Late Spring Regional Beekeepers Update (S5, E51)

S5, E51 - Late Spring Regional Beekeepers Update

Betterbee: Hello from Betterbee in Greenwich, New York. Welcome to Beekeeping Today Podcast.

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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. Thank you Betterbee for that fantastic opening to today's episode. You know folks, we couldn't have chosen a better opening because today we announce that Betterbee is the new key sponsor of Beekeeping Today Podcast. I've invited Quinn Brown to the show today to talk about Betterbee and how the Beekeeping Today Podcast fits into their plans. Quinn, Welcome to the Beekeeping Today Podcast.

Quinn Brown: Hi, Jeff. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Jeff: Totally our pleasure. Kim is sorry he couldn't make it today. He was really wanting to share this announcement with us but he is unable to. Quinn, I'm really excited to have you here. Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself, about Betterbee, and then we'll talk about why you chose to step in as key sponsor for the podcast.

Quinn: Sure. My name is Quinn Brown. As you mentioned, I'm the Marketing Manager here at Betterbee, I started in the fall of 2018. A lot of growth has happened here since then. One of the biggest pieces of growth is our focus on education. In 2021, we hired on a director of research and education. We're really focused on spreading the word and helping beekeepers grow as beekeepers.

A big part of Betterbee's philosophy is that a lot of our staff here are beekeepers ourselves. In 2019, the spring after I started, I became a beekeeper. I started writing a series, The Year in the Life of a Beginning Beekeeper for our newsletter, which if you're not getting that newsletter out there everyone, you should be. It's chock full of great educational resources and information.

Jeff: I definitely agree that's a great newsletter, and I encourage everyone to sign up and receive it. Six years ago when Kim and I started the podcast, we wanted to provide a reliable source of beekeeping news, information, and entertainment because there is so much noise out there for beekeepers to have to sort through. When you're a first-year beekeeper or a second-year beekeeper, and you're just getting your feet wet and your fingers stung, you have to decide what is worth listening to and what isn't.

Some people go through quite a few colonies before they sort it out, and they may even get out of the hobby because they're so disappointed. When that happens, no one wins. That's why I'm really happy that Betterbee is there providing the education. I mean, look at your catalog, it is more than just a glossy picture catalog. There is great educational beekeeping information in it.

Quinn: We are a full-service beekeeping supply company. We offer all the basic supplies that beekeepers need to get started. We realized fairly quickly that it can be very depressing for new beekeepers to lose their colonies that first winter and that can really be a hit. We discovered that we needed to offer as much education as possible, not in just using the products, it's just the different methods of beekeeping that are out there.

Just educating our customers to be better beekeepers overall helps them stick with it and they thrive and they enjoy it. In turn, that just helps the whole world. That's a big focus for us here at Betterbee and has been growing, we've been growing that over the past few years.

Jeff: It's a great message, beekeepers helping beekeepers.

Quinn: Beekeepers serving beekeepers.

Jeff: Serving beekeepers, yes. Thank you, thank you.

Quinn: We really stick by that too. We have our customer service staff and we have beekeeping staff here. They started a program like a mentorship program this season, and a lot of customer service reps are heading up to the bee yards and learning about all of the products. Learning about the bees and just getting to experience the high of actually beekeeping. We really stick behind our values here. We want to educate and help people become better beekeepers.

Jeff: Fantastic. We are certainly happy that you chose to support us. Even further Betterbee has been a longtime supporter of the podcast, not only Beekeeping Today Podcast but also Honeybee Obscure, and 2 Million Blossoms the podcast. It's exciting to have you step in as key sponsor. We'll be talking to others from Betterbee in future episodes. We'll even have Dr. David Peck from Betterbee joining us on an occasional series featuring different aspects of beekeeping education, and even maybe some questions and answers. We're really looking forward to that.

Quinn: Back when the opportunity arose for us to establish a relationship with Beekeeping Today Podcast it just made 100% sense since our values really overlap. Both Beekeeping Today Podcast and Betterbee we have the goal of educating beekeepers with skill levels that range and offering scientific information, but also, how do I set up my hive for the first time? How do I install a nuclear package of bees? The basic how-to's ranging to really nitty gritty, scientific how-to-use equipment, just a wide range of different topics. It just makes sense to support a podcast with values that perfectly align with our own.

Jeff: Thank you, thank you. We have a big show set for today. We're talking to I think it's one, two, three, four, five, six or seven beekeepers from around the country, all bringing their different aspects and their regional points of view. I can't think of a better wide range of topics for beekeepers other than the regional beekeepers that we start to kick off this relationship with Betterbee and enjoy having you on.

Quinn: Thanks for having me. We're really excited to see where this relationship goes.

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Jeff: While you're at the Strong Microbial site, 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. Sitting around this very large virtual Zoom table right now are one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and not including myself beekeepers here on our Seasonal Regional Beekeepers Panel Discussion. Welcome guys to the podcast.

Rainier Eich: Good to be on. Thanks for having us.

Duane Combs: Hello. Thanks for having us, it's great to be back.

Jay Williams: Hey, Jeff. Thanks for having us.

Jeff: Sitting around a virtual table right now and we'll just go around the table with names first, and then we're going to get in-depth discussion with all these guys. I'll let them tell you where they are, but we have Tracy Alarcon, we have Ed Colby, we have Paul Longwell, we have Rainier Eich, we have Jay Williams, we have Duane Combs and Mark Smith. Did I get that all right? Oh, goodness gracious, the old-age brain cells haven't hit me yet her or left me. I'm not sure which one it is.

Gentlemen, we are here to discuss-- the season just passed, which is the winter of 22, 23, the springtime. Now what you're looking forward to this coming summer? Last time we started from west to east, let's go from east to west. Our newest member of the panel discussion here is Rainier Eich, Rainier welcome to the regional panel discussion. Thank you for reaching out and volunteering to join us. Why don't you tell us who you are, where you are, number of bees, et cetera?

Rainier Eich: Thanks for having me on Jeff, I've been listening for years. Really excited to be on here, I live in Midcoast Maine, I'm about an hour north of Portland, Maine. I currently have 13 hives, and so last winter I had 18 in the fall and I took five losses. Three of them were during the winter, and then the other two-- one happened because they were queenless, so I combined them this spring. Then the other one happened because-- I think that some of the bees died that had blocked the entrance and I just decided to go without upper entrances this year.

They weren't able to get outside and so they pooped inside the hives and they just fizzled out there pretty small. I've got 13 right now, it was a very warm fall and a very warm winter till March. It seemed like the season flipped because it was pretty warm for our winter and fall, but then once we hit March it got back cooler again and so dragged on till this last week or two. We've finally turned a corner so we're getting days in the 60s and low 70s for us last night actually, but that'll probably be the last one of the year.

Jeff: You have 13 colonies. What kind of bees are you keeping?

Rainier: They're mutts. I want to work more towards a Carniolan or a Russian, smaller cluster, eat less food, but pretty much a little bit of everything right now.

Jeff: How's the Varroa situation there where you are?

Rainier: It's pretty challenging because our winter bees are made sometimes even in August into-- for sure by September. We really have to deal with those mite levels in the mid-summer. As soon as I pull off the honey around the 4th of July I'm really testing all my hives and testing them every two weeks or so during the mid-part of the summer. I'll use formic acid and that works pretty well for me. I haven't lost very many queens, I've got high mite kill, and then I do oxalic in mid-November when the hives are broodless.

Jeff: What's your spring situation looking like?

Rainier: As I mentioned a little bit before, winter dragged into March and April. We typically get our first inspection around mid-April here, and I got in on the 16th after I got back from a trip. The hives were looking okay, I wasn't amazed by it, but they've built up steadily over the past month roughly and yesterday they looked beautiful. I checked out an apiary, they're building up. They have like five or six frames of brood at least. The honey flow is starting here, so they're looking pretty good and I'm going to graft on Tuesday or Monday next week.

Jeff: What are your goals for the summer?

Rainier: My goal is to go from 13 hives to 25 hives and five nucs. Then I think my goal is ‎300 pounds of honey as well and selling 40 queens.

Jeff: Thank you, Rainier. What we're going to do is we're just going to move on quickly down the interstate.

Jay Williams: 95.

Jeff: 95, yes. Let's head on that down 95. Let's talk to Mark Smith down in the Carolinas. Mark, we missed you last fall. You were busy, busy, busy last fall.

Mark Smith: Last year was a earth-shattering eye-opening experience, so I missed the last podcast because I had not had much time to do any bees. First let me thank you for inviting me back to be on a podcast among such distinguished beekeepers, I really appreciate it. I'm glad to be back. My little operation is called Flatwoods Bee Farm, located in Locust, North Carolina. Just so you can see it on a map that's about 35 miles East of Charlotte. I'm coming the odd one in the bunch, I am a chemical-free beekeeper, meaning I don't use any chemicals to control any disease, pest in any of my colonies. Now let's talk about what happened last year.

Last year was the first big production year for a cut flower farm that I started. I quickly learned what one man can do in the course of a day. Unfortunately what had to take a backseat was the bees. Literally from May the 5th last year to the middle of December, I didn't go in my bees, I just physically could not do it. Obviously, my losses last year were heavy, I lost 80% of what I had. I like to think that most of them swarm to death, so the feral colony or feral population in my area should be booming. It is what it is, there's not much I could do about it. Another thing I try to stay positive. That was a stress test for how I keep things.

My chemical-free management program really showed me that I could do it under really tough circumstances. I lost 80%, but that's okay. A little bit about this year so far, and I know Kim does a blog about global warming and climate change stuff. Third week of December last year we had red maple blooming in Locust. Now where I live there's two varieties of red maple, I think, because one blooms first, the other one blooms second. The second bloom was the end of January. Red maple was completely bloomed out by the end of January. As most of you know that's a huge pollen source and early nectar source.

That kind of stimulates the colonies to start brooding up and getting ready for spring flow. I had early pollen, so everything started brooding up, and it's been a challenge to keep what bees I have left in the colonies. Now what I have done to date is the losses that I took last year. I have almost recuperated half of that from splitting swarms and all that stuff. The early brood up that made the colonies huge and with trying to split as much as I can to get my numbers back up, that was a good thing. Nature's helping me out even though sometimes early brood-ups means early swarms, but it also means that you can start splitting earlier. That's what I was trying to do.

Jeff: Are you doing walkway splits with those, or are you bringing in queens?

Mark: Thank you for asking. I don't bring any bees inside my operation, everything I raised on my bees. I've been like that since 2011. The last bee I purchased was a queen in 2011. Everything else my local survivor stock that I raised myself and so far have not been beeless. I've never lost everything and had to completely start over. So far our flow here where I'm at in North Carolina has been great.

As long as we can keep some moisture in the ground, the bees are really putting back the nectar. Obviously, with me splitting as much as I am I'm not going to make a lot of honey, but it's what I am raising they have plenty to eat. Continuing into the summer I'm real big on summer splits, and as we get closer to the summer solstice I hope that I can surpass going over 50% building back up my operation.

Jeff: I have to ask the cut flower is that you have someone else handling that this year?

Mark: I am a one-man operation, drink a lot of water and let your beard grow and it gets wider every day. [laughter] Of course these people can't see that but--

Jeff: It is white. Yes, it is. You're going to be challenging Kim for whiteness here real soon.

Mark: We're very optimistic this year. Last year we learned a lot of lessons. Life and beekeeping teaches us a lot of lessons, and hopefully coming out of that we'll be a better beekeeper.

Jeff: Let's jump into cars and we'll go up here to Northeast Ohio to Tracy Alarcon. Tracy has been with us on the regional beekeepers, I think, from the beginning. How's it going there near Youngstown, Ohio there Tracy?

Tracy Alarcon: Hi, Jeff, thanks for having me again. Yes, I was one of the ones that was asked from the beginning. For those of you that are new to the podcast my name's Tracy Alarcon. I live in North East Ohio. I live basically halfway between the cities of Akron and Youngstown right off of I-76 if anybody cares to look at a map. I'm an EAS Master Beekeeper. I've served as my county apiary inspector for like seven years. I've been involved in different queen-rearing programs and co-ops and taught a lot of queen-rearing classes.

Made a lot of splits and then I stopped doing it all. I just wanted to be a beekeeper. For me last year, a year ago, February, I slipped on a bunch of ice out here and fell and tore my rotator cuff, and so I wasn't really able to keep bees last year. I went out a couple of times with my few colonies, it survived over the winter. I wasn't able to do my normal activity, trying to open up the colony, remove frames, and remove honey and boxes with one arm is a very difficult thing to do.

I had a huge, huge loss over the winter, I ended up with just one colony over the winter. That one colony is really, really strong and doing really well. That's part of the deal. I wasn't able to do my normal mite control. For me my normal mite control if we start like Rainier mentioned, I do an oxalic acid treatment between Thanksgiving and Christmas, when my colonies are broodless, and I was able to do that last year. Then the other big part of my role of management is in the summertime around the summer solstice, as Mark mentioned is to make splits, and I raise my own queens, and then I make a bunch of splits.

At that time, when the colonies go broodless, I can do another oxalic acid vaporization treatment. We've had our spring flow, I'm able to split all those bees down and then have young, vigorous, well-mated queens in the summer getting ready to go into winter. Then depending on how strong I make the splits, I can usually get a honey crop, but last year, I didn't do any of that. I just cross my fingers and hope that some of them survived and one did. For us here, as Rainier mentioned, our winter was actually very, very warm. As winters go normally, we have plenty of snow and cold days, and we had a very mild wet winter.

A lot of people were still feeding their bees out here and people were having swarms. In early March, we had red maples bloom early. Then in typical Northeast Ohio fashion, we had 80-degree days for a week, and then it all went down to freezing. A lot of people lost a lot of colonies because they brooded up really quick and then they had a lot of chilled brood and a lot of bees died. Because as we know going into spring a lot of those bees are still our winter bees that are trying to raise brood and that's probably the hardest thing that they do.

Spring so far dandelions. Even with all the ups and downs, you can almost always the one thing you can count on here is that dandelions bloom somewhere around the second week of April. All things considered, that's exactly what happened again. I went into my one colony about a week ago and I run all mediums. Because I didn't harvest any honey and all I did was add boxes, it's like 6 mediums, 10 frames high, and it's just booming. I didn't see any signs of swarming and I had the queen cups, but no queen cells. They weren't trying to raise any queens, which is great.

Which is one of the things that in the past that propagated queens for is to help mitigate the swarming. I figure in another week or two I'm going to do some grafting and build my numbers back up. Years ago, I listened to a talk by a queen producer here in Ohio, Dr. Joe Latchaw. He had done an SARE, Sustainable Agricultural Research Experiment, I think it is. I forget what SARE stands for. He took at summer solstice and made one frame splits, one frame of bees and brood and a queen cell, put them in a Styrofoam nuc, and to see if they would overwinter in Ohio and he made 40 of them. 36 of them made it through winter.

Since I heard that talk back in, I don't know, 2006, 2008 somewhere way back then I've done a lot of that. It's amazing you have to feed them, you have to feed them pollen, and you have to feed them sugar. It's amazing that if you do that around the summer solstice, that you can have a strong enough colony, it'll make it through winter. That's my plan for the summer. I'm not planning on trying to get any honey going on this year. I'm going to try to stay healthy this year so that I can still work my bees. That's where I am and what my winter was like and what spring is so far.

Jeff: It's a good thing keep healthy this season. Hey, while we're on our way out to or down to Tennessee to our next beekeeper. Let's take this quick break and we'll be right back and we'll be near Nashville. Hold on.

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Jeff: I just saw Simon, welcome to Nashville. Jay must be around here. Hey, Jay, how are you doing?

Jay Williams: I'm doing great. Thanks. I just went to Boot Barn and got myself a new set of boots, so I'm happy to be here today. I'm going to be kicking it.

Jeff: I know that place, I know. Well, there you go. [laughs]

Jay: Haven't been in Nashville till you Boot Barn. Thanks for having me. Again, I'm very lucky to be here with such awesome beekeepers, so I appreciate you letting me sit at the table. Even if you got to put me at the kid's table I'm happy to be here.

Jeff: You have to start somewhere, buddy. [laughs]

Jay: My name is Jay Williams. Like Jeff said, I'm just South of Nashville in a little town called Franklin, Tennessee. I manage around depending on the year between 150 and 200 colonies. I raise queens and I sell nucs, and I also dabble in artificial insemination. I work a lot in agritourism, so I do a lot of tours, do a lot of speaking, and then honey tastings, believe it or not. I'm having a really good time lately. There is a massive outflowing of support from the public, they want to know more, they want to experience the bees as much as possible. It's keeping me really busy this year, and it's been really, really fun.

If we'll activate the trust tree, I will tell you my winter losses. Hopefully, this is a safe space. This year it was high, I lost 15%, I like to say I try and keep my losses around 5%, but I lost 15% and that is high. Primarily it's probably my fault. I raise Carnies, I really like Carniolan, I like the dark bee, they overwinter are pretty small, and I fed them probably more than I should have. This year, at least in my area, like everybody else has said the winter was fairly warm, and then all of a sudden, out of nowhere February, it was just brutal. It was not all we used to at all.

My brood clusters had gotten a little bit too big because I've been feeding them too much. Life got in the way and I didn't keep on top of things, and unfortunately, some bees starved. It's a tough one, those cold snaps really keep you humble and keep you trying to do a little bit better. This spring has been just absolutely wild swings where it's been super cold, and then super warm the next day 80 degrees. The queen-rearing has been really tough, honestly. Our end of March, beginning of April, was really not what I'm used to.

These parts they call it a hitch in your giddy up, so I've had a little bit of a hitch in my giddy up, getting the breeding going, but we'll get there. The main flow for us is usually-- or the activation of the honey flow is the locust, and the locust has been a bust this year. I think the temperature swings really hit us hard. However, it's really fascinating because at least in my area, like the redbud was massive, the bottlebrush buckeye all of a sudden out of nowhere, the thing is just taken over.

Typically in the beginning of the season, I'd say beginning of April, I'll do double-screen splits on all my overwintered strong colonies. I'll take the old queen sticker above, and usually, it's when they're really crowded, they're starting to throw swarm cells everywhere. I'll let them raise their own swarm cell, get that out of their system, marry them up, or reevaluate the queen. This year because I was saying that the weather was a little weird, a lot of my early season swarms didn't really take, it didn't really work.

As a result, I made a ton of honey, ridiculous amount of honey for what I'm used to this time of year, usually around last week or so beginning of May is when the locust will turn on and the flow is really going. I'd be on my maybe second super-- I'm on my fourth or fifth super right now of honey. It's been an epic year honey-wise, but not necessarily at for the queen breeding that just kind of started. We probably made 60 splits in the last couple of weeks here, so it's like ramping up right away.

This is one of your, in my opinion, is like a typical spring where nothing happens, and you're like, "I got all the time in the world," and all of a sudden you look back and like, oh, bleep, "I'm behind on everything." There's swarm cells everywhere and all the queens are going. It's been really fun. That's why I'm addicted to this hobby because it's always keeping you on your toes. Man, every single season is different. I'm worried about the taste of our honey this year, honestly.

The locust for us is usually that main flow like I said, and so the beginning of the taste of my honey is usually super sweet. It's a big kick right in the beginning. Since we don't have that, I think we're going to have a milder beginning. Maybe hopefully we'll have our basswood at the end of our season and love clover and stuff in the middle. Usually, the wow factor or my secret sauce is the locust and I don't have that this year. I'm really going to be interested to see how it turns out and what the response from the public is going to be.

We're all talking about Varroa control. I'm fairly similar with everybody else, I usually do oxalic acid treatment in December or January 1st typically when they're most broodless. I monitor whenever I can once a month, usually throughout the entire season, if I can get in there in the wintertime. My number is this year, I've dropped the threshold, I'm at 1.5% is when I treat. Usually in years past, they've been a little bit higher, so I've adjusted that based on a lot of the recent feedback from a lot of people out there. I've changed my threshold, I'm still sticking with oxalic acid.

Like I said, over the winter, and then typically we'll kind of mess around with some formic acid if I need to. Then if there's a problem in the middle of summer after the honey comes off, I'll use Apiguard. Hopefully, I won't have to use any of that, I only treat if I have to. It's been really fun, I'm looking forward to the summer. My big plans is I finally got a seat at The American Honey Tasting Society's, Honey Sommelier school, so I will be going to Marina school in June. Hopefully, get my certificate one day in a few years. That's what I have on the radar. I'm excited.

Jeff: For the listeners who aren't familiar with Marina Marchese, she is the honey Sommelier. We've had her on the podcast a couple times, feel free to do a search for Marina on the podcast to learn more. Well, thanks, Jay. Yes, you were up in the Pacific Northwest this last summer too.

Jay: Mr. Colby.

Jeff: Yes, would be Island. Good, good. We'll talk to you about that in a few moments. Let's pack it up and head on out to Colorado and talk to Mr. Ed Colby.

Ed Colby: This is in Ed Colby here in Western Colorado. I'm really in the middle of a state at the western edge of the Rocky Mountains and about 5500 feet, although I do keep bees up in the high country as well. I keep about 70 colonies give or take. We had a wet winter here, a record snow, not particularly cold, but the cold weather hung around for a long time until a couple of weeks ago. Actually, we're having very hard freezes but it looks like clear sailing now. The mites had their way with some of my colonies last fall. That was my fault for not keeping up on treatment.

I did give them an oxalic acid treatment in late November or early December. You know when you've had my counts of 20, or 30, or 40, or even 50 mites, sometimes you can bring those numbers down and the hive looks like it's doing okay but it's usually not. When I lost 10 of 70 colonies over the winter, it appears that the losses were strongly correlated to high mite counts in the fall, even though those were hives that I hoped might make it through the winter. A few of those hives did make it through the winter.

When nothing goes according to plan in life and especially in beekeeping, and as I was telling a couple of you guys earlier, Marlon broke her pelvis, so that's been keeping me homebound, taking care of her. I haven't been able to get the queens that I customarily get in the spring, I have gotten some but not all of them. What I've been doing is making walkaway splits and I'm doing this in a new way for me. What I used to do is make the splits and I had-- what was walkaway splits I don't care which half has the queen, I just split them and one half will make a queen and the other half already has one.

What I would do is separate those splits so that the bees would now go back into one of the splits. I got this idea from this guy named Charles Linder in the American Bee Journal he's a commercial guy, he's talking about four-way pallets, which I don't use. Here's his idea, you don't have to do this, and you don't have to fuss around and figure out which split has all the unsealed brood and all that stuff, I don't have time for that. What I did was I took the two splits-- let's say the hive is facing south. I took the two splits, I put one facing east one facing west, put them right back to back.

Because they're in the exact position of where the old mother hive was, the original two high hive, the bees come back and they got to make a choice, they got to go into one split or the other. What I did was-- and this is all experimental at this point. When I cracked the lids back just, I don't know, quarter half an inch, something like that so that now they have as they come back, the landing boards are facing in a different direction. That's their old familiar way of getting back to the hive. They're going back into these hives, they're deciding which one to go into.

Because there's a split there's nothing at the top of the hives, the hives are right together, and so far it's working pretty well. They tend to go about 50, 50 into each of these. This is saving me a lot of work from having to haul splits to two different yards, so that's the big news here. My goal this summer is to put bees in locations that historically have had less of a mite problem than others. I have places that are terrible for mites, and I have places that aren't so bad.

I'm trying to go with the current here because mites is what it's all about for me. I'm hoping to be more diligent in monitoring the summer, and also to harvest my honey early in mid-August when there's still a honey flow. That's an opportunity for me to treat colonies that need it. If the bees continue to bring in honey, they can certainly put it in the brood nest and elders make it a little easier for me as far as feeding going into the winter. I've got my fingers crossed and I think everything's going to go really well this summer.

Jeff: Thank you, Ed. Let's hit on directly west, let's go to Phoenix, Arizona, where it's nice and cool today.

Duane Combs: Hi, Jeff. Go Betterbee, it's great being with you here today, it is a little warm today but we've had a great year so far. In the desert, it's all about water, and our reservoirs were down to about 30%, 33% fall. We've gotten so much rain this winter and spring that they anticipate they'll be up to 60% capacity. Now, what all this rain has caused is what we call a super bloom. You go out and look at any field that hasn't been plowed in the last year, and it was covered with yellow from weeds, and now all of the plum varieties, and the mesquite trees are blooming, and the cactuses are blooming, and we're having an incredible year. I've got 90 hives right now, that's 60 doubles, 20 singles, and 10 nucs.

Give you an idea of how good is fed out here, I started helping new beekeepers and renting equipment to them. I had a guy in Cave Creek that we installed a nuc into a 10-frame box with five frames from the nuc, and five built-out hives. On March 25th, it weighed 50 pounds, by April 22nd we had put a second box on with 10 frames of heavily waxed frames and it weighed 100 pounds. When I checked it last Saturday he's ready for a third box, and we had to pull out a couple of frames of completely kept honey in order to make room to give the bees something to work on until he got the third box on. It's up to 150 pounds, that's 100-pound growth little in six weeks.

Jeff: Duane that sounds really great man, you're profiting-- I shouldn't say profiting but the bees are profiting from all the bloom. I let you get going and I didn't ask you to say who you were, and your background in bees. You've been on the podcast in the past, but I want to make sure that for today's listeners you are known.

Duane: Duane Combs, I'm a master beekeeper from an alumni of Montana as is Jeff. I own Arizona Beekeepers LLC. We sell nucs, and honey. This spring, I sold 170 nucs. We expect an incredible honey crop. Because I'm always growing bees, I don't get a lot of honey but this year I will. My year is almost over because as we get into the summer, it becomes survival for the bees, especially if we don't get more rain. We're expected to have a typical dry summer and then a wet fall. I'll be trying to keep bees alive for the next June, July and August, and then we'll get back into the bee business with the rest of you.

Jeff: Thank you, Dwayne. Let's head on up to the Pacific Northwest to a neighbor of mine. Paul, let's talk to you about your beekeeping.

Paul Longwell: Okay, I'm Paul Longwell, I'm a master beekeeper alumni from the University of Montana just like Duane and Jeff is. I live probably about 10 miles from Jeff. Olympia Washington is about 40 miles South of Seattle, Washington. I started the winter with 17 hives I lost five. I take that to Varroa and yellowjackets, so hopefully I'll be able to do better this year.

My summer plan are to regrow my hives back up to-- I would like to get them up to 25 eventually, but take it a little bit slower. Then Varroa changes a little bit different. This year, I took the hives that survived and I've moved them out to out-yards, divided them into out-yards. Because what I want to do is I want the drones from those hives to help my new bees that I'm bringing in-- so I know what I'm getting out there in the DCAs around me.

I've got them situated in about a mile curve around me. Then I brought in some VSH bees like Jeff did, so hopefully we'll have a little bit of a better Varroa control.

I've also put a written plan together for Varroa control to make sure that I stick to it, because like all you guy's life gets in the way. You're helping somebody else down the road with their hive, but you forget to do yours when you get back. That was what killed most of my hive is Varroa this year. Our spring this year is late. In fact, it's just starting for the apple trees and everything to bloom this year. Because of that Jeff can tell you we only got our packages two weeks ago. They're in the phase of just being releasing the queens and starting to rebuild. That's what's going on now.

Jeff: What are your plans for the summer? [chuckles]

Paul: Just rebuild my hives and make sure that I'm spending time on my hives instead of somebody else's hives to build them up.

Jeff: Oh, I get the hint. Okay, I'm not allowed to call you anymore. All right, I got you. I hear it. No, no, that's all right. That's all right, I hear you, I hear you. That's okay. [laughs]

Paul: It's not what you're hearing. My problem is I like to, and I have too many mentors. It's passing them off and not mentoring as many people, or if they have a question send me a photo or something and I'll answer it in the evening. I'm not going to be driving to your house to take care or to treat your hives for you instead, so more attention to what I'm doing.

Jeff: Well, thanks, guys. Let's open this up to a general discussion. Hopefully, you've been taking notes and you might have a question for one beekeeper to another better than I could ask a question. Tracy, I see you have your hand up there.

Tracy: Yes. In the past, I brought in a bunch of VSH bees, and I was just wondering then who you got your VSH stock from.

Paul: They were from Ortiz. They're the Saskatraz bees.

Tracy: You mean the Saskatraz?

Jeff: Yes, Saskatraz.

Paul: Jeff and I call them-

Jeff: Sassy pure as hybrids.

Paul: -sassy bees. It's easier to say.

Rainier: I'm getting in some virgins from Corey Stevens on the 23rd. I made a group order with everyone. Have you guys tried any of Corey's queens?

Mark: Corey Stevens is with the Russian Queen Breeders Association, correct?

Rainier: No, he's independent. He's breeding his own Italian-ish line.

Jeff: Yes, I'm not familiar with him at all.

Duane: I haven't used any of his bees, but I've been bringing in Pol-line plus bees from Louisiana.

Jeff: The Pol-Line's supposed to be really good as well.

Rainier: Yes, I had a guest on my YouTube channel last week. He buys all Pol-line queens in to San Antonio because they have so many Africanized drones. That steep makes a queen bank and sells it to everyone around.

Jeff: Jay, last time we talked, or when we talked to you on the show, you were working with Southall -- or is it South Hill?

Jay: Southall, yes. You like to call it South Hill, but yes-

Jeff: Yes, I know I can- [chuckles]

Jay: -you can call it whatever you want.

Jeff: [chuckles] The South place.

Jay: Yes, the South place, resort of the South.

Jeff: Yes. [laughs]

Jay: Southall is going great. That's really where I'm doing all the agro-tourism. We're probably doing, I don't know, four or five tours a week, at least right now. We do honey tastings every other weekend. Man, almost everyone sells out. There's been a great support from the public and it's been really fun. I can't wait to see where it goes. We have a lot of really cool things in the works and plans for future development. It's really been a blessing to be a part of a farm-based resort that cares a lot about quality and knows that it takes time to create good stuff.

We're up to seven apiaries on this property, and we've really spent time positioning them correctly. We talked a little bit about DCAs. We have our own DCA that I was able to find flying my own drone quadcopter, which is quite comical to do. Then we've set up a four-to-one ratio for production or a colony-to-one drone producer to make sure we're flooding the area, just like we've been talking about with our good stock. Then doing our own artificial insemination on the property in addition to the grafting.

Jeff: Our discussion with you and the agro-tourism, and what you're doing there with Southall, it sounds really exciting. I think that's really a model for any beekeeper who really wants to take their beekeeping experience to the next level with the general public. I think it's a really cool thing what you're doing there.

Jay: There's something about putting a stranger or someone from the public in a bee suit, and then convincing them a half an hour after they meet you for the first time to take their glove off, stick their finger in the honeycomb, and taste it right out of the hive. They never forget it. It's really fun. We do something too where we grab a drone-- you know the trick where you grab a drone and you hold it by the wings and you hand it a queen cork and it'll juggle? You ever seen that, or done it? Check it out. It's cool. You can literally make a bee juggle, and they will never forget that experience. We do that literally [chuckles] every week right now and have a great time doing it. We charge for it. It's not for free. Imagine that. It's fun.

Duane: I've got a question. Paul talked about committing time helping newbies. I got into the nuc selling business and all this because I wanted to help new beekeepers, but I've not found a great model yet. We've set up a Facebook page staffed by experts that answer their questions. I'm president of our local bee club and we have field days for these people. What other sorts of things are other people trying to help new beekeepers, but not spend your whole life running around helping new beekeepers?

Tracy: When you find that out, let me know because I failed miserably at that. The only way that I ended up being able to help people and still maintain my sanity was to start a business and charge for it. Because otherwise, like Paul mentioned, you're spending your whole day running around taking care of other people's bees and your bees are not being taken care of.

As an inspector, that was part of my job. I was going to everybody's colonies and inspecting, but just as a president of an association, as just as a mentor, it can run you ragged. The only other way that I found that helped me was I held field days in my own bee yard at one time. If you wanted to learn, you came to my colonies where I had 30, 40, 50 at a time, where we could inspect versus their one or two. That helped save me is a lot of travel.

Jeff: There are some beekeepers I've seen where they have their group sessions for five to 10 beekeepers and that's one price. Then they set up another one to their personal bee coaching and that's at a higher price.

Paul: What typically are they charging for personal service?

Tracy: I charge $60 an hour plus IRS mileage round trip. The time included, whatever time it took me to drive to and from your apiary is what I charge.

Jay: Here's a suggestion for you guys and it's worked pretty well in Nashville. About a year-and-a-half ago now I was in the same situation where I couldn't drive all over the place. I didn't have the time. I wanted to help people, but I really just couldn't. There wasn't enough to go around. I started a text messaging service. I think everybody could do this in your own regions where you're from. It's a paid service, but it's four bucks a month. It's not ridiculous. This is primarily for all the new beekeepers that would come on to my schools and join in the service.

All I would do is text the group what I was doing that time of the season, or the month, or whatever. I would say, "Hey, heads up. I'm noticing my Varroa numbers are going up. You might want to check yours," or, "Heads up. I just switched to a screen inner cover," or, "I just pulled out the tray underneath my screen bottom board. You might want to consider doing the same." I stayed ahead of those questions. I knew, like, "All right, we're coming out of the season. It's going to start to warm up. You should consider checking to make sure your hives aren't honey-bound."

That's what's happening right now, actually, in our area. "You may want to consider doing the same." By staying ahead of that, I had less questions or less people saying, "Hey, can you help me?" because they were checking that their hives weren't honey-bound before it actually happened. It was pretty easy. A lot of this stuff, I don't do the data, but I pre-write it a week ahead of time, or whatever, to try and stay on top of things.

I batch it so that it's automated and it goes out. I would encourage anybody to start that in your group, or your club, or whatever, "Hey, this is what I'm doing. You may want to consider the same thing." Because you're right there's only one of you, and you really can't go everywhere all the time. You might as well try and scale or multiply yourself, and the easiest way to do it is an automated system like that. Just an idea.

Ed: It's a good idea.

Paul: What I like is I just went down to the Portland Bee Club and their club apiary. They had Dewey Caron there from the Oregon Master Beekeeping Program, and he was teaching the whole club what to look for in diseases. He actually has samples of EFB and AFB, and everything else. What the club's done is they've got a group of about 10 people that they call the tech team, who have more and more advanced training.

The mode of operation for them is somebody will contact them by text or email saying, hey, I have a problem with my hive or something like that. They'll communicate basically by email or text. Send them a form, have them fill it out. Once they figure out the standard stuff it's not this, it's not this, they'll send one person out from the team on a pre-arranged appointment to check their bees for them. You have 10 people doing something instead of one person trying to take care of 30 people, which worked really good for their club.

Tracy: Is that a free service or do they charge for that?

Paul: What they do is they have a kit and they carry the AFB and the EFB kits and that, but what they'll do is they'll charge them for the cost of the kit if they actually need to use them for a test.

Jeff: To subscribe to the service does not cost the beekeeper?

Paul: No cost for the club it's a part of being in the club.

Ed: The tech team does not get reimbursed for their time and energy of going out to someone's colony?

Paul: That's up their individual what they arrange.

Rainier: One way that I've found to really help newer beekeepers, I've already mentored two people for the last two years is you can send them YouTube videos. There great YouTubers like Kamon Reynolds, Bob Binnie, many others. If they start watching YouTube from those creators, they can pick up knowledge so they know what to do when they see stuff in the hive, and so they won't always be asking you for help. That's one thing I found.

Jeff: Yes, send them reliable resources such as the YouTubers that are good, and then also you have Bee Informed Partnership and Honeybee Health Coalition. Even the local state Ag extension services are always great resources for those folks.

Rainier: Definitely.

Ed: I have a mentee who is getting so good that she started bossing me around out there in the bee and telling me what to do. I had to tell her to cool it. I was the beekeeper and I was bringing her along to teach anyways, she's great, but she's a little bossy. I do have one quick story for the coolest thing that happened in beekeeping this year to me was I have some really old equipment and I have some old telescoping hive covers. They came out of a junk pile over my friend Paul Limburg. They're really old-- I'll get to that.

They've got a sheet metal top and then there's a wooden frame inside. This one is completely coming apart, so I thought I'm going to save that piece of sheet metal, so I'm just going to knock the wood off this thing. I start knocking it off and guess what? There's insulation in there, and the insulation is newspaper. As soon as I see the newspaper I think, "I'm going to see how far back this goes." April 1st, 1934. That's how old my hive cover was. It's magical.

It's logical it's The Denver Post. I got the comics, I got the classified. Here's the difference between today and yesterday. There's a lot of lonely heart stuff in there and ads for psychics for unfortunate girls who may need some temporary shelter. He's just very blunt. Please, this is nothing like Tinder, trust me. My favorite one was a fine woman, 29 owns nice farm, unmarried. That was during the Depression, but I did not see any ads for bees for sale.

Jeff: Interesting. All right, I think on that note-

Ed: That's a story for the day.

Jeff: Yes. On that note, gentlemen, I appreciate your time this afternoon and I know our listeners will have enjoyed listening to how you're managing your bees. It seems like Varroa are the topic of the day which we all know is the case. Misery loves company and it's good to hear that other people are feeling the same pain as we're having for whatever reason that is that seems to be the case wherever. I look forward to having you back in the fall, and I wish the best for you this coming summer and honey season. Y'all take care now.

Duane: Bye-bye

Jay: Bye.

Tracy: Thanks for having us Jeff. Nice listening to you guys.

Duane: Good talking with all of you. Have a good summer for you guys. Stay cool for us guys.

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

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

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