Protecting the Future of Beekeeping: A Tri-States Panel (399)

Protecting the Future of Beekeeping: A Tri-States Panel (399)

Georgia Karras
Hi, I'm Georgia Karras. I'm at the Midwest Honey Bee Expo. I'm from Will County Beekeeping Association and I love the podcast.

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
Big 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 episodes 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, Georgia Karras, for that great opening from the floor of the Midwest. honey bee Expo back at the beginning of February.

Becky, we have to get some newer openers. I'm getting cold just thinking about all the cold weather openers we've had.

Becky Masterman
Hey, don't disappoint anybody who recorded an opener and they're still waiting.

Jeff Ott
That's true. That is true.

Becky Masterman
I mean, we still we're we've gotta play every single one of those openers. I know that you will too. You're very s you're very organized and take it very seriously.

Jeff Ott
We will play all of them that we have. Back to Georgia. She said she's from Will County Beekeepers Association. Do you know which county or what state that county is in?

Becky Masterman
Will County is in Illinois and holy cow you should check out their website. They are an organized bee club. Oh very cool. I think. that it's great that she did the opener and kind of great to do a shout out to Will County Beekeepers up there.

Jeff Ott
Well today's episode is also a result of the hard work from a couple associations. As a follow-on from a couple weeks ago, we did a panel discussion from the Tri-States and Minnesota Beekeepers Association meeting in Fargo. And this is from the second panel discussion. Today's episode is from the second panel discussion.

Becky Masterman
Yes, we did a panel at the very beginning of the meeting and then the very last thing before that before the quilt drying, we did another panel.

Jeff Ott
Before the quilt drawing

Becky Masterman
So we had a we had a nice audience because everybody wanted to find out about that quilt.

Jeff Ott
Oh that's true. I think they also wanted to hear from the panelists that we've got. Yeah, yeah.

And we had we had a great panel. We had Brandon Hopkins from Washington State University. Randy Oliver sat in on this one again.

And Izzy Hill joined us on stage to discuss the state of the beekeeping industry and the future that they saw. Really fascinating discussion.

Becky Masterman
I learned a lot actually, and I think I kind of walked away with a bit of a new perspective on the state of the beekeeping industry. And so I really did enjoy that conversation and I might just listen to this episode myself.

Jeff Ott
You were there, weren't you?

Becky Masterman
I know I was there. And I'm not a big fan of re-listening to episodes because I don't need to hear myself talk. But this is a great episode.

Jeff Ott
It is.

Becky Masterman
Wait. I'm talking in past tense. But that's okay.

Jeff Ott
That's all right. This episode and this panel discussion and the prior panel discussion And earlier this season, when I was able in June to go to the COLOSS meeting, was a great opportunity to come away with a global perspective of the beekeeping industry. that I really enjoyed exploring and learning about. And the COLOSS, just as a footnote, the COLOSS episode is something I'm still working on. I talked to a lot of good people, and that'll be a future episode coming out this fall.

Becky Masterman
The importance of joining a club or attending meetings is just cannot be emphasized enough when you're talking about how to be a good beekeeper and also how to be a good beekeeping community member. It really is helpful if people are aware of the local issues and the statewide issues and national and international issues that are facing yourself as a beekeeper and also facing the other members of your beekeeping community.

Jeff Ott
That's absolutely true. And as we'll hear Randy say in this episode, and not to upstage him here But just alert our listeners to listen for Randy. He talks about it becomes important to understand what the message is that we need to drive to the consumer because it's actually the consumer that's driving the industry is going to drive the government, which is going to drive the research and the other things that our industry needs, and not only for the big producers, but what benefits are local beekeepers from things as such as habitat.

Becky Masterman
Yeah. Anybody who has stood at a table and sold their honey, you know that the people who are approaching you and talking to you will share what they've heard in the news. And sometimes that message might not be exactly what we need to emphasize.

You just mentioned habitat. We don't hear that enough in the news, but we hear about beekeeping losses in the news. And so this was a good panel discussion as far as getting to the bottom of some of these issues and what needs to be communicated.

Jeff Ott
Well, let's delay no longer and listen to this panel discussion right after the words from our sponsors.

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Jeff Ott
I think we're working. So we will get started here. The discussion today is the state of the beekeeping industry and with our three panelists.

We're going to just let them introduce themselves. And then we will ask them a couple questions and then towards the end we'll open it up and you can have some questions if you have any audience questions. So if the panelists would please, for our listeners at home and for those people in the audience who are here today, we'll we'll pass the mic around, is to introduce themselves and then we'll start with the questions.

Randy?

Randy Oliver
I'm Randy Oliver, Beekeeper. I do some applied research and publish in ABJ and at my website, Scientific Beekeeping.

Dr. Izzy Hill
Hi, and I'm Izzy Hill. I'm with Project Apis m.. I'm our Director of Regulatory Affairs.

Dr. Brandon Hopkins
I'm Brandon Hopkins, bee researcher at Washington State University.

Becky Masterman
Could I ask the panelists to turn their phones off? I'm in trouble now. Okay. So this is a heavy topic. Did you announce the topic?

Jeff Ott
No, I yes I did, but go ahead and restate it.

Becky Masterman
Well it's We did choose a heavy topic for the very last conversation of this meeting, but it is about protecting the beekeeping industry. And we will travel to a number of different subtopics under that general topic. Let's just start with a general question.

What do you think about the next five to ten years when you're thinking about the future? What concerns you most about the future of beekeeping and let's keep this happy, what gives you the most hope? So project out next five to ten years, what are your biggest concerns and then really what do you see as hopeful?

Dr. Brandon Hopkins
I don't you know five to ten I mean I feel like I've only been doing this like ten to fifteen years so it's pretty hard to say but I mean the I mean the concern is like that it follows these things like the capping of sort of almond acreage and the decreasing demand for that. You're said to make it keep it positive, so I'm struggling to figure out like what to say here. But hop hopefully.

Oh yeah, I'll end it in something hopeful I guess. That's right. is and then it's the same in Washington with the tree fruits, is you know, those industries themselves are struggling, and so that trickles down to beekeepers.

I remember going to Almond Board conference, like the first one I ever went to, and it seemed like they had like cheerleaders and Taylor Swift performing on the stage and all this stuff. And then like after that the that price dip, it was like a very depressing room, you know, to go to the almond industry thing.

And so I feel like the beekeeping industry follows behind that like wave a little bit and but the hopeful thing is that what I see is beekeepers tend to be like a very innovative group and that they find ways to make things work and so I no doubt that the bee industry, you know, will figure this stuff out and they'll find ways to be successful and to make money and keep bees alive.

Dr. Izzy Hill
Good answer. so I would say and I come from a very bit of a myopic perspective. I'm very focused on bee health products, so I really think that the science is here to start seeing new products that are incredibly promising and can be directed at specific issues that we're dealing with.

And I think it's going to be happening with products that are cheaper for the beekeeper and I really think that's going to be a huge part of the solution to what we've been dealing with the last few years. And in terms of hopeful thoughts, so I've been working in this realm since 2008 and I've noticed over the time period that where we are now, everyone's working together in a way that I've never seen before.

People are reali like the honey bee working together, you know, to make this Colony that is our industry thrive and I think it's going to continue and we're gonna see really amazing things as we start to put as Brandon said, these really innovative minds together in one room and come up with these greater than additive efforts.

Randy Oliver
Yeah, you know, if we were talking about the buggy whip sales industry, I would have been optimistic some years ago. But things do change and yet it is difficult right now to be optimistic. the reason is we have two income sources, two main income sources, honey and pollination services.

Much of pollination services are probably going to start decreasing from the almond industry, not from the others, but from the almond industry. So that's gonna be a bigger change. As far as honey, honey's gonna depend upon two things, the price of honey and the availability of nectar to make honey I'm optimistic about changes in the availability of nectar.

We've hit like a low point in the agricultural industry. and regenerative agriculture now has been signed the new bill end of june to start pushing towards regenerative agriculture That may be good and help to bring back some forage for bees. Climate change is going to be rough.

There's going to be changes on that. So that is a plus. If we get the honey identity act passed and so we get the price for honey back up, that would be a good thing.

So we're largely looking at Things kind of out of our control. As far as, you know, all the treatments, to me, since I'm doing breeding for resistant stock, that really doesn't even apply. to me.

And I think most industry is g is not going to need that many treatments in a few years if we start bringing for resistant stock. That's very, very positive. Not if you're spending millions of dollars to develop a treatment, that's very positive for the beekeepers that we may not need those treatments.

So mix mixed on that. So I'm seeing we're going in the right direction or national organizations of really focusing on keeping the getting the price of honey up and getting forage through regenerative agriculture to we may shift more back towards a honey producing industry rather than the p riding on the coattails of the almond industry.

Jeff Ott
This follow-up question may expand on what you were talking about, Randy. So if you could wake up tomorrow after getting back from today from the conference this weekend and solve one problem for the beekeeping industry, what would it be and what difference and why would that make a big difference?

Randy Oliver
Oh just having agriculture leaving a space for pollinators to a pollinator awareness in agriculture and our soils. Regenerating our soils. We're driving driving down the carbon content of our soils.

When I go out to the agricultural areas, I'm looking, my God, this soil is, you know, you're not managing the soil. But there is that sea change. So that would be, that's not gonna be an overnight thing.

But we're making steps right now, so that we're moving in that direction.

Dr. Izzy Hill
So I met a corn grower once that had grown corn for 30 years and he always said, you know, I I haven't grown corn for thirty years. I grew corn for one year thirty times Right. And I really think this industry struggles with that. And for me, I would like to get to a place where you're not wondering if the next year is gonna be your last year, and really thinking about how to make the economics work out so that beekeepers can have their livelihoods and do what they love and take care of our nation's bees.

Dr. Brandon Hopkins
Those are great. I would just double the price of honey or sh

Becky Masterman
Okay, isn't there not a bigger round of applause for that?

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Becky Masterman
com I'm going to kind of touch on what you said, Izzy, but it's not just about protecting bees, but it's about protecting our beekeeping farmers, our beekeepers. What do we need to do to support beekeepers through the cycle? And is there anything more that any of you think we could do in order to support beekeepers?

Randy Oliver
Well, Charlie Linder with the Bee Cause Alliance is proposing something opposite of ELAP, where ELAP rewards beekeepers who fail. And he's talking about how about rewarding beekeepers who are successful instead. Change the incentive system.

And there's a lot of beekeepers who have learned how to milk the system right now. We're all aware of that, okay? That's the elephant in the room, okay?

in both Canada and the US. And As Charlie says, he owns agricultural land. He gets cash payment from the taxpayer simply for owning agricultural land.

If he plants a crop, he gets taxpayer money for doing that, for doing something positive Okay, beekeepers get rewarded for failure. So he's saying, let's shift that now, taxpayer money, instead of rewarding those who fail. get emergency money for year after year after year in the millions of dollars.

How about getting rewards? to keep us going. So it would just be no extra money, it'd just be changing that.

That's not gonna be popular for the guys who know how to work the system, but that's a reality that he's floating

Dr. Izzy Hill
Well I mean coming back to what's already been mentioned, beekeepers are some of the most innovative individuals I've ever met. And I think we're at a point where some of that innovation doesn't necessarily need to be applied to problems within a hive, but what's going on in the environment around them as Randy said, like let's get creative. Like we have the most creative population on the planet.

And I think there's ways to, you know, just thread these needles that will be beneficial for our industry and for everyone involved, but it really takes stepping out of one's comfort zone. to start to address this, but you're you're seeing it, you're starting to see these individuals who are going for, you know, more structural changes. So It's it's happening, for sure from where I sit I see it every day.

So I think you're just gonna continue to see this continue on and improve

Dr. Brandon Hopkins
Maybe or you're gonna have to tell me what the question was again. So was it like what can we do or what can like the what people of this country do to support beekeepers?

Becky Masterman
Any anything. But it's not just our honey bees that need support, but it's our beekeepers.

Dr. Brandon Hopkins
And how can we help our Okay that's great. I mean I think you said it. I think that The beekeepers are very good at the beekeeping part.

I don't know that the bees need so much support anymore. I mean I think the beekeepers are the ones that need the support and I don't I mean I think it's like such a difficult question because you y they it's you we need like the government support of you know, the systems in the land and nutrition and how that's managed so beekeepers can put their bees in good places that are safe and that they can get good forage. And so that's the support I think beekeepers need.

They need lower diesel prices and they need support and like labor laws in s in certain states and so that's the kind of support I think that beekeepers need to remain like economically viable and attract like younger generations into the business so that it's attractive.

Becky Masterman
So one of the things that I've noticed over the years is that if you look at honey production, I this you all know this in your businesses, but honey production has really been tanking since 1987 and USDA has been tracking it and it in recent times and honey imports are increasing. But it feels like when I talk to beekeepers that we are now talking about habitat more But we created a habitat committee for the Minnesota Beekeepers Association because it wasn't getting enough attention Is there any other industry out there who could see such a huge decrease in production and not have that make the news? So the bees make the news, right?

But I don't think honey production is making the news. I'm and I'm gonna go straight to Randy. Do you have an opinion on is there anything that we can do?

How do we get the message out to the people who are actually buying a lot of honey now. Honey is huge it's it's very much appreciated in our marketplace. But how do we get the message out to those consumers that they need the good stuff

Randy Oliver
So there's the problem is that we have so many marketing agencies that the environmental groups hire for marketing and they market fear And they say, well, this, you know, the world's going to collapse, the sky's falling, this guy, and now we're inured to that. We've heard it so many times environment sky is falling. It is falling, but you just repeating that you gotta come up with some solution solutions here.

So shifting from honey bees to that saying honey bees are the canary in the coal mine, the indicator of the whole system is failing. And organics certified organic It's not what we what we need to do. We need to do shift to regenerative.

We need to give consumers an other choice. I've been trying to do this for years. I've actually registered websites work with nature, you know, for farming.

I had a couple other names I registered years ago, waiting to give it those names to any group to come up with an alternative to certified organic So the consumer at the market, the consumer, go, wow, regenerative, yeah, that's a little bit cheaper than certified organic, and I'm doing a good thing for the environment and saving the pollinators in this So shifting again, if you want to make change, the change is made by the consumer. She's the one that drives agriculture. She makes the decisions.

And she will if you look at an influencer, in a week, completely change an industry. It will shift an industry. So the consumer has all the power.

But you convince the consumer that they have the power to change things. but they have to have an options, which means we have something to have something other than conventional, which has been badmouth so much, and certified organic, which is really artificial and arbitrary. Whereas regenerative, back going back to Rodale's was organic wasn't about originally about anti pesticide, it was about regenerating your soil.

That's what the organic movement started out. It got hijacked by the anti this and anti that. It should be pro rather than anti.

The people are pro-choice.

Dr. Izzy Hill
Sure, I know this isn't exactly answering your question. Great, perfect. But I want to come back to what Randy was mentioning of I mean really this is a consumer choice question and I think the issue here is that consumers are not armed with full knowledge of what they're purchasing.

And how do you solve that, right? And it's a huge issue and some of it you I mean there's different pathways to take this. You can go to regulators and government agencies, labeling groups, and try and change it that way.

I think there is some unexplored heavy hitters in terms of influencers. I There's a massive wrestling championship going on here in Fargo as we speak. And I just happen to be on the plane with an Olympian Wrestler, I know, this is going somewhere, I promise.

Where they where he was just talking about how all of like every wrestler in this building relies on honey to help with their training and their nutrition. And I started chatting with him about adulterated honey and he said, you like he gave me his card. He's like, let's talk because Some of this is like who can send the message that what you're consuming is not what you think?

Because FDA, for example, and I don't want to misspeak here, but if it's not harming you they don't have the you know the legs to go after something like that and adulterated honey is not gonna hurt you but it's not gonna help you so how do you bring in the conversation to again influencers who have a real interest in what's going to help you, right? So I almost feel like this particular problem could be navigated around to some degree. I mean it should be both for sure, but I think there needs to be more conversation with folks who like absolutely rely on honey for their well-being.

Jeff Ott
So if you're sitting here in five years and we're sitting back on the stage and everybody here and there's probably about twice as many people sitting in the audience. And you're looking back, what would success for the industry be? If you're sitting here looking back the last five years, how would you define success? A room full of people.

Randy Oliver
I mean, that's it. I've looked at audiences for many, many years, and this is a whole different audience than I used to look at. I mean it was all white males over fifty five years old and there's a handful.

That was the old beekeeping audience. Now we're seeing audiences with lots of female representation, lots of the younger people, the next generation, and that's the generation that's in five years is a lot of us are gonna be retiring out by that time as far as keeping bees and if we need to replace ourselves. with younger people who and they need to be able to make money.

So m my guess we will still have that but maybe shifting more towards a honey production back to honey production. And it may be a smaller industry at that time, but it can be successful. There's always gonna be a demand for that.

So just because If you decrease the number of beekeepers to fill the market for profitability, there'll still be a beekeeping industry It may not be quite as large an industry and then hopefully grow back as we slowly shift back to regenerative agriculture and reverse the damage that we've done so far to the agricultural soils

Dr. Izzy Hill
I will I mean again from my little myopic viewpoint, I think one of the things that's changed in the last five years is like i mean coming back to what Randy's discussing earlier, like Beekeepers are becoming very savvy when it comes to like how the system works, like on a level I have not seen before, and I think this is going to continue. and really amplify the voice of beekeepers in a way, especially in venues where there might need to be changes. Maybe, you know, maybe it's how emergency assistance is allocated or maybe it's how honey is labeled or whatever it is.

Like There, unfortunately, like there is a huge layer of politics that most other cropping groups are pretty I used to work in all specialty crops and You know, most of them have figured it out. and I think a lot of it is because they were unified and it's one voice, it's one organization. And it's fine that we have many, but they have to work together and they're doing that And it's making a huge difference in the impact that they are having in especially federal and state regulatory arenas.

Becky Masterman
I'm gonna hijack the mic. I've got a I have a special question for you. Okay.

So Brandon, you're a researcher. And you're you're right now you're researching trying to help the honey bee, help honey bee health. What do you want to research when it comes to honey bees Like what would your dream research be if we weren't under such constant threat?

Is that a tough question?

Dr. Brandon Hopkins
That's a pretty tough question. I mean I d my master's advisor told me that research is like doing ninety percent of the research to like fund the lab so that you can do spend ten percent of your time doing the research you want to be doing.

But I don't I really find the stuff I like the most is like the projects that are with the beekeepers and dealing with like very practical issues that they can immediately implement But I mean if there weren't all those problems I'd be out of a job for one thing and then but I would be doing I mean I really I mean I started off doing like this reproductive biology and conservation and breeding stuff so I'd love to do sort of more of that work if all these other problems were solved.

And so that's kind of you know in like this five years thing, how would you know it's successful? I think Randy hit on it too, like having the next generation want to come into it, so it's attractive. and the other thing would be great, I think you would know we were successful maybe if we were like back to talking about chalk brood or some of these like the things that used to be problems because we've like solved all the Varroa problems and diesel prices are low and the labor issues are all solved and so then we could just like whine about foulbrood and chalkbrood or something like that.

Becky Masterman
I just want to talk about honey production. And oh my gosh, we have so many bees, what are we gonna do with them? Right?

Okay. We are close to time so I think if we could ask if the audience has any questions, we can field I think a couple. Yes Please tell us who you are.

Audience Guest
Hi, my name's Bobbi Chambers Wilson. And I am the beekeeper at Ecdysis Foundation in Esteline, South Dakota. And my boss is Dr. Jonathan Lundgren, who was in Washington last Thursday and was in the room when the executive order for promoting regenerative ag was signed.

And the reason that Ecdysis was started was because beekeepers of South Dakota told him there was a problem with the bees. So it all sort of came from that. How do we help promote this in the store with the consumers?

Right. And Randy had talked about that with even buying bees. But so how do we do that with food too, which are there because of the bees?

Does anybody yes? Oh, okay.

Randy Oliver
That's an idea to get the farmers' wives to start an organization. I'll give you, you know, I'll give you a website name you know, you are to go with Yeah, somebody needs to start something and as she said, farmers would is the start and the farmers' wives are very p powerful too.

Dr. Izzy Hill
So again, not exactly answering your question, but Randy and I were just talking earlier about that executive order. And I what I think is really interesting, I just read a study a couple weeks ago where having higher floral diversity, especially, and this is for pollinator like forage, in rangeland and pasture lands actually has incredible benefits for the soil. And I think getting that message out that when you're talking about regenerative ag You can combine it and like layer benefits if you put it in the context of bee health as well.

And so to me part of the story here and the message is hey like you can do all of this and you can support bee health and you can get honey yields up hopefully coming back to you know Becky's question about that and You know, make it all one effort and then communicate that to consumers of like, guess what we are doing here? Not only are you, you know, getting this food or getting this jar of honey, but in the process, all of these other benefits were accrued in the, you know, in the you know, process of making it.

So I'm really excited about that particular executive order and especially what it could mean for our industry and for research like Diana Cox-Foster at the Logan Bee Lab and ARS has been working on this for some time of How do we make bee pasture?

And I think when we talk about bee pasture, in a lot of ways we're talking about regenerative ag. And then how do we, again, package that up and message it for consumers?

Jeff Ott
Just a shameless self-promotion here. We do have several episodes with Dr. Jonathan Lundgren on Beekeeping Today Podcast talking all about regenerative soil practices and how it benefits bees and other pollinators. So it's a really informative at discussion. Any other questions from the audience?

Dr. Izzy Hill
So I have to give a shout out to the North Dakota 4 H. And here's what I used to be at USDA, I was our departmental honey bee and pollinator research coordinator. And you might know this, but we had a program called the Budding Scientists where we had 4-H'ers come out to Maryland and working with scientists to learn how to collect pollen and nectar from plants to then ship to the Tucson ARS lab to then be analyzed and logged and so we can better understand the nutrition of plants. And my understanding is they're still doing it, which is incredible.

So I think part of it is making it hands-on, making it something that You know, especially if it's a high schooler, for example, and they're trying to get their like especially if they're college bound, for example, like how do you get that resume together? How do you say, like, look, I've got experience working with scientists and it's applied and look at how this was used, not only in terms of in the lab and what was found, but then how was that amplified into let's come back to regenerative ag? Maybe some of those nutrition samples that 4-Hers took might one day end up in the you know, the seed mixes that are gonna be used for bee pasture.

Like it can all connect. So I think really having children understand that our y our young people understand that holistic connection between everything, it really I think it's enticing for young minds that are, you know, creative and wanting to learn more.

Randy Oliver
to inspire them or get them interested, instead of hearing beekeepers talk about doom and gloom and problems and everything Talk about why people are be you don't get into beekeeping for the money, okay? It's way easier ways to make money. It's that oh I get goosebumps even thinking about it, you know the that connection I call it the tangent tangible connection to the wild is that when you're a beekeeper you're connected now to nature.

It's not artificial. Like even farming now is so artificial for many farmers But beekeeping, you're really you're aware of the weather every day, of the plant blooms every day, of everything that's happening. Your bees are telling you open that hive up and you got that vibe that we all get.

You all know the vibe, okay What was interesting to me is talking to one of the veterans groups where they said their suicide rate was like sky high. If they get veterans into hives, it drops to zero. Because that vibe of being in a beehive, that connection back in this crazy world we live in, back to something that's so natural.

So that's who I would be is get beekeepers talking to these kids who talk about the vibe and the love of being a beekeeper. Not about how much money you're making, not about the problems, but about why it's joyful to be a beekeeper.

Jeff Ott
We got time to shoehorn one more question in, y if you have it.

Becky Masterman
We really don't have time for one more question.

Jeff Ott
I was wrong, folks. We don't have no more questions. Thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you to our panelists. 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.

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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, and Northern Bee Books for their support in bringing you each week's episode. And 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.