The Propola Hive with Jeff Johnson (306)

306 - The Propola Hive with Jeff Johnson

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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 O.: Hey, a quick shout-out to Betterbee and 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 300 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.beekeepingtoday.com Becky, did you hear how quiet that opening was?

Becky: It was another quiet opening.

Jeff O.: Yes. I don't want to whine, but-

Becky: But--

Jeff O.: -we need some openers, folks.

Becky: Oh, that was a good one actually.

Jeff O.: We need some openers from our listeners.

Becky: Please, everybody. Please.

Jeff O.: [laughs] They might just be holding out because there's rumors out there what might be down the road, but let's hold that off until we get all of that taken care of. Becky, it's not pleasant outside. It's not "go hug a hive season," is it?

Becky: It's not. Windy and cold, and it's that reflection time now. Just start looking back and going, wow, that was really inefficient. Or wow, I should have done it that way. Is it the time where we regret some of our steps in the last season?

Jeff O.: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. This is the time of year when we say next year, I'm going to be a better beekeeper. I would be on top of the Varroa. I'm going to be on top of all of my management tasks. It's going to be my number one priority.

Becky: Do you say that in front of a mirror too like an SNL skit?

Jeff O.: That's what I'm going to do this year. Maybe that's the one thing I've not done.

Becky: My biggest thing that I realized this year is that my apiary or my whole operation sites grew so much but I was acting like it was smaller, so when I bought sugar, I bought it in small increments when it would have been so much more efficient and cheaper if I had purchased more sugar at that one time. I think I need a little bit of lessons on how to scale my operation.

Jeff O.: I'm glad you mentioned that, and just to give our listeners a peek into 2025 because that's just right around the corner.

Becky: Yes, it is.

Jeff O.: We are working on a very special series for the month of February for beekeepers looking to expand their operation. We probably shouldn't say too much more than that, but it is a super special.

Becky: I'm looking forward to it because boy, do I need it. I want to work smarter, not harder. Is that the way to say it?

Jeff O.: Yes. I work hard and definitely not smart. That's going to be fun in 2025. Now work the end of the year 2024, looking forward to 2025. All kidding aside, I'm looking forward to 2025. It's going to be a great year in the bee yard. We're kicking it off in fashion in Louisville.

Becky: Exactly.

Jeff O.: Folks are going to be at the North American Honeybee Expo in Louisville. Please make sure to stop by our booth.

Becky: Maybe leave a listener opener for us, right?

Jeff O.: Oh, that would be very cool. We got quite a few last year.

Becky: We could technically get thousands of openers if everybody left one?

Jeff O.: Oh my gosh.

Becky: Does that overwhelm you?

Jeff O.: We could fill the next couple of years' worth of openers. Becky, today's guest is going to be really good. I am looking forward to it. I met Jeff Johnson and his team at North American Honey Bee Expo last year and talk to them about the Propola Hive. This is an interesting conversation.

Becky: I had the opportunity to meet him at our tri-state meeting a couple of years ago, and again I met with him in Iowa. When I was giving a talk down there, he was one of the speakers. Boy, I love his story. Again, I love beekeepers who want to do things better for other beekeepers, and so they invest in a company and start making things that they believe will make a difference. That's Jeff Johnson.

Jeff O.: He's out in the green room. Let's let him in, but first a quick word from our sponsors.

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Jeff O.: Thanks a lot to our sponsors. Sitting across this great big Beekeeping Today Podcast table, sitting in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, is Jeff Johnson, who's a partner and co-founder of Premier Products. Jeff, welcome to the show.

Jeff Johnson: Jeff and Becky, thanks for having me in today. I sure appreciate it.

Becky: Jeff, it's nice to see your face again. It's been since the summer, I think in Iowa, right?

Jeff J.: Yes, back in June at Northwest Iowa. I think they call it the Sioux Land Beekeeper Summer Field Day.

Becky: Seems like a very long time ago.

Jeff O.: Jeff. We invited you on the show today to talk about premier products, and we'll get to the Propola Hive. Can you give us an introduction to yourself and how you got interested in bees?

Jeff J.: Sure, Jeff. It's just been my life story. I don't think it's anything too out of the ordinary, but when I tell the story to people, they're like, oh my gosh, that's a really interesting story. I won't go down to any rabbit holes with it. The short version is I owned a large power sports dealership in Sioux Falls for probably close to 20 years. An opportunity presented for me to sell that business, so I went ahead and sold it. I was 52 years old and I thought I would be retired. My business partner in the power sports business was in the same boat as I was. We were too young to retire. Had nothing to do, and it started to drive us. It's like, got to find something to do.

I tell people, I'm not old enough to want to go to Hy-Vee and sit with all the old guys at 7:30 AM every morning. I had to find something to do. One of our good friends was a plastics engineer. Had done things with plastics his whole life. He goes, "You and Brad should come up with something to do that we can make out of plastic and we can have come up with a little company where maybe you guys have one employee and we figure out some widget to make, and there you go. You can do that. That'll keep you busy, and it'll keep you out of your wife's hair." That's really how Premier Bee got started.

Jeff O.: That was Brad Snyders?

Jeff J.: Yes. Brad Snyders. He was my CFO at Mid-America Motorplex, which was the power sports dealership. We've been best friends since that. Well into the 20-some years. He's a business partner. He's a good friend. Golf and hunt, and fish, and that kind of thing. He found himself in the same boat as me as we just needed something to do. Our friend, Mark, who is the plastics engineer passed us with, come up with something to make out of plastic and we'll figure out how to make it. I had a family friend from my hometown in Northwest Iowa that was a beekeeper.

One thing led to another and they started talking about beehive foundation. I found that actually interesting because, it's close to 40 years ago now, when I was in college I was a biology major and a nursing major. The biology thing, actually the science with bees has always been interesting to me. I started doing research into plastic beehive foundation. I thought maybe that might be interesting to get into that. Brad and I had a list of things that we wanted if we were going to start a company. We really didn't want anything to do with social media and the internet, and all that because I'm old.

I don't do all that stuff. Brad is even a little older than me, so he doesn't do all that stuff. We really didn't want anything where we had to mess with the internet or social media. We didn't really want to have a lot of employees because we had just come out of the power sports industry where the dealership in Sioux Falls, we had 40-some employees. We really didn't want to have to deal with all that. As I studied foundation, it was really interesting, guys. The plastic foundation really came about and was developed in the very early 1990s. From about 1994 on, there has been nothing that has changed about it.

I thought, maybe if I spent some time and learned something about it, between 1994 and today, there may be something that we could do that would advance it, or it was ready for a change. We started to study, or we, really was me, started to study foundation. This is interesting because all the research that I could find, it talks about cell size. Just for example, most of the plastic foundations have about a 5.3-millimeter cell size.

I couldn't figure out how they were measuring the cells. If you picture the hexagon, you go from the top to the bottom. It's a way different measurement than if you go across it. I have got samples of all the plastic foundation out there that's manufactured and sold in the US, and I've got my micrometer and I'm trying to measure these cells to see how are they getting 5.3. There was not one of them that was 5.3 the way I was trying to measure it. I started calling some people in the academic world to figure out what was-- because I couldn't find it online.

Jeff O.: Sorry to interrupt. You go from flat side to flat side where you're doing the inside diameter. You basically turn it around three different ways. There's six sides--

Jeff J.: You could get three different measurements yes, by doing it that way. What I wanted to do was find out what was the industry standard for measuring a cell. In my mind, because I didn't have experience with bees, I was thinking when they talk their 5.3 millimeters that they were talking about the living space, the inside space from across the cell. I know how to use a micrometer. I'm not the smartest guy in the world but I can use a micrometer and I couldn't come up with 5.3.

One of the people that I called, and this was six and a half years ago, I called online, I found University of Minnesota bee lab, and I called up there and Becky actually answered the phone. I don't know if she remembers it or not but she answered the phone and I explained that I wanted to figure out how to measure cells. She told me what they do in the beekeeping industry.

Becky: I had to ask, Jeff, though. I wish I knew this answer but I think I went next door to Marla and asked her because I think that's where this answer came from.

Jeff J.: You gave me the right answer, Becky, because I checked with you, the U of M up in Minnesota. I also called Michigan State and I called Cornell. I actually also called the other manufacturers of it. Everybody gave me the same answer. That was they measure a string of 10 cells and then just divide the number by 10, which that makes sense, except that also has 11 cell walls in it. I wanted to know what was just that one living space. Without getting into a bunch more, unless you guys want to talk about it, I spent a summer doing research on top bar hive comb.

What I did was just about 100 samples of top bar hive comb from around the United States. I took them to Augustan University here in Sioux Falls to the biology department. We took them into the lab, we cross-sectioned them and we measured them, and we measured, it was about 800 cells that we measured to come up with what was the living space that would be go right across from left to right, right to left across that cell. What's that dimension or what were the dimensions of that? That's really how Premier Bee products got started.

It was making a foundation. The other thing that's really interesting, Jeff, is when we measured that dimension, we also measured how thick the cell wall was. The real key was that cell wall in natural comb is way, way thinner than the cell wall that was generated from a plastic foundation. When we tried to make our foundation, we wanted it to mimic the dimensions that we got from those 800 samples. In a natural comb, that cell wall is about 36% thinner than what you get with, at that time, what were the plastic foundations out there. A long story to get to that but that's really how Premier Bee got started.

Becky: I want to clarify for the listener. You've said them separately but I want to connect it for maybe the newer beekeepers out there. You got the top bar cells because that is the natural foundation that the bees built without a blueprint.

Jeff J.: Yes. We wanted to come up with what natural comb would be, really what mother nature is telling the bees to build. We wanted to see what that was. There's not a lot of Winnie-the-Pooh trees out here in South Dakota, so we had to come up with another way to find natural comb. One of the academic people that I was talking to said that we should get samples of top bar hive comb. That's why we ended up with a top bar hive comb.

Jeff O.: If the 5.3 doesn't work, and that's been the standard since the early '90s, what did you find, if you can tell me, what is that width of that natural cell, the comb, and the living space as you define it?

Jeff J.: The living space. First of all, I can tell you none of them are 5.3. That's a misnomer that the living space is 5.3. That's not it at all. The existing foundations at that time are all around 4.6 to 4.2. I think it was 4.64 to 4.71 when you measured the interior living space that you just mentioned, Jeff. What we found is in natural comb, that interior living space is 4.93, so it's even a little bit bigger.

Jeff O.: This is getting geeky on from a bee standpoint.

Becky: We were there a long time ago. I'm sorry. It's fascinating but I just think we should say Jeff just made cell size very interesting. We've been in the geek for a little bit here.

Jeff O.: We're going deep dives here but at least it's not about bikes or cameras, or anything else, so this is good.

Becky: I love this. This is so interesting.

Jeff O.: This was from the top bar hive comb that you pulled. I have a question about that. I assume that you took your cell samples from the middle of that comb as opposed to along the top edge or along the bottom edge, assuming that there might be differences there. Then what race or what subspecies of honeybee did you-- I'm using the wrong term, but what bee did you use as your example? Were they Carney Owens, were they Italians? Did they have a little Africanized bee in them? Did you keep track of that?

Jeff J.: Here's what I can tell you. As far as where we got the comb from the u-shaped top bar hive comb, the directions that we gave to the people when they contacted us back is they had to come 3 inches down from the top, 3 inches up from the bottom, and 3 inches in from the side. Then they cut out a 2-inch by 2-inch square and they put it in the box that we gave them that had a serial number on it and send it back to us.

I at that time didn't even know enough to ask what kind of bees they were, so I don't have that data, but I have the data from where they came from in the United States. The 98 samples we got, I know where they came from. Really, predominantly, it was from Ohio out to Utah and North Dakota down to northern Texas is where they came from.

Becky: You might not know this offhand, but you could, but what was their standard deviation? You said 4.93.

Jeff J.: The standard deviation on the cell size, that living space was 0.23. That's a pretty big deviation. That 4.93 could go all the way down to 4.73 or all the way up to 5.13.

Becky: That's exactly what you would expect.

Jeff J.: Exactly. The interesting thing was the cell walls. That measurement that I said before that was, oh, in nature, mother nature wants those bees to make a thin cell wall for whatever reason. I've got some ideas in my head why they could want a thinner cell wall, but the standard deviation, Becky, on that cell wall was 0.013. That's extremely tight. That told me mother nature wants that cell wall that size for some reason. That was what was the most-- The hardest thing for us to figure out how to manufacture was how to get that cell wall thin. I think I talked earlier about our friend, Mark, that's the plastics engineer.

He could look at a sheet of foundation, the existing foundations at that time, and tell you how was made and everything. There are many things on that sheet of foundation that are determined by the manufacturing technique of it. Really what happened back in the early '90s, they figured out a way to make the foundation and they tried to make the bees adapt to it, and the bees did. What we did is we took the exact opposite side of that coin. We learned what mother nature wanted the bees to build and then we had to figure out how to make it. It was really, really hard. It took us almost three years to figure out how to make it. That's how it all started?

Jeff O.: Let's take this opportunity to take a quick break, and then we'll wrap up the cell discussion, and we'll get into other topics. We'll be right back.

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Becky: Welcome back, everybody. Jeff, I love the fact that you spent about three years of your life on cell size and then you moved on to another problem that--

Jeff O.: Wait, I'm sorry, Jeff, you must have been the thrill at parties during those three years talking about cell size.

[laughter]

Jeff J.: Oh yes, definitely. Without a doubt.

Becky: Jeff, what are you working on? You used to be the fun guy with speed boats.

Jeff O.: Power sports.

Becky: Power sports, fast things. Wow, you really shifted a little there. Anyway, you dedicated three years of your life, you were the life of the party, and then just when people thought they were safe, you started talking about propolis linings of beehives and how hard it was to actually figure out how to get the bees to deposit propolis inside of a hive. Now, I will say I remember being at the university and working there and hearing a number of talks on the fact that it is hard and it's hard to figure out the university would use propolis traps to try to get them to deposit propolis, but you decided to dedicate a chunk of your life to this problem. Can you tell us the story about the Propola Hive?

Jeff J.: I can tell you a little bit about it. When I was trying to learn anything about beekeeping six and a half years ago, we talked about, I was interested in cell size and everything, but I also wanted to learn. I saw online that the South Dakota Honey Producers were having their summer meeting out in Pierre, South Dakota. I thought, that might be a good thing. I bet I could learn something. I went out to it, and I thought there'd be all these beekeepers at it because South Dakota has so many hives. I get to this meeting and there's 30 guys in the room.

I didn't realize that it's half the bee hives in the United States are represented there. Anyway, it's all these guys and they're really nice people. They're wondering, what am I doing there? Anyway, they were nice. One of the presenters at that meeting was Marla. She was talking about some of the data with the propolis envelope and the benefits of it. I remember at that time thinking, that would be really cool to come up with. At that time, I was so focused on plastic. I was thinking of some plastic thing you could put on the inside of a beehive to get the propolis envelope.

Life started and the business took off, and I didn't think about that for a while. Then as our business continued to grow, it became evident that we were going to have to start manufacturing boxes also. I thought that, you know what? We need to figure out how to make a box that would facilitate the bees, again, like the cell size conversation we had, mother nature's way smarter than us or than me anyway to let the bees do what they want to do with putting the propolis envelope inside of a hive.

As we grew and developed our wooden wear division, one of the main engineers is a friend of mine that is a lead engineer for a large custom cabinet manufacturing place in Sioux Falls. His name is Bart. He worked for me on the side. I said, Bart, we got to figure out how to do this. I showed him some of Marla's studies and stuff. I said, we got to figure out how to do this. We've got to make a hive that's like the inside of a tree. He thought about it. We thought about it. We tried, guys, all kinds of stuff. We were sending hives out to people to have them try them.

We were making hives where each face on the inside of the box was something different to see if they would like it. We were striking out. All the easy things to do didn't work. They looked good to us but evidently not to the bees. Then we finally stumbled across something that worked to give us that really rough interior that exposes a lot of wood fiber that the bees, they just jumped all over it. It was very evident.

It's like, ooh, they like this. It really didn't matter where they were at in the country, what kind of bees they were, they jumped all over it. That's how that really got started. The idea happened at the very beginning because of a talk I heard Marla give to a bunch of commercial beekeepers out in Pierre, South Dakota. Again, figuring out what really worked was a little more difficult, but we figured it out, and the whole Propola Hive has been really, really fun to watch and see what's happened with that.

Jeff O.: I did see the Propola Hive at North American Honey Bee Expo last January. It's really unique, the interior texture. Any beekeeper will tell you after hearing, and a couple of years ago, we had Marla on the podcast talking about the value and benefits of propolis, and I'll put the link to that episode in the show notes for our listeners, but there are many benefits to the propolis build-up. Any beekeeper will look at the hive and say, I can take a grinder and do that to the inside of my wood box. I'm sure you did the same thing in your initial studies. How does that not work?

Jeff J.: I can't tell you why it doesn't work. I guess I can tell you a couple things. We exactly thought that we could take a grinder, we could take a wire wheel, rough it up, and that would do it. I was out in my garage on my bench with a drill with a wire brush on it that I got it Harbor Freight trying to mess around seeing what I could do. I thought, oh, this might be it. Bees don't do anything with it because you're not able to get a deep enough groove and expose enough fiber. You got to have the groove for them to pack it in, and you need fiber for them to think that it's like the inside of a tree.

Jeff, you mentioned that you had Marla on a few years ago talking about it. It's interesting. I don't know if you know them or not, but the Adee family, the largest beekeepers in North America, they're out here in South Dakota. They're probably about 45 minutes. They've helped me immensely with foundation and everything. They've done testing and they've got Propola Hives that they're using.

The two sons that are involved in running it now, they're about my age, Brett and Kelvin. They go, my gosh, we remember back in the '70s where the USDA and these other academic institutions were working with our dad trying to come up with bees where they were trying to breed, out of the bees, the instinct to pack in Propola and now they're trying to come up with ways so the bees do pack propolis in the hive.

Jeff O.: The same thing with drones. A few years ago we were, tear them all out, take them out. Now it's like, no, you want to leave them there. It's amazing what goes around.

Becky: I think it's also important to know that with the-- I know a lot of beekeepers will try to rough up their own boxes, but the data do suggest that it needs to be a pretty complete envelope and it has to encompass the whole part of the-- or it has to surround the hive, or the colony, excuse me. I know they were hoping maybe if you just put a propolis trap on top, does that give the colony the benefits?

It just didn't. It was only when there was regular propolis deposited around the whole hive that it made a difference. That's what I tell beekeepers. That you can try to do this yourself. It really has been a mystery. I know of one other person. He had a company for a while making these hives that were effective, but it's a hard thing to do to actually be able to have the bees deposit this evenly in the hive body. Good job.

Jeff J.: You guys might find this interesting. I thought it was interesting. To study this, we had to find logs that at one point in time had colonies in them to see. Becky, you just made a reference that you might be able to get the same effect with just a propolis trap in there. I wanted to see what it's like on the inside of a tree. Do the bees just do it on one side or the other side? By the entrance? What's really going on in there? I found a guy down in Ames, Iowa, that cuts trees down, and he's a beekeeper guy. He's called the barefoot beekeeper.

Every log he gets that has a bee colony in, he saves them. I went down there and we started looking in these logs. That is so incredibly interesting how the bees actually coat the inside of the tree. Colonies that have been there for quite a while in that tree, it's almost like varnish on the inside of that log. They just keep packing it in and it becomes smooth. It's not predominantly where the brooded parts of the comb are versus where the honeycomb are at. It's the entire hive is encapsulated in propolis. That's why we did not just do two sides of the box, we've got to do the whole thing.

Becky: We should probably take a step back because I don't know-- we keep saying Marla. I don't know if any of us have actually said Marla Spivak at the University of Minnesota, so I'm just going to put Spivak out there in case we haven't said that. Also, Marla and her graduate students, several graduate students, have studied propolis. They've studied how it's used as social immunity. That the propolis envelope will actually quiet the immune system of the bees so they're better able to fight pathogens and pests. I just want to throw that out there so that everybody who's listening is caught up and why this is so exciting and interesting.

Jeff O.: Thank you, Becky, for restating that because that's so important. We did take that gigantic step to assume our listeners here understand the importance of propolis that Dr. Spivak and her students have come to realize.

Becky: I know Jeff talks about it to other beekeeping groups, and gives a really good talk that addresses why propolis. We got to the punchline without taking that walk.

Jeff J.: I always tell people when I'm talking to them, a propolis envelope, it's not a magic bullet, it doesn't cure everything, but it's a big step in the right direction to allow those colonies to try to remain healthy with their own immune systems in the colony. There's a lot of research going on right now for other diseases, other pests. I know the USDA bee lab down in Baton Rouge is doing some really interesting studies with it. That's where one of Marla's students, Dr. Michael Simone-Finstrom is down there. He's doing quite a bit of research with it.

What Marla found, oh, and this is not just, oh, she found out in two years. She spent years and years of her life figuring this part of it out. There's really good data out there where a propolis envelope will significantly reduce American foulbrood and European foulbrood, are the two that they really looked at. They're looking at other things now also, and seems some encouraging initial results.

Jeff O.: From a practical beekeeper standpoint, are you only providing the Propola Hive on the hive bodies themselves or are you also providing that in the honey supers or the mediums and shallows?

Jeff J.: Really the propolis envelope, the benefit of it comes mainly in the hive bodies because that's where the bees are living. That's where they're spending all of the time. The super is only on for two or three months in the summertime, so we've really concentrated on the hive bodies.

Jeff O.: Are you producing 8-frame and 10-frame or is this all 10-frame?

Jeff J.: We have it all 10-frame. Actually, it's interesting. We have figured out how to make it in 8-frame now, and so that's being released shortly because we'll have that at the North American Honeybee Expo in Louisville in January this year. The 8-frame boxes now.

Jeff O.: For all of us 8-frame beekeepers, yay.

[laughter]

Jeff O.: Also, just to complete the thought, in the tree that you referenced, and this is the Propola Hive, not the Propola Hive, but the propolis and the benefits of propolis comes from the lining of a tree. The tops and bottom of the space is lined in propolis. Are the bottom boards also treated or the inner cover or the tops?

Becky: That's a really good idea.

Jeff J.: I've not went down that road yet, Jeff. I've had to figure out how to manufacture them in a 10-frame and then an 8-frame box first because it's not as easy as you think. I'm always looking for a new challenge, so maybe that'll be come up with a inner cover and a bottom board that also have a Propola coating on them.

Jeff O.: I was just thinking about the inner cover of it now. You'd have to set it up so that the gap wouldn't be so tied down. You'd really be cracking that open then if you're encouraging propolis on the inner cover or the top. Anyways, I'll leave that to you to figure out. It sounds like a great project you have some time ahead of you to figure it out.

Becky: I am friends with a beekeeper from-- he's in South Dakota. He on Facebook just last week, put up a bunch of regular deep boxes and said, Free to a good home." It's because he's exchanging all of his equipment out for Propola Hive bodies. A lot of beekeepers are really interested. I have purchased them myself. I have not gotten them as a discount or any kind of a promotion. I really do think these are important and a great tool for the bees. I'm a customer, I'll say that.

Jeff J.: I thank you for your business, Becky. What's been interesting with the Propola, I thought it would be a hive that would fit into the hobby market. The smaller beekeeper market. That's true, it's really done well there, but the commercial guys that are aware of the research, they're calling me asking for it, wanting it. They're not going to switch out their entire operations, but they may add 1,000 or 2,000 boxes every year to replace stuff that they're culling out. They want to replace all that stuff, especially for the hive bodies with propolis, because the science behind the propolis envelope is really good science.

It's not like a lot of things in beekeeping. Scientifically speaking, it's really good science. It's really all due to Marla. She's the one that's figured that out. I didn't have anything to do with that other than figuring out how to make a box look like the inside of a tree. That was my small role in it. She's the one that really has done an incredible job of figuring out what the bees really want in order to try to stay healthy.

Jeff O.: It's an exciting development. If anyone has not been out to your website, you have a lot of this great information on the website, well-done website, some nice video. Looking at the interior of this, you can see that you're not selling a hive body that's just been grooved with, as you said, a drill bit and a lot of elbow grease. There's some thought and design into the interior of the Propola Hive. These are really cool.

Jeff J.: Thank you.

Jeff O.: I need to say this. I will have family problems if I don't. My brother lives in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Hi, Bill, if he's listening.

[laughter]

Jeff O.: Shout out to my brother.

Becky: I bet you could get a free factory tour for Bill if you work hard enough.

Jeff O.: I'll tell him to go on up that way. He'd probably enjoy that.

Jeff J.: Tell him to come out. We'd be glad to show him around. Wait, this isn't really part of the podcast, but I'll say it.

Jeff O.: It definitely is part of the podcast.

[laughter]

Jeff J.: Oh, I think it was three weeks ago, maybe a month ago, we wanted to do something to just generate some excitement. Again, as I alluded to earlier, I'm not social media, I'm none of those things, but I've got this really good guy that works with me that does this stuff named Matthew. He said, we should have a sign-up, and what people can sign up to win is a tour of the plant, and show them around.

We put a tour package together where we're going to give him a tour of the plant and show them how the secret sauce is made, and then we're going to take them up. The Adees are going to give them a tour of their Bruce facility up in Bruce, South Dakota. Then we're going to go and take them and visit AH Meyer to show the big beeswax rendering facility. In two weeks we had almost 6,000 people sign up for that.

Becky: Wow.

Jeff O.: I bet.

Jeff J.: It was unbelievable. The winner was picked, oh, I think it was the beginning of this week. I can't tell you his name, but it's a guy that has about 30 or 40 colonies from down by St. Louis. I'm really looking forward to him coming out. That's going to be fun to show him around. I go to the plant every day and it doesn't seem special, but when a commercial beekeeper is going through, if he's going down to Texas or whatever, and he'll stop in, and they're just like little kids in a candy store seeing all this stuff that we do every day. It's been really fun.

The beginning, I had alluded Brad and I, we wanted to have maybe one employee and nothing to do with social media or any of that. In the last three years, we built two different plants. We built a big new plastics manufacturing plant. Then we built a big new wooden wear plant where we make all the frames and boxes. I think we've got 38 employees now. That's all happened in three years.

Becky: That's not 40. [laughs] You're not going to sell when you get to 40, are you, Jeff ?

Jeff J.: No, I won't. I don't want to have to find something to do again.

Becky: I'm just trying to figure out what the next mystery is you're going to start working on. Looking forward to hearing about it.

Jeff J.: I'm working on a couple of things, but I can't talk about them.

Becky: Oh, that's great.

Jeff J.: Yes, I got a couple things.

Jeff O.: Out of curiosity and round numbers. About how many Propola boxes do you typically make in a year or have you made in a year, and the same with the foundation?

Jeff J.: We just started the Propola boxes. We just introduced them at the conference in Louisville last January. I looked at the end of August. I think it was the third week in August, I went and looked to see what's happened. We were way over 10,000 of them already. I don't know if that's good or bad, but that's a lot. In my mind, I think that's pretty good. The only way it's going to do any good for bees is if we get them out there. Having all the science doesn't help until it actually gets into the field and the bees can get the benefit of it. We're doing everything we can to get them out there.

The foundation, that number, I think last year we sold about 2.5 half million sheets. No, it might be closer to 3 million. It's between 2.5 million and 3 million sheets. That's a pretty good size number. I don't know how big the markets are in the United States. I have no idea if we're 1% or 15%. I don't know. We're just trying to do what we can do and that's going to be good enough. If we always try to do the right thing for the bees and the beekeepers, all the rest of the stuff will work itself out.

Jeff O.: Becky, you're going to have to stop buying so many of those Propola boxes. 10,000, that's--

Becky: 10,000. No, I have not purchased enough, but I am excited to buy more, believe me. I'm not quite to 10,000.

Jeff O.: Jeff, is there anything that we haven't asked you that you were prepared to tell us and our listeners, more importantly, about Premier Products and the Propola Hive, and/or the Puracell?

Jeff J.: All I would like to say is for the people that have become customers of ours over the last five and a half years, I thank you to the bottom of my heart. We wouldn't be here if it weren't for our customers. All we are trying to do is provide a really high-quality product, to give the bees what they want at a fair price. I have never had more fun in my life than working with beekeepers. That's hobbyists, side liners, commercial guys, they all have a really interesting story. The most fun I have is when I load my suburban up and just go out on the road and call on beekeepers, and listen to them and see their operations.

Everybody has a really good story if I'm smart enough to just shut up and listen to them. It's an incredible industry to be in and it's incredibly important. I really have been blessed to be able to be here at this point in my life to do this. It's fun. Just like getting to meet you today, Jeff. This has all been fun. I was really nervous about it, thinking, oh jeez, I'm going to be on this big podcast and I don't even really understand the whole podcast thing that well, but this has been really fun. Thanks for having me in. I really appreciate it.

Jeff O.: We're excited to have had you here with us.

Becky: Jeff, I'm just so glad you joined us because I love the story of how your products got started and how much work you put into them. I really appreciate you sharing it with everybody.

Jeff J.: Thank you. Thanks, everybody.

[music]

Jeff O.: Talking with the people who are actually creating beekeeping products and they see a problem and they go out and address it, that is inspiring. I really enjoy that.

Becky: The fact that he invested so much of his time before it even became at all profitable. He just put so much of his energy into it. I think we got really lucky, again, with early retirees putting their blood, sweat, and tears into helping beekeeping.

Jeff O.: Focusing on the propolis envelope and creating a solution that's adaptable to beekeepers is exciting. I applaud them for the work that they're doing.

Becky: I think that anything we can do to help the bees help themselves, which is exactly what they do in nature in that sense, it really can make a difference. It still allows us to intervene and manage pests and diseases, but at the same time, we know we maybe are giving them a little bit of an advantage if they don't have that, compared to if they don't have that envelope.

Jeff O.: I agree 100%. Thank you, Becky. That's a great wrap-up. Folks, before we go, I just want to remind you, we need openers, so feel free. If you feel so inspired, send us an opener and you'll hear it in an opening of the show in a future episode. That about wraps it up for this episode. Before we go, I want to encourage our listeners to follow us and rate us five stars on Apple Podcast or 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 tab along the top of any webpage. We want to thank Betterbee and our regular longtime sponsors, Global Patties, Strong Microbials, and Northern Bee Books for their generous support. Finally, and most importantly, we want to thank you, the BeekeepingToday Podcast listener for joining us on this show. Feel free to leave us questions and comments on our website. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks a lot, everybody.

[music]

[00:49:38] [END OF AUDIO]