Healthy Bees, Heavy Hives with Steve Donohoe and Paul Horton (S6, E49)

S6, E49 - Healthy Bees, Heavy Hives with Steve Donohoe and Paul Horton

Montgomery BA: Hello, this is the Montgomery County Beekeepers Association from the great state of Maryland. 500 members strong.

"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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Hey, thanks a lot, Montgomery County Beekeepers Association. Becky, 500 members. I wonder if all 500 were in that room.

Becky: It sounded like they had a quorum at least. There are a lot of beekeepers in that message. Is that a record for the number of opener speakers?

Jeff: Let me check my Guinness Book of World Records here. It is. It is.

Becky: It is?

Jeff: Yes.

Becky: Should we include that information on the map?

[laughter]

Jeff: Well, definitely, Maryland will be colored in on this map today.

Becky: That's exciting. Thank you to Maryland, the Montgomery County Beekeepers.

Jeff: Yes, that's really cool. Hey, you know, it is about the time of year we're getting through the swarm season and really starting to focus on what we have bees for. Most of us, or I like to think most of us, really focused on honey production. Is that why you keep bees as well?

Becky: Well, it hasn't historically been my reason for keeping bees. I came to bees because I just really love them and I love it when they're healthy, but I've taken steps to limit the honey production by keeping a lot of my colonies in three deeps so I don't have to do a lot of late summer, fall feeding. This year I'm making a big effort. I am going to try to increase my honey production.

Jeff: Are you thinking about extracted honey? Are you going to do comb honey?

Becky: It will just be extracted honey, but one of my methods for dealing with more honey is going to be extracting over the season. I'll be able to pull out the different flavors and then I'll be able to make it so that I do not have an overwhelming harvest at the end of the season. I'll just extract as I go.

Jeff: I really like that idea. Trying to separate the different honey flows so that you get different honey varieties is really fun thing to do and it really, I believe, helps increase sales. If you can say this is predominantly blackberry or this is predominantly basswood or that's really fun as opposed to just saying, "Oh, it's wildflower," which is fine and there's a market for that for sure, but bridal honeys can lead to higher sales.

Becky: It's just pretty. I think one year where it was very obvious I was able to extract five different kinds of honey where they were predominantly one kind of flower or another and it's pretty and it tells such a fun story to people who like to buy your honey. It's a great tool for beekeepers to both understand where their honey's coming from and then to share that information with people who are utilizing their honey.

Jeff: I agree. Do you have an extractor or use an extractor or are you sitting there with nylon mesh bags and pressing it over the sink-

Becky: Oh, boy.

Jeff: -or into a bowl?

[laughter]

Becky: I do have an extractor. It's electric, so I'm not that old school. I do though, when I uncap, I very gently just use, not a knife, but I use a scratcher and I lift off the wax cappings. It actually limits the amount of wax I get and it limits any damage to the comb. Once you get it going, it's not that tedious, but oh my gosh, some of you are probably cringing right now when you hear how I take off every single capping. [laughs]

Jeff: Yes, that was me cringing. It's funny you-

Becky: Was that you? [laughs]

Jeff: -said that when you-- "some of you," and you were looking at me, Becky.

Becky: That's true. It actually is a neater extraction because I don't have the big wax and honey mess to deal with. It's just, it keeps it a little bit more easy to manage.

Jeff: We'll talk about this in an upcoming episode that we will have about our pet beaves or pet peeves with beekeeping, but dealing with wax cappings is an issue that every beekeeper has to face at some point. We'll leave that discussion for another time. Finally, set up with my buddy Paul here, I took an old tack room in the barn, redid it all, and set up a nice extractor. Paul put in a uncapping tank and we can keep it heated and it's clean. It's really nice. It's the first time, actually last summer was the first summer I was able to uncap and not be in my garage one place or another. Uncapping is part of that process, but honey production is really cool, which really brings us to today's guests.

Becky: Right. I'm really excited to talk to Steve Donohoe and Paul Horton. They are beekeepers from across the pond and they have just a very timely book that's out this year,  Healthy Bees, Heavy Hives, which is everything we want, how to maximize your honey crop. I don't think we could have timed this better.

Jeff: I'm looking forward to this. We had Steve on the show when Kim was here and we talked about his brand new book,  Interviews with Beekeepers. He's a delightful beekeeper. I'm looking forward to hearing about his new book in collaboration with Paul Horton. First, a quick word from our friends.

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Jeff: While you're at the Strong Microbial site, make sure you click on and subscribe to  The Hive, the regular newsletter full of interesting beekeeping facts and product updates. Hey, everybody, welcome back to the show. Sitting across this big virtual continent-spanning interview table is two guests from the UK, Steve Donoghue and Paul Horton. Guys, welcome to the show.

Paul Horton: Hello.

Steve Donohoe: Hi.

Becky: Welcome. Is it Donoghue or Donohoe, Steve?

Steve: It's Donohoe, actually.

Jeff: What did I say?

Becky: Donoghue. I

Steve: I get called worse.

[laughter]

Jeff: I won't go back and re-edit it, but my apologies, Steve.

Steve: That's no problem. It's good to be here. Thank you. Thank you very much for the invitation.

Jeff: When Kim was here, we had you on the show, I think that was back in 2020, and you'd just come out with your book then called  Interviews with Beekeepers.

Steve: Yes, four years later, I must be older and wiser. I'm definitely older, but I think I'd been beekeeping about seven years when I wrote that book or when I started to work on that book. I think now I'm at about 12 years or something. I like to think I've learned a few tricks off all those people that I interviewed.

Jeff: For our guests who haven't heard that interview, and for those who don't know both of you, tell us a little bit about yourself, who you are, your background with bees, and then Paul, we'll move to you.

Steve: I'm based in a place called Cheshire in the UK, which is just south of Manchester. I'm what you guys probably call a sideliner with about 70 colonies. Probably it will go up to 100 or so by July time. Yes, as I say, I've been beekeeping about 12 years, and I started as an escape from the stresses of the corporate world. I was running a business with my wife. It was a small company, and all the stresses and strains of that.

It was just I needed something to get me out of the city. Just turned out to be beekeeping, really, and I got a couple of hives and absolutely loved it and just became obsessed, like many beekeepers do. Just gradually grew, and that book,  Interviews with Beekeepers, came about because I was applying my business logic to bees, which is I'll go and talk to the people who are really successful and great at the thing I want to do and see how they do it, and then hopefully I'll learn off them. That's basically what happened, really.

Jeff: Paul, welcome to the show.

Paul: Thank you. Thanks for having me. Yes, I'm probably still considered a sideliner compared to your guy's standard, but I manage 250 to 300 colonies, and I'm based up in Lincolnshire in the UK, which is the northeast coast of the UK. I got into bee farming because of my father, he was a commercial beekeeper and started back in the '60s, so I grew up around it and got into it that way.

Jeff: Very cool, and for those who haven't had a chance to, make sure you go out and look at Paul's photo in the show notes or on the guest profile. You have a healthy bee beard there in that photo.

Paul: It was just for a bit of fun that a few years ago. We did that for charity at our county show locally. It was a bit scary, but fun.

Jeff: It was overflowing down under your shoulders and everything. You looked like you could be a ZZ Top person if bee beards were hair. Very nice.

Becky: I don't want to drag us right into the book, but I want to drag us right into the book because it's such a fascinating exploration of, well, Paul, your business is outlined in here. You gave up all your secrets, which I think we can appreciate, but could I first ask how did the two of you connect for this project?

Steve: Basically, I have been gradually getting closer and closer to more and more commercial beekeepers. That's always been the thing that interested me, was how people make a living at beekeeping. I kept on hearing this name. I kept on hearing about Paul Horton and how much honey he made, how much honey he consistently makes.

After I had recovered from writing my first book, I thought at that point, I'll never write another book again. It just goes on and on forever and it never seems to quite be printed. Eventually, it was done and I thought, "That's it, I'm finished." A few years later, here I am with another one. It had to be something a little bit different and worthwhile. This guy that all the bee farmers in England say is one of the best, I thought, "Well, I'll give him a call and see if he's interested in, as you say, sharing his secrets." I just gave him a call and he was quite surprised, I think, to hear from me and happy to go along with it, really.

Becky: Paul, you're shaking your head. He didn't have to twist your arm. Based upon what I've read in this book, you are plenty busy with your bees.

Paul: I've always believed in jumping at opportunities that present themselves like this. It's a once in a lifetime for me, Steve coming to me with that. I was really honored and really keen to take part in it. I still to this day don't know how I've got this reputation amongst beekeeping in the UK where I'm this mysterious, brilliant bee farmer, but I don't feel like that.

Becky: I could point the reader, after they buy the book, to some graphs at the end of the book that will explain some of that. Then there are data throughout, some really impressive record keeping. The numbers are very impressive too. I want to talk a little bit more first about how you designed this book because it's not a beginning beekeeping book, although I think a beginner beekeeper could get a lot out of it. You're talking to, I think, it seems like a beekeeper who wants to become more organized, grow their business, or just become more efficient and productive. Is that true or who do your audience as?

Steve: Both of us really love Manley's book,  Bee Farming. I think that was published a long time ago, maybe 80-odd years ago, but people still talk about it. It was one of those books that specifically concentrates on the business of making honey and making money from honey. It was very much about this is how a big bee farmer runs his business.

Then there was a gap of about 40-odd years until one of the people that used to work for him wrote another book called  Honey by the Ton. It was quite a small book, but there's not really been much since. We just thought, well, another 40-odd years has gone by, and let's try and do a Manley. Let's try and make a modern bee farming book. It's very specific to the UK, but the idea initially was anyone who wants to do it as a business, make as much honey. There's two ways to go really. Sorry, I don't know if you can hear my dog.

Becky: Your dog's agreeing with you, so it's all good. [laughs]

Steve: You either have more and more hives and you have less and less time to look after them and you have more swarming. You might end up having less honey per hive, but you have a lot of hives or there's a more intensive way where you try and get more honey per hive. That's the kind of approach that Paul tends to take and myself as well really. It's just anyone who wants to get a little bit-- get an extra super of honey off their hives from where they are now, then hopefully we can help them do that.

Becky: I think it was interesting that you noted that part of the reason you need to do that right now is that forage conditions are changing, weather conditions are changing, and so you're directly going to maximize hive production to be able to take advantage of whatever forage is out there. Does that sound right?

Steve: Yes, Paul's a migratory beekeeper, and many of the people in the UK that make the most honey, they move their bees and that way you're slightly cheating, isn't it? Because you're always on a honey flow and you move from crop to crop to crop and it doesn't really matter too much if one crop fails because you're on to the next and the next. Whereas for someone like myself who's pretty-- my bees pretty well stay where they are, I'm at the mercy of the weather a little bit more.

Paul: We're certainly seeing more extremes in the weather over here in the UK. I don't know if it's the same with you guys over there, but our winters are much wetter and milder and the summer's much drier, so the migratory style that I use, it mitigates a bit of that because we're continually moving from crop to crop and they don't all work out, but it just gives you that extra opportunity to try and get a crop.

Becky: Even your numbers though, whether or not the colonies are being moved are very impressive and a lot of that has to do with how you've decided to house your bees.

Paul: It's a strange way I keep my bees actually. The national hive that I use is actually quite small, it's probably a third smaller than your Langstroth hives, I would say, and I keep them in a single deep, you would say. What we've maybe touched upon in the book is that because I'm constricting the bees to a single brood nest, it almost exclusively becomes brood in the summer months. Every frame is almost solid brood. All the stores are almost putting the super boxes for us, the honey boxes. It may also lead to me cropping a bit more honey than a larger brood box would lead to, potentially, but it's quite risky as well. It's quite a risky management style.

Becky: I think that if you read the book, which I think if anybody's listening, they can tell that I really like this book so far, but if you read the book, right about the time when I was about to say, "Okay, I'm going to have to figure out the math and the difference of the box sizes," there's this just beautiful summary that goes into more detail about the difference in sizes than I could have ever appreciated. Then it goes on to estimate the colony configurations and population sizes. It's the way you're doing your beekeeping business is very number-related and data-based.

Paul: That's kind of a recent thing within the last four or five years for me. Within the UK our trade organization, the Bee Farmers Association, they set up a group called the Knowledge Exchange Group. That's where this openness began, where lots of bee farmers got together and we sat down and we just told all. We didn't keep anything back. We revealed all our secrets to each other in an attempt to try and just learn from each other completely openly and honestly.

Part of that group was recording data like this, recording site data, honey crop data, everything, everything you could possibly think of. Much of that I carried on after the group ended and still carry on to this date. It's fascinating information once you get into the nitty-gritty facts and figures of what your operation is doing. It's quite a revelation actually, when it on paper, the numbers.

Steve: It was quite refreshing actually, because I had no idea that Paul was a fellow spreadsheet geek. Because I, being as my background in business with going through accounts and cost control. I lived on Excel spreadsheets and I quite like turning numbers into charts and here he was, not only was he making a lot of honey, but he had all this data and was quite happy to share it. That was a bonus really.

I don't want to make it sound-- it's not dry, "Here's a bunch of data," it's hopefully the book's a bit more than that, but it's good to have that in there.

Becky: I don't think any of it's dry. In fact, Jeff and I were talking earlier about how at some point you're reading the book and you're giving away some free hints and you include, make sure you bring some hot tea sweetened with honey. It's really such a delightful read because the reader is going to be surprised throughout the book. This is a really good time to take a break. Let's take a quick break and we will be right back.

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Jeff: Any beekeeper with a few years experience can come back and write how to get started in beekeeping. There are very few and far between books about the business of beekeeping. Even though, I shouldn't say even though, because I don't want it to sound negative. This information, regardless, you're sitting there with national hives and your units of measure, those are all applicable in theory to beekeepers everywhere in terms of what you're watching for and how you're managing bees. Am I correct in that assumption?

Paul: Yes, beekeeping's like a universal language, really, isn't it? The boxes might be different and the forage might be slightly different, but the practices and the methods we use can be universal and applied universally, I think. It really distills down to keeping your bees healthy, managing them well, and we talk about all aspects of that in the book, really.

Steve: The other thing is that I use Langstroth hives myself, Paul's on the smaller national, which is the common one here. I guess it's because I spent all that time in America talking to people and I ended up deciding that they had the right idea. No, the basic-- because we cover the basic principles and all sorts of things about queens and the importance of having good queens because so much can depend on how strong your colony is at the right time, can't it? All of these things are applicable to all beekeepers, really.

Jeff: I do have a question that may sound controversial. I don't mean it to be, but there's a big discussion in the last 12, 24 months about the condensation hive or closed hive, top ventilation, no top ventilation. Is that a discussion in the UK?

Paul: Yes.

Steve: Afraid so.

[laughter]

Paul: Definitely two camps there, even over here, yes.

Jeff: Okay, well, it's a universal debate.

Steve: I think what happens with many people when they get obsessed with their business or their hobby, they sometimes go off on-- tiny little details, get blown up that probably aren't as important as the basics. If you've got good, healthy bees, strong colonies, good weather, and good forage, you're making honey, aren't you? That's what's important. What box they're in is probably lower down the list. People have been successful beekeepers with wooden hives, polystyrene hives, plastic hives, insulation, no insulation.

It's interesting, but I don't think it's in the top three of most important things in beekeeping. I also think that when anyone says anything new or slightly different in beekeeping, all the media grab hold of it and write about it and talk about it because they're all desperate for content. Anyone who comes up with anything a bit controversial or a bit different, they get a lot of publicity in the short term. I don't think it's that big an issue, really, but there'll be those that disagree with me.

Becky: I think we have to ask, you mentioned the top three. Do you both have the same top three?

Paul: I don't know. What were your top three, Steve?

[laughter]

Steve: Uh-oh. For me, we talk about healthy bees, heavy hives, and for me, the healthy bees side of it is almost-- it's varroa mites are such a big thing. Everyone likes to talk about all the alternative nasties that can afflict our bees, but really the big killer still is varroa mites and associated viruses. Managing that, managing varroa and good queens. I'm obsessed with queens. I love making queens. I think that if you've got good queens, then your bees will be-- if you've selected the queens properly, hopefully, they grow strong and healthy at the right times.

I suppose, I don't know, I think record-keeping is probably quite important. I don't know if that's a top three. I need to be able to look back at previous seasons because sometimes you get strange weather conditions or something and you just think, "That reminds me, I've seen this before," and you can flick back and look. I think it's quite helpful.

Paul: You can learn to adapt a bit when you've got the data there and you can look back on it and reflect on it. You can adapt. I even stopped keeping bees on certain sites just because the data was showing they were not good sites, over several years. Top three, the health is number one, really. Varroa, for us, is everywhere, really, that it's reached, it's a killer, really, for bees.

I should have mentioned at the start of the podcast, I spent some years as a bee health inspector for our government. I would see no end, go out and inspect for certain diseases, European foulbrood, American foulbrood, things like that. I'd see no end of beekeepers that don't treat their bees for varroa. Quite proudly, they would be treatment-free and the bees were almost always suffering. They were never healthy or productive. It was sad to see, to be quite honest.

Forage is massive. I think that's up there for me, adequate forage and in abundance. Queens, yes, the queen's the heart of the colony, really. You need a good queen to produce a good colony, I think, to keep up with them.

Becky: I was really surprised to see how you depend upon genetics for swarm control more so than splitting. Your percentages that you reported, actual splitting hives, although it makes sense to get a great honey crop, it really did surprise me as I split everything. Just my eyes were wide and I was reading intently because you could share generally your numbers. I think that listeners might be a little bit surprised.

Paul: I tend to see maybe between 20% and 30% of colonies try and swarm or at least show initial signs of swarming, but much of that can be put off, much of that can be dissuaded by removing brood or simply adding extra supers, honey boxes. Then the actual amount that I have to take hard action to stop swarming by splitting is probably around 10% or 15%, which is, I was speaking to the queen breeder I use who's in Denmark actually, he says that 10% or 15% is actually quite high for him, but he uses bigger deeps rather than a small national hive.

A small hive that I use may be adding to a sort of slightly higher swarming instinct in some of my colonies, but I still have to go out there and do the regular inspections because even though it's only 10% or 15% or 30% that are thinking about it, you still have to go out and try and stop those. Some people say, "Why bother? Just leave them to it, just put boxes on and leave them." I feel like you've got to hold as many together as you can really. Other bee farmers in the UK do exactly as you do, they split preemptively, they go in and split the colonies early just to stop that swarming before it happens really.

Becky: Your numbers show that you can be extremely successful if you don't do that.

Paul: You've got to be out there all the time, you've got to be regular inspections, you've got to be on top of it. If you miss an inspection by a couple of days, it can all go, it can all fall off really. You've got to be really actively out there trying to stop them I think. That's what it feels like for me anyway.

Becky: Also, I think that it's not just the low numbers of splitting, but the reason that you can do that successfully is your other low number that you have in your operation, which is your winter kills or your winter deaths. It's a very low percentage.

Paul: That's quite consistent. We're usually around 5%, 6% winter losses, but I wholly put that down to the health of the colony. That's keeping on top of the varroa, making sure they've got adequate food stores and adequate pollen going into winter. We're quite lucky in the UK that we have an abundance of pollen all through the year almost, from March through to September, October. There's always something for the bees to forage on. I think that probably sets them up quite well for winter, especially if we can keep on top of varroa. The 5% or 10% losses is about normal for a commercial beekeeper over here, interestingly.

Steve: When we see data coming out of the States, it's quite shocking how high it is. I don't really know what the reasons are for it but it does seem a lot higher.

Paul: What do you guys put that down to, out of curiosity?

Becky: It is really hard in the US to keep mites out of your colonies. You're not just dependent upon your own mite management, but also that of your neighbors. Mitigation is constant and critical. There are times when honey crop is especially good that it's hard to get that treatment back. The colonies for commercial beekeepers might get to two Langstroth deeps. Some do a deep and a super, and I'm sure that some are out there doing singles. I do think that colony brood nest size is also something that's definitely makes it harder to control mites. The smaller your nest size, the easier it is to mitigate that reproduction.

Jeff: What's your primary course of treatment for varroa in the UK?

Paul: I'm quite rigorous. I treat three times a year. I treat in the spring with a thymol-based treatment, and then in the late summer with an Amitraz-based treatment, and then an oxalic acid in the winter months.

Jeff: That's a good question.

Paul: It's interesting saying about the larger brood nest or double brood nests as you talk about because I would say it's common in the UK to push the bees down to a single brood nest, and a small brood nest at that. The British National Hive is small, so that could be something, yes.

Becky: There are definitely papers that talk about brood nest, and so there's some peer-reviewed work out there. Also, that will show an early season is going to increase mite pressure just because the amount of brood being developed. That has something to do with it.

Paul: We're starting to see a bit of resistance to Amitraz over here, I think, which is becoming a bit of a concern. Certainly in my bees, I think it's not as effective as it used to be. That's becoming a worry for me.

Becky: Are you doing testing or?

Paul: Only on the drop. I've not done the shake at the counts, it's been obvious to me when I've been using Amitraz for maybe 10 years, and it always used to give such a good knockdown. These days, you still see varroa mites running around on the comb afterwards, which is, if you're seeing it on the comb, it's still high infestation, I think.

Jeff: Your beekeeping practice then is all on honey production or do you also do pollination?

Paul: Yes, we do quite a bit of pollination in the spring. Now, sort of late March, early April, and we pollinate. It's not even close to being on a scale that you guys do for almonds and things like that, but we pollinate cherries, apples, blueberries, and yes, orchards down in the south of England, down in Kent, which is about four or five-hour drive for me, which again, is not any distance at all compared to the miles you guys move to almonds. It's incredible.

Jeff: Still movement, so that's--

Paul: Yes, and it's guaranteed. It's a guaranteed income as well at the very start of the season, which is nice. It's a payment up front and yes, the rest of the year, if we go wrong, we still earn something.

Steve: Of course, for Paul, who's more northerly and so his bees are a little bit behind the ones in the south. When he takes them south for pollination, they're straight on to almost a different climate really, warmer weather and more forage. I think it probably benefits them to go to pollination.

Paul: The bees that go down there, they come back so much stronger than the similar-sized colonies that stayed at home. It's like traveling a few weeks further ahead in the season in the UK and they're going down to warmer weather and an abundance of pollen and nectar and it just brings them on so much quicker in the spring. It's a secondary bonus of doing it. They come back ready to go on other crops then.

Becky: I think it's interesting because if you're starting with pollination in the south, but you're getting them ready for pollination in the north and your queen production is in Denmark, how do your requeening logistics work? Are you doing it at a different time of year?

Paul: It happens late in the season for us actually. It happens late July, August time, which at that point, our season's coming to a close. We've still got the heather, which is in August, but I tend to bring my colonies home that need requeening and I requeen on a two-year basis. I have no colonies that are older than two seasons. The colonies that don't need requeening will go on up to the heather and then carry on production and the other ones will come home to be requeened. Luckily it works quite well.

Becky: That's also probably why you included some tips as far as easier requeening because it's a little bit more difficult to requeen later in the season.

Paul: I find it more difficult, not now, but sort of into April and May when they're naturally thinking of swarming. I find it more difficult to requeen then. I think they've got their own ideas then as well. They may be quicker to draw queen cells when there's a lack of a queen for a brief period. I've always found it easier later on somehow.

Becky: We're down to 30 minutes as far as their time when you take out the queen and put in a new one. We don't let them get any ideas.

Steve: That's one of the things I love about raising my own queens. See, I don't really rely on my honey business for my income. It's nice to get some money from honey. For me, making queens means I can just pull a laying queen out of a sort of mating. You can stick it into a hive and they normally accept them because they're laying. It's definitely an advantage to have your own queens, I think.

Becky: When you said they normally accept it, are you giving them a slow introduction in a cage?

Steve: I have done both. I've done with a cage, with a travel cage with a push-in cage and just drop them on a frame and see if the bees accept them. Well, nothing works perfectly anyway.

[laughter]

Steve: I found that the big colonies, it's always the big, ugly colonies that want to kill you. They're the ones where you want to change the queen and they never want to accept one. They kill her and make their own. I found push-in cages the best for the big colonies. That's something I learned off Mike Palmer, actually.

Becky: Inseminated queens, they recommend you gradually put them in a very nice, friendly way and introduce them slowly.

Steve: Lots of people who follow Brother Adam's teachings, they tell me that as long as the queen's reasonably mature, so maybe about 30, 35 days old or older and laying, she's matured and got all her pheromones and everything. Most colonies that are queenless would accept them because it's a laying queen, which is what they want. Obviously, some don't.

Becky: It's easier to do if you've got a few that you don't have to pay for as a backup versus $45 a pop.

[laughter]

Steve: Yes.

Paul: One problem we do have requeening in the autumn is, so I'll go into a colony, I'll take out the old queen, but often there'll be a supersedia virgin in the colony as well that can go unnoticed. Then they'll reject the new queen because they've happily got this virgin that's coming on, and that's quite common. It's quite frustrating as well when you go in to check on the new queen and she's dead, and then you spot this virgin running around. It's quite frustrating seeing the money, literally.

Becky: [laughs] There's my investment. Now, you'll both clip and mark queens, correct?

Steve: Yes, I definitely do. Yes.

Paul: I don't clip everything, not instinctually, but I do if they're getting to the point that I think that I'm pushing my luck, shall we

Steve: That's one of the things I was doing today with my son. We went to an apiary and we just went through all the colonies, and the ones which I thought I might have to requeen because the queen was old, they'd already changed her. It was just a case of marking and clipping a few. I quite like it when they do that, really.

Jeff: Your book is full of useful and practical information no matter where you are if you're a beekeeper and you're looking to expand your business or make it more of a business and less of a hobby. You might have touched on it, but I want to ask you both, just from your perspectives where you are in the UK, what is the biggest challenge to beekeeping as a business in the next three years, next five years?

Paul: It's the climate. I think it's the rapidly changing weather patterns that are certainly becoming an issue for us. Not necessarily for the bees. If anything, the bees are probably coming through winter stronger and bigger because the winters are milder, although wetter. It's really causing havoc with a lot of crops being grown. Winter sown crops have been washed out over winter and farmers are struggling to get on the land to drill spring sown crops.

We're seeing a lot of bare fields more often now as a result of massive lack of forage, agricultural forage. That's certainly an issue that I'm struggling with the last two or three years. It's been a problem. Very dry drought-like summers as well. The crops are struggling then even.

Steve: I've seen the change in climate and in my area it seems to actually be slightly beneficial, I'd say, a bit warmer. Where I live is wet anyway, really. It's England, isn't it? I think the warmer weather helps. Whenever I've had really big crops, it's always been in a heatwave. I think we've got clouds on the horizon with Asian hornets, which have just come into the south of the country and they've cropped up a little bit in the north. It might take two or three years. At some point, we'll have this new pest to deal with that basically eats honeybees for fun. There's that.

Another challenge for the bigger bee farmers is the price of honey and the competition from imported honey that's possibly not entirely pure. Do you call them supermarkets, the really big stores like Costco and Safeway? We call them supermarkets. They have massive great shelves of loads and loads of honey and hardly any of it comes from our country. It's quite disappointing really, but it would be nice if there was a bit more British honey on the supermarket shelves, but they can buy it cheaper from other countries. Customers seem to like it because it works for them, but for the bee farmers, it's a bit frustrating really.

Becky: That's definitely the same here. We've talked about a lot. Is there anything that we haven't discussed in beekeeping and or your book that you'd like to talk about that we haven't mentioned?

Steve: As I said, we tried to do a honey farming Manley update, but it's actually laid out in a-- it's got quite a large text. It's got summaries at the end of chapters. We've tried to make it friendly and easy to read. It's not exactly a huge book either. I know people who've been able to read it cover to cover in three or four hours, I think.

It's not like a huge text, but we've tried to cram a lot in there. There's some good stuff on forage, but that would probably mostly apply to our country. Lots of good photographs of forage and Paul's experience there of what kind of crop you might get and what the honey tastes like and that thing. Then there's the disease side of it because he was a bee inspector. We've tried to not just give cold, boring facts about disease, but personal experiences because, again, Paul's inspected colonies that have foulbrood and have these diseases.

There's quite a good story in there about how when he took over his father's business, they actually found European foulbrood in there. That was a bit of a difficult few years. Also, marketing because lots of bee books, they don't really tell you what to do once you've made all this honey. It's quite important that how to process honey and store it and sell it. We cover that too.

Jeff: Be careful what you wish for, right? I have all these kilos of honey. What am I going to do with it?

Becky: I'll say, Steve, a lot of the flowers that are discussed in your book, I think most of them are significant bee forage here. It does overlap quite well.

Steve: Ah, that's interesting.

Paul: I think I'm really proud we've created a book, I think, that's quite a modern take on beekeeping today. Everyone that's read it is saying how easy it is to read. I think that's down to Steve's writing style. He's done us really proud. It's a really enjoyable read and easy to read. Yes, I think we've covered pretty much everything.

Jeff: It's definitely enjoyable. I really encourage all of our listeners to get  Healthy bees, Heavy Hives and add it to your bee library. Valuable information on there about expanding your business and about just keeping your bees healthy. Gentlemen, thank you for joining us today.

Becky: Thanks, everyone.

Paul: Thank you.

Steve: Thanks.

[music]

Jeff: Wow. I'm glad those two stayed up late for us here in the States. It was late where they were for our recording time.

Becky: It was. It was late and it's during bee season for sure. Hey, did I come off a little excited about the book?

Jeff: Not at all, Becky. I was going to send you an email saying, "Geez." Oh, absolutely, and rightly so. It's a great book. It's not just about how to keep bees. It's talking about how to manage your bees as part of the business. That's the novel approach to this book. That's why it doesn't matter that it was written by two knowledgeable guys from the UK and why it is an important book for beekeepers around the world.

Becky: I think of all the books I've read on beekeeping, this one really makes me appreciate everything they put into it because it's not just the two of them writing it, but I think that they mentioned in there, it is also Paul's father's wisdom is in this book. It's a generational beekeeping family. You heard them, they're very generous. They wanted to be open about what is making them successful and what their challenges are. We were lucky to be able to talk to them.

Jeff: What a novel concept, openness. Just real briefly, but we were talking to them after we stopped recording and you mentioned some of the additional work that was in the pest and pesticides or pests area. Let's talk real briefly. What was the borage?

Becky: Oh, so it's when the bees forage on borage, it's obviously great for nectar, but it came up in their flow chart as something to look for as a problem in the hive. They got this ingenious flow chart that I've never seen before to guide a beekeeper through inspections, but it came up because of the fact that the actual flower will tear the wings of the bees. I didn't know that.

Jeff: The beekeepers, when Paul was an inspector, were complaining about the bees being okay, but their wings are all torn up. He says, "It's probably because you have borage nearby." I never heard of that. That's something to look for.

Becky: It also, it's just so interesting to look on a flow chart right in the same neighborhood of signs of European foulbrood. Another thing to look for is a sign of a, not a problem maybe, but something that's happening to the bees in order to understand it now that it's forage-related.

Jeff: That's borage, not forage. Did you say forage?

Becky: I said it's forage related, which is borage, borage, the forage word. [laughs]

Jeff: Is that with an F or was that with a B, Becky?

Becky: It's both actually.

Jeff: Borage, forage.

Becky: It's borage forage-related. I think that's really interesting. I get really excited when I can look into something and just page after page, I learn something new. That's what this book was for me. Pretty exciting.

Jeff: Yes. That's a great book. folks, check it out.  Healthy Bees, Heavy Hives: How to Maximize Your Honey Crop by Steve Donohoe and Paul Horton. 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.

[00:51:03] [END OF AUDIO]