Regional Beekeepers: Spring 2024 (S6, E46)

S6, E46 - Regional Beekeepers

Bryan Zavada: This is Bryan Zavada from Lakewood, Colorado, Flower Street Farm. Welcome to  Beekeeping Today Podcast.

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

Becky Masterman: I'm Becky Masterman.

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Jeff: Thanks a lot, Bryan Zavada, from Lakewood, Colorado, and Flower Street Farm for that wonderful opening of the show. This is a special show for sure. This is our regional beekeepers episode, where we have beekeepers from around the country all here at one time to talk about their season. I'm looking at a screen, folks, and that's not in alphabetic order. It's just the way that the software put it up here. Paul, introduce yourself, who you are, where you are.

Paul Longwell: Hi, I'm Paul Longwell, from Olympia, Washington. I have averaged between 7 to 11 beehives.

Jeff: Very good. All right, Jay. Jay is a return here, to the regional beekeepers.

Jay Williams: Hey, my name is Jay Williams. I run a company called Williams Honey Farm, and I'm also the pollination program manager at a local farm-based resort here in Nashville, Tennessee. I run between, depending on the time of year, 150 and 200 colonies.

Jeff: Nice. Then we have Ange.

Ang Roell: Hey, y'all. My name is Ang Roell. I run They Keep Bees. We are located in Western Massachusetts and Western North Carolina, and we run currently about 350 honeybee colonies in comfort style hives.

Jeff: In what kind of hives?

Ang: Comfort style hives.

Jeff: I'm breaking format here. What is a comfort style hive?

[laughter]

Ang: It's an adapted Warre hive, essentially. We use those to raise queens, VSH queens specifically.

Jeff: All right. Very good. Thank you. Bonnie.

Bonnie Morse: Hi, my name is Bonnie Morse. I'm with Bonnie Bee and Company, in Northern California, just north of San Francisco. We do small-scale new production and help in one way or another. We also do consulting, manage about 350 colonies.

Jeff: Last but not least, return of Duane Combs.

Duane Combs: Hi, Duane Combs. I'm with Arizona Beekeepers LLC, in Phoenix, Arizona. I sell nucs and honey. We'll sell about 300 nucs this year.

Jeff: You're also the US distributor of Hive Heart?

Duane: Yes. I also distribute beehive monitoring sensors.

Becky: They did so well on the first question. It is so much fun to have so many people in the studio with us. Let's go with, what is the best part of keeping bees in your location? What makes it easy? Let's start with Paul again.

Paul: The best part in Washington, I think, is the temperate climate. We have a really good summer most years, which makes it really nice because we have a variety in honey and pollen throughout the whole season, where a lot of areas have extended dearths. It makes it really easy to keep bees.

Becky: Thanks, Paul. Jay, how about you?

Jay: I'm going to have to say that the best part about being a beekeeper in Tennessee is actually the public support. There's a massive amount of people that want to either know more about bees, get bees themselves, or enjoy honey on a whole other level. It's been really fun. More than half of my business is actually agritourism. It's honey tastings, apiary tours, educational speeches, that sort of thing. I've never had so much support, and people that are smiling when I come in the room rather than grimacing, so that's a good change for me in life.

[laughter]

Jay: Right now, it's really, really fun to be in this area, and to get to do what I do full-time, and really get that support that we wanted for 16 years now, I've been at this thing and it's finally sort of clicking on all cylinders. Tennessee is a great place to be doing it. Also, one little caveat, we have a really large nectar flow when it's on. When it happens, bam, it's like crazy. Then it's like a distant memory the next day, but when it's on, it's amazing. That's what I love about Tennessee.

Jeff: You said you're near Nashville?

Jay: Yes, just south of Nashville.

Becky: Ang, I think you get a two-part answer, because you keep bees in two different locations. If you want to talk about both, please do.

Ang: Beekeeping in multiple locations is a complicated logistical mapping exercise.

[laughter]

Ang: Especially right now, as we're having these really variable seasons. I think one of the best parts for me is really being able to get so much experience, because I essentially get two queen rearing seasons in one year. Over the course of beekeeper's life cycle, we've gotten like 12 years of experience in six years, rearing queens for the different bioregions in which we raise bees. Really, a close second is getting to handle thousands of queen bees a year, and learn all about them and their biology and their mating cycles. It just never isn't magic for me. [laughs]

Becky: Thank you. Bonnie, can you share about your operation and what works?

Bonnie: I was thinking about the question about what makes it easy. I don't find a lot of things easy with beekeeping today.

[laughter]

Bonnie: There's a lot of challenges and changing climates. I will say, I think that here are mild winters, so we're not really dealing with harsh winters. I think that helps a little bit.

Jeff: Speaking of winters and the changing weather, you've recently been dealing, or this last spring, you dealt with a lot of rain.

Bonnie: The last couple of years. This is always a precarious time of year for us because forage has been out, the non-native eucalyptus have been blooming for two months now. On nice days, they're out foraging and trying to build up. Then if they get stuck inside, they can starve really quickly. Yes, that can be a real challenge.

Becky: Duane, last but not least, please tell us about what works in Arizona.

Duane: The beauty of Arizona is my winter starts December 15th and ends January 15th. I can grow bees any other time. Now, if I could [crosstalk] -

Jeff: Who invited Duane? Who invited Duane?

Becky: Wait, should we even be listening to this?

[laughter]

Jay: Buzzkill.

Duane: It's so tough down here. Let's not talk about the 20% of my bees that I lost because of heat, when we had 38 days in a row where the minimum temperature was [crosstalk] -

Becky: Okay. We're not there yet. Keep talking about the good stuff.

[laughter]

Becky: Oh, that's great. Thank you, Duane.

Jeff: That is interesting.

Becky: I think. Okay. So, we talked about the good, should we talk about the bad? [laughs] I think we're calling it challenging. Paul, do you mind going first? Are you put on the spot too much?

Paul: No, that's fine. The bad things is definitely winter around here. It's cold, it's freezing, it's rainy. You got to make sure that your hives are kept dry and very, very well insulated, and they're fed really good. Our springs, when they're starting to build up, we have a period where it might rain for two months. You got to make sure you're giving them the right feed and everything, because they can't get out.

Jeff: Having kept bees in Ohio and Colorado, it's a lot different on the west side of Washington than any place else because of the amount of rainfall. That is, for me, has been a big adjustment, because of the moisture in the air, and it's just constantly wet. It's not like it's freezing, it's just constantly damp and wet and raining. I think that adds an additional stress to the bees and the beekeeper, that many of the other beekeepers in different parts of the country don't experience in the winter. I think it's a unique challenge.

Becky: Is it mostly showing up in chalkbrood? Is that a problem year round, or is it just losing bees to moisture?

Paul: There is some chalkbrood in the spring to deal with sometimes. I've seen some places where they're more close to a river or something, where it's really prevalent.

Becky: Jay, do you want to continue to bring us down and tell us what's hard in Tennessee?

[laughter]

Jay: How much time we got? That's my question back to you guys, because you asked for challenges. Jeff, you wanted to keep this at 40 minutes, you said, and I don't know if I can do that.

[laughter]

Jeff: That's not 40 minutes a piece, Jay.

[laughter]

Jay: Oh, darn it. Okay, I'm going to stop everything. Okay, I'm going to give you the top couple, right? We're going to go high level here, because I have a lot. Let's talk about right now. We'll be mysterious and say, I don't know the exact date that this is going to air, but right now my bees are just booming. Everything is going really well. We're brooding up really fast, there's lots of populations. The problem is, I can't make any splits because I don't have drones out yet that are mature enough. The environment around here, the cycles, don't allow me to raise queens right now. I have to wait for another few weeks.

I instead are now over-supering my hives to make sure they don't swarm too early, instead of making early spring splits, which is what I'd like to do. You're stuck right now, at least in our area. We don't have the drones for the queen to mate with. As a result, we're sort of in a holding pattern for a little bit longer. Then also, something that we have been challenged with the last few years, and this is going to be a little controversial, but we have a lot of package bees coming into our state. I'm just going to just get it out there. I'm of the opinion, just personally, that I'm not a big fan of package bees. I haven't seen great results.

I think there's a lot of well-meaning new beekeepers that are trying to start new colonies, and start a colony. Most people bring in package bees to do that. We have just had very, very poor results statewide, no matter the producer, just statewide bringing in the early season bees in, in packaged quantities. As a result, the genetic stock that's out there is not great. There's this battle that we have been facing for a while now, flooding our areas with our stock, our drones, to try and raise everything ourselves.

We do have this pressure from a lot of well-meaning new beekeepers that bring in package bees. Unfortunately, the quality is just not where we would like it to be. That's very challenging right now in Tennessee.

Jeff: What you are categorizing as packages, is it the packages or is it the beekeepers receiving the packages?

Jay: What I'm talking about is actually poorly mated queens that are shipped to Tennessee from out of state in the early season, because again, we really can't raise-- I can't shake packages right now. It's just a little early to be making new queens. As a result, our business is all nucleus sales, but the majority of-- We can't supply the whole state, so there's a lot of people that are getting packages from other states that can do this earlier on. The quality, just for many years now, has not been right. It's unfortunately flooding our area with maybe subpar genetics.

Becky: Ang, can you continue this-

Jeff: The spiral.

Becky: - sharing of spiral?

Ang: This enlightening and joyful conversation?

[laughter]

Becky: We're going to start therapy in the next question. Just hold on, everybody.

Ang: Yes. Great. I'm looking forward to that. For us, there's a number of challenges, because we're migratory as well. We're, first of all, a new challenge that's emerging as a result of changing weather patterns is that now I need to be in two places at once, because spring is early in one place and early in another. The other thing is something that Jay mentioned, which is that-- I wouldn't say it's package bees per se, because I think package bees with like a Russian queen, a VSH queen, a queen that's of high quality, that's been dropped into bulk bees can be a really great starter hive.

I would say that one of the challenges we face is well-meaning beekeepers starting up, and then having, say, very broad stroke understanding of what beekeeping is, and what genetics are, and the importance of genetics in raising high quality bees, and starting up in our neighborhood. Being like, "I'm going to keep 50 hives," and really not understanding what the scale or needs of that many hives are, and flooding our area where we've worked very hard to have a saturated drone population with just these random bees, and then are out of that operation within a year or two years.

It feels like there is a lot of impetus to participate in the saving of pollinators, but without really an understanding of what the needs are, both ecologically and at a honeybee level, and then even further in at a beekeeping level. Those are big challenges for us. Then winter in the Northeast has always been a wild ride. It's very long, it's very wet, as Paul mentioned, for the Pacific Northwest, and it's very variable. You can have really warm Marches, where bees start to brood up, and then really cold Aprils, where there's no food and no capacity to gather food, and bees can starve to death or really crash from a Varroa pressure early in the season.

There's a lot of challenges, particularly in the Northeast, to beekeeping. It's one of the reasons that as a business, we do a lot of education, we do a lot of speaking, we do a lot of intentional, sustainable beekeeping education, teaching people how to raise queens and how to manage hives in a way that's in step with the ecology, so that we're trying to mitigate some of those issues, but it doesn't necessarily get everyone, as Jay was saying. It's a little hard to get everyone when you're a small little business.

Becky: That was depressing, but very well said. [laughs] I think we're going to skip Bonnie right now. Duane, go ahead and--

Duane: Well, we have three opportunities in Arizona. The first is African bees, which we won't talk about because we don't have enough time. The second is, if it doesn't rain, we don't have flowers, if we don't have flowers, we don't have food and we don't have bees. The third problem is summer heat. I was out installing a pool for my bees in one of my bee yards, because by the end of this month, it'll be 95 degrees here.

Becky: I've heard you on previous podcasts, and your description of beekeeping in the heat was pretty riveting. Can you expand a little bit more about how you're combating the heat when you're keeping bees?

Duane: What we were doing is we take a 10 frame box and we put two inches of foam inside on each end, so we have seven frames. Then we put two inches of foam on top as an inner cover. Then we use migratory tops on that, and wood boxes. Last summer, we had 38 days in a row where the temperature, high temperature was 110 or above. For the first 30 days, I'd go out and look at my bees at 5:00 in the morning, because it's the only time cool enough, and they'd smile. Then on the 35th day, they were looking pretty ragged. On the 38th day, 20% of them were gone.

We have a high-- I'll start with a double box, basically 20 frames of bees, and watch the heat whittle them down to 10 frames if I'm lucky. Now, what I'm working on this year, I'm working on two things. One is, I'm working on sharing bees with somebody in Montana, so that they will come pick my bees up, take them to Montana for the summer, and bring them back to me in October. Then I'll raise his bees and my bees from October to May 1st, and then he'll take them back up north.

The other thing I'm doing is I just did a-- I'm in the process of-- We have state land leases here, and I'm doing a state land lease on a cooler part of the state so that the maximum temperature the bees will experience will be 105 or below. They'll survive that okay.

Becky: Bonnie, could you share the challenges that you have with your bees in California?

Bonnie: Well, geez, after listening to everyone else, I say we have no challenges.

[laughter]

Bonnie: No, I'm just kidding.

Becky: Duane was booed earlier, so be careful.

Bonnie: Yes, some good news, because I was inspired by what Jay was saying about the challenges. I guess going back to what maybe is the best part of keeping bees is we have so much local support for locally produced nucs and queens. More so, we really discourage people from the packages, so I guess that's some good news. What's challenging? There are a lot of challenges. I said one of the nice things was our mild winters, but mild winters mean really no broodless period, so mites can be a challenge. Three of the last seven years, we've had significant challenges with smoke from the fires, and depending on when it occurred and what burned.

The year that the Paradise fires happened, and they were mostly structural, was really toxic. Very toxic. We lost 70% of our bees as a county. It was really hard. It can impede queen mating flights. If there is forage available, they're staying at home, so the fires have been a problem. Related just with these extremes, with drought and rain, have been challenging.

Jeff: I think this was a great place to take a break, and we're going to hear from our good friends at Betterbee, and we'll be right back.

[music]

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Becky: Welcome back, everybody. Let's talk about something that I think we can all agree is fantastic, which is, what is your primary honey source or honey plants in the area where you keep bees? Paul, we're going to go to you first again. [laughs]

Paul: Well, our main crop here in my area is blackberry and raspberry are the two main ones in Olympia. Then we have a lot of large leaf maple and vine maple as our honey producing plants.

Becky: Jay, you hinted that it was amazing and it was fast. What is it? [laughs]

Jay: Amazing, spectacular, life-changing.

Becky: Life-changing.

[laughter]

Jay: I don't know. Again, I'm going to try and keep this short, because I can go on and on, but black locust is our rock star. Usually, it's May 1st, which means is when it comes on, which means it'll probably come on like tomorrow, because that's the way it goes. When the black locust is here, it's amazing. Everybody's smiling and in a good mood. Tulip poplar is cool, clover is the easy, it's everywhere. Last year we had a huge catalpa bloom, which is new to me, and we may get that this year again. Then at the end of our season, we close out with basswood. Basswood's got a great, like back of your throat, like spicy kick to it, good finish.

We only harvest once a year at the end of the entire season, so that we can get all those flavor varieties packed into that one taste, and it aids us in our honey tastings. We take people on a journey of the season, because there's so many florals.

Jeff: You don't separate them? Per flow? We mix it all together. We found that each nectar source gives you that different taste, and luckily for us, they've sort of tag-teamed off of each other. When you taste our honey, the first taste you get is that black locust. Ironically, it's right at the beginning of the season, and then clover is usually in the middle of our taste, and then the profile ends with a basswood tree. It helps.

I don't know if anybody else has experienced it, but in our area, it's really helped for us to wait till the end of the season, because we get all those varieties and then we can go to-- I work with a lot of chefs, and I can go to the chef and say, "Hey, this year, catalpa was a rock star bloom. What can you do with this taste variety?" Then they can pair a good dinner with it or something.

Becky: Ang, will you share the primary honey plants in your area, please?

Ang: In New England, we start with dandelion. We also have an epic black locust flow. Sometimes if it rains too hard, it can get blown off the trees. It just depends. Last year, it was one of the best ones I've ever seen. We literally had bees like queens mating in their mating nucs, and then as the black locust flow hit, they'd be in there for like a day and a half, and the hive would just swarm. Leave just eggs and be gone.

[laughter]

Ang: It was insane. It was like nothing I'd ever seen. I spent like two weeks chasing swarms out of trees everywhere. At some point I was like, "This is just comical now."

[laughter]

Ang: We also get the basswood, which I love. That's a mid-summer for us. We have a good clover flow, and then we have a Japanese knotweed flow, which is a non-endemic pretty invasive species, grows in the waterways and stuff. It comes on at the end of our season in New England. What happens is that it actually provides like a really strong nutrient-dense nectar for the bees to go into the winter on. It can be almost too nutrient-dense, that can lead to expression with Nosema, if the bees are sick with anything.

It's a great way to end the season, and we're usually able to get just a little bit of that off, so we have a single floral. Like really dark honey, and then an early summer where we, as Jay said, we combine all of those flows into one early summer honey. Then down in North Carolina, we also get the tulip poplar and the sourwood, which are really beautiful honeys, each with their own special profile that I love.

Becky: Are you extracting in two different geographic locations then?

Ang: Not yet, because we're still growing our North Carolina operation. We're moving our bees from Florida, where we've been for several years. We haven't gotten to a point where we're extracting. We're mostly just splitting, making queens in that location, and trying to get our numbers and our locations stabilized. Every once in a while, I'll cut a comb off for us, or fill a bucket with comb and smash it to take home.

Becky: Thank you. Duane, we need to hear what your bees are feeding on.

Duane: Our number one is mesquite honey. We're world-renowned, us and Texas, for mesquite honey. It's a wonderful honey. You sell it, the customer takes it home, and if they don't use it up in six months, it crystallizes. Where my bees are, there's a lot of agriculture, so I get a lot of alfalfa that my bees forage on. Also some cotton, cantaloupe, cactus plants in the desert are a big thing.

Jeff: What kind of flavor does mesquite honey have?

Duane: It's my personal favorite. I like dark, rich, deep honeys. Avocado, buckwheat, mesquite, and so I really like it. What we do in our operation, we only process the honey once a year, so we just mix everything. Call it raw desert honey.

Becky: Bonnie, could you tell us about the honey flows in California, please? In your area of California?

Bonnie: Yes, our area, there are so many microclimates. Just to give you an idea, in a 15 mile distance in the summer, there might be a 30 degree difference. In the southern area, cool, foggy redwoods, you get to the north and you've got oak scrublands. Really, we don't get any-- It's rare for us to get any true varietal honeys. They're really all just wildflower honeys. As I mentioned earlier, early in the season, as early as December in some areas, the blue gum eucalyptus will start blooming, and the native bees are all still pupating at that time, so it's a feast for the honeybees.

Our native ceanothus and manzanita are in bloom right now. Frankly, a lot of-- We will get some blackberry. It really depends on the areas. Frankly, most of the honey production is happening from irrigated gardens. Most honey production happens within a 2 mile radius of the main highway, that goes through the county. One really important plant that comes late in the summer, early fall, is our native coyote bush, Baccharis. Actually, you can smell it when you walk into an apiary, it smells like a dirty locker room.

[laughter]

Bonnie: You've got to get it in jars immediately, if you harvest any, because it'll be crystallized within a few days.

Ang: That sounds like our goldenrod, which smells like dirty socks.

Becky: Dirty socks.

[laughter]

Becky: Sorry, I jumped in. I thought we could say it together. There's nothing like walking into the apiary and smelling dirty socks though.

Ang: Yes. It's so funny because we get our basswood in July, and we have a little dearth, it's like two weeks maybe, where we don't have anything until that goldenrod really kicks, and that's before the knotweed. You'll just smell like nothing, nothing, and then it's just like getting punched in the face by a locker room, essentially. It's really something.

[laughter]

Jeff: I don't know. What does that say if I like the smell of the goldenrod infused beeyard?

Ang: You're into the terroir.

Jeff: Yes.

[laughter]

Duane: My first year, the goldenrod hit, and I thought my eyes were diseased.

Jeff: Interesting.

Becky: Bonnie, what does it taste like?

Bonnie: You don't taste that. Yes, it's pretty mild flavor. That really strong odor, it's like some cheeses. They might smell a lot, but you're not tasting that. It's like that with the coyote bush.

[laughter]

Becky: Everybody is looking it up right now. We're going to have to put a link in.

Bonnie: It can be a problem. I know some beekeepers that are migratory don't like their bees getting on it because if they're stuck inside for the winter, it can because dysentery. Back to our mild winters, our bees can get out for the cleansing flights pretty much whenever. It generally isn't a problem here. It's more of a problem if we don't have the coyote bush because it helps them recover from the summer dearth when they usually lose some weight. The last two years, it's been a bust.

Last year, I think it was because we had unseasonably cool weather. Even though they were blooming everywhere, they just seemed to be no nectar flow. The year before was the opposite. The buds were just about to break, and then we got a heat wave and it just fried them. Challenges.

Becky: I must say that all of your answers, you've just proven that beekeepers are botanists. Thank you for that information. Okay, let's take things down again.

Jeff: Oh, ow.

Becky: I'm sorry. Is that okay?

Jeff: Yes, go ahead. Go ahead.

Becky: We need this information. This is super important.

Jeff: Yes. No, this is important.

Becky: Okay, we're going to take Varroa off the table. What are the top three diseases and/or pest challenges that impact honeybees in your location, our operation? Paul, you're doing such a good job.

Paul: Well, the big one around here for me is yellow jackets. They dust with all the apple orchards and everything around here. We seem to be a breeding zone for them. Everybody claims yellow jackets killed my hives. It's really something you have to watch out for. Another thing is, because of the blueberry fields around here during the spring, a lot of people are seeing EFB from the poor pollen from the blueberries. Fortunately, I'm starting to hear some people are starting to have small hive beetles show up in some parts of our state. Fortunately, they're not in my area yet.

Jeff: Yes, there's hope that the wet conditions that we complain about or, okay, I was complaining about earlier, may prevent the small hive beetle from being a serious issue around here year round.

Ang: Ooh, they love the wet though. When they're down in Florida, and it rains and it's dark and there's no sun, oof.

Jeff: We're telling them that they won't like it.

Ang: They thrive.

[laughter]

Jeff: No, they will hate it here.

Becky: You're hoping that the wet and cool weather tells them.

Jeff: Wet and cool weather, yes.

Becky: We'll keep avoiding.

Jeff: Constantly wet and cool. Not the occasional wet. Constantly.

Becky: You're actively campaigning and telling them, "Stay in Florida."

Jeff: Yes, that's the sign at the border.

Ang: Going to need a lot of little signs, I think.

Becky: Much warmer.

Jeff: Yes.

Becky: Little signs. Very little, tiny signs.

Jeff: Small hive beetle, you won't like it from October through May. Just saying. All right. Sorry.

Becky: Okay, Jay, would you share your top three, excluding Varroa, please?

Jay: Becky, you take Varroa off the table, is there really anything else?

[laughter]

Jay: It's like life would be so much simpler if we didn't have it on the table. The biggest pest problem, can I start with people?

Jeff: Yes. Sure.

Becky: You sure can.

Jay: In my area-

Jeff: Two-legged pest.

Jay: - people want their beautiful wasteland, right? Those perfectly manicured front lawns with the green grass and there's nothing there. Then they'll put tons of glyphosate and round up everywhere. That's very challenging for the bees. Small hive beetle, we do have our issues. We've already started putting in, we use Swiffer sheets here as a mechanical trap to try and trap our beetles. We've already started putting those in the hives, which is pretty early. Unfortunately, it looks like a lot of those small hive beetles survive the winter inside the colonies, which is rare for us. A little discouraging.

We do have some yellow jacket issues as well. We had a pretty strong boost at the end of last season of yellow jackets, which was a little discouraging. Primarily, as I said, Varroa, that's all you talk about. I know. We don't want to mention it again, but if I didn't have Varroa, I think I would look a lot younger.

[laughter]

Jeff: You look like you're 12 anyways.

Ang: That's where all my gray hairs come from, too.

[laughter]

Becky: Oh my gosh. Okay. Thank you, Jay. I'm sorry we took Varroa off the table, but I think it's fair to say that if we had left it on the table, we would have started at Varroa and not ended. [laughs]

Jay: Good point.

Becky: Ang, I'm wondering if your three are different in each location. I'm making you work harder. Sorry. [laughs]

Ang: Yes. If we're in Florida, hive beetles are such a pain in my tush because they go after queenless hives. As soon as you catch a queen and make a hive queenless to take a cell, they're in there just like, "Let's get it," because they can smell the stress hormones of the honeybees. That's a challenge, if you're taking Varroa off the table. In Massachusetts, last year we had an AFB outbreak, which is the first time we'd ever had one. Thankfully, we didn't see it in any of our yards, which was really a blessing, because it came very close to us. I'm curious how the Varroa sensitive hygienic selection we've done over the years has played into that, but I don't have any evidence to play that out.

It's scary because people are having to destroy all of their hives. Again, I think that plays into that lack of education. The beekeeper that had it, that spread it, didn't know he had it for several years. He was just using the same equipment.

Becky: Oh, no.

Ang: Horrific. Yes, I think one of the challenges, I co-sign what Jay said, is that beekeeper education feels like one of the major challenges for us, especially in the Northeast, where those winters are so long and stressful. Really having people understand how to manage and treat their hives so they're ready for winter, so they don't get robbed out by other bees and spread disease laterally, is really important. Then I'd say as far as pests, bears. We have to be such vigilant engineers to make sure that our honeybees don't get attacked by bears in Western Mass, in Western North Carolina. It hasn't been an issue yet in Florida, thank goodness, because grass grows faster than anything here.

[laughter]

Ang: I think finally, the other big piece is that the changing climate is changing the bloom times on our trees, and stressing some of our trees to the point where they're not even producing anymore. I have grave concerns about how that's going to play out over the next several years, as things shift, and what we can actually do about it, because we don't have a strong understanding of the nutritional makeup of our honeybees.

I know there's a lot of research going into that right now, but really understanding what plants for pollinators we could be planting, to begin to mitigate what is coming, is something that I'm always holding and curious about. So that we can address nutritional issues, which then become pest issues further down the line.

Becky: Duane, could you please share your top three with us?

Duane: Yes. Again, everything comes from Varroa for us. We have no bears, although I have lost hives to javelinas, which are not a pig, but a pig-like creature. Small hive beetles are-- I've only seen them in two places. We have some residences that have irrigated flood irrigation, and you can see hive beetles in the flood irrigation land because the ground will stay wet enough. The other time I've seen it is, I make my own patties, and I make them as wet as I can. I've seen a few hive beetles in those, but if I pull the patties out, they go away. They're not really a problem. See a few wasps, but it's not really a problem on any of the hives. My biggest killer is heat. Heat and Varroa.

Jeff: You took the Africanized bee off the table early on, but is that an issue, or pest for you?

Duane: Yes, because what happens is, on an annual basis, about 1 out of 100 hives, an African swarm will come underneath the hive and then send worker bees up into the hive. As soon as they can get admitted, they kill the queen and then the African queen moves up into your hive, and you have a hive in about 60 days that you'll get some degree of warm. One of the interesting things with Africans is, some of them are just horrible and most of them are just aggressive bees.

One of the things we've started using is we put a layer of window screen, nylon window screen, because we like to use an air gap above the box. This keeps the bees from coming up. One of the nice things is, I can pop the top off and the bees are under this net. So I can look at them and lift up a corner to see what the response is without lifting the whole top off and having the bees swarming.

Becky: That's an interesting adaptation to measure defensive behavior.

Duane: The real problem is, we can't open mate because the African drones are faster and tougher than the Europeans.

Becky: Okay. Thank you, Duane. Bonnie, can you bring us home with three top pests and disease?

Bonnie: Major pest right now, oh my gosh, and I dealt with a hive full of, like the inner cover full of them today. Ants. They're the worst. It's frequent that we'll open up hives at the end of winter, and you'll find an ant colony living on the inner cover, and the bees have propolised, so they can't get down into the hive. This was a full on colony today. It was horrific. During our extreme droughts, of course, everything is hungry. For ants, you can get into these hives, that can be a real problem. I would say the next one that would have been number one if you'd asked me this question in August, September, yellow jackets.

They're just terrible here. With all this open space that we have in our area, and lots of nice nest cavities in the ground for them, where it can be really difficult to find their nests. Just like Paul was saying, definitely here, I always say to beginners in classes, you read in the books that a strong colony is not going to succumb to yellow jackets. They absolutely do here, if you're not vigilant in restricting entrances and helping the bees out.

Number three, it's not a major problem yet, but because it's so new, and that's bear. Historically, there were grizzly black bears and brown bears in this area, but for over a century, they were gone. Now they're slowly coming back. In a few apiaries that we've had, they've been torn apart on multiple occasions before we finally had to start setting up electric fences, but that's new for us. Trying to figure out where it's going to hit next, and whether or not it's worth the time and effort putting up electrical fences, that's challenging right now.

Jeff: Before we go to the last question, I just want to open it up. Do any of our regional beekeepers want to ask another regional beekeeper a question?

Duane: Bonnie, do you see any African bees in your area?

Bonnie: Once or twice, and it's because beekeepers moved them here. They were brought from Southern California. Knock on wood, at this point, they're not up here breeding. We try to educate people to not bring bees in from the Southern part of the state. Stick with the Northern California bee breeders if you want to buy bees and buy them outside of the county.

Jeff: Jay, I saw you raise your hand. You had a question.

Jay: I got a two-parter. I got two questions. First, to Bonnie, I'm definitely not pro-ant. I don't have the T-shirt that says I love ants, but have you ever found, my wild and crazy theory is, have you ever found that the colonies that have those massive ant colonies in the inner cover, like you're describing, are your best colonies? I have found that when I open up a colony, I'm like, "Oh my goodness." They're everywhere, and it's warm, and they're like prolific. When I go down below, it's like, "This colony is insanely cool." Tons of honey, and it's a strong one.

It's almost like a flag, when I'm in the yard, like that's going to be a potential breeder or start or finish a colony, because there's a ton of ants on top. It's the most random thing, but I was curious if you've ever seen that.

Bonnie: That's a great question. I need to pay closer attention to that. Actually, the colony that I was in today was very strong, and clearly not bothered by them. A lot of times I just let them be. If they're not bothering the colony, ants are pretty cool. Ants are very cool.

Jay: So, you're pro-ant?

Bonnie: When they are--

[laughter]

Bonnie: I'm pro-ant, but it's like yellow jackets. I'm pro, because they've got their place, except when you start messing with my bees. The problem we do have with ants sometimes is in our nuc yards, where they can just literally take over. We do have anti-ant platforms that are just plywood boards with carriage bolts, and we put a 50-50 Vaseline baby oil mixture, which is fantastic. It's very effective to keep the ants out of them. Fortunately, we don't have to use those every season, because what a pain? Just more equipment, but we have them if we need them.

Jeff: The whole ant problem question just brings to mind that commercial for the insurance company about, I have ant problems, and there's, "Johnny, have you answered my Facebook question yet?" All right. Thank you.

Becky: Wait, Jay had two questions. Are we going to let him ask his second?

Jay: Oh, it's actually really fast. I just, last week, got back from Italy, believe it or not, from a honey sommelier school. It wasn't. I'm not a honey sommelier. We're very careful to use that expression. In school, we were tasting and testing a bunch of different varieties, and they say, "Dandelion," out there. My question for Ang is, if your first flow is dandelion, what is the taste of your dandelion? Because the dandelion in Italy smells like the worst, stinkiest feet you've ever experienced.

[laughter]

Jay: You're like, "Get it out of here." Yet, when you taste it, it's amazing. It's warm butter, it's very floral, it's great, but you just, you want to pinch your nose, instead. I'm curious if that is your beginning flow for your season, what is it like for you, and does that impact the rest of your taste profile throughout the season?

Ang: Yes. What a great question. What I find with the dandelion honey where we are, is that we don't get much honey, because it's often used for brood production, because it's so early in the season. We see a lot of nectar come up, to the point where we have to super, but then it all gets eaten back and put into both brood and drone production. We don't mitigate drone production here, because we are a queen producing operation. It's like castrating the hive. We really let that run, by letting the dandelion grow up. I haven't tasted it where we are, but I've been in the Midwest, and I've tasted it there.

I agree that it smells quite stinky, like feet, but is like one of those honeys that I was like licking the bottom of the jar when I finished. I was like, "[unintelligible 00:45:19] feet." [laughs] I've never noticed that sort of like funk that shows up in our early season honey in the same way that I can notice-- I can pick goldenrod out from knotweed, and whether a batch has more goldenrod than more knotweed in our fall flow like that. Like, "Oh, that's more goldenrod, that's more knotweed." Because I do. I can smell and taste that funk immediately.

Jeff: Any other questions?

Bonnie: I'm just wondering if there's like a top 10 list of really funky honeys that smell like feet, but taste really good.

Ang: There's one in Florida called Brazilian pepper, which is the late season honey, and it is neon green, and it tastes very bitter. Actually, like the mesquite I've experienced in my tastings, but it's really, really bitter, and a lot of people don't like it, or are like, "Why is it neon green?" I love it. It's great for cooking, and for barbecue sauce, and that kind of thing. I'd add that to the funkier flavor profiles that I've experienced in my time beekeeping.

Jeff: It sounds like the honeydew from like the lanternfly or something, is supposed to be really-

Ang: Oh, yes, that stuff is weird.

[laughter]

Becky: Everybody, what is your favorite method to control Varroa? Paul?

Paul: OAV.

Becky: Jay? Come on, Jay.

Jay: Formic Pro.

Becky: Ang?

Ang: Yes, I use OAV as well.

Becky: Duane?

Duane: Oxalic acid.

Becky: Bonnie?

Bonnie: Stock selection.

Becky: Very good. Doesn't that feel good that you shared that information with everybody? [laughs]

Jeff: Becky, what's your favorite?

Becky: Oh, I have a great relationship with Formic Pro. Jeff?

Jeff: I don't have Varroa.

[laughter]

Jeff: OAV. OAV. Thank you to our regional beekeepers. Enlightening show. I love listening to everybody's feedback, their experiences, and it just helps me, personally, and our listeners, better beekeepers for hearing that everybody faces challenges and have reasons why they keep bees, because they're so much fun. Best of luck to you this season. We look forward to talking to you all again. Keep in touch. Take care.

Becky: Thanks, everybody.

Paul: Bye-bye.

Ang: Thanks, y'all. Bye.

Duane: Bye.

Jay: Take care.

Bonnie: Bye.

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

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

[00:48:34] [END OF AUDIO]