates a panel better than you and me? Wait, is that should I say that?

Jeff Ott

No, I actually I kinda like that. I like the sound of that. anybody who wants a panel discussion moderator, give Becky one a call.

Becky Masterman

Right Panels are my favorite. I've always I've always loved doing live panels at conferences just because it's it's usually it's it's just a great time because the audience can actually add Ask questions so they can get a little bit deeper into the material. Usually somebody makes you laugh at some point during the panel discussion, so It's a good experience.

Jeff Ott

Well, this was a very fun panel discussion we have coming up and we recorded it was on current bee health issues and the perspective of our panelists. And in that panel we had Randy Oliver Rogan Tokash, Katie Lee, and Jackie Park Burris. Jackie Park Burris.

Becky Masterman

Who or Jackie is as You know how at a meeting Randy Oliver's is always really sought after? Well, the number of times I had people say to me, Oh, I can't believe Jackie Park Burris is here. This is amazing. She she is so well known for her queen operation and and her her knowledge and honestly her her communication. So it was it was great to have her as part of our panel.

Jeff Ott

Absolutely. I was very pleased to meet her in person and look forward to having her on as a guest one-to-one here in the future sometime. With that as a preamble, let's get into this panel discussion with our four experts.

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Becky Masterman

Hi everybody. My name is Becky Masterman. I'm with Jeff Ott, my co-host for Beekeeping Today podcast.

This is a test to see if the podcast gets better if there's alcohol involved. So feel free to keep getting drinks, because I I think it does. And then also there's a little bit of food left if you still want to eat.

That's not being recorded, is it?

Jeff Ott

Shoot. It's all being recorded.

Becky Masterman

Oops, okay. I was waiting for the intro music to come in. But everybody, welcome to Beekeeping Today Podcast.

Jeff Ott

This is being recorded and edited, and it'll be on a later episode on Beekeeping Today Podcast. The topic today, we're gonna and welcome all of our guests listening both here in in Fargo and also those listening at home or wherever you happen to be listening So what we're going to discuss tonight with our great panel is the state of the health of the U. S. honey bees. So what we're going to talk with the panelists here, and we're going to just talk about just their feelings about honey bee health this year and going forward. So what we would like to do now, we're gonna hand just hand this mic down and just for our audience introduce yourself and just do a quick intro of your background with bees and what you're doing with bees and then just hand the mic off.

Jackie Park-Burris

I'm Jackie Park Burris. I am a second generation queen breeder. I've been involved in the bee industry and working with CSBA for 30 plus years. CSBA is the California State Beekeepers Association. Thank you, Katie.

Dr. Katie Lee

My name is Katie Lee. I work at the University of Minnesota. I'm the Apiculture Extension Educator, which means I get to do education with honey bees.

I'm also a co-coordinator of a USDA-funded granting program called SARE, Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education. I've in honey bees doing research and education for a bit more than 20 years.

Dr. Rogan Tokash

 I'm Rogan Tokash. I'm probably the least qualified to be on this panel, I think, but no. I'm assistant professor for North Dakota City State University. I just started last year actually. actually a couple weeks ago I just had my one-year anniversary on my start date. So I'm really excited to be up in North Dakota I do honey bee research and extension, and so I really love working with doing applied research for North Dakota beekeepers.

Randy Oliver

I'm Randy Oliver. I've kept bees for most of my life. I'm also got a a background in etymology and I translate the science into English for beekeepers and have I have a website of that and I do a lot of research when beekeepers ask me beekeepers ask me questions If I can't find an answer, a legitimate answer in the literature, I will either try to get somebody else, fund somebody else to do it, or run the research myself. And you'll see like tomorrow. Small scale research I do all the time

Becky Masterman

Scientificbeekeeping. com in case you don't know the website, which I'm guessing most of you do. Thank you everybody.

This is a fantastic panel. I think you could just solve all the honey bee health problems The four of you working together. I would like I'd like to start by asking who wants to give us their their opinion on the state of honey bee health right now in the US?

Who's not shy? That's right.

Randy Oliver

We're in a transition period. we got we've had a number of parasites invade during my beekeeping career. chalkrbood came in, then we got tracheomite came in, wiped out 70% of the hives.

But luckily the bees had within their genome enough variants to deal with trachomite on their own And then when true Burroa came in, thought that was going to be easy for them, and it hasn't been. And we beekeepers slowed the process of ev evolution way down. by having effective mitocytes.

We got behind behind the ball as far as to breeding for resistant stock Now that amitraz is failing, worldwide beekeepers are making a big transition, shifting two main things to the organic mitocides And a big shift towards sexual breeding, seriously, for mite resistance, which is gaining traction throughout the world. We're also getting some other we also have two big invasive species banging on us, the yellow-legged hornet, which can be devastating in areas. I'll show some a photograph or movie tomorrow about that and trobal elaps banging on the door.

Rogan can talk a lot more about that. But we're also making progress on understanding some of the things with the virus system with Queens right now that we were not understanding why we were having so many queen losses. And now we're starting to see some of that as with a better understanding of viruses.

So we're in a dynamic state right now and any time an industry is in a dynamic state that means there's gonna be a bunch of losers and there's gonna be a bunch of winners. Okay? So you can choose which side you're gonna be on.

Jackie Park-Burris

Okay, I've probably been at this longer than all of these other folks here sitting here with me, and I've seen our industry go through all these ups and downs and I have friends now that are beekeeping that I keep telling them, hang on, it will get better. It always does And we learned, you know, I remember as a child my mom and dad coming home from meetings and saying, there's two mites coming after us and they're gonna be terrible when they get here and boom the trachea might hit us and boom the varroa might hit us. And somehow or another we survived because beekeepers, real beekeepers, are dug in and they will preserve.

their their need to do this because we love our bees so much. So it's been very helpful to work with scientists like I know Marlett has worked with our family extensively and we've gained from all of that. We've learned, we're always trying to do better.

We're bringing in Some of our scientists are rock stars. Some of a applied research that we get, that's why we've kind of picked out some of our rock star scientists that do applied stuff that can help us And as beekeepers, we need to keep paying attention to them because they may not solve all your problems, but if you keep going and you keep listening to them and take little bits from each one of them, pretty soon the decisions that you make in your outfit will benefit from the education you get from coming to these meetings and learning stuff. A lot of times you feel like it was a waste of time, but you always come to these conventions.

You never really learn what you came for, but you always learn something to go home with. So you need to show up. You need to talk.

I can remember my dad when he was president of the CSBA, you know, 50 years ago, and he said, you know, invite your neighbor over. We all got broken comb in our warehouse. Don't worry about it Talk about your problems.

And like when Trachea and Viola really hit us and hit major commercial beekeeping outfits. The fax machines were smoking because everybody was sending their idea of what they did and what worked for them So they were sending their recipes to your friends and neighbors and said, don't try that. I killed too many bees doing that.

Try this. And we all did that. And we preserved ourselves and made it through it.

And our biggest problem in my view is the lack of forage that we're all facing with these numbers. that some beekeepers are running. You just can't keep enough forage in front of them.

So I'm really glad that we do have a a lot of supplement People working on good supplements, improved supplements, the supplements years ago, I mean, yeah, I can't even say what my dad called pollen because he didn't like it. You know, it was goopy and ucky and looked like something out of the baby diaper, he would say. So now we've got solid and we're improving that all the time.

So thank you to all those guys who are doing the research to work on nutrition because that is in my opinion our biggest problem other than the varroa which we're all trying our best to breed better bees but not lose what we've got. I know a lot of people can say they've got mite resistant bees, but can that can that hive m bring in a crop of honey? Can it have a full box of bees when it hits the almonds Sorry guys.

Becky Masterman

I I I think we had some really good coverage on on either end. I'm kind of curious with the two of you because you've had different I'm talking about Kitty and Rogan. You've had different Amounts of time in the industry. What have you seen changed in the sense are are things getting better or are things getting worse for for your own personal timelines?

Dr. Katie Lee

 better or worse. So I think certain things are definitely getting better. I think one of the really cool things that has kind of come up in the last few years Especially like are the communities of beekeeping, which Jackie was talking about a bit, like people are talking with each other more, they're reading papers more, they're going out and seeking information more.

I think like there's a challenge with kind of sifting through some of it, but because there's so many people interested in this and working on it, there's some really cool technologies that are coming out. that that I I'm really I'm excited to see how they work. I think one of the things I think that has felt more challenging lately is the state of the actual economic health of the industry, which I think is the scarier, like the scary part of this.

Like I I I don't know, like it I'm more hopeful about kind of the state of of the bees like in moving forward, although we still get these crazy losses, which are awful. but the economic part of it, the the honey prices, like people talking about going out of business that I've known for like Two decades. That that's that's one of the parts that I'm really scared about.

Like, and it is, it's obviously always tied overall to the health of the bees and how the bees are doing. our system, um, yeah, there's there's something, as Randy was saying, it does seem to be a really dynamic time with how how this is gonna kind of shake out with everything

Dr. Rogan Tokash

So, yeah, I obviously I came in well after CCD to my beekeeping experience. I started keeping bees about probably 2010, so and I really didn't get into commercial beekeeping until I had a summer internship in like 2019. So I've really only been experiencing the commercial side of things for the past probably six or seven years really.

But I think some of the biggest kind of changes that I've seen is really the implementation of so many different Especially Varroa mite management strategies, you know, talking with beekeepers. Obviously the Varroa mite's a huge, huge issue. And it used to be that you could, you know, come to North Dakota, you could get your treatments on before supers and then you could take them off and get your treatments and you didn't really have to worry about it near as much.

Now with the viruses being as bad as they are and you're trying to constantly catch up because of the amatraz resistance that you're seeing. You're having to turn to beekeepers. I have a tough time going around the state and finding a beekeeper in North Dakota that doesn't have something on their colonies when they have supers on because they just can't catch up to the mite So I think that's one of the things that's been a really big struggle for some of these beekeepers is making sure that they keep their mites low, you know, going into those sheds before they take them to almonds in the future.

So I think that's one of the biggest changes that I've really seen just in the recent kind of year. But then also, you know, economics like Katie kind of just mentioned with beekeeping is that we have seen You know, I go around the state and I don't talk to a lot of people that are kind of my age. It's a lot of beekeepers that are more transitioning a little bit on their way out.

And so It is trying to get that new generation and I do like to see because there are a few really awesome beekeepers in North Dakota that are just getting into it. So it's really cool to see kind of the young and innovative side of things But one of the favorite things that I really have just going around and talking with different beekeepers is I learn so much from them. And so that's one of the things that I love working with commercial beekeepers about is that they're always willing to try something new and really push those boundaries because they're working to find solutions.

You know, this is their livelihood. So they're really trying to make sure that they can figure out what's right and what's going to work within their operation. And I just love working with beekeepers who are willing to do that and work with me on that.

Jeff Ott

Thank you. So as you look back at say let's say the last year and you're thinking about honey bee health, what is going on that gives you hope? for the state of not the economics and also the honey bee health specifically. But what what what is what is the interaction between new treatments, new management approaches Research that can be brought into the the bee yard, what is giving you hopes for the next next 24 months

Jackie Park-Burris

As a beekeeper, I love working with the scientists for a couple reasons. One, I like to know what you're thinking, and one I'd like to direct you in a different direction. Because sometimes you guys go off on your tangent.

It's like that isn't gonna be helpful. Come back here. And so it's very good to work with that.

It it's always hopeful when you love bees like we all do in this room, it we're gonna make it work. We're gonna, you know, put our heads down and keep working until it comes If you got into this business just to make money, you're probably gone by now because it you know you love those bees and you gotta keep them alive and you borrow money from the bank to make sure you can have them fed if you're worried about it or whatever You're gonna keep trying. we have a lot more opportunities for treatments because these guys have been working.

You're throwing a lot of stuff at us where we used to have one or two tools in the box, we now have choices. And we can rotate those choices. Of course, we'd like better choices, but that's coming, I feel a a real push from the scientist and the begivers working together to get more things on the table and we're not shy about telling you that that crap don't work.

You know, we need better stuff and and you guys keep trying harder because we are willing to work together. So that's I see that as being extremely important. We gotta keep working together and talking to each other.

Randy Oliver

One thing that's of concern is the shutting down of the USDA bee lab. And there's applied research and there's also basic research And they were very good at basic research, kind of so-so on applied research. I'm hoping maybe they'll get that message and whatever reformation we have of the V Lab that they will push towards more applied research, not to give up all basic research, because a basic research then later often leads to applied research or tells you not to go down that path.

There's there's nothing there. but we need both of those. we're gonna lose a whole lot of wisdom and learned experience from people who've been in bee scientists for many, many years And that's really tough when we lose that by shutting down a lab.

They're not willing to move to Fargo. So that that's going to be a a tough one. But on the other hand, And Jackie said something really important, the word rotation.

Because beekeepers are doing the same damn thing that they've done for years. I say, hey, these oxalic acid pads work really well. And the first thing they say is, great, can I keep my hive all year long?

That's what and this has been the same thing with every treatment that's come out A treatment comes out and beekeeper is great, I will use it year-round in my hive. And what you're doing then is you're breeding for mites that are resistant to that treatment. And we shoot ourselves in the foot.

every single time. I'm hoping that we are learning to start rotating treatments. Again, as we're making long term view, is eventually we'll be keeping bees that don't need any treatments at all.

I don't know that any of us are commercially are there yet and I completely agree with Jackie. One of the reasons is that up until recently much of the research on breeding focused on Might resistance as opposed to a bee that people would want to buy and use in their operations that are productive. And I think they're getting the message on that that that doesn't take off.

are productive with micro resistance being secondary.

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Becky Masterman

I think we're gonna turn it over. to you for some audience questions because we've got a great panel here and a lot of information that I bet they're going to be generous and share. So do we have some questions from the audience?

Jeff Ott

Oh, there's gotta be something.

Becky Masterman

We're gonna put you on notice.

Jeff Ott

We're hearing the lot in the last couple years about honey bee nutrition that's become the area of focus. I was just at the Colosse meeting in in Washington State not too long ago. Can we talk a little bit about honeybean nutrition and what's the latest that you're seeing that is valuable that would be useful for for all beekeepers but regardless of size and and of their operation.

Jackie Park-Burris

It's your turn.

Dr. Rogan Tokash

Me? Yeah. Okay.

Well I don't specifically do as much honey bee nutritional work as I would hopefully potentially like to do in the future. There are a lot of other Very qualified researchers. Off the top of my head, of course, Priya out at Washington State and Pierre Lau down at USDA Stoneville.

Um, I guess one of the things that's really exciting for nutritionally wise at least is the innovation of some of these new things that are coming to market. some of these new pollen supplements that are being able that beekeepers are using. I know that there's one Apex by name that they've been able to have bees rear brewed in essentially cages be using just that apex pollen.

And so using those supplements that are, you know, maybe a little bit better than some of these other things that we've been having to use in the past is a potential really great innovation that could really push us into nutritionally being a little bit more successful with beekeeping. But other than that, you know, it's really being able to find those great spaces in the US that have that nutrition. And of course, we're sometimes spoiled in North Dakota, but we also have to deal with a lot of neighbors in North Dakota because we have so many beekeepers in the area.

And so I think that's a real big challenge of beekeepers is just the lack of space and the lack of quality forage area. Um, you know, in South Dakota and Montana where you're a little bit more limited because of your limit laws where you can't have apiaries within a certain radius of other apiaries that helps you be a little bit more spaced out from other beekeepers. You get into North Dakota and it's a little bit more like the wild, wild west, and so there's a real big competition.

for some of those great spots in North Dakota. So I think that's one of the challenges that beekeepers are really facing that even in an area like North Dakota, which is what some people say is the last great frontier for honey production You're not seeing quite as great returns on honey production because you have so much competition with some of these other beekeepers because it's just so plentiful.

Randy Oliver

It's not just the competition. It's the it's changing the landscape with the monocultures now and the lack of regenerative farming and the lack of pasture. I was talking about that with John Miller driving over here that back in the day when it was a whole bunch of 35 cow dairy farms, there was pasture stuff blooming all during the season, a wide diversity.

I took photographs out of the window of the airplane coming into Fargo here. I go, my God, it looks like a lawn, which means you're gonna have maybe two monocultures which each have a flash bloom and there's nothing else for the bees to eat the rest of the year So one of the things the article I'm working on right now is to get our industry to push the next farm bill for more money towards regenerative farming, more money towards a w rewarding beekeepers or n I'm sorry, landowners to start bringing livestock back and doing regenerative pasture which would supply supply forage. The other thing, my own county over in Northern California, I sat down and realized we were being overstocked.

We were over the carrying capacity. of our our county and when a commercial beekeeper would come in from down the valley where there was no food for alma pollination and and plop down five hundred hives in an area All the hobby beekeepers would no longer make a drop of honey. So we realized we were going to be destroyed, so we we got together, we beekeepers, we approached the Board of Supervisors.

and said, we this may surprise you, but we're an agricultural group asking you to regulate us. And we we will write the ordinance. I the Ag Commissioner and I wrote the ordinance together And we limited it.

And we did it by making the commercial beekeepers, making it so that the commercial registrations protected the hobby beekeepers and the native pollinators. so that there was no pushback against the commercial guys because we benefited by we had limits only for the commercial guys. And that means that the hobbyists and the native meat could fit in between the mercial g commercial guys.

Now my sons hate me for it because there are no more commercial sites in my county. There's no no one's gonna be able to come in until somebody dies. and takes that over.

But we are now back to curing capacity and people are making everybody's making honey in our county again States like North Dakota may have to start looking at ordinances just as this because it it's called the Tragedy of the Commons and it's you know with any kind of livestock You get that point where you put one more cow in that pasture and then all the cattle suffer because there's not enough food. You want to keep your stocking density below that point.

Becky Masterman

I think some of us want to know how you calculated carrying capacity.

Randy Oliver

I analyze every study, every published what on a natural situation where no beekeepers were involved, what the natural population of free-living honey bees was in different environments. And I I haven't published it yet. Maybe it's really interested.

I've got a PowerPoint on it I've I've given elsewhere. and you look at so it's not for any one area. It has to be for the type of ecosystem what that carrying capacity is.

And then we validated it just from our own experience in our own county, because we have some areas where we f we map out our yards, us per we have about 55 yards of bees, just my sons and I do, in areas where they're tied together. We don't make any honey in those yards. Where they're spread out more, we make honey.

So we could double check those calculations and they fit right in.

Jackie Park-Burris

I would like to second that about Apex Poland. You guys I that's about to hit the market and those people have done a great deal of research and tried their best to spend time and energy and dollars that none of us could ever afford to do to get us a supplement that will help your bees grow. And it's always, you know, beekeepers look at it as I threw in so many pounds and they ate so many pounds.

And that's not the end of it. The end of it, those of us that are really in our bees looking at it, it's how much growth you got out of what they did eat and understanding the hive and the nurse bees. are the consumers of that.

And so all of that goes together. These people have done a lot of research at it. So if it comes across to you, I hope that you'll at least give it a shot.

Um, 'cause it's eg again, like I said, I totally believe that nutrition is our big problem. And like, you know, Randy's talking about ordinances, our county came to us up there in Shasta County, which is almost to Oregon. It's been about 15 years ago and they said we need to help you guys because we've got a lot of out-of-state beekeepers coming to stage their bees for the almonds and they're going to eat you alive and it also causes public nuisance and makes people not like bees.

So you really do need a reasonable amount of discussion with your county folks and we all get along with them so that's helpful.

Randy Oliver

Yeah, so back to that testing. Back in the 60s, USDA lab at Tucson had a guy named Elton Herbert Jr. , a nutritionist, and he developed he tested by making a bunch of cages and he has a cage size how much you need to put nucleus columns in there. And you need to do testing, you need a bank of cages that you can put nucleus colonies in and feed them solely artificial diets.

I've been working with trying with some other USDA researchers for the last ten years. for them to get funding and set set that up at one of the US Day labs because that's the kind of stuff that they could do impartially but I haven't had luck getting one of them to actually do it. I may have to set one up.

I've been threatening for years to it myself. But that's what we need. You need to have a whole bunch of cages All identical.

They can put a bunch of nucs in, feed them diet, and see if you can rear bees for more than two brood cycles on. 'Cause you can get one boot cycle on pretty much any police up. Getting a second one is tougher and the third one, unless it's nutritionally complete, does not happen.

So it's not rocket science, just a matter of somebody building a bunch of those cages And that's the kind of applied research that the USDA is set up to do if we can just twist their arm into doing that applied research.

Becky Masterman

Why don't you also just share your name to maybe where you're from?

Audience Guest

 my name is Eric, I'm coming here at Fargo. So if we're talking about the state of honey bee health, I haven't heard pesticides talked about at all. I've been told by some really big commercial beekeepers here in North Dakota that you know neonics are devastating on the west side of the state and then I've also been told by other people not to worry about pesticides.

They put their hives right beside a field of whatever crop. And so I've just gotten so many mixed messages about it. All of our bees are somewhat close to fields where they spray.

But I'm just curious to to know what you guys have to say about that

Becky Masterman

Is anybody gonna reach for the m anybody gonna reach for the mic? Okay, Jackie.

Jackie Park-Burris

So I don't know. Maybe it's been ten, twelve years ago or something There was some beekeepers in California and they were brothers and they each had their bees. One had 'em, you know, half a mile down the road from the other one, and they had, you know, they started complaining about pesticide And one of the brothers said, I don't know what my brother's problem is, because I'm not dying at all, and he's dying.

So it all comes down to, you know, bees can take two things. You throw the third at them, they go in the toilet They can't stomach it. So did he have a higher mite level?

Did with his bees more stressed? Did he have no SEMA? All of those things make it so the bees can handle some of that pesticide exposure or not handle it.

And that is beekeeping. You know, there is no this is not an exact science. And no year is ever the same for us.

So the carrying capacity only worked for the time he looked at it, because the carrying capacity next year might be completely different because it rained like all get out. the next year we had a drought. So we're guessing at all of it.

And we're you know, we're practicing beekeeping.

Dr. Katie Lee

Yeah, I mean we were talking about nutrition too. N pesticides and nutrition go hand in hand as well. Like if they have poor nutrition, they're more susceptible to pesticides.

But I mean who who all in here has had a pesticide kill? Yeah, I mean it's it's it's basically like every commercial beekeeper I've ever worked with has at some point talked about having a pesticide kill Neonics in particular can be a little like more insidious because you can't necessarily tell in the field what's going on because they can have sublethal effects, which is possibly also why some of the mixed messaging is out there But I mean it you know they they can they can definitely they have a proven effect on bees. They can be harmful to bees.

The exposure, the dosage, whatever else that they're dealing with, the different stressors can all make that a lot more complicated to kind of untie.

Randy Oliver

 I have to send your article on the press in two in a week on this very subject. And what I'm seeing is the number one problem that I see is what we're doing to our land. We're eliminating the forage.

So yeah, the herbicide may not have direct toxicity to the bees. but it eliminates forage. And now that Roundup is being phased out because they overused it.

You overuse it, you get weeds that are resistant to it. So now they're coming in with 2, 4D and dikamba which unlike Roundup are volatile and drift and not only drift onto their crops, but as Stephen Coy is finding out, Richard Coy is wiping out all their forage crops, their their their native plants. So this is a huge issue.

The other one is just the use of the plow. for pollinators in general. When you plow a field, you eliminate an entire ecosystem.

You eliminate all the nesting sites for the ground nesting bees. you you eliminate all the the the plants that they required on, and you bring it back, put it in a monocrop, and you round up all your roads so there's no h there's no hedgerows anymore, there ain't nothing there for those pollinators to eat throughout the season. So it's easy to blame pesticides, but it's more just how your land use is.

And I gave an example. I reviewed the most recent literature on the new index and the seed treatments was just insane where farmers are buying their seed every year and using unnecessary seed treatment because it's cheaper for them to do that and the pesticide companies of course push that. You are we are getting buildup in the soils of them.

They do reach an equilibrium. It doesn't it's not in the they I I've done seen the equilibricalculations. But it means that you have the sublethal dose all the time there Now sublethal dose, you guys have all given yourselves today probably a sublethal dose of a toxic alkaloid, caffeine.

Okay? Now if you drank 30 cups of coffee at one time, you wouldn't be here right now. But you know, understand a sub-netal dose, so let's just say Your bees is having a cup of coffee in the morning or having take up coffee in the morning.

That's a new nick is. It's a stimulant, like a like caffeine. It changes their behavior.

So this low these sublethal doses are definitely of concern. So it's about being reasonable. So I gave an example, I'm going to in this article of mine that I'm a pretty much a semi-organic gardener, have been for a long time.

But I my favorite pltree got a new armored scale insect that I could not control organically in any way and I found out, wow, a neonic treatment on that one tree, applied at the right time, in the middle of my home apiary, was able to eliminate that scale insect, okay? So you don't have to be anti Anything, you just have to be pro-judicious use of things, not overuse of things.

Megan Mahoney

Okay, hi. My name is Megan Mahoney. I'm a commercial bee breeder and beekeeper.

But I just wanted to kind of touch base on what you all view as the future of the almonds because that seems very tied to the commercial industry and there's a lot of different accounts that are coming in. that I hear from beekeepers saying, Oh, it's gonna crash or I'm not getting paid or the almonds they don't have enough water or ah that's all you know they're every they're everything's getting replanted anyway. So I was just wondering if if any of you had any any of opinions, especially the California people, um, on the the state of of that.

Jackie Park-Burris

Megan, it's just like the bee industry. Their industry's going through ups and downs. They have been incredibly good at marketing and the beekeepers benefited because they planted more because they were incredibly good at marketing.

Then we had COVID, then we had shipping issues, and then we had stums and then you know we got some political arguments going on. So, you know, almonds are the one thing that go to Asia. You know, it's not the arrow coming back, it's the arrow going there.

My uncle pollinated almonds before they paid you to pollinate almonds. but his bees did so well and then it caught on and the almond industry bloomed. So it the acreage may never be as high as it was.

There will always be almonds because it's such a profitable crop when the weather aligns. So I yeah, you've got to know who you're working with, you gotta plan ahead, you you don't ship bees from Florida to California hoping for a contract, you have to have a signed contract. When you do that, the cost of fuel, the cost of handling of all of that, you know, we gotta be smarter There was a time there where you could just put it on the truck and somebody found a home for it.

So I think the almond industry has given us a great deal. And I think we've given them a great deal also, and we have to work together. I know the California State Beekeepers Association is members of the Almond Alliance and we work with the Almond Board regularly on best management practices for each of us.

And that has helped a lot. There were times there where we were getting a lot of spraying in the day. And now it's like politically incorrect to spray in the day, although it happens and you deal with it, but it's always been worth the risk to the beekeeper because the paycheck was worth it So they were willing to take the risk for it.

I think we're gonna be fine. Yes, there will always be problems with being undercut by somebody who doesn't have a contract. And I think that some of the Technology service that's come out there has proven that we the beekeepers have done a good job over the years

Randy Oliver

Well, back in 2004 I wrote to the editors of both bee journals and said, Do you guys realize we just passed a watershed moment This is the first year in history where the USB industry made more money from pollination services than from honey sales. We have just shifted from a honey producing industry to a pollination industry. We've been riding on the coattails of the almond growers.

Then along came CCD and vromite issues, and it became much more expensive to produce bees. That means the growers were starting to get hurt because I started at $10 a hive. We're getting like $225 a hive now, just in the span I've been doing it.

And that kind of shot us in the foot because that then incentivized the growers to talk to the plant breeders like UC Davis Hey, can you develop trees that don't need bees from pollination? And they've made some really big strides the last couple of years. Yori Zen is coming out now.

And the plantings of the new orchards are telling us the future that there's going to be a lot less demand for bees in the almonds. unless we can get the price down. So the more successful we are at keeping bees without putting a whole lot of money into that, the more of a market we'll have there.

But if our price keep we can't our price can't keep going up in definitely in almond polish are we're gonna just be priced out of the out of the market. So that that's the future. I've told my own sons You're doing really well in Almas right now, but I would not make your long term business plan based upon Almas.

We have the advantage that we live not t too far from Almond Oceans, but if you're coming f if you're paying trucking fees and fuel costs from North Dakota It's gonna be tougher.

Jeff Ott

Any other questions from the audience?

Becky Masterman

We've got one more over here. Final question

Carlos - SD

My name is Carlos and I'm from South Dakota. My question is with the expansion of beekeepers in the United States, it also is there a correlation in the expansion of beekeepers? keepers that are not commercial, that are not sideliners, that aren't at this meeting, and the Barola mites that go untreated.

And are we fighting a a losing battle? And if so, how do we get more beekeepers that aren't engaged in becoming better beekeepers? How do we get them to become better beekeepers?

 it's going to, you know, it's a threat to the commercial guys. It's a threat to everybody else that are spending dollars every year. but as as more and more people become beekeepers, there's more and more beehives out there that aren't being treated.

Or maybe that's just just a perception, but is that a true perception or or not?

Randy Oliver

Katie would be the best one.

Dr. Katie Lee

Yeah, I can I can I can do this one. We teach a beginning beekeeper course. I interact a lot with beekeepers of all all sizes on a regular basis.

I I would say In all all everything I say. It d it depends probably in some cases. You know, like you do like commercial beekeepers aren't gonna be like in urban areas.

Like so some of it is like overlap about where people are in like sheer sheer numbers. Like although we are talking like, you know, there a single colony that collapses of mites can have thousands and thousands of mites in there that can spread, which Can debility be an issue. I would say when people get into it, like it it really does depend on where and who they learn from about mites as well.

like you know, and why they're getting into beekeeping as well. If they're getting into it understanding that this is an animal that they are going to need to take care of They tend to be a lot better about managing for mites and in whatever way that they they do that. There are a lot of there are more and more beekeepers out there that are on a smaller scale.

that are managing mites without treatments as well, which is important to some of those beekeepers too. Also treatments treatments work well to keep mite levels down or can at least sometimes But you know, like it really I I would say like it runs the gamut. Like the diversity of smaller scale beekeepers out there.

You you have people that are true like people that just are be havers too, you know, that aren't keeping bees actively and they just are interested in keeping colonies in the back yard for for whatever reason just to watch them, just to enjoy them, because they're they're they really are an amazing animal. And but yeah, so so really like a lot of I've I'm part of this ex Apiculture Extension Educator group of America and a lot of what we talk about is like really working with people and getting good information out to people that are learning about good management of mites for further specific area. But Yeah, I mean I I think it really does run the gamut there.

Randy Oliver

Katie? Yeah, please. Luckily it's kinda self limiting it gets pretty expensive a after you cereal kill you know m your your bees, you know, for four years in a row.

so and ask go to your local bee club and say, okay How many of the newbies from five years ago are still keeping bees? My guess is going to be a very small percentage. Now, was that even before Varroa?

It used to be maybe 5% before Varroa that we'd have when we kept track of our our newbies. After Vroa it's even a much lower percentage. So it's self-limiting that either you learn how to keep them alive or it just gets too expensive to have them as a hobby.

Becky Masterman

Thank you, thank you. Jackie, Katie, Rogan, Randy, wow, what a great panel. If you could help me thank them by giving them a really nice round of applause.

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 Keepers discover what you enjoy.

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