Seaweeds and Honey Bees with Dara Scott (294)

294 - Seaweeds and Honey Bees with Dara Scott

Frederick Dunn: Hello and welcome. I'm Frederick Dunn of The Way To Bee in the state of Pennsylvania. I want to welcome you to the Beekeeping Today Podcast with Jeff and Becky.

[music]

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

Becky Masterman: I'm Becky Masterman.

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Jeff: Hey. Quick shout-out to all of our sponsors whose support allows us to bring you this podcast each week without resorting to a fee-based subscription. We don't want that, and we know you don't either. Be sure to check out all of our content on the website. There you can read up on all of our guests, read our blog on the various aspects and observations about beekeeping, search for download, and listen to over 250 past episodes.

Read episode transcripts. Leave comments and feedback on each episode, and check on podcast specials from our sponsors. You can find it all at www.beekeepingtodaypodcast.com Hey, thanks a lot. Folks, you might have recognized that voice, that was Fred Dunn from YouTube. Fred will be on the show in a few weeks. You'll find out more about his YouTube channel, but he's a great instructor on YouTube. Thanks, Fred, for that opening.

Becky: Friend of the podcast. We really appreciate it, Fred.

Jeff: Yes, we do. Becky, it's been quite the summer, quite the fall. I know this time of year everyone's should be thinking about getting their bees for the winter, getting those winter bees built up. That's actually something we never talked about, winter bees. That's an interesting topic in and of itself. Besides Varroa, winter bees, what about selling honey? Do you sell your honey?

Becky: I think the word right now is that I'm hoarding wax and honey, so I do. I have sold. I've actually donated my honey often to the Minnesota Honey Producers because we sell something called habitat honey at the state fair. I've shared a fair amount of my honey with them. This year, I have just a record-breaking harvest. I have a lot more work to invest in my label and my product. I do have a honey that I've sold at the fair personally, also, along with the honey I've donated. Now I'm focused on what I have to do instead of our guest coming up. Thanks a lot, Jeff. Are you selling your honey? Let's talk about what you're doing, because you're just making me anxious.

Jeff: When I first got started with bees in Ohio, I'd sell my honey a lot. I'd sell it at farm markets and down the road. Just couple houses down, there was a farmer who had a corn stand. He was real famous for his sweet corn stand. I'd sell cases of honey there. It's just a natural market. There's other places around town that I would go around with my truck and have cases of honey with my own label. I would sell them a case, either at the wholesale price or I'd make deals with them to either sell it outright or they'd sell it for me. It'd depend on the person.

Farm stand owners are as varied as beekeepers, so everyone had their own little way how to negotiate the deal. It was fun. It was a learning experience. In Colorado, I was fat, dumb, and happy. I took my supers to Al Summers, who lived just south of me in Loveland, Colorado. He extracted them, and for the price of whatever the uncappings and the wax, he would bucket it for me.

Then I'd pick it up the next several days later and take my 5-gallon buckets of honey over to Madhava Honey and drop it off, and they would pay me for those buckets of honey. That was the best way to do it because I didn't have to invest in extracting equipment. Here I do extract. I work with my friend, Paul, who's been on the show. We've set up a nice honey house, and I sell the honey here locally. Yes, I sell it. Don't ask me about wax, because I do not sell wax. I have buckets of it myself.

Becky: There's a wax hoarding problem amongst beekeepers, I think.

Jeff: I will tell you at the risk of boring our listeners. When you said you're a honey hoarder, my mind instantly flashed back to when I was a paramedic and we'd go into these houses where people were actual hoarders. Actually there's a path through the living room to find wherever the person was. I was just imagining your house having these buckets and barrels of honey just stacked in the living room that you have to weave your way through. That's not you, is it?

Becky: Jeff, they're in the dining room. There are so many buckets of honey right now in my house, I'm going to have to sell it by the bucket at this point. I had a goal of making more honey. It turns out, it's seen its fruition. I have a serious storage issue in the house that I live in right now. They're in buckets, at least, but yes, I'm not going to be entertaining in my dining room anytime soon.

Jeff: Oh my gosh. Well, I will just tell you, sell it or bottle it and sell it before it crystallizes. I don't know how the honey there, how quickly it crystallizes. 5-gallon buckets of crystallized honey are not fun.

Becky: I can warm them up. I got that covered. Oh, boy.

Jeff: They don't fit, you have them very well.

[laughter]

Becky, we have a great guest coming up today. He's been on the show before. Dara Scott of HiveAlive up front. He is a sponsor of the show for a couple months. That's important for us. He brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the product and to beekeepers.

Becky: Jeff, I love the fact that the sponsors of this podcast have the great beekeeping history, great beekeeping stories, and they've invested their heart and souls into making beekeeping better for our industry.

Jeff: That's what makes it fun having them as sponsors.

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Jeff: While you're at the Strong Microbials site, make sure you click on and subscribe to the Hive, the regular newsletter full of interesting beekeeping facts and product updates. Hey, everybody, welcome back. Sitting across this big virtual Beekeeping Today Podcast table stretching all the way over to Ireland is Dara Scott of HiveAlive. Dara, welcome to the show. I'm so happy to see you there, and I'm glad to see the sun is still shining in the afternoon.

Dara Scott: It's a pleasure to be on your show. I've got some sun shining. It doesn't happen very often, but it does pop out every once in a while.

Jeff: We could probably compare notes about quality of sunshine between the Pacific Northwest here in the States and Ireland.

Dara: Yes, definitely more than the Pacific Northwest. I'm sorry, you guys definitely get more than we do.

Jeff: I will grant you that.

Becky: You both know it's easier to keep bees where the sun shines a lot, right?

Dara: Yes.

Becky: I don't want to bring it up. I don't want to bring up a sore spot.

Jeff: I think Dara and I both like challenges. I'm just saying.

Becky: I think it probably means you're better beekeepers than I am. There you go. Anyway, so nice to meet you, Dara. Pleasure to have you here.

Dara: Pleasure.

Jeff: Dara, you are the CEO and founder of HiveAlive. You are a sponsor for Beekeeping Today Podcast, and you have been in the past. We wanted to bring you on to talk about both, not only HiveAlive, but also you have a really good and different, and expansive background in beekeeping. For our listeners who don't know you and haven't heard the other episode, let's talk a little bit about how you got started with bees, a little bit about your background, and then we'll delve into what you like about beekeeping before we do anything else.

Dara: It's nearly 25 years now. I was in New Zealand. I was traveling around New Zealand, and I saw hives everywhere. There's beekeeping in Ireland, but you just don't see it. They're hidden around behind bushes and trees. I think people are afraid they're going to steal them or something. You just don't see it. In New Zealand, you see them everywhere. It's quite obvious. I decided to come home. When I got home, I decided to take up beekeeping. That was nearly 25 years ago. I worked with a beekeeper for a summer and got a cast swarm.

I still have the same stock from that cast swarm 25 years later. I know it's obviously mixed in stuff, but I'm still working off the same hives. That was the start of it. Around the same time, I ended up working for Woods Hole, the oceanographic institute, as well. I spent 10 years with them. I was coming back and forth and doing bees in the middle of it and stuff like that as well. It was a bit of a challenge too.

Becky: I want to make sure the listeners know what you did and who you are aside from beekeeping, because that's pretty darn interesting as far as what you're bringing to the table. Could you tell us about your non-beekeeping history?

Dara: Before New Zealand, I used to work for a metal company, used to do R&D and stuff like that. Then when traveling, as you travel in Asia for a while, then traveling to New Zealand for a while. Then I got a job, very lucky to get a job working with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, which are one of the biggest marine research bodies in the world. They're based in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Was part of a team that ran the deepest robot in the world, certainly the deepest active robot at the time of the world doing science. We would work different locations.

We'd go out for a month at a time. Because of the deepest robot, they tend to use it where it could be used most effectively, which is the Pacific Ocean, which is a deeper ocean. A good few, if not all the Pacific guys, but most of the ones you've heard of go out, meet the boat, get set up, and then do research. For scientists, we were a tool for scientists. We would do different things from working on hydrothermal vents where there's these sulfur seeps out at 300 degrees. Sulfur seeps where there's a whole ecosystem living off these these giant chimies in the middle of nowhere.

You could be gone on the sea floor bottom for hours and see nothing. All of a sudden, there's a seep and there's so much life in one spot. This is 2,000, 3,000 meters below the surface, are working on plugging in different underground deep sea water stations, science stations, or working with-- We were the first to film an underwater earthquake actually. That was cool. We filmed that. Just lots of different things.

Becky: Very different than bees flying for flowers. [chuckles]

Dara: Yes, it was certainly different.

Jeff: There were some news early this summer about they're finding new life and the chemical processes in organisms at those vents.

Dara: They're considered the only or one of the very few forms of life that isn't based off photosynthesis because they live exclusively off the sulfur or off the chemicals and stuff that come out of the sulfur as well, not just the sulfur, I think. They're unique. It's a theory that they could survive without the sun.

Jeff: And the pressures.

Dara: Yes, huge, huge pressures. Huge, huge. We used to have these balls. There were these big glass balls. They're, I don't know, 2 or 3 inches thick, hollow inside, but 2 or 3 inches thick and maybe a foot and a half high. We'd have different instruments in those and you put them down, you'd seal them up and all the stuff and put them down. Every once in a while, one of them would fail.

The ball is only a foot and a half in diameter. One of them failed. There was a huge amount of aluminum structure all around it, blah, blah, blah. The whole thing just went [mimics explosion], just totally imploded. Totally distorted. A piece of aluminum that were 2, 3 inches thick, the power, the force of it when it implodes and things go wrong. It's pretty severe.

Jeff: Disasters in a bee yard pales in comparison.

[laughter]

Dara: You generally recover from those, so that's okay.

Becky: Maybe that's why you're calm and collected and you're managing what's known to be a defensive bee, right? Apis mellifera mellifera?

Dara: Yes. She's not as friendly as the other ones are. My bees aren't too bad. I would consider them fine. I've definitely worked in other parts of the world with bees that are super quiet and really easy to work with. There are some that are very aggressive. Generally they end up being hybrids when they get cross-bred with Buckfast, something like that, and then they can get quite cross. I found over the years that mine have gotten quieter and quieter. I think a big thing about the bees here is that they just weren't farmed and selectively bred the way they were in other countries.

You can quite quickly change their temperament by selectively breeding them. Also we have weather. I think if you brought our bees over to somewhere sunny in the US, they'd be a lot quieter. On really nice days, you can do anything with them. Once or twice every two or three years, I get a chance to do anything with them. They're all crossed, but you have to be careful with them. You can't spend a long time with them or you have to know what you're doing.

Jeff: What's the difference between the Apis mellifera mellifera and the Apis mellifera, Carniola? What is the difference?

Dara: They're darker. They're a dark color, a little bit smaller. The ones in Ireland, I suppose in general Apis mellifera don't make as big colonies as the others really, certainly the ones used commercially. Other side of that, it's quite handy for us in Ireland because they're more frugal with their stores, which means you're not feeding them the whole time. That takes a bit of pressure off. They will fly in wetter and windier weather for obvious reasons, especially as most-- They're more prone to chalkbrood than other strains. That's all I can think of, really, that makes them very different. They are quite dark. They're black, really. They're a bit smaller, maybe a bit smaller.

Becky: I believe that some of the first bees brought to the United States, and somebody's going to correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that it was Apis mellifera mellifera that changed over time.

Jeff: Is that the German black bee?

Becky: Yes.

Dara: Germany would have been all Apis mellifera mellifera. It's not anymore. They're all gone from Germany. Most of Europe, they're bred out. Didn't Seeley do work in the US, some of the forests, and found in wild colonies, there's still as fairly pure AMM in the US, which is mad, you think about it, because they're surrounded by-- Everything else is not AMM, and consistently bringing in new non-AMM stock. Yet they're still fairly pure. One other thing, I remember seeing a study I think some Polish guys did, where the AMM-- Because it goes out in worse weather and something about it flies lower or something that they reckon the queens and the drones don't intermingle as much.

Becky: Oh, interesting.

Dara: The drones or the queens from other species, particularly I suppose that the drones from other species don't intermingle with the queens of AMM. That is part of the reason why the strain is able to keep its health together.

Jeff: That is wild.

Becky: I also believe there are, and you, I'm sure you know more about this, but there are efforts to bring that back in Europe. Isn't there an effort in France?

Dara: Oh yes, and Ireland. I'm actively involved in NIHBS, the Native Irish Honey Bee Societies. That's a group that's trying to keep what we have. We've done a lot of genetic work to show that not only do we have a really good population of AMM, one of the last in Europe that's sustainable, but also that we have a unique ecotype of that AMM that shows that it has adapted, it has changed, probably because of the environment, the rain, the wind. It's different from other AMMs around Europe. Not only that, but I remember doing a work with Varroa before we were doing stuff, and we were trying to collect Veroa samples from random beekeepers.

There was a beekeeper who, older guy, he kept bees all his life. All he knew was AMM. We went to the second hive. The second hive was, whoa, this hive was super aggressive. He was back, I don't know, 30 yards away, watching. All of a sudden I saw him drop. I was like, oh my God, what happened? Because basically that colony had been cross-bed with Buckfast. Someone decided to get Buckfast bees, had them around the corner, they intermingled. He didn't know what was going on. His bees got super aggressive and he got stung badly.

He collapsed. They had to take him off to hospital. He was fine. I think it just hit, was it the artery going up to the brain or something. It did something funky like that. He was fine. It was like, work with them, they get super aggressive. Someone could get awfully hurt. I just don't like the idea of, A, once you compromise a strain, it's compromised forever. You can't take it out again. B, the aggressiveness is going to get somebody hurt. Plus, the only way that, generally, they keep other strains alive in Europe, or in Ireland is by bringing in new stock. If we keep bringing new stock, we're going to bring in new diseases. I don't really want that either.

Jeff: We get so focused on the bees in the States here. Obviously, that's where we're located. The honey bees are so important, and beekeepers are just as passionate about their bees all around the world. That's really the uniting thing about beekeeping, I think. You do some unique things in your own personal beekeeping, too, don't you? Do you keep standard Langstroth hives? Are you using Warre hives? What type of equipment are you using, and what's your management style?

Dara: In Ireland and the UK, use a high called national hive. It's smaller than what you guys use because the colonies don't get as big because the weather is generally isn't as good. I use polystyrene hives, poly hives. I just find that the bees do so much better in poly hives. They overwinter better, they build out the spring better. They're able to expand quicker because they don't have to worry so much about getting cold. I use poly hives. I do a bunch of unusual or quirky things that just work for me. Years ago I read a book called The Rose Hive Method by a guy called Tim Rowe.

It's about having the same size box for all your beekeeping. Allows you some lovely things like, for instance, in the springtime, you might have two boxes. Instead of adding a box on top, you would add a box in the middle between two boxes which then drives then the bees to fill up that space in-between which I was going to expand up all that quicker. I got sick of looking for brood frames or super frames and I had the opposite. I would argue about established beekeeping this stage, so I had a bunch of stuff. I ended up doing this, deciding not going--

This rose hive was a mix between a super size and a brood box size, halfway between the two. I didn't have any. I had a bunch of supers and I had a bunch of brood boxes, so I ended up just cutting my brood boxes the size of the super and cutting the frames. Now they're gone a long time, those brood boxes. Now all I work with the supers. I overwinter with two supers instead of a brood box and it's brilliant. I wouldn't change it for the world. I don't have any heavy boxes. I'm totally flexible what I can do. I always have the same frame.

The other beauty of it is I don't have to use any foundation. I just use strips. I haven't bought foundation in years. I just use strips and it means I can play around. It means I can extract all the honey without any hassles because if you use a bigger frame than a super, and if you're just using strips a lot of time, the frame, that's really broken up really easy. Whereas if you use a super size, it's great.

It probably isn't the most efficient way of keeping bees. They like a bigger brood, bigger frame for sure. What I did initially, they were like-- you could see them, they're a bit slower to go up onto the second super, stuff like that, when they were in the brood. After a while, they get the knack of it and they're fine. They just go up and down supers no problem. It just works out so handy. I save so much time just even in-- I can't remember in the States. You guys use sheets of foundation, right? To put in-

Jeff: Typically.

Dara: -in the frames.

Becky: A lot of bee keepers do.

Dara: It's so slow. Never mind the compliment. It's so slow. Whereas I'll come around, any old frames I have, I just cut it right back to where the strip is, dump it out, put it back in-between other frames and off I go again. It's just making up frames takes a couple of seconds and they're frames for life, because in time they get messy, I just cut them back to the strip and they're good to go.

Becky: I'm just wondering about one of the reasons we use foundation here is because it decreases the amount of drone brood that the bees produce which then decreases the mite population opportunities. Are your bees only rearing drones in a short period so it doesn't matter, or are you just really good at managing Varroa?

Dara: No, I have a lot of drone. I have a fair bit of drone brood. I find that certain times of the year when I put in the foundation, I'll try and push them harder before they start making drones in the spring, stuff like that. Now is a great time to build up because they've stopped making drones. They have no interest in making drones now. I actually like having a bunch of drones in my colony. The colony just seems happier. That's very intuitive now. Not very science at all.

I feel the colony is happier when they have a lot of drones. [chuckles] That's real, I don't know what you want to call that, but not generally the way I work. It seems to work okay. As for Varroa levels, I don't have a problem with Varroa levels. See, I have the advantage that I'm generally working towards making up nucs instead of honey. I will basically start with new queens in the spring every year, I'll make new queens spring every year. There will be a long brood break. Then what I'll do in the wintertime, just before Christmas, I will do an oxalic acid. I'll reheat it up, heat up the oxalic acid.

Becky: The vaporization.

Dara: Yes. Sorry, I couldn't remember because there's a fogger and I didn't want to say the wrong thing. I'll do that. I don't have an issue with Varroa. They used to be years-- but also, I cut out a lot of colonies. I'm quite happy if a colony dies of Varroa because I don't want it. It's no good to me. I did that fairly harsh, I don't know, five-plus years ago. Also, I think Varroa isn't as big a deal in Ireland as it used to be. You don't hear as many colonies dying out of Varroa as they used to. It's still around but it just doesn't seem to be as destructive as it was.

Jeff: Oh, that's nice. Describe what you mean by when you set up your frames, you use a strip. What is that strip? Is it a strip of foundation across the top of the frame?

Dara: I used to use foundation. It gets messy. It's much better off a piece of wood, a thin piece of wood. A really thin piece of wood. I put it in the gap. A thin piece of wood. Then there's tap that in with a nail gun. I also put a thin piece of wood through the gap that you would slide the foundation through at the bottom of the frame, because if you don't have that, you might get-- it's a great spot for wax moss to hide in. The bees can't get at them, plus it means they're much quicker. Sometimes if I don't do that, they'll join the wax down at an angle to meet one of the bars as opposed to dead center. If you have a little strip of top, strip at the bottom, you're talking about six pins of the nail gun and it's in there for life.

Jeff: Do you extract your honey?

Dara: Yes. I have a basket extractor.

Jeff: It holds up fine. Interesting.

Becky: Do you put beeswax on those strips?

Dara: No.

Becky: You don't and they don't-- okay.

Dara: No, you don't have to because if you put that frame in-between two drawn-out frames, you always put them in-between drawn-out frames, and if you put them in there, that's the only place they're going to build and they'll have no problem. It's like you take off the cover board or some of that and you have that [unintelligible 00:25:50] in there. They have no problem making strips all over the whole inner side of the cover board. They don't need it.

Jeff: We could talk all episode about the beekeeping in Ireland because I find it really fascinating in what you're doing, and your techniques. I also want to hear about what you're doing currently with HiveAlive, your current product company. Let's take a quick break and we'll be right back. Then let's talk about what you're doing, what brought you to HiveAlive.

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Becky: Welcome back everybody. Behind the scenes, we have this amazing conversation going on right now about how Dara winters multiple queens and runs multiple queens in a stack. We're not going to talk about that right now because we've decided that it's so interesting and there's so much content that we're going to do another episode soon and he's going to share this information with us. Right now, we have to talk about why HiveAlive? How did this get started?

Because this is a worldwide supplement company and it is using nutritional supplements for bees supported by research and showing that bees are healthier with your products. That sounded like an infomercial but it's not. It's the fact that you are actually going out there and testing with different research groups and showing that what you have decided to invest in, is actually supporting honeybee health. That's a long intro, but go ahead. Why HiveAlive? Could you start at the beginning and then we'll talk about where you are right now.

Dara: Thank you for the intro.

[laughter]

Becky: The long intro

[laughter]

Dara: It's just over 10 years now that HiveAlive was launched. The thinking and the reason set up was, at the time, Nosema ceranae was newly discovered and I was very conscious about that we need to have something better than an antibiotic for Nosema ceranae. That was the beginnings of what was was set up, was designed to be around that. For those that don't know, HiveAlive, the original is is a liquid supplement that's fed to bees. It's based on, its seaweed extracts. Not just seaweed, but extracts pulled out of seaweed that are antifungal, antiviral.

Less so antiviral, but antifungal, antibacterial. It also has thymol in there, which is also antifungal, and has lemongrass in there as well which mainly is there as an attractant. The right amount. Not too much lemongrass where you get robin and stuff. Launched 10 years ago. It's now the number one feed supplement in the world. We're in, I think it's nearly 50 countries now. It's only actually in the last couple years we've had any budget to advertise. The reason it's done so well is basically beekeepers telling other beekeepers this actually works, this works really good and you should try it. That's allowed us to expand and to grow, which is fantastic.

Since we've launched that, we've then expanded out into a couple other products. We launched a fondant, which is super easy to use in the winter time. It's a fondant that has HiveAlive and some other vitamins in there as well. Basically you're getting the HiveAlive to the bees. Not only that, it's because it's wrapped in a plastic packaging and you just open the hole in the bottom of it, it's there for the bees to access when they need it. There's a famous line that bees are looking up at it as opposed to looking for it. One of the biggest reasons you get colony losses over the winter time, not just in the States but around the world, is starvation, bee starve.

They might have food in their colony, but it's not right where they need it to be. It's too cold for them to leave their cluster and they starve. Particularly as you get later on in the winter time, as the food that's close around them is gone and taken up, there's a greater chance of that happening all the time. By having that fondant on top of the bees, the bees are looking up at it, it basically means that the bees won't starve to death. The beauty of it then is, of course, as well, is that you can just lift up the roof without having to stir up the colony. See if they've taken the food down. If they need more, you can replace it, and you're not upsetting the colony in the process.

Becky: Just in preparation to have this conversation, I realized that I don't know what seaweed is because seaweed is something that we've heard about. I remember seeing it on a survivalist documentary show where people are actually eating it. It was praised for all of the nutrients in it. I want to take a quick step back and just ask the question, why seaweed? I think we left some beekeepers there, and I want to make sure they understand the importance of seaweed and nutrients.

Dara: Seaweed isn't the normal thing you would be feeding your bees. Seaweeds throughout time have been used as food and as medicines. I was researching it after we had developed HiveAlive. It's all over the world. Pacific islands, South America, they've all used them as medicines in particular. Seaweeds are very high in actives. Like I mentioned earlier, there's antifungal, antibacterial, different properties. There's also a theory that because land-based, say, parasites or pathogens have never dealt with seaweeds and stuff like that, that they're more effective.

Seaweeds, over the last, I suppose, about 15 years now, seaweeds have gotten really popular in animal feeds as nutritional supplements because in particular, because people know better how to pull out the extracts and the active extracts out of the seaweeds. That means that these are used particularly in high-end animals where the value, because seaweeds are expensive enough to produce like horses horse racing, show jumping, stuff like that, but also in animals from pigs to dairy to beef.

They even feed the seaweeds to things like shrimp. They add it to the feed even though certain shrimp would never eat seaweed, or fish that would never eat seaweed, because the nutrients and the actives in there. They'll feed certain seaweeds for certain pathogens in certain animals. I was very lucky in the beginning to partner up with some of the top people in the world, because Ireland is pretty much forefront in that space. Of course, we've got a lot of seaweed, so we're like, what do we do with all the seaweed?

[laughter]

There's a lot of money spent developing the science around this in the very beginning. Basically, I started working at the very beginning of this, it was like, how do we get this to work for bees? Fortunately, we did. We figured it out.

Becky: I also know there's a beekeeper out there who's like, you know what? I live near the ocean. I can just grab some seaweed and put it on my colony and use that as a supplement. We've all heard it before. We've all thought it maybe it's different than doing that, correct? It's not just grabbing something from the ocean and putting it on, because you're doing a lot of testing.

Dara: It's a blend of different seaweeds. Not just that we pull the extracts out of the seaweed so they wouldn't be concentrated, just feeding it. I have since seen bees eat seaweed or at least lick seaweed, and often licking the salt off it, or what they are, but I've seen them working off seaweed down the beach since. This is a patented process actually, for pulling these these extracts out of the seaweed. No, it'd be a trending example of, I don't know, trying to getting vitamin A and eating lots of-- I suppose carrots are good for it, but I don't know if you need a high dose of vitamin A or something like that.

Jeff: I can just imagine someone laying strips of seaweed across the top bars of their colony.

Becky: I know somebody's done it out there.

[laughter]

Jeff: We know. We've been emailed. The people have done it before.

Becky: Okay. [laughs]

Jeff: I'd have to think it stink, but I don't know, rotting seaweed does not smell well, but that's not what you're doing, obviously, is what you said.

Dara: No. Definitely not.

Jeff: You have your original product and you just talked about the fondant. What else do you have that's based on these extracts.

Dara: Last year we launched patties. We have patties that are made with-- Global Patties make them for us. We add in HiveAlive to it and we add in actually some more seaweed extracts into that to make them nutritional better than the standard patty and the full dose of HiveAlive. First year was tough to people again to try something different, and patties only last for six months, which is a pain.

That first year was tough. This year they've flown out the door. We actually ran out. We're only back in stock again now. We have new things that we've launched as well or we're just launching. Over the summer just launched the HiveAlive Hive Tool that's gotten very popular. People love that. It's a hive tool. It's a hook-style hive tool, but some unique features in that. A, the colors we have, some very bright colors. We worked on colors that the golfing industry uses so you can find balls in the grass.

[laughter]

We worked with those colors.

Becky: That's so smart.

Dara: It's also super thick hive tool. It's super strong. I basically took what hive tools are out there and made it how I would like it to work really well, a nice, long, bevel, and super sharp. The hook is the right shape. There's a serrations on the hook so that you can lever your frames up and your hook is the right shape and there's a serrations on the hook so that you can lever your frames up and your hook doesn't slide down into the frame while you're trying to do it, stuff like that. That was launched, that's gotten very popular. What I'm very excited about now is our HiveAlive EZ Feed Super Syrup.

his is quite different. It's going to be available at the end of August. Basically what it is is it's pouches of syrup. The idea being it's making feeding very, very simple. It's a 2-pound pouch of syrup that the pouch is flat on the bottom and domed on the top. You put it down on top of your cover board or directly on the frames you want to, but it's easier to put down on top of the cover board. You do five little pinholes in the top of the Ziploc. You probably put a Ziploc bag feeding stuff like that. This is just refined again.

Put some holes into the top of the bag and the bees come up and feed it. You don't have to have a feeder. You don't have to mix up your syrup. You don't have to measure out your HiveAlive to put into it. You don't have a mess to clean up afterwards. The bags are recyclable. You can throw them in the recycling bin. It just means that you always have syrup ready to go when you need it. I think that's going to be really popular. You can put on multiple bags on to the cover board at the same time if you want to. Just super handy. No mess. Very, very simple and easy to use.

Jeff: I always complain about being a time crunched beekeeper and always looking for ways to do as much work, but in less amount of time. Boy, that sounds appealing to me. It would be a lot easier to feed the bees that way than spend the time mixing up the syrup and putting it in a feeder and setting the feeder.

Dara: Mixing up syrup's a pain. Really.

[laughter]

Like I said, the HiveAlive's-- The syrup is special as well. It's inverted syrup that has a really good ratio of fructose and glucose. As close as you're going to get to nectar as you can. There's no high fructose corn syrup and that in it. It's as far as I can see is as good as you're going to get syrup-wise as well. Better than you would get at home because a couple reasons. One is when you heat up sugar syrup-- I'm blanking, what is a HCF? HMF, sorry. I'm blanking for a second there. When you heat it up, you create this toxin for bees.

In Europe there's a standard where you can't have it over a certain amount. Corn syrup has a much higher chance of building up this toxin as well. When you make up your syrup at home, you don't know, you could be heating up for longer. You get three options. You hit it just right and get the right mix of fructose and glucose in there, or you don't heat up for long enough and you only have sucrose, so it's harder for the bees to digest.

The worst option is the third option, where basically you heat it for too long and you start creating HMF as well. If you have a small amount in there, if you leave syrups stored for a while, particularly the corn syrup as well you got stored for a while, that will build up as well and quite quickly and get numbers that can get toxic for bees. Not like the bees are all going to die, which is not good for them. They can all die, but that's very unlikely.

Becky: Just for context, because we do have some-- some of our listeners have just started their beekeeping journey this year. When we talk about feeding and when we talk about supplements, it is something that we do for our bees because we are managing them as livestock. When we're talking about feeding, for example, in the fall, we want to give them as thick a syrup as possible.

If we're doing just the standard, is you do a two to one sugar, and that's not heated, it's pretty much the most that they can hold in solution, the bees do have to work really hard to convert that to a stored honey product. That's not really honey because it's sugar. What you're saying is that the product that you're selling has already done a lot of that work of conversion of the sugars for the bees so that they don't have to work as hard as if they're getting something that we're just using granulated sugar.

Dara: To make two to one, you do have to heat it. I've never heard of it being done without it being heated. I'm pretty sure. I've always heated it anyway. If it's one to one, you don't have to heat.

Becky: I don't know if it's Minnesota water.

[laughter]

I use warm water, but not heated at all.

Dara: The pH of the water will change that around as well. In general, for two to one, you generally heat it up. That's where you have the issue of the HMF. By heating it up, you are breaking it down into fructose and glucose to some extent. The question is how much have you broken it down or have you overdone it or have you undercooked it, basically, or overcooked it.

Jeff: It's a good feed for fall and spring?

Dara: Yes, it's two to one. I know a lot of beekeepers would use one to one in the spring, but it'll work just fine for nectar simulation in the spring as well. Two to one is more efficient then for the fall, for them taking down and actually getting food to them quick.

Jeff: Really appealing, actually.

Dara: We have one other little thing coming along as well. It's just only a small, little thing. We call it a fondant tool. It's a little plastic. How to describe this? It's a circular plastic that has little spikes on one end and serrated side on the other end of this circular disk. The idea being for our bags of fondant, that some cases the bags will collapse. Some people seem to happen more than others. I don't know what it is or what the pattern is, or we can't figure it out. People sometimes put little sticks in to hold the fondant bag up.

One side of the tool, you push it into the bag and twist, and that cuts your hole for your bag. Then the other side, you flip it over and it's spikes on the side, you push it in and it holds the bag up with a little hole. It's hollow so they can go up through it and there's also a little bump on it. If you don't have a hole for them to work up-- I'm explaining this really badly now. Basically it supports the bag up and they can come up through the bag nice and easy and the bag won't collapse. Not as impactful as the EZ Feed Syrup, but something to help beekeepers.

Jeff: It's really fun to hear that you're working with companies who are also our sponsors. You're working with Global Patties. I see on your website you're working with BeeSmart Design and that little trivet that they have. It's fun to see that the industry does work together to help beekeepers keep their bees healthy and going throughout the season.

Dara: Definitely. It's great to be working with quality people like the people you just mentioned. We're lucky to be able to work with them.

Jeff: We could go on. In fact, Becky has said that we will have you back to talk about-

Becky: We are going to go on.

Jeff: -your wintering or how you work with your queens. Folks, stay tuned for that. Dara, is there anything that we haven't talked about that you really want to talk about?

Dara: No, I think that's it. We can definitely talk about bees all day. There's no doubt about that.

Becky: Now is the time we're actively getting our bees ready for winter. It's good to have you join us and share what HiveAlive is doing for winter prep.

Dara: It's great chatting with you guys.

[music]

Jeff: It's really interesting how beekeepers can just bring all of their life experiences into beekeeping and make something of it. We've had many guests on the show who've done that, and Dara is no different, and exciting. Woods Hole Institute knowledge, bottom of the ocean. That's really cool.

Becky: It's very cool. He mentioned Woods Hole almost in passing. I had to bring us back to that because Woods Hole is held in such high esteem in the scientific community. It is just held in high regard. The fact that his career has brought him all over the world, but part of it in Woods Hole, and then he's been investing, what, 25 years in beekeeping. I love what the community brings to beekeepers. I would like to revisit the fact that we don't accept truckloads of items from our sponsors. We accept nothing from our sponsors. We're getting nothing free to do these interviews, but I think we should revisit it because we could really have some great stuff because our sponsors are really impressive, right?

Jeff: Oh, absolutely. Just to be clear, we use the products, we're not given the products. We pay for it just like everybody else.

Becky: I think that's important for people to hear because I think we have a great unofficial but official policy where we're not receiving these items for free. We're able to talk about them much more independently. How impressive is Dara? I am so excited to spend a whole episode talking about some more of his management in his apiaries because he's doing impressive work. I think our listeners are going to be just as excited as I am to have this conversation.

[music]

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 webpage.

We want to thank our regular episode sponsors, Betterbee, Global Patties, Strong Microbials, and Northern Bee Books for their generous support. Finally, and most importantly, we want to thank you, the Beekeeping Today Podcast listener, for joining us on this show. Feel free to leave us questions and comments at the "leave a comment" section under each episode on the website. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks a lot everybody.

[music]