John Hill of HillCo Bees (285)

285 - John Hill of HillCo Bees

Anik Smith: Hello, this is Anik Smith with Dogwood Ridge Bees from Boonville, Indiana. We are here today at the North American Honeybee Expo in Louisville, Kentucky, and we would like to welcome you to the Beekeeping Today Podcast.

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

Becky Masterman: I'm Becky Masterman.

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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. Thanks a lot, Anik, for that great opening. I remember talking to her in Louisville, that was fantastic, at the North American Honey Bee Expo. We have another state to color in.

Becky: Yes, the Midwest is looking pretty good on this map. That conference was a long time ago. Are you running out of listener openings yet from it?

Jeff: Oh, I thought you were going to say something else. Like how many do you have in that bucket of-- You know, we are coming up to the end of our North American Honey Bee Expo visitors who gave us an opening. If someone would like to open our show for us, boy, we could use that. You can record and send us an opening at questions@beekeepingtodaypodcast.com. If you need a reminder, you can check out our fantastic newsletter that Becky prepares for us every week.

Becky: Newsletter? We haven't told anybody about the newsletter. Are you letting the newsletter out of the--

Jeff: Mailbag?

Becky: It's no longer a secret because that's the first on-air mention of the newsletter.

Jeff: You've been spearheading that for the last six months at least.

Becky: We have. We have.

Jeff: It's fantastic.

Becky: It's nice to be able to communicate with people in a different way. We are able to maybe add some more timely information to the newsletter and also share Honey Bee Obscura Podcast episodes as well as 2 Million Blossoms episodes.

Jeff: Occasionally some messages from our sponsors, too. I encourage folks, if you're not receiving the newsletter, to go to our website and sign up today.

Becky: Fantastic.

Jeff: Becky, what was your first piece of beekeeping equipment that you purchased? Don't say a hive tool.

Becky: Okay. I won't say a hive tool, although it probably was. I think the first piece of equipment was an actual set of equipment to house the bees, so 10-frame Langstroth boxes.

Jeff: Let me back up. Let me rephrase my question, please. What was the first piece of extracting equipment you ever purchased?

Becky: Oh, the first piece of extracting equipment? Oh, my husband bought me an extractor, he surprised me with it, so I bought the components, the strainer, uncapper, but not an electronic uncapper. I'm not that fancy, but my husband bought me an extractor. I think he was just afraid that if he didn't buy me something that I could plug in and do, he would be recruited to help me extract all that honey.

Jeff: Or you'd be left to your own devices and get something that really

caught your eye.

Becky: Oh, there you go. There you go. No, so he surprised me with it. What about you? You've got a nice set-up there, don't you?

Jeff: Well, I have a nice set-up today and it's been a long time coming. My very first piece of equipment was a old Dadant Ranger-powered extractor that I received for Christmas years and years ago. It was fantastic. I thought I was king of the world. It was a great Christmas gift.

Becky: Did you play a role in picking out the gift?

Jeff: I don't recall that part of it, but knowing me, I probably left big hints around.

Becky: Like model numbers, things like that.

Jeff: Yes. The magazines laying out open, circled. I had borrowed other people's manual extractors. Never used a powered extractor up until that Ranger. It was fantastic. The reason I bring it up is today's guest, John Hill, from Hill Equipment, will be joining us. He is a new player in the stainless circle of beekeeping equipment and he's really making waves. I find it'd be really interesting to talk to him about what they're doing.

Becky: That sounds like a really good conversation that's pretty timely considering the time of year right now.

Jeff: Sure is. I'm looking forward to talking to John. Before we get to John, we have a new feature. We're starting today with Dr. Dewey Caron, who many of our listeners may know from as many books or many speaking engagements. Dewey joins us today with a new monthly audio postcard that he will bring us exploring all things honeybees. This month the topic is communication.

[music]

Dr. Dewey Caron: Hello, this is Dewey Caron. Today I'd like to do an audio postcard about communication. Our busy spring that is roughly defined as the first day of spring to the first day of summer is extremely occupied with our honeybee activity. Today I'd like to talk to you a little bit about communication. Communication of bee scientist to beekeeper, beekeeper to bees, and bees to bees. Communication, bee scientist to beekeeper. We have a fascinating book, one in a series from Dr. Tom Seeley. The name of the book, the title of the book is Piping Hot Bees and Boisterous Buzz-Runners. It's from Princeton University Press. It just recently released.

Listeners may recall that Dr. Seeley was on Beekeeping Today Podcast April 1st, no fooling, April 1st, where he talked finally about this book. The book includes 20 chapters, which are really a recounting of the work that he's been doing over his professional life at Cornell University, investigating aspects of bees and bee behavior. Nearly half the chapters cover some particular aspect about swarming. The title refers to two of those chapters, Chapter 6, Piping Hot Bees, and Chapter 7, Boisterous Buzz-Runners. The book is a very easy read, but it is important, I think, for understanding what we do as bee scientists.

Tom takes you through a tale of how he became interested in a particular topic, in this case how bees are able to get ready to go with a swarm, that's the Piping Hot Bees chapter, and how they then get the message to leave home with the swarm, that's the Boisterous Buzz-Runners. In each of the chapters besides introducing and then introducing his experiments, he walks us through the experiments of how he was able to set up and actually find out information from the bees to be able to communicate with the bees, have the bees tell him in an experiment what he would like to know relative to a particular topic.

As I indicated in this case, how bees get messages about getting ready to swarm and then eventually leaving. Each of the chapters feature very simple but very elegant illustrations. Also in most of the chapters, there is a graphic actually of the information that he presents. Swarming, it's a big topic, lots of different aspects of bees and bee behavior. I recommend Piping Hot Bees and Boisterous Buzz-Runners from scientist Tom Seeley to us as beekeepers. Beekeeper to bee communication.

In the spring quadrant, that is that first day of spring to the first day of summer, one of the activities as beekeepers that we need to consider if we're trying to gather honey that we might then be able to harvest from our bees is the behavior, the management of supering. Supering is to add a box or boxes above the part of the hive for the bees, above the brood area. Sometimes we'll use a queen excluder, sometimes not. Sometimes we'll put one or more supers on initially. Sometimes we'll put an initial super on and put additional supers on. The way we put the additional supers on, we might put them on the top.

We might put them right above the queen excluder, which sometimes we then take off, or we might bait the supers. What we are doing with supering is we are communicating to our bees and expectation. We want the bees to take the incoming nectar that the foragers are bringing into their home, into the hive, and put that above the brood area, the area where the bees are rearing their young and storing the resources for the young, storing the bee bread and some nectar stored there so that they can feed their young. We have the expectation that with supers, they're going to store surplus, they're going to store extra honey that we then might be able to harvest.

There are a number of different ways in which we might approach supering, but the major aspect that we need to do is communicate. We need to let the bees know what our expectation is. We expect that they're going to store surplus, surplus that we can then eventually harvest from them. We do that in the way that we might super. Although the techniques may vary, we are basically telling our bees, ladies, this is where we expect you to put extra nectar so that we're going to be able to get something back, get something in return. Our harvest for our efforts in keeping you in a nice, warm, and dry domicile, and managing you through the season.

Communication. Communication of bees to bees is critical as well. The beehive is a dark, smelly, hot, humid place. How do bees talk to each other? How do they communicate? They have a number of ways that they can do it. A relatively new publication out of some researchers in England, references supplied, talks about how important one bee facing another bee and using their antennae is to bee communication in that hot, dark, smelly, humid hive. By antennation, by one bee touching other bees with antennae, they are able to communicate a number of different aspects.

For example, trophallaxis, the movement of honey from crop and honey stomach contents from one bee to another is through antennae contact. This paper features the dancing, dance language of honeybees. When a forager comes back and wants to tell her sisters about a great resource out there, she can do a dance. How do bees then get the information out of the dance? They get it by touching or sensing a sound that the dancing bee has made with their antennae. The bee that is dancing is moving widely among bees in somewhat of a pattern and no one bee can follow her directly.

With a bit of touching that dancing bee with their antennae and using their antennae to know where they are relative to gravity, bees are able to then pick up the information from the dancing bees and then use it. It's critical that they have that information because they only take enough crop contents to get out to the source and get back. They don't actually feed in the field. This dance language is critical for telling other bees where sources are and how rich they are, what they smell like, and where they're located, specifically where they're located. By using antennae, one bee then is able to pick up that information. Communication antennae to antennae. Today's topics then, communication, swarming, supering, and dancing. Thank you. I hope you found this of interest.

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Jeff: Hey, thanks a lot, Strong Microbials. While you're at their website, make sure you click on and subscribe to The Hive, their regular newsletter full of interesting beekeeping facts and product updates. Hey everybody, welcome back to the show. Sitting across the big virtual Beekeeping Today Podcast table is John Hill from HillCo. You may know him from all the extractors and beekeeping equipment that he makes there in Minonk, Illinois. John, welcome to the show.

John Hill: Thank you, Jeff. Great to be here.

Becky: Nice to meet you, John.

John: Thank you, Becky. Likewise.

Jeff: I invited you to the show because, well, number one, you are a new player or relatively new, new is a relative term, but a new player in the beekeeping supply equipment company. Secondarily, at the North American Honeybee Expo in January, I swear to goodness your booth had the most foot traffic than anybody else. If there was one other person, there might have been only one other person, I don't even know, but you had the most foot traffic and you had the foresight to bring in a bunch of carts that every beekeeper that had a stash of booty that they had bought along the way was pushing it along on a John Hill HillCo cart. I thought, oh my gosh, this guy is on top of his game.

John: Well, we try. We don't always get it right, but that conference is something that we put a tremendous amount of effort into and money, frankly, we put a lot of investment into that as well. It pays off though. It's really, really exciting to see the way people are embracing what we're doing, especially at that event. We don't want to come in second place if we can help it. That event, we really try to be the best that we can be. Again, we put a ton of effort into it. Even for the next one in 2025, the expo, we started planning for that on basically January 7th or whatever the last day of the conference was. This year we're planning for next year. Every day we think about it really. It's a lot of fun. Those carts were a big hit and we plan to bring them back bigger and better than ever next year.

Jeff: You better bring back motorized, I suppose.

John: Maybe, maybe not, but we'll see.

Becky: You need extra insurance if you're going to go that route.

John: Yes, right.

Becky: Before we get more marketing tips, I think we need to get John Hill's beginning story, I'm just going to say it, because I think you two are just going to go down this road and we're not going to be able to pull you back. John, can you tell us how you got started in beekeeping and how you ended up with a company?

John: Yes, for sure. I got started in beekeeping in 2005, I believe it is. I was 16 years old. I don't know, my family was traveling in Florida, saw a lot of beehives and orange groves in different places down there. I had read an article in some homesteading magazine, I think, that my folks subscribe to. I guess even further back than that, I remember at four or five years old seeing a sign for-- and this is just my vague memory from 30 years ago, but seeing a sign for honey at someplace and somehow either my assumption, or maybe it was the way it was, maybe I had real reason to believe this, but I remember like being a board fence with a sign about honey, there was an apiary in behind that fence, was at least in my imagination.

I just remember being really fascinated. Again, four or five years old, we were visiting somebody, I saw this sign, this fence, and somehow just this mysteriousness of beehives being behind that fence. It was really intriguing to me to think about. Again, fast forward 10 or 12 years, I was about 16, again, saw some beehives in Florida, different places, read this article, was really intrigued, really excited to get into it. Read every book I could get ahold of, ordering catalogs from all the different bee suppliers. Read these catalogs. Got real familiar with the terminology and the equipment and beekeeping in general. I borrowed--

Actually, I grew up in this town of Minonk, Illinois, where we run our business now and the library is actually basically right next door to where we run our business now, the old bread bakery that we remodeled and run our business. Now the library's right next door. As a kid, I would go to the library a lot. We had one beekeeping book there, an old 1970s version of ABC and XYZ of Bee Culture that Dadant has put out many times over the years. I borrowed that book so many different times, I kept renewing it or I'd have to take it back sometimes before I could renew it again.

A cool thing, I actually went to that library here a year or two ago, I think it was last summer, and sure enough, they still had that same exact book, the very same one I had borrowed. I said, hey, can I replace this book? Can I buy the latest version of ABC and XYZ of Bee Culture, donate to the library and you guys rotate this one out and give it to me. I'd really like to have this book. Sure enough, it took a month or so for their process, but we did that. I have that book now.

Jeff: It reminds me of a story similar, but not quite the same. I also collected books, a lot of insect books. My sister-in-law went there not so long ago. The librarian said, are you related to Jeff Ott? My sister-in-law said, well, yes, he's my brother-in-law. She said, well, he has outstanding fines from a book How to Follow Insects from back in the '70s. My sister-in-law had to pay the fine. Anyway.

John: Oh, why?

Becky: Oh no.

John: 30 years of fines.

Jeff: Well, they only did it for so many, but yes.

John: Oh, okay.

Jeff: It was funny. Yours had a better ending. I think that that's nice that you did that.

John: I had an ulterior motive there. I certainly wanted that book for myself, kind for a collector item. It was an important part of how we got started in this journey. Anyway, as back to my high school days there. Yes. Then I think in that summer, maybe of, I think it was again, 2005, some people here in town, again, very small town, some people I knew here in town, they farmed outside of town here and they heard I was getting into bees. I was passionate and interested in beekeeping and studying up on them. They called me up one evening in June, I think it was, and, hey, we got a swarm of bees in our backyard here.

I didn't have any equipment yet at this point, but I knew another beekeeper who lived south of town here. I called him up and went out there. He loaned me a hive box, a deep box that he had sitting there. He didn't have any extra bottom boards or lids. We used plywood for the lid and bottom board just had a box with frames in it. Ued a mason jar for a feeder or something probably and got the swarm hive, got it home. I was on cloud nine. I was really, really, really excited. Then ended up getting better equipped over time. As a kid there, I ran bees for about the next several years after that till I was in my early 20s, maybe 22, 23. Never got more than 15 hives or so probably.

Then got out of them for a few years. Guess we were living in town at the time. I'd gotten married, started having kids, just got too busy. Got out of beekeeping for a few more years. Then in 2018, we moved to where we live now. It's a couple of acres around El Paso, Illinois, just the next town south, and we run the business here. We had a couple of acres there in the country, and a lady from our church was doing some beekeeping, had a couple of hives, and she got stung a few times. She kind of thought she was maybe allergic somewhat, so she reached out to me and said, do you want to buy these hives? Oh, absolutely. I was all over that.

Now I had a place to put them, so I got back. Again, that was the summer of 2018. Pretty much right away I dove right back into it. From my high school days on up, I'd always wanted to be self-employed someday at the time I was working for a lumberyard. I wanted to be self-employed and I wanted beekeeping to be part of that in some form or fashion. It was part of my living, the whole thing, whatever. I wanted beekeeping to be part of my future self-employment plan. I started splitting these hives and really rolling on it. Again, I was working at a lumberyard, had no woodworking background, but man, you can learn anything from YouTube.

I looked up on YouTube how to build a beehive and this guy, a simple video, he used a simple cheap table saw and cut a simple hive box and a simple migratory lid, a simple bottom board out of basically a couple of pieces of 1 by 12. Well, I work in this lumberyard, I can buy lumber at employee discount, and so I started taking home boards. I had an old table saw at home I'd never used, I had bought it for $5 on a whim at auction, an old home-built table saw, and started cutting some boxes and they were crude. I still have one, kept as a keepsake, but they were functional. I made a few migratory lids out of plywood and things like that.

Over the next year, I started studying up on finger joining and how to cut better handles and stuff and kept morphing into a better hive box until I thought I had a halfway decent box that I could maybe market. Again, at the time, I was working towards commercial beekeeping. That was my goal, whether I was going to sell bees, nucs, queens, honey, whatever it took to make a living, however many hives I had to get to before I can make a living at it, that was where I was working towards.

I thought, man, I'm getting better at making these boxes. Maybe I'll go ahead and market some of these boxes here locally on Facebook or whatever and see if some local beekeepers want some of these woodenware I was making for myself. Another way to bring in a little bit of extra income to boost the whole project. By the way, I'm also an auctioneer part-time, so you may notice.

Becky: I was getting a sense of that.

John: Sorry, I get a little long-winded and I talk fast. Anyway. This is later in 2019, yes, I was again getting better set up. My father-in-law's been an integral part of what we've done here. He was a mechanic for 47 years. He's just got a real engineering mind, very, very sharp guy. He's been a huge help to us as we've gotten started here. Even today, still, he is very involved in design of the special electronic stuff, and I'll get back to that later. He and I were working on building a machine to cut finger joints in hive boxes. That was a colossal failure where basically by the beginning of 2020, by January 2020, we launched our HillCo website.

All we had on there was a couple of different sides of the hive boxes, 8 and 10-frame deeps and mediums. I think I had Pierco. Within a couple of weeks, I was bringing in Pierco or Acorn one-piece frames. I was starting to make lids and bottom boards out of PVC. We just launched this website. I started attending a couple of local bee club meetings and spreading the word, hey, we're doing a little bit of equipment up here. We realized real fast that people in the local area around here, there was an appetite for a local supplier. Almost immediately, I started working towards doing-- I still was planning to do full commercial beekeeping to some level as well as supplies.

At that time, selling bee equipment was not necessarily the top of my list for what I was looking to do, but I saw potential there. I know we're going to get to the China thing here later maybe, but at the same time, I was looking for a honey extractor for myself. Yes, I wasn't really finding what I liked as far as price point or size and stuff here in the US market. I started looking at China to see what they had over there and was just really interested at the time in a honey extractor for myself, or maybe I'd buy a few and sell some off. I'd had mine for cheaper or free or whatever using the profits from the other machines.

Again, this was in the fall of 2019, I got some money together and ordered a dozen honey extractors from China. That was all going on. I was waiting on those. In the meantime, as I'm getting this website started off in January of '20 and starting to get a little bit of traction here in the local area in January and February. By March of 2020, my first shipment of 10 or 12 extractors had come in. I looked them over, I was impressed. Really, they overall looked pretty well built. There's some design things I would've changed, but overall, they looked quite good. A couple of months later I finally got around to it. I'm still working a full-time job in this time, obviously.

I'm making hive boxes as fast as I can and shipping a few and mostly selling them to local beekeepers. By May, I think I finally got around to taking pictures of these honey extractors and listing them on the little website we had at the time, and putting them on Facebook Marketplace. Boy, this first batch sold, most of them were sold out in a few days. I thought, oh wow, we're onto something here. We got some more money together, ordered a whole shipment, a whole container of extractors that came in in July. Then even before those had come in, I was still getting enough inquiries, enough interest. I ordered another shipment to sell that didn't come in until October.

This whole summer, I went full-time. Then of July of 2020, we're making boxes, building bottom boards and lids and such. I was getting my frames elsewhere. We're selling woodenware and starting to ship it, starting to really gain some traction with these honey extractors. Pretty soon, somewhere in the summer of 2020, I got up to maybe 50 hives or so. That was as big as I ever got it as far as my beekeeping. I realized pretty quickly that there's a lot of opportunity in this bee supply industry, especially with the stainless steel honey extracting products. I started to move in that direction pretty quickly. I've never gotten above about 50 hives. Right now I run about 10. That's usually where I've been in the past few years, about 6 to 10 hives, and go up and down as I sell off a few nucs locally or whatever. Anyway.

Jeff: 2020 is when you really decided to turn the corner and really focus on the equipment side of the beekeeping supplies.

John: Correct. Yes.

Jeff: You're still manufacturing the boxes?

John: No, we're not. We have two manufacturers here in the US. One is in Michigan and one is in Southern Illinois. We use both of those as our sources for woodenware. We're not manufacturing. We do quite a bit of assembly here, some assembly, some not. Some comes preassembled.

Jeff: Speaking of equipment suppliers, let's take this quick break and we'll be right back.

[music]

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[00:30:52] Becky: Welcome back, everybody. John, that was an incredible amount of information and I got the cadence of the auctioneer in there. It was very easy to listen to and easy to follow. I understood all of it.

John: Thank you. Good.

Becky: It's interesting because you told this story of ramping up so quickly and you ramped up because you are engaging in multiple streams of income, I think. It seems like you're doing a little bit of bee work, you're selling equipment. You're selling packages, too, aren't you?

John: Packages and nucs.

Becky: What prepared you to be able to put all of this together? Because you're juggling a lot of different components of the beekeeping industry and it sounds like you're doing it well.

John: Well, we have a lot of room to grow, but we're trying. Thank you. I've been blessed with a really diverse background. First of all, we have a great team. I want to be really careful there and acknowledge that. First of all, I want to acknowledge God and his blessing on what we've done. Also, he's put a great team of people around me. Early on I mentioned my father-in-law, who again, was really, really instrumental early on and still is very instrumental today. My wife as well, my kids even. My kids now are 12 down to 7 years old. I have four kids. At the time they were quite a bit younger, eight down to three or four, I guess. Anyways, they were with me from day one.

They're a really, really powerful part of this, but even earlier on than that, as a kid, my family had a business, a hardware supply business. I was fortunate to work in the agriculture industry and a farm equipment dealership for eight years, and I spent four years managing a couple of different lumberyards. I've really been blessed with a lot of opportunity to learn a lot of different things business-wise that really has helped me get to [unintelligible 00:32:41]. Honestly, every day now as in the last four years has been a wild roller coaster. I've learned so much, still learn so, so much every day. Again, a great team and just a lot of learning experiences that have been a lot of fun most of the time, but also it's a struggle some days, but it's just been a real adventure.

Becky: You can be really good at sourcing and shipping and understanding what people want to buy, but if you're not good at marketing, then nobody's going to know what you're selling. You've really been able to pull it together, especially from what it sounds like at the NAHBE Conference.

John: Well, when I get my mindset to do something, I guess I can get right after it, but running my mouth has always been very easy, as you can probably tell. The Internet is such a powerful thing and right here with your podcast, you're doing and reaching thousands and thousands of people this way or with us for YouTube, just a website. I mean, so many things that we're doing today that we would not. If this had been 20 years ago or even 10 or 15 years ago where we would have been forced to send out paper catalogs and try to build a mailing list and advertise in the bee journals and stuff, building this would have been so much of a slower process.

The Internet is a powerful thing and allows you to reach-- with YouTube people like Kamon Reynolds and others, so many YouTubers they talk about us or have tested something, one of our products or again, your format like you have here on the podcast. It's just so easy to reach so many people nowadays, which can be a really powerful thing for building a business. It can also be we got to really be careful because I daren't let-- I got to be really careful if I get somebody ticked off at me, if we have a failure if we fail somebody.

Becky: It goes in both ways.

John: Yes, it can go the other way real fast and so we really try. We certainly do make mistakes. We certainly do have issues from time to time with a product. Boy, I do whatever I can do to make sure that we take care of our customers because I cannot afford-- it's just the right thing to do, first of all, taking care of customers, but secondarily it's I cannot afford to have people bad-mouthing us on the Internet because it would be very devastating real quickly if it snowballs.

Jeff: Well, John, everybody's so understanding on the Internet. I don't know what you're talking about.

John: Right. I will say, though, if I may, beekeepers, though, are a really kind group of people and you both know that. It's very understanding they know what we're doing here. We're growing very fast. When we have some hiccups, generally speaking, people are just pretty awfully nice about it.

Jeff: Your equipment, it's definitely shiny. Tell us a little bit about what you're doing. You started off with extractors. What else are you working on or what other types of equipment are you expanding into?

John: A lot of different things. I'm a little bit ADHD or maybe a lot of ADHD, I don't know. Well, my mind's always running 100 miles an hour. Different opportunities looking for what we can do, what product needs are out there. What are beekeepers looking for? Where's the low-hanging fruit in the industry? Again, just what do people need the most? We find in our stainless steel, whether it's extractors, honey tanks, storage tanks, uncapping tanks, heated bottling tanks, things like that, we've really seen a lot of opportunity there. There's other manufacturers out there, other distributors offering, making, selling, whatever, great equipment.

We've really found-- trying to strike a balance that suits the needs of, particularly at this point in our business hobbyists and sideliner beekeepers looking to fill some niches there. We're working on some uncapping machine options, some better-heated honey tank options, just a lot of different things. We've got a lot of stuff in the works and it's hard because I say this is in the works, that's in the works. Maybe a capping spinner or things like that. I got people, once I mention something like that's in the works, then I got people on my case. Once I get it ready! Unfortunately, sometimes two or three years down the road because I've got 100 different things in my head and I'm only working on two or three. I might be working on 10 at a time, but only two or three are really moving forward.

Jeff: I actually know a local beekeeper who's anxious for you to get a wax melter.

John: That's something that might be sooner than later I'll tease that. I'd say when I say sooner, I'm talking probably by the end of the year, but probably not three years down the road either.

Jeff: Very good. There you go, Paul. What's the biggest challenge bringing this up to speed? You've grown so fast, and as you described, you're doing so much at one time. What's been the biggest challenge you've had to overcome?

John: It has been quite fast growth. A lot of times really finances are the biggest challenge. This is where I'd say I'm still learning things every day and I've learned so much in the past few years of being in this business. I said to my wife, we have-- any business, any business owner can relate to this. You have your ups and downs, your finances, and even when you have millions of dollars coming in, you have millions of dollars going out, too. I naively thought three or four years ago that by the time we got to that millions numbers that I wouldn't have these issues of inventory, capital, and just all the expenses.

I knew it'd be expensive, but I thought, well, I'd always have plenty of money coming in, it'd be fine, and learn the hard way that your money problems are still there. You just have more zeros on them. $20,000 problem, $200,000 problem or whatever. It's still a struggle. I have to be really nice to my bankers and my investors. I have four silent partners that are invested with me in the business here. Again, mentioning people who were trusted in me from early on and have been helpful. They're part of that group, too. Anyway, it's always interest rates are interesting these days.

The growing pains and we-- I don't know if either of you have followed. We posted a lot of videos last year as we bought this bakery property and have renovated it and stuff. We were in a 5,000 square foot building before that, closer to 6,000 square foot building and we moved to this building which is about 25,000, and so five times as big, almost. I literally told people, I thought we'd be five to eight years before we have this building full. We bought it in November of '22. We moved into it in April of '23 just a little over a year ago.

By September of last year of '23, and also five or six months later we were already building a 6,000-square-foot addition, which some of your audience may have seen. We were posting pictures and videos of that. We're looking at that now, and we're saying, my, oh, my, what are we going to do for our long-term facilities? Again, this building that a year and a half ago thought would last us for eight years, we're looking at it now, and like, okay, this is not going to work long term. What do we do? Those things like that, it's just been quite a journey, quite a roller coaster ride of just like my, oh, my. Everything keeps adding up and it's so exciting at the same time. It's so fulfilling and just a real blast.

Jeff: Quite a roller coaster, I would think. It's very exhilarating and terrifying at the same time.

John: Yes. Exactly.

Becky: John, are you now the biggest company in your hometown?

John: We are not actually. You'd think though, maybe out of town of 2,000 people, but we're getting there. Caterpillar makes industrial construction equipment. They're headquartered in our area here in central Illinois. Around here there's any number of smaller shops and factories that build custom parts for them. We have a couple of shops here in town, each of which employ probably 50 or 75 people. We're only up to 22 employees, I think, right now. We're not quite there yet, but we're working at it.

Jeff: Well, anybody who's been out to your website knows that you put a lot of time and energy into marketing the products, marketing HillCo. It's really commendable. Let me ask you directly, John. When I approach other beekeepers or we talk to beekeepers about the work that you're doing and the products you sell, I've been told HillCo products are fantastic, John is doing a great job, but the products are made in China, and they leave it at that. It's like, well, there's a lot of things made in China, but I'm sure my Apple computer that we're recording all this on is made in China. How do you respond to that because that can be inflammatory in today's political environment?

John: Absolutely. It's a fair question and we do get that question sometimes. People just ask where their product is made at. They ask, why don't you have your parts made in the United States? Whatever. First of all, I'll say this. As I mentioned earlier in our discussion here, we started out by having our extractors-- we were basically taking off-the-shelf extractors from factories that were already building honey extractors in China. Again, they were pretty good in a lot of ways. They were fairly well-built. We ran into some issues there early on. About the first year and a half, we were relying on China. China-made machines that were just pretty much off the shelf.

Well, sorry, in that same time period, this is the first few months or so we were just using off the shelf. As we got into 2021, we started throwing in our own ideas, having them customize stuff more to our liking, adding a few different design elements that were suggested to us by our customers, or just things I thought of myself or whatever. Then in the summer of 2021, we really started to see fraction of the system of this factory we were using. We were basically, again, having extractors shipped to us pretty much ready to go. We would check each one over, test run it, and stuff. There was just issues, mainly consistency issues. The overall quality was pretty good.

This shipment would have this on it, this ship wouldn't have that on it, and they put a different motor controller on it all of a sudden or something that didn't really work very well. We realized that this was not going to-- if we were going to be the number one distributor, manufacturer, seller, whatever, of honey extracting equipment in America, or even if we're not, we are number one even for-- one of the best. We wanted to be the best we could be. By the way, we do think we're number one right now as I don't think anybody is selling more extractors and equipment in the United States than we are stainless steel. If I can brag a little bit there, sorry.

Jeff: That's fine.

John: We wanted to be the best that we could be. What we've been doing for the last couple of years now is, and in summer of 2021, we started working with a different manufacturer over there and have them start building parts custom for us, and then we assemble them here in-house. That's what we started working on in the summer of '21. We launched that lineup in about April of '22, about two years ago, which is more or less the current lineup we have now. It's improved somewhat, but it's largely the same designs as we've been doing for the last couple of years now.

We've built a shop, we have a team of five or six guys in our shop right now that all they do all day long is build honey extractors and build equipment from the parts that are made for us overseas. We say engineered and assembled in the USA. We're designing the stuff over here, we're assembling it here. There's a lot of things assembly-wise that I can have the Chinese do for me and they want to do for me that we insist on doing here because I want to make sure the product is done well. Yes, we rely a lot on made in China. I'll absolutely admit that. That being said, people like the price points that we are at on this stuff.

I just got to say, I think almost everybody can understand that's probably how we reach those price points is we have to rely on foreign labor force. If I were using entirely US-made stuff, my prices would be at least twice as high, maybe three times high in some cases, higher in some cases, which and I fully respect, I'm an American, too. I want our country to succeed. Mike can fully respect the Made in USA mantra, and we try to do some of that as much of it as we can. In order to hit the price point we're trying to hit and reach the target mark we're trying to hit, we have to rely on that overseas. We put a lot of effort into checking over this stuff, making sure it's done right.

Believe me, it caused a lot of headaches but we keep plowing on. When we have an issue, we back with solid customer service. We put a great warranty in this stuff. That's the story. That's just the way it is. I will say if I can one more thing though, we're not married to China. We're having some stuff made in Turkey right now. We're starting to switch to Turkey to a Turkish manufacturer on some stuff. We're also talking to a Mexico manufacturer. Again, we're also trying to start to make some small stuff ourselves here, too. We're trying to diversify, we're trying to not rely on China as much, but it's somewhat the reality.

Jeff: Right. Well, that's not just you, but it's the entire world relies so much on Chinese-made goods. Well, thank you for sharing that with us.

Becky: I have a quick question about questions. If you sell bee equipment, you get bee questions. How is that going for you?

John: More of our bee questions come from local customers. About the vast majority of our business, over 90% is shipping nationwide, customers all over the country, even in Canada some, the Caribbean some, et cetera. A relatively small percentage, probably 5% to 10% of our business is here locally and we love these local customers. These are the same people that helped us get started four years ago. The majority of our beekeeping questions typically come from the local base. It's here in a store or ordering bees for pickup.

It can be really interesting because we'll have customers who they've dropped $1,000 or better on a couple of hives worth of product and bees and everything, and they can come get their bees and it's clear they haven't done any research yet. It's like, oh boy. I hope this goes well. You give them a quick crash course on how to install their package and what to do in the first few weeks and send them on their way and you just hope they do some research. Sorry, I'm being blunt here, but we don't get a ton of beekeeping questions from our nationwide customers, but occasionally do, especially when it comes to honey processing and stuff. We just tell them what we know.

Jeff: What you've been able to achieve in such a short time is amazing and I think it's taken many people by surprise. You've raised a lot of eyebrows around the country.

John: Thank you.

Jeff: I mean that in a good way, of course.

John: Thank you.

Jeff: Well, I was just going to ask if there's anything we haven't covered that you wanted to make sure our listeners knew about you or HillCo?

John: Oh, not too much. It's been a lot of fun talking here. The exciting part, I think, is that we're just barely getting started. It really, really keeps me going every day when things go a little bit south once in a while. Generally, it's not generally every day just a lot of fun, but we just have got so many things. We feel like we're barely scratching the surface of our potential in this industry. That's just a really exciting place to be. There's a lot of opportunities. There's a lot of great beekeepers out there who are hungry for more of what we have to offer. We're just trying to offer more and more products and more services. We're hoping to eventually have more stores around the country. It's just a lot of exciting stuff. Just stay tuned.

Jeff: I'll try to keep up with you. You're going at light speed and I look forward to catching up with you in January at NAHBE in 2025. We'll have to get together because the January 2nd is my birthday, so that's the kickoff of NAHBE. I'll talk to Kamon about having a special.

John: We should. Absolutely. For a guy like you, why not?

Jeff: I'm going to cut this part out of the episode.

Becky: You're not allowed to do that.

Jeff: Editor prerogative. John, it's been a great pleasure having you on the show today. I think you're doing a bang-up job. I will say in full disclosure, I did buy a bottling tank from you earlier this year, and it's working and I paid full price. It's no exchange here or service. It is working flawlessly and I really enjoy it and it's made my bottling a lot easier than out of the plastic five-gallon bucket.

John: Yes, it will do that. I'm glad it's working out. Thank you so much, Jeff.

Jeff: Take care and we'll catch up with you soon.

John: Sounds good. Thanks, Becky. You as well.

Becky: Thank you, John.

Jeff: I'm tired, Becky. I'm glad that we were all sitting and I wasn't holding the microphone trying to keep up with him if we were walking around the display.

Becky: I don't know that anybody has ever made me feel so lazy. I thought I had energy and was a go-getter and got things done. Now I just feel like, what am I doing? What am I doing with my life now after that experience?

Jeff: I've wasted my life.

Becky: Had I gone faster, I could have gotten more done. Such great energy. He was just so willing to share the good and the bad, which was really interesting to hear whether or not you love bees. That was just an interesting business interview.

Jeff: John is working hard to get where he is at and he is putting a lot of energy into being successful and making his customer beekeepers happy and make the beekeepers successful. It's really hard to put that down. Kudos to John and those who are like him shaking up the business that's better for us.

Becky: Beekeepers need people with that kind of energy trying to support them and that's what he's trying to do, so that's exciting. Exhausting, but exciting, right?

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 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 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, 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.

[00:51:02] [END OF AUDIO]