Banking Queens with Dr. Brandon Hopkins (S5, E52)

S5, E52 - Banking Queens with Dr. Brandon Hopkins

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

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Hey, everybody, welcome to the show. Before we get going here, just want to let everybody know that who's written in that Kim is doing fine. He is eager to get back here. He's had some issues this last spring that's prevented him from being available at the time that we were recording. He appreciates everyone's support, and he's looking forward to being back here in a week or two. This spring, in the last couple episodes, our big announcement was our new sponsorship by Betterbee and we're really excited about that. With us today is Chris Cripps, a partner with Betterbee, here to talk a little bit about the history of Betterbee and what they do. Hey, Chris, welcome to Beekeeping Today Podcast.

Chris Cripps: Hi, Jeff. Thanks for having me on. We're excited about this partnership. You asked me to give a little bit of history of Betterbee. It's a company that started in 1979, so quite a while ago. Bob and Margaret Stevens here in Greenwich started it on the family farm. They were commercial beekeepers that were providing equipment to people. People would come and ask, "Hey, can you sell me a box? Can you sell me a bottom board?" Whatever. He took it and turned it into a business.

It's progressed from there. It was one of the first bee businesses that had a real strong internet presence and had the web shopping and e-com all set up. Through the years, the family decided to move on. Bob actually passed away. In 2012, I was able to buy the company with one of my partners, Joe Callie, at the time. We were two veterinarians wondering what we wanted to do next.

We were cow veterinarians. Had a lot of ring around the sleeve. You can use your imagination to know what made the rings. Just at that point of life of maybe there's another opportunity out there. Both of us had done bees. I started with bees in the '80s before we had tracheal mites even. It was a Boy Scout merit badge project. Took classes at Cornell on bees, and then went out to Ohio State for veterinary school. While I was out there, worked as a bee inspector, kept bees, and had always kept bees. Some people say, "How'd you go from being a veterinarian to having bees?" It was really more, having bees going to a veterinary school, and then coming over to bees afterwards.

Jeff: Well, that's really interesting also that everything comes back to Ohio too. There's a lot of beekeeping history that has its origin story that's in and out of Ohio, and here we are with you and Betterbee as part of that in Ohio too.

Chris: When I started veterinary school, that was in 1991, and I was from New Hampshire. I'm driving through New York into Ohio, and I was really excited because I'm going to school in Ohio. I'm going to get to stop at A.I. Root and pick up bee supplies. I won't have to pay for UPS shipping and such. I stopped there one year on spring break and it was the year they were closing their bee supply store. There were a few items left on special that they were doing their clearance, but that was when they were transferring into just having the magazine, books, and the candles.

Jeff: That was a sad period of time. I'll just say that because I used to live there in Medina County and I used to go into the store. The lady that worked at the counter was-- her first name was Ellie. I just loved talking with her and she was a great lady. I loved getting all their factory seconds because even their factory seconds were fine furniture. It was sad to see that part of history go.

Chris: I'll tell you too, in 1995, there was a young newish editor at Bee Culture Magazine. I don't know. I don't think it was Gleanings in Bee Culture still at that time. I think it had switched to Bee--

Jeff: At '95, I think so.

Chris: I wrote an article on how to inspect your own bees, just from the Bee Inspector stuff I had learned over the last two years. Kim bought that article from me and I think he gave me a check for $100 or something. When I pulled into Greenwich in my U-Haul, I had $10 of that left. They gave me my first paycheck the day I got here.

Jeff: Oh, that's fantastic.

Chris: It all came out but very fond memories of working with Kim at that last little part of vet school when I was in Ohio.

Jeff: Oh, very good. Well, he'll be happy to hear that for sure. Tell me about Betterbee today.

Chris: Betterbee, when we bought it in 2012, we had about eight employees, and now we're up into the 50s.

Jeff: Wow.

Chris: It's grown quite a bit as people have come to us looking for things. Part of that is just having all the basics. The bottom boards, the boxes, and such. We bought Humble Abodes. That was a manufacturing company up in Maine. We're managing that now to make sure we have our supply of things. We've partnered with some others as well that make some fairly unique items. We're the US distributor, the main importer for the Lyson Company, which is in Poland, one of Europe's largest beekeeping supply manufacturers. We bring a lot of things into the country from them.

It's a company that's really nice to work with because they listen to what we say. We get input from beekeepers. We notice things as we're using some of the stuff that they make. We go back to them, we present them with ideas and drawings and thoughts for how things could be better, and then we have those improvements made.

Jeff: Oh, fantastic. It's good to hear that they're innovative, just like Betterbee is.

Chris: They have a lot of different ideas over there too. We have some fairly interesting power setups that come through with the extractors, fairly energy efficient, and get a good degree of power out of what they're providing. We've worked with others. There's a company in Hungary that makes BetterComb. That's all artificial wax that's used to make comb for the beehive. It's like putting fully drawn comb into the hive. It's safe comb.

If you're buying comb now on the open market in the States, you might be going to somebody looking for what their bees have drawn out. Then the question is, are we bringing in any diseases? Is there foul brood or something else that's coming along with that? This product doesn't have that. It's kind of nice to start with a clean slate sometimes.

Jeff: I know a lot of beekeepers are concerned about the pesticides and other contaminants in the wax, and this would eliminate that possibility.

Chris: Right.

Jeff: Fantastic. I have to ask, and I know our time is short here. Are you going to open up a West Coast distributor, just speaking from the West Coast?

Chris: It would be very nice to have West Coast distribution because we do have a number of customers that are on the West Coast. The shipping from New York gets to be fairly expensive. We're working on an arrangement with some folks in California, and we may be able to partner with them where we can get some stuff out there on major less expensive shipping methods like tractor-trailer lots, or container lots, and then they can do some distribution from California similar to what we would be doing from New York, but none of that's solid.

Jeff: Well, I look forward to those days. [laughs] Chris, it's been really great having you here this morning. Kim and I both appreciate Betterbee's picking up a sponsorship of Beekeeping Today Podcast, keeping it available for all of our listeners, and I look forward to working with you here in the coming months.

Chris: Well, we appreciate what you guys are doing, and we look forward to that.

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Betterbee: Betterbee is proud to be the main sponsor of Beekeeping Today Podcast to keep beekeepers like you informed on industry news, fresh beekeeping tips, and new-to-market products. To celebrate our growing partnership and to give you, our listeners, a sweet deal for a limited time, you can get a free Bee Smart Uncapping Slicer with your purchase of $25 or more. Shop at betterbee.com and use code POD at checkout. This deal is good through midnight, Eastern Time, on June 30th, 2023.

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Jeff: While you're at the Strong Microbials site, make sure you click on and subscribe to The Hive. They're a newsletter full of interesting beekeeping facts and product updates. Hey, everybody, welcome back to the show. Sitting across the virtual Zoom table right now is Dr. Brandon Hopkins of the Washington State University Bee Lab. Brandon, welcome back to Beekeeping Today Podcast.

Brandon Hopkins: Yeah, thanks for having me, Jeff. I like talking with you guys.

Jeff: Well, thank you. We enjoy having you in the show. In fact, we had you on in October talking about indoor wintering of bees and CO2 levels, et cetera. Right now, you've done some exciting research on queens and queen production and how to best bank queens, and that's so important to the queen industry, getting queens pulled together and then having them available when beekeepers need them. We can talk about that today.

Brandon: I would love to. That sounds great.

Jeff: Well, good. We pulled Brandon in from the field to talk to us today. Were you out there amongst the queens today?

Brandon: A little bit. I was even pinching a few queens today, but no. Yes, it's a nice break from the sweat and the heat, so I'm glad to be here.

Jeff: Indoors in Washington State. We've had quite the heat wave that's atypical in May.

Brandon: That's right. It's pushing things along real fast, but that's okay.

Jeff: Let's talk about the commercial queen production. Not all beekeepers are involved with the queen production. They might raise a few queens in their backyard, and your research didn't really pertain to what hobbyist beekeepers and maybe a couple of side liners do, but what your research is focused mainly on was the large-scale queen production for the commercial beekeepers and for those operators who produce queens for the hobbyists and all the others throughout the season.

Brandon: Yes, that's right. I think even though this particular research isn't aimed at the hobbyist sideline beekeeper in particular, I think the outcome of this research is for the benefit of all beekeepers because we all benefit from the productivity and improved performance of those large-scale queen producers. A lot of folks now have received their packages this spring, and all those packages that have gone out across the country really come from these commercial queen producers, that are only made possible because of the high-level, high-quantity of queens produced by the big commercial queen producers to supply queens for all of those packages.

Jeff: Do you have any idea roughly how many queens are produced in a year or in a season?

Brandon: I don't know that anyone knows it. The numbers I've seen are around a million queens a year in the US. I would imagine that it's probably a bit higher than that. If you consider that there's 3 million colonies in the US, that number is variable, but say between 2 and 3 million commercial colonies needed just to meet pollination demands, and most commercial guys are re-queening their colonies every year plus making splits and all these other things, so each of those re-queens requires a commercially produced queen in general. I bet it's more than a million queens.

Jeff: Well, that's quite the production line really. Well, we're not going to talk about it today, but that does raise questions in the last several years about queen quality and everything, and your research may help with some of the questions.

Brandon: Yes, and I think one of the main things it deals with is trying to help or provide alternatives for these banking practices because of the high level of production and especially high level of demand in the spring for packages and splits. You can't just turn that on and off like a water faucet, so you end up with these differences in the supply and demand of queens, and so inevitably, you have queen producers that have to bank queens when the demand tapers off. If they can hold a large number of those queens until the demand comes back, it benefits everybody.

Jeff: Well, let's talk a little bit about the industry and the process of commercial queen production, and then we'll define what the term banking queens really means. It's not a Bitcoin thing, it's a little bit-- or maybe it is a Bitcoin thing. I'm not sure. [laughs]

Brandon: It's really valuable. Maybe a lot more than Bitcoin, but yes.

Jeff: [laughs] Can you describe the process of the commercial bee industry?

Brandon: Yes, I'll try my best. I feel like I should preface this considering there might be, or is definitely people out there smarter and more knowledgeable about this than myself because I'm not a commercial queen producer. I have a lot of respect and envy for those folks that do this because I couldn't go out tomorrow and be a commercial queen producer. It's pretty involved and highly specialized and requires some really skilled folks.

The differences between making a few queens in your backyard and this commercial production is that, for one, you've got to have access to a large number of colonies that you can go access to shake bees, to make nukes, and to make cell builders. Generally, what you have is these large-scale commercial queen producers who are making 20 or 40 cell builders at a time and they've got full-time grafting queen production folks that are grafting thousands of larva a day going into the cell builders, and then managing those cell builders very closely to keep production and quality levels at its highest level.

Jeff: When you see cell builder, that's a small colony.

Brandon: Yes. Well, oftentimes, quite big colonies that they're individual colonies oftentimes in either a single deep or double deep box stuffed full of young nurse bees and no queen. They're queenless, generally, for at least a day, and so all those bees in there are geared up to make queens, so that without that queen pheromone,, they want to make a queen. Then the only larva that they're provided to do so is done so by the grafters, the people that are selecting larva, and then providing the cell builder to that queen, this colony, the one-day-old larva of their choice.

That's where the bee breeding aspect comes in and allows you to control the genetics of that queen. They're taking the one-day-old larva from very special queens that have been tested, say, for hygienic behavior and selected for, for honey production and being low on varroa mites, low on disease levels, gentleness, all that stuff. All that's done also by the bee breeding end and by those queen producers throughout the season and from collaborators and purchasing queens that are selected for this stuff.

They've got their queen mothers usually in that same yard as their cell builders, and so they're going out every day and managing those queen mothers and polling frames with the one-day-old larva, bring that into the grafting room, and then they quickly transferring the one-day-old larva into the queen cups, and then on those bars, go into the cell builders that were made up generally the day before.

Depending on the size of the operation, you're going to be doing a couple thousand of those a day. Then you can start imagining how the logistics of this gets quite complicated because then once you start that process, then after the 10, 11, 12 days after that larva goes in, those cells have to come out and you've got to have homes for those couple thousand queen cells. That requires making those small nucleus colonies and having them out in the field.

Then it gets even more complicated once you get to that stage because as you do multiple rounds, now you got to go catch those queens, cage the queens, prepare the battery boxes to ship those queens out, and so you got to have the next round of queen cells ready to go in at the same time you're out there catching. You're catching thousands of queens, installing thousands of cells, shipping those queens, grafting that stuff. That's happening day in and day out during the high production time of year.

Jeff: Very labor intensive.

Brandon: Very labor intensive and highly skilled. Those queen cells are fragile, and you got to transport those out to the field. You got to be able to quickly find queens in these nucleus colonies and catch them and put them in the cages. The ability to keep things from overheating, making sure that the nukes don't get too strong or too weak, preventing absconding. Managing thousands of these tiny nucleus colonies is quite the skilled beekeeping operation.

Jeff: We haven't even mentioned managing your drone breeders or your drone congregation areas and setting those yards up and having them ready.

Brandon: Having them ready and keeping that drone production high requires a lot of feeding and making sure that they have enough drones in the area to provide the meeting opportunities.

Jeff: When someone complains about a $40 or $50 queen for an insect, they're really not considering what we just discussed at a large scale. There's a lot of people involved in--

Brandon: There's a lot of people and a lot of feeding and a lot of diesel fuel and a lot of labor and a lot of knowledge and skill levels. That has a lot of value too. Like I said, I think I know a lot about this, but I would probably fail miserably if I went out and tried to start a large-scale queen-rearing business.

Jeff: At a high level, that really describes the production of the queens. The breeders get the queens, they capture them after they're mated, they put them in the queen cages, whether they be the little matchbox ones or the new plastic ones, what do they do with those? Where do they keep the queens till they ship them out or add them to a package?

Brandon: That's where this banking comes in. In order to keep all those queens alive in preparation for the packages or the shipping and the battery boxes, they bank them. A bank is somewhat similar to, say, a cell builder. It's generally a queenless colony that's got lots of young bees and there's often large amounts of capped brood that are added continuously to keep the bank going so that you have a constant supply of newly emerging nurse bees, and they're heavily fed, so they have lots of food in there to keep the nurse bees going.

Then these banks can be-- everyone's got their own technique and way to make these banks and to manage them, but that general idea is you have a queenless colony that's very strong, lots of capped brood, and then you have a few frames in there that with racks that hold all those queen cages. There's a little bit differences depending on the type of queen cages people use, but the idea is that instead of a normal colony with a single queen for each colony, in a queen bank, you have up to 200 queens that are in a single colony, and then they've got to care for those queens through the little screen mesh in each individual cage, and so it requires a lot of bees and a lot of care, especially considering the value of the queen bank that holds 200 queens.

Jeff: That's a significant investment there just in bees, but also the labor it represents to get them to that point.

Brandon: Yes. Yes.

Jeff: Traditionally, how do they manage those bee banks? I imagine they have to either be there for a couple days or a couple months maybe. How long is that period of time?

Brandon: I think most people probably say as short a time as possible, but they're banked during the peak of the season when the band is really high like now, and in the previous few months when it's packaged season and splitting season after almonds. They're probably not banked for very long. Maybe a few days. Just logistics and hold them over the weekend and things like that.

This is where our work started to come in is that as the demand tails off and you get into honey production and the demand for queens is lower when everyone is done making their splits and package season is over, but you still have thousands of nukes out in the field, and so you've got to do something with those queens. That's the time of year when they may hold them for two, three months over the course of the summer until the demand picks up.

There's quite a bit of demand generally after honey pulling, especially here in the northern latitudes because beekeepers lose queens throughout the year. Every time colonies get moved to a different pollination season, generally, might lose a few queens, say, 5% or 10% for each move. After honey pulling, so you go in and pull in those honey supers off and doing all that work, you might lose a few queens, and time to identify failing queens and things like that. Anyways, after honey is pulled, so in the fall or late summer, the demand picks back up for more queens, but you can't make queens that time of year.

The big thing, I guess, talking about that skipped over is that there comes a point when you can't really make queens anymore because of the heat and the natural forage is tapered off. Really, the main thing, the limiting factor in making queens as the summer progresses is that the bees just don't want to make drones anymore.

Like you said, it's easy to forget about that part of the operation, but it's equally important that you have plenty of good drones out there to mate with these queens. You can force them to make queens almost any time of year, but it's almost impossible to force them to make drones once they've decided to stop making drones. At some point, it gets too hot, too dry, they won't make drones and you're best not to be making queens at that time of year.

Jeff: That's something that's typically not discussed. Everyone knows about the drones being kicked out in October and November timeframe or once first frost hits, and there's very little discussion that the bees will just stop making drones.

Brandon: They're very sensitive, I think, to the forage that's available, and so once that forage starts to dwindle, the first thing to go is the drone production. They'll stop producing those drones. The ones that are already there and mature are allowed to hang on maybe for a little bit, and then eventually, like you said, they don't even tolerate having those drones around at some point. That's why, generally, this large-scale high production level from queen producers tails off by June or early July, and then anything they have left over and haven't sold becomes very valuable to store those queens in that July and August timeframe for the time when demand picks up in September-October time of year.

Jeff: Well, this is a great place for us to take a quick break in our discussion. We'll be right back, but first, a quick word from our sponsors.

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Jeff: We have the queens. That's summertime. They're waiting there patiently in the bank to be withdrawn. What is your research looking at? What's been the problem with that in the past?

Brandon: I guess the problem is that the same reason why they tail off queen production, and the reason that the bees know to stop raising drones is it's very hot and dry and there is little to no natural forage available. Like we talked about early on, it takes a lot of effort to maintain these banks, so you got to continuously add brood to the bank, you got to feed them syrup and protein patties oftentimes. It's very hot and dry, and so these banks are difficult to maintain the hotter and drier it is. Basically, you have some attrition.

Queens are going to die in those banks the hotter the conditions are and it's difficult on your production hives. You got to go in and steal brood all the time from those production hives, and some of that pull pollen frames and resources from your normal hives to keep those banks going. It's labor-intensive and expensive and you run the risk of losing large numbers of queens in those banks. That's been the problem.

I think that problem has been exacerbated a little bit by recent extremes, say in temperature, and a lot of queen production occurs in Northern California that's faced a lot of wildfire issues. Not only the wildfires directly say the potential burning colonies, but those wildfires burn up a lot of any remaining forage during the summer months. It gets very smoky, and the smoke can be hard on colonies as far as ability to go out and forage. The hotter it is, the harder it is.

When you have weeks on end that are 115 degrees plus, those colonies are just trying to get as much water and stay cool as they can. It's especially tough for a bank that's got to be stuffed full of bees, probably more bees than you'd want when it's 115 now. It gets ever more difficult as those environmental conditions get more difficult for the bees.

I should say, I guess, this work was really inspired by some work from some Canadian researchers that had published a paper where they had great success in banking queens over the winter. That's what I-- we were doing this indoor winter storage work, and I thought, "Oh, well, we should try banking queens in the wintertime." I reached out to some queen producers in California and asked if they'd be interested in trying that and providing the queens for that study.

A couple of them were really the ones that said, "Well, I'm not that interested in banking queens over the winter. It's not a time of year when we even try to bank queens so much here." They were the ones that pointed out that, really, the time that they bank queens over a long period of time and a time of year when it's difficult is that summer banking period. We figured if it's a temperature issue, that might be an opportunity to utilize these indoor storage facilities to control the temperature, reduce the amount of foraging of the bees in those banks, and give them a temperature where they're more efficient at using their food supply and caring for queens.

Jeff: Did you start with your indoor temperatures based on your indoor storage temperatures for the winter, or did you start somewhere else?

Brandon: That's a great question and that's what I would've assumed because they've done a lot of work on that and had shown about 40 degrees Fahrenheit the best temperature for storing colonies indoors during the winter. That's what most people would've targeted, but thankfully, those folks in Canada had done their banking over the winter at different temperatures and, surprisingly, they found that a temperature of about 55 degrees Fahrenheit or 54 degrees was much better at storing queens over the winter than the 40 degrees.

They had something like 82% or 85% survival over the winter at 55 degrees. Whereas, I think, at 40 degrees, they had a-- I don't have that in front of me, but 50% or something like that. It was a significant decrease in the queen's survival when banked at that lower temperature. We used the 55 degrees Fahrenheit for banking over the summer.

Jeff: I have to ask, based on your prior work that we talked about last October, did you monitor, is there a difference in CO2 levels?

Brandon: There was no difference, and in part-- we didn't try to control or manipulate it. Even our research chambers, which are relatively very small compared to the commercial buildings, we only had nine banks in there. Nine big colonies in a space that can hold 90. There just wasn't the capacity, say, for the bees themselves to produce any excess CO2. I don't think that had much of an impact on it, but it's an interesting question. If these higher levels of CO2 can affect the metabolic rate of the bees, it may be something that's more efficient for banking if you could slow down their metabolism during that time of year.

Jeff: Let's talk about your research and how you did that. You said you followed closely the work that was done previously in Canada. How did you set up your research for the paper that we were talking about?

Brandon: Basically, what we did was we talked to a queen producer into donating over 2,000 queens for this study.

Jeff: That's some fancy talking.

Brandon: Yes, and I'll tell you, there were some difficult night's sleep when all those queens were in my care. Yes, it was pretty close to 2,200 queens, half of which stayed in Northern California in the banks under the control of the queen producer. In the best condition and the way that they've traditionally been stored. Then the other half of those queens appear to Washington to be banked in our indoor storage building. Then what we did is with those two groups, each location had a three different banking rates. We were looking at 50 queens per bank, 100 queens per bank, and 198 queens per bank. Each of those had three replicates each. We had 3 banks with 200 indoors, 3 banks with 100 indoors, and 3 banks with 50 indoors.

Then that was repeated in Northern California. The 200, the 198 is the normal banking rates. Then we wanted to see if there's any difference in survival if you reduced that banking rate. Then the only other difference being that, like I said, so in Northern California, they were free to keep them however they normally do, which was all that input we talked about. They carefully watched them added brooded, fed them, cared for them with great concern. We had the great concern part, but we basically did not manipulate those at all. What we wanted to do is put them in the cold, in the dark, and leave them alone during that two-month period.

Jeff: The Northern California group was basically your control group, your standard practices?

Brandon: Yes, exactly. What we found was that the queens stored indoors had a higher survival rate overall than the queens stored outdoors in California during that time period. We had about 78% survive in the indoor group compared to 62% for the outdoor group. In the paper, we sent queens off to David Tarpy's queen clinic, the queen quality lab there. We sent subsets of each of these groups for analysis and we didn't find any significant differences in queen quality. The queen quality was all great, but we did have a little bit better survival indoors.

Jeff: The obvious question is, what do you attribute that to? How would temperature alone be the differentiator?

Brandon: I think it's a couple things. One is that they're in the dark and in the cold. You don't have bees flying out needing to go get water, things like that. All the bees are in there with really only one thing to do, which is to feed those queens, care for the queens, regulate temperature, and you don't have the bees flying and dying and getting water and temperatures going up and down. We had a steady temperature day and night throughout the entire period. The bees had to stay in the box the whole time and care for those queens. I think the outdoor group, you have more manipulation going in, adding brood, doing things, and you've got these extreme temperatures is the main thing, I think.

Jeff: What was the time period of the banking? Were you looking at a 30-day period, a 90-day period?

Brandon: Yes, and this one, I think it was 60 days, a little over 60 days. I think it might have ended up, just by chance, being 65 days or something like that. That was basically the period we were looking at is for the month of July. I think late into June, basically, that July-August time period when the temperatures are the highest.

Jeff: It shows that you're banking your queens and refrigerating them in cooler temperatures does improve survivability of the bank queens. Is it viable for today's queen producer?

Brandon: I think it is. Like I said, we have some folks that are looking at building structures for banking during the winter months and things like that, but for these queen banks, you're not going to have thousands of queen banks to put indoors. I think the initial investment cost is much less because you can do it in a 20-foot or 40-foot refrigerated cargo container. I think the initial investment is much lower than a large giant building. Then, of course, the refrigeration operation cost is less because you're not refrigerating a large space.

I think the main thing we wanted to show was that the survival was equal. In our case, we found a little bit higher survival indoors, which is cool, but if it was repeated over and over again and it-- I imagined or hoped that it would at least be the same. Assuming that it's about the same, I think what you get is a much lower labor cost. Like I said, we didn't have to go in and manage them all the time. We didn't have to rob from other colonies to keep the banks going, and so your labor and input costs are much lower and you maybe aren't so subject to environmental conditions. You get to control the environmental conditions. You have lower input costs.

You can focus your efforts on the normal colonies within your operation and not worry so much about the banks would be maybe the biggest selling point or something to switching to this or having something like this as part of your operation rather than, I guess what I'm saying is that I wouldn't say that this research shows that you're going to suddenly have a lot more queens to sell because they're all going to survive. That's, I don't think, the target for this. I think the target is the labor issue and the control of environmental conditions.

Jeff: Nor is the quality of the queen improved.

Brandon: Exactly.

Jeff: It's not like you can say ours are 50% more viable.

Brandon: That's right.

Jeff: Super bee. Good. What about that research surprised you, if anything?

Brandon: The surprise and the relief was that we didn't kill all those queens, I guess.

Jeff: You didn't have to explain to somebody why you lost 2200 Queens.

Brandon: What I had to do was just say, "I'll pay you for every queen that we kill beyond what you kill at home. If you lose 50% and I lose 40% or I lose 60%, I got to pay you for the 10% over that I kill." We ended up doing good enough. I didn't have to pay for a bunch of extra queens. No, I really appreciate those folks for supporting this research and Project EPSM for funding this work. Those folks were really gracious and trusting to provide that many queens when we often we kill a lot of colonies and kill a lot of bees doing research. It's pretty risky working with us.

Jeff: [laughs] I don't know if that's a sales slogan you want to go forward with. [laughs]

Brandon: I think they know it. I don't think they need me to tell them how risky. We do our best.

Jeff: Good. Looking forward, what are you working on next? What's exciting you in the research there at WSU?

Brandon: We have lots, we have some cool stuff going on with this oxalic stabilized oxalic glycerin type product that's a commercial formulation that's in the process of EPA registration. That's what I was out today preparing colonies for a summer honey production trial with that new miticide treatment. Really excited about that, that last fall, we did some of that work and it worked really well. Now, we're doing it as a summer honey flow treatment. I think it's going to work great.

We've got some new pollen patty formulation diet that we're testing throughout these summer months as a pollination stress type project, and it's a really big one that was just moving colonies into blueberry on Monday over on the west side. I'm really excited to see how that goes. They'll be being fed this novel protein supplement all summer compared to a current commercial product.

Jeff: Will that have any impact on the occurence of EFB?

Brandon: It's one of the things we're looking at, and we've got some grants that we put in for with Ramesh at Oregon State, with Dr. Sagili at Oregon State University, and we're hoping to look at some of that stuff and its impact on EFB. It's something we've been interested in for a while now, and the folks here in Washington that do a lot of blueberry pollination have had some really big losses in recent years especially, and they don't see those losses until September and October, but all those colonies are tending to go through blueberry pollination.

Something that we're looking at, I don't know that that feeding itself is going to be a solution. I think it's a pretty complicated issue with the current stocking rates that they have for blueberry pollination and some of the pest control fungicide sprays and things like that. I don't think any one of those things, in particular, is causing the problems, but hopefully, we can put together the puzzle pieces and help these guys.

Jeff: It's a multifaceted problem. It'd be interesting to see what your research finds and what it could do to help beekeepers who do a lot of blueberry pollination. I know it's been a challenge.

Brandon: It's been a challenge.

Jeff: Is there anything else you'd like to talk about?

Brandon: I can't think of. Hopefully, we get invited back to talk about some of this work. I'm excited to get started on this year.

Jeff: We'll definitely have you back, and look forward to hearing updates on both the gel varroa treatment and protein patties and everything else you're working on that you haven't talked about.

Brandon: Yes, that sounds good. Thanks a lot, Jeff.

Jeff: Thanks a lot and we look forward to having you back.

Brandon: Appreciate it.

Jeff: That about wraps it up for this episode. Before we go, I want to encourage our listeners to rate us five stars on Apple Podcast wherever you download and stream the show. Even better, write a review, and let other beekeepers looking for a new podcast know what you'd like. You can get there directly from our website by clicking on the reviews along the top of any webpage.

We want to thank our regular episode sponsors Global Patties, Strong Microbials, and Better Bee for their longtime support of this podcast. Thanks to Blue Sky Bee Supply and Northern Bee Books for their generous support. Finally, and most importantly, we want to thank you, the Beekeeping Today Podcast listener, for joining us on this show. Feel free to leave us questions and comments at leave a comment section under each episode on the website. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks a lot, everybody.

[00:45:55] [END OF AUDIO]