Honey Labeling and Native vs. Non-Native with Eugene Makovec (S6, E18)

S6, E18 - Honey Labeling and Native vs. Non-Native with Eugene Makovec

Robert Godfrey: Hi. This is Robert Godfrey from Moonspeed Bee Supply. This is the Beekeeping Today Podcast.

[music]

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

Kim Flottum: I'm Kim Flottum.

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Jeff: Thank you, Sherry. 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 our website. There, you can read up on all our guests, read our blog on the various aspects and observations about beekeeping, search for, download, and listen to over 200 past episodes, read episode transcripts, leave comments and feedback on each show, and check on podcast specials from our sponsors.

You can find it all at www.beekeepingtodaypodcast.com. Hey, thanks for joining and a big thanks to Robert Godfrey for that opening. Folks, you too can help open a show by recording your greeting on your phone and sending it to us here. It's simple and it actually is easy to do. Of course, you can also track me down at a upcoming conference and I will record your greeting right there on the spot. Now, what could be easier? Becky, speaking of easy, I bet you have an easy weekend all set.

Becky Masterman: Oh, absolutely. I don't have to fight the muddy tracks to my bee yard or anything like that. It's been raining here nonstop for a couple of days and I need to get to my bees.

Jeff: Oh.

Becky: I hope that I don't get stuck, but I'm looking to-- Right now, it's time in Minnesota where we stop feeding, so I'm going to take off those feeders. Also, it's not quite time to button them up for winter, but I like to put a moisture board on top around this time of year.

Jeff: A lot of questions there for you. We've not talked about this. Is your bee yard, not in your backyard, obviously, is it out in the field? Do you have to drive onto property to get to them?

Becky: Jeff, I have six bee yards, and so every one of them has a different plan of access. Ask me if I've ever gotten stuck at any of them. [laughs]

Jeff: Yes, it sounds like maybe you have. [laughs]

Becky: I have. Luckily, the one I got stuck with, the farmer was ready to pull me out of the mud. I have four-wheel drive too, but still, it can get pretty muddy, especially when we've gotten so much rain.

Jeff: Sure.

Becky: All of my bee yards are within really 45 minutes of where I live. One of them is as close as five minutes away, and then a couple, like I said, are a little bit more of a drive.

Jeff: You were feeding sugar syrup then, and you're going to pull those feeders off?

Becky: Yes. I probably had to feed about, probably about 50% of my hives this year. In Minnesota, we do something that's a little different from the rest of the world. We actually keep them in three deeps, which a lot of people are now doing the math and saying that's about 60 pounds of wasted honey right there, [laughs] but it's a nice system sometimes if you just don't have to worry about feeding. I had a few colonies that I was nursing along a little bit. They started small this year, and they're doing okay, but just a little insurance, so I've been feeding some of them.

Jeff: Very good. This is a common misconception for many, especially newer beekeepers in the fall feeding. We're getting towards the end and people should be wrapping up their feeding, but what proportion to sugar to water do you feed in the fall?

Becky: Oh, that's a good question. It's a 2:1 proportion, or it's however much I can dissolve in warm water using my arm.

Jeff: 3:1 even would be really thick?

Becky: Right. For sure, it's a thick syrup. I think when I was at the university, it was we had actually a mark on the bucket. In the field when I'm mixing syrup, I'm not as precise, but it's definitely a thick syrup.

Jeff: Oh, very good. Moving here to Washington State, and folks, I apologize because I've lived here for 20 years, but I always talk about moving here, it's funny how time changes, I never dealt with candy boards. Here, candy boards are really popular because of the atmospheric moisture that's in the air. The candy boards are a way to feed the sugar and also utilize the moisture that's in the hive from the bees' metabolism, and so it helps control some of that humidity in the hive through the winter and through the fall as well.

Becky: Do you do just moisture boards, or do you feed with syrup also?

Jeff: This year I did not feed with syrup. Ask me next spring how did that go.

Becky: How did that go? [laughs]

Jeff: Yes. This year I'm working with some fondant and working with fondant as opposed to a candy board because I just don't have the facility to set up and make candy boards.

Becky: It's a major operation.

Jeff: It's a process that I would be kicked out of the house if I tried to do that. I'm not a very good handy person, so I like to buy things readymade. The fondant readymade to go is good for me.

Becky: Oh, that's really interesting. Really interesting. With the fondant, where are you putting that? Are you putting that below the inner cover?

Jeff: I try to put it under the inner cover, but today's boxes or today's inner covers aren't like the old-

Becky: They're thinner.

Jeff: - inner covers where you could flip them and have enough room-

Becky: Right.

Jeff: -to put a patty. I have a quilt box that I picked up from a local supplier that has a 2-inch, 1.5-inch space underneath the quilt area. I take the quilt box, it has a screen cover on it, I lay down a piece of cloth like burlap or an old pillowcase. Then on top of that, and that's to retain moisture in my warped brain, and then put the insulation and then put the top of the hive. There's a little gap, a 1.5-inch or 2-inch gap for the patties, and then the insulation. That worked really well last year, so I'm looking forward to seeing how it works this year.

Becky: Nice.

Jeff: Long answer to your short question.

Becky: I still have questions. I'll wrap this up quickly, I promise. Are these two deep hives?

Jeff: These are two deep, eight-frame hives, yes.

Becky: Eight-frame. Okay, interesting.

Jeff: Yes. All right. Folks, there you go. That's our weekend in October. Let's get to our guest, Eugene Makovec, who is the editor for American Bee Journal. You may not know the name or you might barely recognize the name, but there's a beekeeper behind that name and the editor of that magazine. We'll be talking to Eugene real quick, but first, a quick word from our friends at Strong Microbials.

Becky: Looking forward to it.

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Jeff: While you're at the Strong Microbials 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 editor-in-chief, Eugene Makovec, of American Bee Journal. Eugene, welcome to the show.

Eugene Makovec: Thanks. It's just editor. I don't know, I'll have to try and get a promotion to editor-in-chief one of these days. We'll see. [chuckles]

Becky: Beware that you might just get a title instead of an actual raise.

[laughter]

Eugene: All right, thanks!

Becky: Yes, be careful what you ask for.

Eugene: Normally they give you more responsibility and no more money is always my experience. I'm editor of American Bee Journal. ABJ, as most people call it, has been around since 1861. It's the oldest English language beekeeping publication in the world as opposed to Bee Culture, which is just the younger sibling. They've only been around since 1873 or something like that. I love my job. I love working for the Dadant family. They've been around as long as the journal, and so it's a nice gig.

Jeff: It definitely shows in the quality of publication you put out. You can always tell when someone enjoys their job. I know one of your passions for the last couple of years, and you mentioned it the last time you were on the show, was the labeling laws for honey in the state of Missouri. We were talking before we started recording, this is an issue for many states around the country as beekeepers, in this time of year especially, start dealing with bottling their honey and selling their honey, and start thinking about that part of beekeeping. The label laws are all different and can be crazy. Let's talk about that.

Eugene: Yes, and this time of year, like you said, we get a lot of questions through the local club and through the state organization on what are my rules for selling honey. A lot of people don't know, and some of the stores that they're trying to sell through don't know, and they direct them in the wrong direction, and so we're always trying to set people straight and let them know that we did change our law in Missouri in 2015. That was a personal quest of mine. I was on the wrong end of that regulation at one point, and so I set about doing something about it.

There are a lot of states that all follow the same general rules. It's like somebody came up with this thing years ago and everybody else copied it, and basically comes down to, honey is classified as a processed food. Some states will call it a cottage food and they'll allow you to sell direct to your consumer. As long as you put a little label on there, warning people that it's not inspected by the state, you're okay, but the minute you try selling at your neighborhood and feed store, or farm store, or pharmacy, or any other, those places that people like to buy local honey, suddenly you've become a food process and you're subject to commercial kitchen rules or inspected kitchen rules.

It's a pain in the neck. Me personally, I tend to lean a bit libertarian, so anytime there's a government regulating something, I always ask, "Why? Is there a good reason for this?" Here was a case where it affected me personally. Most of the time the government regulates a lot of things. Governments at all levels. For the most part, people just live with it because it's more trouble and more hassle and more expensive to try and fight it than it is to comply with it. Then when you ask around, everybody else that's like you has been dealing with it too, and it's just a normal course of events. It's always been this way, and so you just comply and you don't think about it.

Becky: Since you'd worked on changing the law in 2015, has something changed since then, or is it not changed to the degree that's suitable to help beekeepers make it easy to bottle and then sell their honey? Are there still changes that you need to make?

Eugene: Where Missouri is concerned, we're pretty happy with it. We've gotten what we want. I've been talking to people, I talked to the local clubs about this, about what the rules are in Missouri, but I've also talked to people in other states. I talked to a group a while back in Florida, talked to a group in California. Carlifornia is, nobody regulates like the state of California, their rules out there. You've got to have a cottage food license, you've got to pay something for that license. You have to take a cottage food training course. You have to repeat that every three years.

You cannot sell outside the state. You can't sell outside the county without the next county's permission, which is a really odd thing. I don't know where that came from, but it's just, there's a lot of levels there. Apparently, that's been that way a while. Now, I looked up Minnesota. Becky, since you're in Minnesota, I looked up, you've got some of those requirements up there. You've got to have a registration apparently.

Becky: We're actually good as long as you don't add anything to the honey.

Eugene: All right. I just did a quick search today, and I got some bad information then. That's good.

Becky: It's on the Minnesota Department of Ag website. It's one of those things where you have to dig through it to read it, but basically, if they're your hives and it's your honey, then you're fine. If you are packaging it from another beekeeper, then that triggers the license requirement.

Eugene: You can sell through stores then?

Becky: Yes.

Jeff: Is there a bottom, or is there a threshold, and I'm not sure how, it's probably different each state, what that threshold would be with this number of pounds, or colonies, or number of jars, that hey, if I'm only producing 10 jars of honey, I can take it down to my local farm market and sell it without worrying about the regulation? Whereas if I'm doing hundreds of pounds--

Eugene: Not really. Usually, if you're selling anything and you're selling it through another location, then you've got to meet those requirements. Now, in the exemption that we got where we don't have to deal with these things, there's an upward threshold of $50,000, where if I were to sell more than $50,000 of honey, then I would have to have the inspected kitchen regardless. In that case, I'm probably going to have a pretty good facility for that anyway, the larger producers. Now, where we used to be, there was a $30,000 requirement where even if you were doing just the selling, a farmer's markets or whatnot, direct to consumer, if you sold more than $30,000, you needed the kitchen regardless.

Now we've moved that up to $50,000 for anybody. When this first came along with me, I'd been a beekeeper for about 15 years. I lived in St. Louis County. I live in Lincoln County now, Missouri, about an hour northwest of St. Louis. I spent the first 15 years of my beekeeping career in St. Louis County, which, generally speaking, is a lot more regulated than we are out here. As far as I knew, Lincoln County was the place you go to get away from regulations. Your old fridge craps out, you drag it to the yard and use it for parts, and it sits out there.

The nice thing about living in a county like this is you can pretty much do whatever you want on your own property. The downsize is so can your neighbors, but it's, everything is a trade-off. Anyway, I moved out here, put honey in a couple of local stores, and I got a call one day from a county inspector saying, "I pulled your honey off the shelves up here at Brown's Meat Market because I have no record of you having an inspected kitchen." I said, "What's that all about?" I said, "I wasn't aware Lincoln County had those kind of rules." She said, "This isn't us, this is the state health department coming down to the county level saying we need to start enforcing this law on beekeepers."

I went round and round with her about what it entailed, and she told me about the direct sales versus indirect sales. I kept asking her, "What's the difference? It's the same honey. What does it matter if I'm selling it to Joe, and he's selling it to Susan, versus me just selling it direct to Susan? It's the same honey." She said, "That's just the way it is." I asked her about the law. "Can you at least give me the law and I can look it up?" She didn't know. She said, "I don't know what the statute is. I'll put you in touch with the state inspector." She gave me the contact information for this woman, Virginia.

I called her, and then I called her again. It was several days before she got back to me, but finally heard from her and went through the same questions between the direct versus indirect, and the fact that even if I'm selling direct to you, I have to have a little warning label on there saying, "This product is not inspected by the Department of Health and Human Services or Health and Senior Services," which, try fitting that on one of your small honey labels. It's not an easy thing anyway, especially for something that shouldn't be necessary.

I was getting a little bit annoyed at the whole thing and annoyed with the fact that I just wasn't getting any amount of understanding or empathy from either of these inspectors. I got a chip on my shoulder and we had Virginia come to our Missouri State beekeepers meeting. I think this was in August that this first happened and in '14, she came to our Missouri beekeepers conference in October to discuss this and explain this to us. She had a PowerPoint presentation. She got about five slides in and gave up because there were so many questions and challenges.

It went on for about 45 minutes. It was an eye opener for her, I think, but also for us because most of us had never heard of this rule. We had actually had her scheduled to talk to our local club, Three Rivers Beekeepers, of which I was president at the time. She didn't make it because her daughter was sick, but when she didn't show up, there was another person that had come in who had been her predecessor in that job. He offered to get up and explain some things, and we had a good back-and-forth. One thing he told us was, "You're not going to get anywhere with the health department. If you want to change this, you're going to have to go through the legislature." We set about doing that and it took a while. It turned out to be a complicated process.

Becky: Did you find somebody to sponsor a bill? It was a statute that was changed?

Eugene: Yes. We were part of what was called the Jams and Jellies law. I don't know why we were in there, but we were. It was the end of 2014 and was right after the election when we started looking at this. My local rep was between jobs. She had just got elected from representatives to the state senate, so I couldn't get ahold of her at either place. I had people telling me we need to get a lobbyist, and I said, "We're not going to get a lobbyist, but we're going to try and get ahold of somebody." Finally, I ran into somebody who knew this now state senator, Jeanie Riddle or knew her legislative aide, and he put me in touch.

I sat down with them, and my other beekeeper friend who knew him, and told her what was going on and what we thought we needed changed, and she said, yes, we should be able to do that. Meantime, at the state or at the local level, we had sent a letter to the Missouri health department saying, "Please tell us how many cases that you have of people getting sick from eating honey," especially since they hadn't been enforcing that rule up to that time. We figured they probably won't respond, but if it comes to it in the legislature, we'll just say, "Look, they wouldn't even talk to us."

On the morning of my meeting with Senator Riddle, I got a letter back from them stating that we checked and we have no record of anyone ever getting sick from eating honey in the state of Missouri. I showed that to Senator Riddle, and she said, "This is going to be helpful." From there, it was a matter of sitting down and hashing out, basically, what they thought we could get past, what I thought beekeepers could live with. We wanted to get rid of the commercial kitchen regulation, that little warning label, and I was hoping to also get rid of that monetary threshold of $30,000 because there again, my question was what's the difference between the $29,000 honey and the $31,000 honey. There's an arbitrary number there.

Jeff: I'm surprised that someone didn't try to use the fact that no one had been sick in the State of Missouri due to honey as proof that the law was working. That would be the logic, wouldn't it?

Eugene: Yes, except for the fact that they had not been enforcing that law until that year.

Jeff: Till they saw your honey on the shelf. [laughs]

Eugene: Yes. Somebody got the bright idea that we need to start cracking down on these beekeepers because they're endangering public health or something.

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

Sheri: Elevate your beekeeping knowledge with Betterbee's free monthly newsletter, The Betterbee Buzz. Get the buzz on seasonal beekeeping tips and education designed to make you a beekeeping superstar. Don't miss out. Sign up today at betterbee.com/signup and become part of our buzzing community. Happy beekeeping adventures await. Betterbee, your source for beekeeping success.

Jeff: You talked to the senator and you got the senator's support. What were the next steps? What did you have to do?

Eugene: Another interesting thing, though, in the process was that I was on the board of the Missouri State Beekeepers because I was doing the newsletter. I brought this to a board meeting and there was a little concern there that if we pushed forward on it and we failed, that the health department might actually get aggravated with us and crack down harder. There was also some members that thought it's probably too late to do something this year because this was in January at that point. The session runs from January to mid-May, and a lot of bills get pre-filed by December.

There's a whole pile-up of bills always, and a lot of them don't get through. One of the nice things that talking to Senator Riddle was she said we've got time to do this because it's a fairly simple issue, but she kept going back. I was talking about the label requirement, for example, and she kept saying things like, "Yes, I don't know. Any way that we complicate this, it's going to increase our chances of getting some pushback." I said, "Who do you think will be opposed to this?" She said, "Oh, urban and suburban legislators." She was surprised when I told her that most beekeepers nowadays are in those urban and suburban districts.

I settled her down on that, and then she asked me, she said, "We need to be able to demonstrate that the beekeepers of Missouri want this. It's not just some disgruntled guy in my district who's got a bone to pick with the health department."

Becky: How did you do that?

Eugene: I said, "Give me the bill as it's written up, and I will run it back by the board." The MSDA board approved that wording unanimously, and we moved forward. Then it was just a matter of getting it through the legislature, which there's that saying that you don't want to see how the sausage is made, it gets very complicated. The great thing about it was there was no opposition in the legislature. We testified in committees. The questions that we got were things like, "Isn't honey the perfect food? I heard that it never spoils."

They were all on our side.

It was a really neat thing. We just got bogged down in the process. It got interesting in the last week because we actually passed companion bills. One in the house, one in the Senate that were identical. They both passed easily. Two votes against both sides and then one of them had to make it through the other side. We had a house bill in the Senate and vice versa. The last week of the session, the Senate shut down for a filibuster. The Republicans had control. They wanted to pass a right-to-work bill. Democrats were dead set against it.

They said, "We know you have the votes, but if you do that, we're going to filibuster everything from the morning prayer to the end of every day." They passed the bill, the Senate shut down. Then on the House side, we had three days to go, and there was a scandal. The Kansas City Star published a story on Tuesday night. The sessions were ending on Friday. They published a story about the House speaker having a dalliance with a college intern and the House shut down. The speaker resigned. They opened back up Friday morning, elected a new speaker, and said, we'd gotten back in session, "Friday afternoon we're going to pass some bills."

We were 1 of 32 bills that they pushed through out of hundreds that were still in the pile there. It really went down to the wire, and it was a very stressful thing. It also happened to be I was getting married about two weeks after that. The bad news for my wife is I wasn't a whole lot of help. [laughter] The good news for me was I wasn't a whole lot of help . [laughter] We got it done and then the governor ended up signing it. Like I was saying, there's a lot of states that are struggling with this. We have, occasionally, you hear of one that's doing something.

When this whole thing first came up, I wrote about it in the Missouri newsletter. Both ABJ and Bee Cultureadvertised in the newsletter, so they both get copies of it. Joe Graham, he was the editor of American Bee Journal at the time, he emailed me, and he asked for permission to reprint my article. Then he also said, "I want to tell you what Illinois did a year or two ago to fix this problem." What they did was they pulled honey out of the purview of the health department and they gave it to the Ag department. Illinois is a completely different world from Missouri in terms of bees and beekeeping.

We're like the Wild West over here. If you're a beekeeper in Illinois, you'd have to register your hives. You have to submit to inspection once a year, and which I wouldn't be real happy about probably. The upside is that they've got a very active program over there. They've got the university, Jim Robinson and May Berenbaum, and those people over there. They've got, at the U of I, there's a lot of good honeybee research comes out of there. The Ag department is very much involved in beekeeping. The local bee clubs are affiliated with the state organization, which is in turn affiliated with the Ag department.

When they ran into this problem over there, the Ag department helped them go to the legislature and change this, and just pulled it out of the health department's hands and turned honey from being a processed food to an agricultural commodity, and pulled the regulations off of it. They set a threshold of 500 gallons where if you sold more than 500 gallons, you then had to have that kitchen, but otherwise, you're free and clear, and you can sell wherever you want. I really took hope from that at the start because Illinois is not a state that I think of as being one where you can reduce regulations. I thought if Illinois can do it, we can do it over here.

Becky: It would be really interesting to get a tally of each state and what their rules are. It also makes just the argument for, I bet there are beekeepers siloed in different states who are working with these regulations to try to change the regulations to make them more favorable and to make them represent the actual properties of honey. It would be really interesting to get a tally on that and also to give those states some support.

Jeff: My guess would be that there's probably more beekeepers who don't know or unaware of what's required than those who are aware and trying to comply or blatantly just ignoring it.

Eugene: Yes, and I think that's a lot of it. A lot of it just gets ignored and not enforced. It hadn't been enforced in Missouri until that point. A lot of people just get used to, that's the way things are. Whenever I read a story in magazines or online or whatever, about how you go about preparing your honey, extracting and bottling things, they tend to throw that thing in about, just remember that you're not allowed to sell through stores unless you do this in a commercial kitchen and all this. It's just in there. It's just a part of life. People, they just know that that's something that they have to deal with.

Nobody really thinks about it beyond that other than, "I can only sell person to person." Every now and then a state does something. New Jersey just passed the-- They got out from under this just last year. Their state organization got behind this in '21, and they got a bill through their legislature unanimously on both sides, and the governor vetoed it. It was what's called a pocket veto, and this varies by state. In New Jersey's case you have, if you pass the law, then it's up to the governor, of course, to sign it or veto it. If it's passed at the end of the session, he can just sit on it and ignore it, and let it die if he doesn't do anything with it, which is, to me, that's worse than a real veto.

At least you got to take a stand if you're vetoing something. Pocket veto was more like, "These people aren't even going to waste my time." Then they did the same thing again in '22, and they passed it earlier in the session to where I think it was a 45-day limit to how long he could sit on it before he made a decision on it. The governor actually went out of town toward the end of the session, and so did the lieutenant governor, which put the third in command, the Senate president, in as acting governor. He sat in that chair, and he signed a bunch of bills that the governor was ignoring.

They got it through that way, so it's whatever it takes. I'm always amazed that there aren't more of the state beekeeping organizations that are making a real push to get these things changed because you can see how, in both Missouri and New Jersey, there was no opposition in the legislature. We're basically loved. Bees and beekeepers are loved throughout the country now. People have a lot more respect for us than they did before CCD and all that put us in the news all the time. As far as the actual convincing people, it's a slam dunk.

It's just a matter of somebody going through that process. In my case, I was just the guy that took it personally at the time. I had a job where I was fairly flexible at the time. My boss was good about letting me take off on a day's notice to go to Jeff City and do this sort of thing. That's really all it takes, is somebody to be able to do it, and it's not that difficult.

Becky: Beekeeping organization presidents need to put it on their winter to-do list, to check the laws, share them with their organization members, and then possibly change them if there are some roadblocks, right?

Eugene: Yes, I think so.

Becky: The National Honey Board, I know they're really interested in supporting beekeepers in marketing honey, and I know they have USDA funding and it's federal, but I wonder if there's something that they could do as far as supporting beekeepers and giving them support for changing laws.

Eugene: I really haven't contacted anyone there about it, but that's a great idea.

Becky: Yes, they really do want to get more local honey on the shelves. I know I've talked to a couple people from the National Honey Board, and they've been really supportive. It's an idea as far as maybe getting all the beekeepers on the same page and having their support.

Eugene: One thing that surprised me during and after this process was that I actually got a little bit of pushback from a couple of people. First of all, there was a commercial beekeeper in Missouri that pushed back on it in part, for one thing, because we couldn't get rid of that upper threshold, and he thought it was unfair to the larger producers that the little guys like me would be able to sell to local stores without having to, I guess, spend the money he had to spend to get that whole commercial kitchen and everything. I had posted a couple things on an online forum about this when we got it passed, and I had a couple people push back that were larger beekeepers.

There was a honey inspector that pushed back, or a bee inspector from another state, basically saying that we were going to destroy the industry, destroy our reputation by allowing every Tom, Dick, and Harry to sell their honey that was produced God knows how, and dirty bottles and whatnot, which really caught me off guard. I remember reading somewhere from another guy at one point on another larger scale, beekeeper said one time, he was in the Kansas City area, he said that every time I see some upstart competitor's honey on the supermarket shelves next to mine, I call my buddy at the health department, and a couple weeks later that honey is not there anymore.

Becky: Oh, no. [laughter] That's not the spirit.

Eugene: It's one of those gatekeeping things, but I can see the point where if you've had to spend all that money, that that would be something you wouldn't want somebody else coming in and undercutting you on price because they didn't have that overhead. That was another part of our argument in the legislature was, the tremendous amount of money that it's going to cost to build this kitchen. One of the people that testified with us talked about having to go through this and spend $20,000 getting up to the standards of her county. It varied by county too and local. Everybody has a little bit different rules on that, so it's a guessing game until you actually do it.

Jeff: Besides Google, where would you suggest someone start investigating their state about these requirements? What search terms would you use? What's the starting point?

Eugene: That's a good question because I mentioned at the outset that I looked up Minnesota's laws, and I didn't get the right information. In fact, I can look up Missouri's laws and sometimes find the top thing that'll come up will be the law as it used to exist, so I can understand how there's confusion because the webpages don't go away. They're out there forever unless you find the most recent one. I think that the state beekeeping association usually has got that information on what the laws are.

Becky: It's on our Minnesota extension in our state or at least the Bee Lab website, the Minnesota Bee Lab website. They have a link for the labeling requirements, and then also, we're under cottage food law, but we're exempt if that makes sense. That's where it falls.

Jeff: A beekeeper listening to the podcast would have to do a little digging and then verify the information that you find, to know that you're in the right place. I wouldn't necessarily rely totally on what you receive on a listserv or a bulletin board or Facebook, or something like that. I would do a little bit digging to find the regulations where food and honey comes in for your state laws and regulations, I think would be one of the safer bets.

Eugene: Of course, you could ask your local health department, but there, again, if there is a law that they're not enforcing, that might get them thinking, "Hey."

Jeff: "I'm asking for a friend."

[laughter]

Eugene: Right.

Jeff: "My name is Jack Smith, I'm asking for a friend.

Eugene: Same when people ask about, "Is it legal to keep bees in my suburb and who do I ask?" Do you really want to go ask the city, or do you want to, what is it, ask forgiveness rather than permission? [laughter]

Becky: Ask for forgiveness. Oh boy, we're going to get all sorts of people in trouble bad.

Eugene: No, we always tell people that that's a local level. The best thing that you can do is ask the local authorities because there, again, a lot of cities have those regulations online, but finding them in the right place is not always easy. The other problem with these state rules that we had is, and another one of my arguments is that you're basically picking on the beekeepers of your state because, for one thing, if I'm allowed to put it on on there, then I have to have that label on there saying, "Not inspected," or whatever. Whereas you can bring in honey from surrounding states, and it's not subject to that Missouri law, or worse yet from outside the country, so the onus is on the Missouri beekeeper versus the Illinois beekeeper or even the Chinese beekeeper.

You're punishing your own people. After I got this thing passed, after we got it through and I did a follow-up article for ABJ, and actually, Kim Flottum asked me to write one for Bee Culture as well, and after those published, I got a call from a guy in Arkansas. He said, "I live in Arkansas right across from the Missouri border. I run 80 to 100 hives, give or take on both sides and up until now, I've been selling my Arkansas honey in Missouri, my Missouri honey and Arkansas, just to get along around these goofy regulations." Now he said, "Thanks to this new law, I can legally sell my Missouri honey in Missouri." You still got Arkansas with the old laws. Kansas has got the old laws.

Jeff: That's where I think people choose to be ignorant of the law as opposed to try to actually research it, but I think it's better to research it.

Eugene: I think a lot of it just happens.

Becky: It's good to research it and do it right, especially because I think our market for local honey in grocery stores is increasing. If you're going to do all the work to get yourself into a grocery store, it makes sense to make sure that you don't have any roadblocks like you experienced, Eugene.

Eugene: One of the things that this inspector that was pushing back against me said was that you have to worry now about anybody who's just going to adulterate honey in their home kitchen and whatnot. I said, "Okay, so who's going to be more likely to adulterate honey? The person who's selling in his local store and talking to the owner, maybe chatting with the customers walking in the door, or the person who's selling it in from out of state on a truck that has never met anyone that's in your local community?" That didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. As far as the same thing with dirty bottles and whatnot, that the market will take care of that pretty quickly. If you're selling honey that's poorly labeled and smudged bottles and things like that, I'm not going to buy that honey. I'm going to buy the nicer-looking one next to it.

Jeff: What do you think, and this is out of left field, right field, the impact of all the artificial honeys, the bio honeys that are coming out? This is probably not even in the same subject, but I would think that enters in somehow or does it just muddy the waters? Maybe it doesn't do anything.

Eugene: I think it muddies them a little bit. You're talking about the new plant-based honey that's extracted from plants and whatever . Yes.

Jeff: Using enzymes such as were in bee gut, but not produced by bees. [chuckles] Something.

Eugene: I think it might muddy the water for some people. I don't think to a whole degree. It's maddening to read that and hear the rationale behind it because they base it on bees being poorly treated and bad for the environment. They claim that honeybees are crowding out all the other native bees, which as we know, that's not settled science by any means, and there are arguments for and against. You can certainly flood an area with enough bees that you're going to outrun the forage for both honeybees and native bees, but that's not the norm. I think that's, most beekeepers aren't dealing with that or doing that. I think for most people buying honey, they're going to know the difference.

Jeff: Ask any beekeeper and they'll tell you that the people like their backyard honey, far better than anything they found in the store. That's just because the personal touch, and plus it does taste better. Eugene, this has really been educational. The whole topic of labeling and the laws regarding honey is an important subject, and I'm glad you brought it to us. It's actually something I'd like to keep exploring. Maybe we can have you back, and as we learn more about labeling laws and requirements in other parts of the country, you can come back and comment and maybe provide some feedback for our listeners.

Becky: Your personal struggle is great information and inspiration for all the beekeepers out there.

Jeff: We've been talking about the label laws and a little bit about ABJ. Anything that you'd like to talk about that we hadn't brought up before we let you go for the afternoon?

Eugene: That mellow bio thing you mentioned is worth talking about. I think that we went through a push there for a while where everybody thought the bees are dying, and it seemed like everybody was going to the extreme end thinking bees were an endangered species and we had to save the bees and everything. Now it's swung the other direction with some of the environmental groups that are pushing back against honeybees saying we've been worrying about the wrong species.

There's nothing wrong with honeybees. In fact, they're invasive here, and they're crowding out the natives. I think we're going to have to worry a little bit about having to defend ourselves a little against those types of stories. Whereas before they were almost being too nice to us, now we're yesterday's news more or less, or yesterday's darling, and that leaves us open.

Becky: Yes. The focus needs to be changed to more flowers. Honey production overall in the country is down 50% since '87. Honestly, there's an argument out there that it's not one bee versus the other. It's the fact that we need more habitat for all the bees and pollinators out there.

Eugene: Yes, I tell people all the time, I've got typically half a dozen hives of bees in my yard, eight of them right now. I've got hundreds of thousands of foragers heading out of those hives going God knows where because I don't see them in my yard for the most part. I look around the yard and in my garden, and all the things we've got planted in the wildflowers in the area, and I'm finding all kinds of other natives out there and the occasional honeybee. I know when, say the clover has dried up, or that when the major nectar flows are shut down coming into these hot summer months, I know when they hit that spot because I start seeing honeybees in my own yard working all the little things that they were ignoring before because they're desperate.

By and large, I know I'm not crowding out any native pollinators of any sort. I think that in almost all cases, beekeepers are not doing that. Certainly, if you're a commercial beekeeper, and you're plunking down 80 hives somewhere in an area over a couple of months' time, they're going to overrun that forage in that area, but again that's not the norm.

Becky: Not necessarily. There are some really good studies in North Dakota where the honeybees thrive, so do the native bees. I think that with all that competition data out there, it actually does exist where if your bees are making honey, there are data that show other bees are rich in species and are also definitely thriving. That's why we just have to keep driving home; more flowers, more honey, more bees, good for everybody.

Jeff: Specific research is generalized for everything. It might be true for one instance in one very narrow study, but it doesn't necessarily mean that's inclusive across the country in every habitat.

Eugene: Yes, there was one study that was the Canary Islands, which is obviously an isolated area.

Jeff: By definition.

Eugene: Yes.

Jeff: An island in the middle of the ocean, yes, all right.

Eugene: Yes, and there have also been studies that show that, yes, honeybees, given the population, they perform more pollination in that area, which causes more seed set and more flowers the following season. It's that old rising tide lifts all boats thing. This depends on where you're looking, I guess.

Jeff: Eugene, it's been a great pleasure having you on the show today, and thanks for joining Becky and me. I know Kim will be sorry that he missed you. We'll get you back on when he's back on with us.

Eugene: Okay, yes. Thanks for having me.

Jeff: You bet. Thank you for joining us.

Becky: Thanks, Eugene.

Jeff: I'll be honest, Becky, I don't know what the laws are here in Washington State. In Colorado, I sold all of my honey to a local packer, so I didn't even bother ever looking it up. I remember in Ohio, they changed the laws when I was a beekeeper there, where everyone was worried that the state inspector was going to come in and inspect everyone's kitchen or wherever they extracted honey. This is a good topic, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Becky: It's very timely, and I appreciate Eugene's honesty. Also, he shared it's a struggle to get those laws changed and what it almost cost him, his wedding, [laughter] but it's something that I think you want to be on the right side of if you're investing money into your operation. If you're trying to expand your market, you just don't want to have to play catch up with the bottling and the labeling laws because you could invest a lot of money in something that you have to redo.

Jeff: When you start talking about like you said, as you referred to if you have your own label made or designed and put out and go through the print, and then there's a minimum order of labels you have to have printed, especially on a custom label, it's an investment.

Becky: I admit I read the Minnesota laws, especially the label laws, and I don't want to use the word random, but there's a lot of talk about how big the font is and what actually needs to be on it and you do have to pay attention if you want to fall within their guidelines.

Jeff: I guess the best advice is to make sure you do some research. Start with your state beekeeping organization. That would be a good place to start, and then work from there to find out what you need in your state. Then as we heard from Eugene, it may depend on your county as well.

Becky: Yes, good advice.

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 or 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 webpage. We want to thank our regular episode sponsors Global Patties, Strong Microbials, and especially Better Bee for their longtime support of this podcast. Thanks to 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 or comments at Leave a Comment section under each episode on the website. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks a lot, everybody.

[00:53:28] [END OF AUDIO]