Charlie Linder: From Backyard to Commercial Beekeeper (S6, E31)

S6, E31 - Charlie Linder: From Backyard to Commercial Beekeeper

Ryan: Hi, this is Ryan Fowler from Cape Town at the southern tip of Africa. The sun has just set and I've been outside cutting the ivy because I can't do that during the day. It drives the bees mad. Does that happen on your side of the world too? Welcome to  Beekeeping Today podcast.

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

Becky Masterman: I'm Becky Masterman.

Global Patties: Today's episode is brought to you by the bee nutrition superheroes at Global Patties. Family-operated and buzzing with passion, Global Patties crafts protein-packed patties that will turn your hives into powerhouse production. Picture this, strong colonies, booming brood, and honey flowing like a sweet river. It's super protein for your bees and they love it. Check out their buffet of patties, tailor-made for your bees in your specific area. Head over to www.globalpatties.com and give your bees the nutrition they deserve.

Jeff: Hey, a quick shout-out to 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 250 past episodes, read episode transcripts, leave comments and feedback on each episode, and check on podcast specials from our sponsors.

You can find it all at www.beekeepingtodaypodcast.com.

Ryan Fowler from Cape Town, South Africa, you must have just won the prize for the furthest distance opener that we've had on the podcast. Thanks, Ryan.

Ryan Fowler from Cape Town, South Africa, you must have just won the prize for the furthest distance opener that we've had on the podcast. Thanks, Ryan.

Becky: Thank you, Ryan. That was pretty interesting bee management, hive management information, clearing that ivy from the front of the hive.

Jeff: Yes. I hope it wasn't poison ivy.

Becky: Oh, there you go. That's the kind of ivy we have up here in Minnesota.

Jeff: Don't ask me about the time I burned a bunch of poison ivy as a boy scout. It was nasty stuff.

Becky: Oh, that can really affect you for days.

Jeff: It was nasty. Thanks, Ryan. What a fantastic opener. You've set the bar high for our other openers. There you go, folks. Not only are we requesting beekeepers from every state to fill out our state map of the United States, now we've got to enter a map for around the world. Thanks, Ryan.

Becky: I love it. It's really cool. We're going to have really long openers pretty soon. If you can share a little bit like Ryan did, it was really concise but very interesting. I want to hear it.

Jeff: I have mixed feelings about January because January is when I start noticing my dead-outs. That's always depressing out in the bee yard and it's often also when I go out and clean out my dead outs. It's just easier to do when all the live bees are keeping warm and I don't have interruption. Do you inspect for your dead-outs in January or you just leave them be?

Becky: Oh, it's way too cold. In January, what beekeepers do if they're wintering their bees in Minnesota is we watch the temperatures and we hope that it warms up close to the 30-degree range, 32-degree range so the cluster can move to the next honey frame in the colony. If the days go for longer than a week, 10 days where the temperatures are like below 10 degrees Fahrenheit, we just really hope that cluster landed on a place where they had access to enough food that could just get them through that cold spurt.

Jeff: The next cold spell.

Becky: Yes.

Jeff: My gosh. Yes. me. I'm the tech guy. I'm always thinking about that technology. Wouldn't that be so cool to have a time-lapse video of a cluster moving in the winter? I'd love to see how they do that, how they make that migration.

Becky: Yes, it's interesting because you learn how they do that. We probably do have that technology where it could travel through. In fact, you can take an infrared camera and take a series of images. For some of us, it's very low tech and we look at the weather forecast and we hope and we don't even open those colonies to check to see how they're doing. Although I will tell you something we do. If it snows, we do go out and we hope that we see dead bees in the snow, not a lot, but a few and bee poop. That's really exciting after a fresh snow because it's evidence that hive is still alive.

Jeff: It always comes down to poop, doesn't it, Becky?

Becky: It really does. Poop is-- I just can't get away from it sometimes.

Jeff: Poop in the snow. It's actually right. That's one of the nice things. One of the only good things about snow is being able to monitor the health of your colony and seeing the dead bees and how they're still flying and the poop. Hopefully, it's not too much and a sign of nosema, but yes you're absolutely right.

Becky: It's something we really don't teach the first day of how to become a beekeeper, but the poop in the spring inspections, the poop that you see in the winter, it can be a little overwhelming.

Jeff: Yes. Hopefully, it's all on the outside of the hive.

Becky: There you go.

Jeff: Coming up today, January is a great month. It really is the beginning of spring, the beginning of the bee season. The bees are being lined up ready to be placed in California if they're not already there in some holding yard. Today we have a guest lined up that you reached out to, Charlie Linder.

Becky: I am excited to talk to Charlie today. Charlie is a commercial beekeeper who started out as a backyard beekeeper, but he is based in Illinois. He's a Midwestern beekeeper. I think he's got a lot to talk to us about, and he's going to tell us a little bit about his experience in the almonds.

Jeff: It'll be fun to get a perspective of someone who's come up through the ranks from a backyard beekeeper to large sideliner to commercial beekeeper now and to find out how the bee business is and how they get along.

Becky: Yes. I'm really looking forward to this conversation with Charlie.

Jeff: Let's listen to that right after this quick word from our friends at Strong Microbials.

StrongMicrobials: Strong Microbials presents an exciting new product, SuperFuel, the probiotic fondant that serves as nectar on demand for our honeybees. SuperFuel is powered by three remarkable bacteria known as bacilli, supporting bees in breaking down complex substances for easy digestion and nutrient absorption. This special energy source provides all the essential amino acids, nutrients, polyphenols, and bioflavonoids, just like natural flower nectar. Vital for the bees' nutrition and overall health, SuperFuel is the optimal feed for dearth periods, overwinter survival, or whenever supplemental feeding is needed.

The big plus is the patties do not get hive beetle larvae, so it offers all bioavailable nutrients without any waste. Visit strongmicrobials.com now to discover more about SuperFuel and get your probiotic fondant today.

Jeff: While you're at the Strong Microbial site, make sure you click on and subscribe to  The Hive. The regular newsletter full of interesting beekeeping facts and product updates. Hey, everybody, welcome back. Sitting across the virtual  Beekeeping Today podcast table is Charlie Linder. Charlie is a commercial beekeeper and runs a big operation. I'll let Charlie do a better job introducing himself. Charlie, welcome to the show.

Becky: Thank you, Jeff.

Beck: Welcome, Charlie. So nice to have you join us.

Charlie Linder: It is going to be fun, that's for sure.

Jeff: You're a regular contributor to  American Bee Journal and you contribute on occasion to  Bee Culture. Folks may be familiar with your writing, although they may or may not have caught your name. You are knowledgeable about the bee industry and you're a practicing beekeeper. Why don't you give us a little bit about your bee history, your background, and how did you get started with bees?

Charlie: Actually, this is my retirement gig number three, I believe. I quit engineering. I spent many years building assembly plants for General Motors and then ended up with Case New Holland building equipment. The last thing I did from an engineering perspective was build an assembly plant for combines. I retired and I found I really had a little more time than I should have. I got back into beekeeping. Just started a little at a time, just like everybody else out there, a couple of hives in the back from memories from when I was a kid. The next thing you know it's getting a little bit bigger and a little bit more carried away.

A wonderful friend of mine, I'm sure you guys know him, by the name of Dave Burns. He suggested one day I go down and watch him shake packages in Georgia. He says, "You're bored, you got nothing to do." I did. He was right. It was just an eye-opening experience. As a small-scale or a hobby beekeeper, we have a good year, a nice hive, and we think we've really changed the world and everything's great. To go down there and see a real commercial beekeeper was just a revelation. We'd go into a yard with 60 or 80 hives with a heavy deep and a single on top and shake 12 to 16 pounds of bees out of that box. When you were done, you put it back together and it just looked like a normal hive.

That was just a complete revelation and we went to yard after yard after yard like that. What it did for me was two things. One, I invented a little thing to help the package producers because I wasn't impressed with their efficiencies, but bigger yet, it opened my eyes to what commercial beekeeping was really like. I thought I knew how to be a beekeeper, but Spell Bees and Mike down there, they really set the bar a lot higher. That was my introduction. That's continued. We did start a little plant and we make some stuff for commercial beekeepers, but we started making honey very seriously. We got up around 300 or 400 hives, was making honey and selling it locally here. Then the honey market went south.

Wholesale honey had been $2.25, $2.30, a fair price, and suddenly it dropped to $1.40, and "Oh, by the way, we're not buying this year." That triggered my business aspects to say, I've got to do something different. The next step was a friend of mine was retiring from pollination. I decided to take over at his request, a local grower, which at that time was 400 or 500 hives, which was about all I had. It seemed like a good fix. Just move in and take over that pollination job and steady income instead of the spottiness with the honey. That did, that happened. It worked out really well. Then the next year they wanted more hives and more hives. Then the neighbors got involved.

Suddenly I'm finding the demand for pollination is a lot bigger than I ever realized or understood. It's been an eye-opening experience in the last 10 years. Our growth from small-scale hobbyists to, I'm going to say, medium-sized commercial beekeeper because I'm definitely not on the large scale. Last weekend alone, I was with the AHPA guys. Down there, I think the standard is 10,000 hives just to get in the door. Standing around guys with 50,000 and 60,000, 80,000 hives, I feel like a beginner.

Jeff: You mentioned something early in what you were talking about. You said you kept bees as a child. Was that with yourself or your family?

Charlie: Growing up on a farm, there was a hive in the background. It wasn't really a big deal. That was back in the '70s. There was a couple sitting around and we played with them once or twice. It really wasn't a big event or a big thing in my life at that time, but it was one of those childhood memories you get back into and think, "I think I can do that again."

Becky: Charlie, you went from zero to about 5,000 hives in how much time?

Charlie: About 10 years. We got up to about 500 there in three or four or five years. Once I started the pollination gig, kitty bar the door, it got real demanding real quick. Part of that was driven around my business model. When I went into the pollination business, I took it as a real business, not just something I'd do on Tuesday evenings. At the same time, a lot of beekeepers are currently aging out. In our area here, we have an area called the Wabash Valley, which produces about 10% of the watermelons and cantaloupes in the country. It had predominantly been pollinated by medium-sized beekeepers, guys with four or 500 hives, a few here, a few there.

As they started to disappear, they started bringing in bumblebees. Colpert's one of the big companies that brings bumblebees, but the growers weren't really happy with that. When somebody came into the valley with the ability to meet their demands and give them something a little bit better than bumblebees, they've jumped on rapidly.

Jeff: The Wabash Valley, where is that?

Charlie: That's Indiana and Illinois, along the river. It's a special type of sandy soil that does real well with watermelons and cantaloupes.

Becky: You have to have one of the biggest operations in that area. Is that right?

Charlie: That's correct. We're probably the biggest in the tri-state area.

Becky: What kind of honey do your bees make then in that area?

Charlie: Mostly it's wild flower. Although we're pollinating a lot of watermelons and pumpkins and cantaloupes, the number of flowers per acre and yield that they can actually pull off of that crop is pretty limited. It's the purple vetch, the crown vetch, the clover, the neighbor's alfalfa fields, and soybeans that are producing most of our honey.

Becky: I remembered in Indiana, soybean was a big nectar.

Charlie: It is huge.

Becky: I think you just gave everybody with two colonies in their backyard a lot of hope if they want to grow their business.

Charlie: It's easy to grow. I won't say it's profitable, but it's easy.

Jeff: For my days in Ohio, I remember that it really depended on the variety of the soybean, whether the bees would work it or not.

Charlie: Variety and moisture content and soil type are all big factors. We have one phenomena that's a little interesting here in that this is a double crop area for soybeans. There's a lot of wheat planted. About I'm going to say 25% of our acres are planted in wheat that then becomes soybeans. We end up with a very large patchwork quilt of soybeans of varying ages and varying types that fit into just about every colony's range. That's a big plus for us. There's a lot of weeds around here too. That's on the plus side.

One of the things that is probably key for your listeners to understand is that honey is a small portion of what we do. Our average for honey is really not good. I would say we're probably in that 20 to 25 pounds-a-hive average yield. Some years, not even that much.

Becky: You got into beekeeping in the middle of a Varroa crisis. You also didn't have the benefit of high yields because that's been declining over the last 30 years. You picked a good time, right?

Charlie: That's one of the beauties of pollination is we always get the same check every year. It is consistent.

Becky: Are you worried about the consistency being sustainable?

Charlie: Not from the pollination side. The hardest part, of course, is just like everybody else is keeping enough bees alive to meet the demand. That's a challenge every single year and it's not getting any better as you know.

Jeff: When this episode airs, it's going to be in January and the talk in the industry will be the bees moving to California. Do you move your bees out to California as well?

Charlie: As we finish this up, obviously it's December. We have just finished shipping all of our bees to Idaho, the bees that make grade. On a typical year, we'll hit 4,000 or 5,000 hives pretty easy. Come fall, we're going to go through and grade those. Because one of the things you have to understand if you're going to do California almonds is the bees have to be in really good shape. Small bees or dinky bees, four or five-frame hives, you just wasted your money shipping them out there because you're not going to get paid for them.

It's still good for the bees, but there's no profit in it. You have to have a minimum of six frames and an eight-frame average is what they really want. That's not a Midwestern crown. That's a serious California count where we opened the top of the box and the bottom of the box. We add the two together and that. You're looking at basically a single box full of bees at 50 degrees. What we do is in October, November, we're grading all our hives and we end up with, if in a good year, half of our hives will make grade. Those bees are then loaded on a semi and shipped out to a cold storage place in Idaho. That keeps them at 41 degrees throughout the winter. There's a couple perks for that. One is shipping.

In January and February, the trucking to get bees to California is difficult because there are literally a million hives that come out of Florida. Getting a truck to come up here and pick up mine is a little costlier. In that November, December timeframe, we can get better trucking rates. My bees are, I'll say, 80% of the way to California already. There's another perk to that. That is in the cold storage, we seem to get, as my friend describes it, a reset. Bees that were declining or having problems in the fall or booming up, they all just restart the race for lack of a better term. When they come out of the storage facilities, they seem to almost always take off. We lose maybe two or three percent out of the storage. That's a huge perk.

Jeff: We've had John Miller on the show several times. One of the last times he talked about the possibility California inspectors could come to the warehouses and inspect in the warehouse so that the trucks don't have to stop at the inspection stations and sit in the heat or sit in the cold wherever, at the passes or at the state line. That has to be a benefit.

Charlie: It's a huge benefit. For those of you who don't know, going into California, there is a bug inspection station. What they do is they're checking every truck for any unwanted hitchhikers. They put out a can of SPAM and they give it a little bit of time and wait for some ants. They look for moths and spiders and things like that are on the outside of our boxes and problematic for the state.

Becky: Do they really use SPAM? Did you say SPAM? From Austin, Minnesota SPAM?

Charlie: Yes.

Becky: Go Minnesota.

Charlie: If they find them, your load is one of two things. You either turn around and come home with it or you go through what they call a washout. Washout is not good. It's really hard on the bees and they basically take them out in the desert and they use pressure washers. They unload the truck and they pressure wash everything and they put it back on the truck and you go back. That is, as you can imagine, taking a pressure washer to the hives on a 70-degree day out in the desert creates what I'd call chaos.

It's really hard on the bees. We avoid that at all costs by scrubbing the pallets before they go, making sure everything's clean, and making sure it's sanitary. That's a huge problem coming out of Texas and Florida. Those guys get scrutinized really bad for things like fire ants and tarantulas and stuff like that.

Jeff: Let's take this opportunity to take a quick break and we'll be right back.

Betterbee: Feeling a bit drained from all the holiday chaos? No worries, beekeepers. Let's turn that blah into brightness with DIY beeswax candles from Betterbee. Don't let the time slip by. Transform your surplus beeswax into heartwarming, hand-poured candles. Betterbee silicone molds make it as easy as saying, Happy New Year. Classic tapers, funky shapes, you name it. Visit betterbee.com/molds now because who wouldn't want a handmade candle as a gift for say, Valentine's Day? Let's make the new year brighter with beautiful candles, courtesy of Betterbee.

Becky: Charlie, do you have to have three different inspections? Then do you get inspected in Illinois, Idaho, and then do the California inspectors go to Idaho before you ship out then?

Charlie: Yes. That's a good way to put it. The state of Illinois is one of the states that requires moving permits. We do get a fall inspection. The inspector comes out and samples a good number of hives for their satisfaction. They're looking at bee quality, specifically looking for forms of foulbrood or diseases like that. The inspection in the storage sheds in Idaho is an invasive species inspection. They don't actually open hives. They're looking over the pallets, making sure they're clean and free of debris like weed seeds and things like that.

It's a cursory. It's well done, but they also understand it's 40 degrees, so any of the ants and that kind of stuff are pretty well cleared off, and spiders and that that they're looking for. Then California is a little bit dicey when you say inspections. We are required in most counties to advise the county inspector that we are there, but I'm aware they come out a lot of times and look and make sure where they're at, but they really don't have time to inspect. One of the things we have to understand is that right at 2 million hives are moved in and out of there in a six-week period. The chaos, it's hard to describe.

You can be out there unloading your bees at two o'clock in the morning and you can see four or five other bee guys across the area also unloading bees, their lights at 2:00 AM in the morning and you know that's what they're out there for as well. The inspectors don't do a super job in California keeping up, except in some particular areas that are for breeder queens and things like that where they're really, they actually pay extra to have extra inspections to finish.

Jeff: Two to 3 million colonies coming?

Charlie: Right at 2 million.

Jeff: Two million. That's, as the news and headlines always state, all the country's bees head to California from a December timeframe to January timeframe when they're there for that six-week period. Then leave California and go across the country, and most beekeepers by the end of their first year will have heard about the big bee migration. It's more than just the pollination of almonds. Those bees are then used as the base in the spring for all other beekeepers. Is that correct? Is that how that works?

Charlie: That's a really good analogy. Almonds are unique in that they require bees to set a fruit. If you didn't have bees in the almond orchards, you'd get just a handful of nuts per tree instead of the 25 to 2,800 pounds an acre that we shoot for. It is the biggest demand because the California Almond Board managed to do a really good job of marketing almonds, so they've been increasing acres for the last 20 years. The almond market's really changed, and the beekeepers have kept up with that demand. It came in at actually a good time due to the fact we were losing hives to Varroa, as well as the honey yields dropping.

Beekeepers got all on board with an alternate source of income. You pointed out correctly, what happens after that is that many of the California locals, they stay there. Our bees coming out of almonds just look fabulous. Almond pollen is just great for them. We go in on Valentine's Day, and right at a month later, those 6 and 8 framers are 18 and 20 framers with bees hanging out the front. They're ready to roll. A lot of the California local boys, they're into shaking bees and making queens. That's their gig. They do that in preparation of going into the Dakotas. Most of them go into North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, or Idaho to make some honey over the summer.

The rest of us, the Florida guys, the Upper West Coast guys, Oregon, and that, we all come back and do other pollination. Everything from blueberries to apples to, I was talking to a guy from Canada the other day that specializes in hybrid brown mustard seed. Not something you would think of. He's making his living off doing a couple thousand acres of Dijon mustard, I guess is the best description.

Becky: I love that.

Jeff: A little Grey Poupon stickers on all of his hives.

Charlie: Wonderful idea.

Jeff: I have the Grey Poupon. You're absolutely right. People don't think of almonds and they might think of apples, but man, there's so many other crops they're using pollination to come out of. Oregon, the seed crops are big in Oregon. The number of hives I saw pollinating for carrot seed, and I was just like, wait, what? Oh, wow. I guess so. That makes sense. That's a lot of acreage for carrot seed and bees pollinating it.

Charlie: We're all looking for our next gig when we come out of almonds, because depending on where you're going, you want some new food. The orange crop is going to hit next, avocados in Southern California, onion seed in Arizona. Blueberries are starting in Georgia, all the way up the East Coast. Then by April, we're into apples on the East and West Coast. Just continues all summer long into hybrid canola into Canada, alfalfa seed. There's a whole bunch of flowering plants like rosemary and orchard stuff that's all done on the Upper West Coast that I'm not even familiar with.

Becky: I don't know who's working harder, if it's the bees or the beekeepers.

Charlie: Well, I've actually done the calculations on that, and I can assure you, it is the beekeepers.

Becky: It is the beekeepers.

Charlie: Our farmer's called the Lazy Bee Honey Ranch, because as an engineer, I sat down and figured out what's actually going on in that hive, and I figured out that the average bee spends 11 minutes of its life making honey for me. I find that disappointing.

Becky: Yes, but their lifetime is like 30 days in the summer.

Charlie: I know, but still, for crying out loud, couldn't I at least get a whole half hour?

Becky: In your calculations, did you factor in their investment in raising the young that become the foragers that collect the nectar to make honey for you?

Charlie: I calculated the number of miles they can fly, how much honey they can grab in a mile based on the fact that they have a 14-day life cycle as a forager, and the potential upside of a hive is about 11,000 to 1,300 pounds of honey over the summer, and of that, I get 20. They're selfish.

Becky: I think you need to redo your calculations and look at the investment into raising their sisters and defending the hive.

Charlie: Alright...

Jeff: The dependency on the industry then for the successful year in pollination in that February 16th, the middle of March, is really critical then, it sounds like. If you have a bad season in the almonds, that really impacts the rest of the summer for many folks, or at least the first part of the summer until stocks build up again.

Charlie: Yes, there's absolutely no doubt about that, but keep in mind that the circus that is going to California for almonds is only participated in by commercial guys who are really paying really close attention to their hives. They're prepared if the weather's bad to feed. We're staying on top of those things, we're paying real close attention to that, as we also understand that sets up our entire year. Problems in almonds for lack of feed because of cold weather or rain is something we're prepared for. It's a plan.

Jeff: I think last year it was the cold and mud, as I recall.

Charlie: The mud was really bad. To give you an example, I had four loads out there. The first couple of loads got out on time and then the rains hit. My last load that came out, we lost 25% of the hives because they starved to death.

Becky: Oh gosh.

Charlie: Just couldn't get to them in the mud and the rain. Sometimes that happens. It is a very rare occurrence, I'll tell you that, but it does occasionally happen. I think one of the key things I want listeners to understand is that there's two aspects here. The honey industry in the United States, when you look at it, is pretty close to a billion dollars. When you talk about all the honey, the packers, the people that sell it, the retail value, and that, it's actually under a billion, but the pollination side is closer to $30 billion. That's a key thing we need to understand going forward as an industry.

When we talk about the industry, we want to make sure everybody understands that it's not just that cute little jar of honey that's important. It's all the produce that in your stores, and that's apples, oranges, broccoli, asparagus. All of that stuff is managed by either bees or local pollinators, so they're all very critical. Every single individual out there who has a hive, I don't care where you're at, if you're in a soybean field area, you are responsible for another six bushels of soybeans out of every hive. Rose's garden across town that you don't know anything about, you pollinated her cucumbers and strawberries and all of those things.

Don't ever think as a small beekeeper, you're not part of that picture because you absolutely are. It may be Georgia's apples or Ethel's peaches down the block, but your bees are working.

Becky: Charlie, I think some of that messaging that you just shared is getting lost with the native bee, honeybee competition, those conversations that are being had. I think that the beekeepers are in a situation where they maybe are not being recognized for what they're doing and what they're contributing to US agriculture.

Charlie: Let me, if I may here, I'd point out, I am on the board of directors for the American Beekeeping Federation. That is one of the things we're concerned about and we're going to be talking about getting some more research on. Because as beekeepers, we understand that more bees means more flowers, which means more butterflies and more native bees. It's a downhill effect. You can take a look at the Lost Hills area of Kansas, where there's no place for bees out there. You realize there's no flowers out there. There's nothing for hardly any of the pollinators to eat.

Then you go to areas like the Dakotas, where we stock bees all summer, and you look at sweet clover and canola that's 5 feet, 6 feet tall and you realize that more bees, within reason, obviously, just create more forage for all the bees. It generates the flower and nectar-producing plants to make more flowers, more blossoms, which is just, it's an escalation.

Becky: The symptom of lower honey production and competition issues is really, it's just simply the fact that habitat has shrunk so much for all pollinators. I think the beekeepers, I think it's really important that we share that with them. I think the backyard beekeepers need to understand what you're doing to support the industry and understand how they play a role in it and how they are tied into the bigger industry. I'm sorry, this is my soapbox now. Sorry, I'm going to give it back to somebody else.

Charlie: It's a very pretty soapbox.

Becky: Thank you. I'm glad you're on the board for the American Beekeeping Federation, because you are representing the industry so well.

Jeff: Can you explain why the big federations, American Beekeeping Federation, American Honey Producers, why their messaging, their work that they are doing is important to the individual beekeeper?

Charlie: Excellent question. Please understand, we're talking about national organizations, not state level. We're trying to tackle national issues. For example, there is a movement right now to transfer our pesticides, our miticides, from the control of the EPA to the FDA. That's going to create some issues for us. We're trying to get on top of that and resolve those things before they happen.

Jeff: At the high-level bullet point, what's the main issue for that?

Charlie: The main driving issue was dogs and cats. The Varroa mite in particular is considered what's called an ectoparasite. Ectoparasites are the same as fleas and ticks on dogs and cats. There were some problems with an EPA approval on dogs and cats that killed some dogs. Some people got upset and they decided that the FDA needs to be controlling ectoparasites. We're probably going to be lumped into that. I don't want to make negative comments at this point, but it makes things very difficult because one of the things the FDA will require is efficacy studies on any new miticides. While that sounds great, it becomes a really big hurdle because anybody who's used a miticide knows that sometimes they work better than others.

If we get a third-party organization such as the FDA, which is not familiar with beekeeping in our six-week lifecycle, most of the current miticides that we have would never pass approval. The few bullets we do have to control Varroa would probably be the only thing we're going to have for the next 10 years or so. That's scary.

Jeff: This is news to me. I wasn't aware of that. Is that part of the HIVE Act?

Charlie: No, this is part of a process that started about eight months ago. The ABF has been on top of it. It is one of my focal points. I had meetings today with various officials to try to figure out how this is going to roll out. We're going to stay deep in it. It is an ugly situation, but I think we can manage it. We just have to figure out where to head from here. We have lobbyists, again, that goes back to the national organizations. The AHPA is working on the HIVE Act, as you just mentioned there, and they're trying to make the definition of honey legally put into law. That is a huge issue for all beekeepers.

It'll slow down some of the fake advertising and selling of funny honey or bee-free honey. Those are the issues that the national organizations take on behalf of all beekeepers.

Jeff: That's important for all beekeepers, as you mentioned, to understand is that these are national issues that need to be addressed only through the power of a national organization, but it affects the individual beekeeper with one or two colonies in the backyard. Even if they sell it out in front of their house, it's important to them.

Charlie: That's it exactly. My involvement, in particular, with the EPA and the FDA is based about everybody having easy access to cost-effective miticides. There's another threat on the horizon. I don't know if you guys have mentioned or not with the AAA-level spikes. We're deeply concerned that's going to hit us and we don't have the ability to be, shall we say, agile with our treatment methods when they come in.

Jeff: The tropie is a scary one, for sure.

Charlie: It is. I'm not the authority on the mite, but I'm trying my best to make sure we never see it.

Jeff: We've had Sammy Ramsey on the show a couple times talking about the tropie lay-lapse and--

Charlie: Isn't he fun?

Becky: He's so much fun.

Jeff: He's a good guy.

Charlie: It's depressing because here's a guy talking about the end of the world of the bee industry and he makes you smile when he does it.

Jeff: I think that's a compliment.

Becky: He also makes you pay attention, so that's important.

Jeff: That's it. Yes, there you go. I am a little concerned-- Yes, not a little concerned. I'm greatly concerned. How can a beekeeper keep abreast of the news on the change in legislation for the mites and the transference of that from the EPA to the FDA?

Charlie: At this point, obviously a membership to the national organizations can help. The other thing that we'll be focusing on over the next six or eight months is making sure that we have a series of state delegates to the ABF whose task it is to take this message down to the state level. Please stay abreast of the national organizations if you can and the state organizations if you have to. Then ask your local bee clubs to be in touch with the state organizations. ABJ and  Bee Culture are also a key part of this. You'll see articles next month or just coming out in January time frame on both topics.

We're working really hard to make sure this message gets out because we have about six or eight months to try to make a change in the farm bill. After that, the window is closing rapidly on us. We are such a small industry that for us to make standalone legislation in further out years is difficult. We hope it doesn't ever come to the crisis point where we have to say, "Look, we're going to die if you don't do something.

Jeff: Back to the FDA to EPA or EPA to FDA. Is that part of the farm bill then or is this a different standalone?

Charlie: No, this is a completely different project. The FDA proposed what they call a white paper study. They did that in March of last year. They publicly put it out for comment. Our group as well as several other beekeeping individuals, we managed to get the message out and we made a great presence and told them, look, we understand your concern with ectoparasites, but beekeepers are going to have a problem if you lump us in there. We did a good job of that. They said, thank you for reporting. We'll get back to you. They just came back in November and said, "It's going to happen."

"We're not sure of the timeframe yet, but we're going to do that. Your comments are noted and we'll continue the discussion, but just assume that ectoparasites and honeybees, in particular, will fall under FDA control sometime in the future. Now that's anywhere from two to five, seven years out.

Jeff: Are the cattlemen also affected by that with the ticks?

Charlie: The cattle are already under that. There's some theory that the CVM, which is the Center for Veterinarian Medicine may be a bit of a benefit to beekeepers and that potential certainly exists, but the CVM is also restricted to currently approved mitocytes. Our biggest issue as an industry is that the FDA has no entomologists on staff. The EPA has entomologists and the USDA not only has entomologists, but they have beekeeping research. We want to stay to that side and avoid the FDA. The FDA is a large organization with a lot of responsibilities and we won't be very important to them. That's a concern.

Jeff: We'll do some research and we'll have some additional links in the show notes for those beekeepers who want to learn a little bit more about this issue because this is definitely the first time it's come to our attention here at the podcast.

Charlie: It's extremely new. Myself, Randy Oliver, David Peck, Jack Rath, and a few others have been digging through the terminology and the implications of this and having a lot of discussions about what we can ask for to minimize the problems here. We do have the industry leaders trying to talk about the legal implications and the workarounds and it's not pretty. It's not pretty.

Jeff: Yes, it's going to be a challenge for sure. We'll check the show notes. We'll keep on top of this.

Charlie: We definitely appreciate that. We're going to need the support in the springtime.

Becky: Definitely, Charlie, let us know if you want to get a message out because I think our listeners will want an update if it happens and if they want to know if they can do anything to help.

Charlie: We'll definitely be glad to do that.

Jeff: You're welcome back anytime. Is there anything that we haven't asked you about that you'd like to bring to our and our listeners' attention?

Charlie: I think the key here is that over the next few months and few years as an industry, we should all take great pride, not just in the three jars of honey we made last year, but in all the zucchinis and tomatoes and strawberries and pumpkins and watermelons and peaches and apples and everything that every one of us made because it doesn't matter where your hive is. I promise your girls are helping somebody's garden out. They're putting more flowers in the road ditches and that's as big a story or bigger in my opinion than the two jars of honey that you sold at the farmer's market.

Becky: That is a nice message.

Jeff: I like that message. I do, I do.

Becky: It's a little bit happier than your last one, so thank you.

Jeff: Charlie, I really appreciated your time talking to us and we look forward to having you back and giving us an update on both your pollination season, your bees, and anything else that comes up, including the EPA, FDA hurdle.

Charlie: That's a good term for it because we want to be real positive, but it can be a little depressing and daunting to think about.

Jeff: Very good. Thanks a lot, Charlie.

Becky: Thank you, Charlie.

Charlie: I appreciate your time.

Jeff: I really enjoyed our conversation with Charlie. We invited him on to talk about almond pollinations because that's going on now, but man, we went down a rabbit hole, I think.

Becky: We heard things that I really didn't expect to hear, like somebody starting as a backyard beekeeper and ending up with 5,000 hives and a manufacturing plant for beekeeping supplies. I mean, is that in our future?

Jeff: Yes. Can you imagine that? Say, "Dear, I want to get started with bees." "Oh, sure. Yes, you can get a couple of hives."

Becky: We'll see where that leads you.

Jeff: Yes. Harm won't happen. 5,000 hives later.

Becky: He's 10 years into it, but I have a feeling he's just getting started. It seems that he's on the board of the ABF. It just seems like he's really digging in and trying to support all the backyard and sideliner and commercial beekeepers out there with his knowledge and his understanding of agriculture.

Jeff: That's the cool thing too, is he started out as basically a backyard beekeeper. He talked about starting out as a child with a couple of hives he threw stones at. He didn't say throw stones at, but every boy throws stones at a beehive. Not speaking about myself, but-

Becky: We've heard.

Jeff: -anyways, starting out with one or two beehives as a child and now having 5,000, he wasn't born into it. He has a different perspective growing into it that I think helps the backyard beekeeper as well as the large commercial person.

Becky: He's a bridge to unite all beekeepers with the work that he's doing. It's pretty exciting.

Jeff: Thanks, Charlie, for joining us and we'll look forward to having you back.

Becky: We have to have him back.

Jeff: That about wraps it up for this episode. Before we go, I want to encourage our listeners to follow us and rate us five stars on Apple Podcasts wherever you download and stream the show. Even better, write a review and let other beekeepers looking for a new podcast know what you like. You can get there directly from our website by clicking on the reviews along the top of any web page. We want to thank our regular episode sponsors, Betterbee, Global Patties, Strong Microbials, 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 the Leave a Comment section under each episode on the website. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks a lot, everybody.

[00:44:42] [END OF AUDIO]