Upscaling from Hobbyist to Sideliner - Equipment (320)

320 - Upscaling from Hobbyist to Sideliner Beekeeping - The Equipment

[music]

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

Becky: I'm Becky Masterman.

Global Patties: Today's episode is brought to you by the Bee Nutrition Superheroes at Global Patties. Family-operated and buzzing with passion, Global Patties crafts protein-packed patties that'll turn your hives into powerhouse production. Picture this, strong colonies, booming brood, and honey flowing like a sweet river. It's super protein for your bees, and they love it. Check out their buffet of patties tailor-made for your bees in your specific area. Head over to www.globalpatties.com and give your bees the nutrition they deserve.

Jeff: 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.

[music]

Betterbee: Ready to grow your beekeeping operation? Whether you're moving from hobbyist to sideliner or scaling up to a commercial setup, Better Bee is here to help. From expert tips on optimizing your equipment to advice on finding the right products for your growing needs, our knowledgeable in-house team is ready to guide you every step of the way. Take the next step toward a smart, sustainable operation. Visit betterbee.com today or call us at 1800-632-3379. That's 1800-632-3379. We're here to help Monday through Friday, 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM Eastern.

[music]

StrongMicrobials: Strong Microbials presents an exciting new product, Super Fuel, the probiotic fondant that serves as nectar on demand for our honey bees. Super Fuel is powered by three remarkable bacteria known as Bacilli supporting bees and breaking down complex substances for easy digestion and nutrient absorption. This special energy source provides all the essential amino acids, nutrients, polyphenols, and bioflavonoids, just like natural flower nectar.

Vital for the bees' nutrition and overall health, Super Fuel is the optimal feed for dearth periods, over-winter survival, or whenever supplemental feeding is needed. The big plus is the patties do not get hive beetle larvae, so it offers all bioavailable nutrients without any waste. Visit strongmicrobials.com now to discover more about Super Fuel and get your probiotic fondant today.

Jeff: Hey, everybody, welcome to Beekeeping Today Podcast for the second part of our upscaling series here in the month of February. If you missed last week, I encourage you to go back to it. This month, we are exploring what it takes to upscale your beekeeping operation from hobbyists with maybe 10 or 20 hives to going up to 100 or 200, or 300 hives and really expanding your operation. What does it take?

Last week, our guest who we invited back for this week, we talked about upscaling your bees and your operation, how do you plan for that and how do you go about doing that? This week, we're going to talk about how to upscale your equipment and what you're doing in the yard. Welcome back to Meghan Milbrath and Ana Heck. Ladies, welcome back to the show. Thank you for coming back this week. Join us to talk about this exciting topic.

Ana: Thank you for having us.

Meghan: Thank you.

Becky: Jeff, this is so exciting. We've got almost all the power from the MSUB team, but not everybody, right, Meghan? You're running a bee lab there, and you have Ana Heck, who I think you stole from me at one point, but if you wouldn't mind introducing yourselves really quickly. I know that people do know you from the first episode, but let's just give anybody who accidentally missed it a refresher and then we'll go from there. Dr. Milbrath.

Meghan: I'm Meghan Milbrath. I'm an assistant professor at the Department of Entomology at Michigan State University, and I run a sideline bee operation in Jackson County, Michigan.

Becky: What's that operation called, Meghan?

Meghan: The Sandhill because it's on a big Sandhill.

Becky: [laughs] Ana, could you tell us more about yourself?

Ana: My name is Ana Heck. I'm an apiculture extension educator at Michigan State University, and my husband and I run about 70 colonies here in Michigan.

Becky: What's your operation called?

Ana: Our operation is called Beehavior Ranch. Beehavior with two Es.

Jeff: Did you say that was in Western Michigan, up by the sand dunes?

Meghan: Yes. It's on a sand hill, not a sand dune. It's technically an esker. I'm at the part where the glacial lobes unzipped in Michigan, so it's like a glacial sand deposit.

Jeff: Welcome both of you two joining us again. We didn't scare you away last week. People think about expanding their operation and they probably think of this as being the most costly part of expanding an operation, as how do you plan for the added bee equipment, and what you're doing. Let's jump into that a little bit. One of the first questions, do you build your own or buy it, your equipment and your boxes and your frames and your tops and your bottoms?

Ana: Sure. We normally buy unassembled boxes. Sometimes we find deals on assembled frames, so we'll buy the frames assembled and the foundation and add that in. That's how we do it. My husband likes to build his own covers and bottom boards.

Becky: Ana, do you have a spreadsheet of everything the operation needs as far as supplies for the next year?

Ana: I often make that in the winter. I often make a spreadsheet of what we have and what we need.

Becky: Meghan, how about you?

Meghan: Pretty similar. I found the cheapest is to buy stuff unassembled but precut. Beekeeping board sizes are so weird. Unless you have a really cheap access to board stock, it's usually the cheapest to buy them pre-cut and then you assemble them.

Jeff: At what point do you decide whether you're going to use bottom boards or you're just going to palletize everything? The easy answer is if you can afford a forklift and a truck to transport it.

Meghan: If you can afford the truck and the forklift or if you can't hand load, if you really depend on it.

Becky: Ana, you've been shaking your head, yes. [laughs] Have you guys done the math? [laughs]

Ana: If we had a forklift, we would palletize everything, but we don't have a forklift, so they don't need to be on pallets.

Jeff: I just was wondering because you just see, and the obvious answer is at what point do you consider that heavy equipment? I assume it's when you can afford it. In your equipment, are you running 8-frame or 10-frame?

Meghan: I do 10-frame equipment because that's just what I started with. When I purchased this stuff for MSU, I went to 8-frame, and I kind of like 8-frame, but I don't feel strongly about it. The only thing I feel strongly about is just so everything's consistent. I think the one nice thing that keeps me at 10-frame, besides the fact that I own it, is that I do have a lot of 4-frame nukes where I can fit 2 on top of a 10-frame box so they're 8 and an eighth. I like that system, but I don't feel strongly in terms of if you're not making those nukes.

Becky: Are you running medium supers and deep supers, or what are you doing for honey supers versus brood nests?

Meghan: If you ask me what I tell people when I'm teaching for extension or you say to do everything in deeps, and then honey, what's the crop for humans is in mediums, what's for the bees is in deeps. I do that most of the time. I have a strong preference for deeps because I do still cross-wire my own frames and that's two-thirds the amount of frames I have to do. We also do have a big market for people who want to buy medium nukes, and so sometimes there's brood and mediums, and sometimes I have deeps that need to get drawn out that go on top and filled with honey. It does mix in a little bit, but I do try to keep the brood and the deeps and the honey and the mediums.

Becky: Before I move on to Ana, let's back up. You're in Michigan. How are you wintering your bees? Is it a variety of styles, or do you have one configuration that you use?

Meghan: In terms of number of boxes, it depends. The last two winters, I've been going up to the upper peninsula for the winter, and so I haven't been near my bees, so I wouldn't have had the option to feed them. In those years, I left them in three deeps. Now I'm down in the balmy south for the winter, and so I could manage feed, and so I have them in two. I also do nukes and singles on the years that I'm around.

Ana: We manage all of our colonies in 10-frame hives. We're normally having nine frames in a hive. Actually, we use a lot of internal feeders or frame feeders. We'll often sometimes just have eight frames with the feeder in them and normally, ours are going to be double deep. We do also like having some single deep colonies in our yards and that does help sometimes with honey production, or if we have a queen issue, we have a colony that we can combine with.

We do do some singles and then there are a couple of yards where we have medium brew boxes. That's mostly because we have some customers who prefer to buy medium nukes, but we do try to keep all of our medium-breed boxes in the same yard, so they're not just scattered everywhere. We use medium supers for honey production, and we use queen excluders.

Becky: I don't think you both have said it, but I don't know what a medium nuke is. Is it just a medium box?

Ana: It's a five-frame of medium frame.

Becky: Of medium frame. They're that small.

Jeff: They're small. [crosstalk]

Becky: I've never seen them before. They've got to be adorable. How many bees do you fit in that? It's got to be 7,000 plus.

Ana: Sometimes we sell medium singles to people who want medium boxes because that's a little bit more comb and bees that you get.

Becky: You'd really do sell medium little tiny. I've got to look this up after the show. Sorry, everybody.

Jeff: You answered, one of the questions I had here is as you're expanding your operation, I guess it just goes back to your philosophy even as a hobbyist beekeeper, whether there is a decision to be made to use queen excluders or not queen excluders. If honey is your primary crop, then I would think that there was a bee preference for queen excluders. That's not always the case. It all depends on the beekeeper. You want to expand on that at all?

Ana: I think this is a fun topic, and I think lots of good beekeepers do things differently. You can be team queen excluder or not team queen excluder.

Jeff: [laughs] I hadn't heard it like that. I'm going to get a T-shirt.

Becky: I was going to say, "Do we have T-shirts for this?"

Ana: We like using queen excluders. My main reason why I really like using them is, I think it's easier to store the honey supers over the winter if we don't have brood in them. The pupil casings and we don't have pollen in them because it's not part of the brood nest, they're just less prone to pest damage. It makes it a lot easier for us to store the supers after we've extracted honey over the winter.

I also like them just when I'm managing the colonies because I have a sense of where the queen should be in the hive. If we're pulling honey, I'm not worried about accidentally squishing the queen if we're just in the supers.

Jeff: Meghan, do you have a preference? I didn't hear you say.

Meghan: I do. It's the opposite from Ana, but I respectfully disagree, and it's one of the favorite-- I love that we teach together and we do things differently because I do think it really shows-- Both of us have operations where our bees are really healthy and live, and make honey. I like that we do it very, very differently, or not very differently. We do queen excluders differently, but I totally agree that it helps for storage and keeping pests out.

I don't have any bee-free storage, so they tend to be put away dry. I always run into the issue in the spring because we have such a strong start to the honey flow that a lot of times, I'll put a queen excluder on, I'll put drawn comb above it and the bees just choose not to go up in there, and then that just ends up in extra work. I'm not against them. I use them for splits and we talked about Demaray last week, but generally in practice, especially once they put in a little honey barrier, I'll pull them off.

Becky: Especially if you're running any three deeps.

Meghan: The three deeps, you don't need them at all.

Becky: Not 100% but close. We've been talking about buying equipment. I don't think we really talked about buying used equipment, and I know that's another t-shirt that we could wear, but there are good reasons to buy used equipment. Ana, do you want to start with maybe some good reasons to buy used equipment, or safe options for buying used equipment?

Ana: Sure. For the most part, we avoid buying used equipment. We did buy several honey supers with drawn comb from a beekeeper who I really trusted his management and knew that he was good at identifying and managing disease and tracking those kinds of things. That was huge for us because as we were growing, each year we're expecting our bees to draw out a lot of comb for the brood boxes and then also the honey supers, and that sometimes was difficult and a barrier to us. We bought lots of honey supers. The nice thing about those is that they were just used for honey. They weren't used for the brood nest. The disease risk was probably a little bit lower there.

Meghan: I think that's a really good point that it really depends on what you're buying. I've definitely bought used equipment, but the most thing I've bought is outer covers because the disease risk there is super low and I always need more of them. If you have a trusted person or you know the bees really well, and it's something that is less risky like the boxes, that's very different than buying brood frames from people or whole hives or things like that.

Jeff: Hey, let's take this opportunity for a quick break to hear from one of our sponsors and we'll be right back.

Bee Smart Designs: Introducing the Bee Smart Universal Hive System. Whether you're a beginner or an experienced beekeeper, our innovative American-made products help you maintain healthier hives with lower losses and increased honey yields made from recycled materials with more insulation. Our system includes insulated tops and inner covers, pest management, bottom boards, plus feeders, and a full line of cool tools. Bee Smart products come ready to use with 8 or 10-frame equipment, no painting needed. Visit beesmartdesigns.com to learn more and to find a dealer near you. Bee Smart designs simply better beekeeping products.

Jeff: We're talking about equipment. Becky, you brought up about tops. Are you using telescoping covers? Are you using migratory covers? Is there a preference? Is there a reason to switch from telescoping as a hobbyist to-- Now, you're a sideline or now you have to go to migratory tops. Is there a reason for doing one or the other?

Meghan: Migratory ones are way cheaper.

Ana: Way cheaper.

Meghan: That's literally it is if you're doing it for a business. I work too hard to not make money at my bees. It is really so much work. If there is something like that, it really has to be that I am watching all of those equipment decisions. I also do have my hives on pallets, but I don't have the forklift yet, and that's part of it is so that, once I get up to the point that I have enough money for it, I don't have to switch out everything yet again. My hives are all close to each other.

Becky: Did you attach metal to the cover of your migratory covers, or they're just wooden and you're wintering them in the snow?

Meghan: They're just wooden, and I'm wintering them in the snow, but I do wax dip them so they're a little bit weather-protected.

Jeff: Team migratory top or team telescoping cover.

Ana: We do you use telescoping covers with inner covers and after the discussion, I'm reconsidering but that is what we do.

Becky: I just started using migratory covers again because of price this year and I loved them, especially the ones that have your built-in bee space.

Meghan: I have a little rim on mine.

Becky: It's very nice.

Jeff: The recent discussion in the last, I don't know, two years has been condensing hive or non-condensing hive, ventilated top or non-ventilated top. I'm going to just dip my toe into this one a little bit. If you feel really strongly about say condensing hives and you want to go sideliner, are those two mutually exclusive in your experience, because it's a different management philosophy I would think? If you're looking at one minute a hive for inspection, does the telescoping top versus a migratory top, does that come into play? Ana, you're currently telescoping, considering strongly now migratory?

Becky: Hey, I'll buy--

Jeff: It is looking good to you. [crosstalk]

Ana: The way we winter is we make sure that we have mouse guards and so that mice and shoes can't get into the hives, and we don't do a lot of other things for wintering or hives. I learned with the University of Minnesota Bee Squad System of doing winter covers and moisture boards and upper entrances, and I really liked it, and it worked really well for me. Then I started keeping bees here in Michigan and for some of our MSU yards, we didn't do much at all to winter the colonies other than mouse or sugar guards.

Those colonies made it through winter really well as long as they were healthy. For us, it's just been that we don't feel a need to keep buying winter cozies or winter covers if we're not really seeing a difference in our area and our climate. I know a lot of beekeepers who get really excited about the condensing hive. I'm really excited to see more research. I think there's possibly a lot to it, but I just know in terms of our survival, we've been doing fine without worrying about the condensing hive.

Jeff: Meghan, I wanted to go back to you real quick on your quick question because you said you do use pallets. Are you using pallet clips then or are you using bottom boards on the pallets.

Meghan: Right now, I'm just using bottom boards on them in hopeful preparation. If someone out there wants to buy me a forklift.

Becky: Forklift. Is it a GoFundMe?

Jeff: Yes.

Meghan: Yes.

Becky: What about condensing hives and how are you wintering your bees, Meghan?

Meghan: I actually really loved Ana's response and I do think this is one of the best ways for people to just try stuff and see what works in their area. Especially the best way to do it is try different things in the same year, in the same yard, and take really good notes For me, all of my energy just goes into making the bees healthy and then putting on mouse guards, and that is really it.

We do get a winter here, but the years that I have done less and haven't put on fancy lids or raptor, things like that, my bees still just do fine. I think it is because I pay attention to how much food they have and making sure that they have mites controlled all season long.

Becky: Are you doing a late-season oxalic and cracking the propolis or are you finding a way to not disturb that seal if you're not wrapping them?

Meghan: Oh, I don't feel strongly about the cracking. I had one year that I left the feedbox buckets on top, so I use those top entrances or the top-- It has a hole and then I use a one-gallon bucket with a screen as the feeder. There was one year that I forgot a hole 12 hives, just forgot they existed, didn't go back and get the buckets, the buckets blew off into the woods.

Becky: Oh gosh.

Meghan: Thankfully, I remembered by spring, but all 12 hives had just a hole open to the elements all winter long and all 12 colonies were alive in spring and perfectly fine. I'm sure they could have been-- This is not a recommendation like MSU says, but it was really useful for me to see just you don't have to be so perfect as long as the bees are well-fed and healthy. I just don't feel that strongly about it. In most years, I do the oxalic acid after they stop brooding.

Jeff: Is that a dribble?

Meghan: The dribble. It's faster.

Jeff: One of the things that we think about and perhaps we all think as beekeepers is the wheels, the how do you get around from one yard to another. We're going to talk about yards in a minute. What kind of vehicle do you find works best? Are you driving around a Subaru or you have pickup trucks or a flatbed truck, the family VW? What do you recommend and what are you finding?

Ana: We have a pickup truck and a car, and that works out really well for us, most of the pickup truck, for doing the bee yards and moving the bee equipment around. I'll do honey deliveries and other things in the car, but the truck is really nice. My favorite VOP vehicle ever is still the University of Minnesota B Squad's pickup truck that was little, and so it was shorter and it was easier for me to reach into the bed. I love that truck.

Becky: Is it still there? That was a lovely truck.

Ana: Hope so.

Becky: Yes.

Ana: If not, yes, I would buy it.

Becky: Easy to lift colonies into it too. It was a good truck.

Ana: I keep telling my husband that that's the kind of bee truck I want and he doesn't think it's the most practical.

Jeff: Well, the small beds are hard to fit more than three colonies in it.

Becky: Couldn't we fit six in that one? It was just short.

Ana: Yes, that's a good one.

Jeff: Well, mine had the wheel wells hook. It's hard to pack around that. Meghan, you have the Ford F350 and it's not a Ford commercial, but it does get nine miles a gallon. What are you thinking?

Meghan: I love my truck more than anything. Anybody who's ridden it-- We could do the rest of this podcast talking about my truck. It's a '99, it's got the 73 and those who know know. It's got a custom 8-foot aluminum flatbed on it.

Jeff: Nice.

Becky: What's her name?

Meghan: Big truck.

Becky: Well, I don't know if you love it as much as you think you do.

Meghan: My husband's truck is called Baby Truck.

Becky: Oh, okay.

Meghan: It is really tall and that is an issue. I was able to get a lift gate for a while and so I used the lift gate to move stuff around, but that wasn't super convenient. Then the lift gate, I had trash picked it and it rotted out. I ended up switching to a flatbed so I have a car haul or trailer for moving hives and for bringing in honey supers and things like that.

My turning radius is two blocks now. A big consideration about where my yards are is being able to get in there with the truck and the car hauler, but having a really low deck means that I can move stuff really easily on it.

Jeff: Are you recommending a four-wheel drive?

Meghan: Yes, absolutely. Well, I've got Dually's, so I've never gotten stuck anywhere.

Jeff: Ana, four-wheel drive?

Ana: Yes, four-wheel drive is definitely nice.

Jeff: All right. Well, good. If you had to choose, if you had only so much money in your pocket and you're looking to expand your operation and you had a family vehicle, whatever you want to call it, whatever you want to be, or perhaps a forklift like a bobcat, what would you get? Where's the money best invested in a set of wheels or a forklift to palletize your operation?

Meghan: We can't really get the forklift around without the wheels. Honestly, if someone bought me one, I would sure take it, but I'm set up where my operation really doesn't depend on it. I'm stationary, so the forklifts really become necessary for people doing pollination contracts where they're moving in and moving out.

For doing honey production and being more or less stationary, I end up having to move yards and move splits and you lose permissions or things like that. I do move hives more than I like, but I cannot financially justify it. The truck for me. Also too, I just do want to say, look, we do have a big truck, but it was part of a bigger farm too, so we do pigs and chickens and it gets used for firewood and all of that too.

I do run my bees under a general farm business, and so it is registered to the farm as a farm vehicle so that does make it a little different even for an insurance and registration and things like that. I did have a little Dakota when I started and that was useful, but it is easy to trash whatever vehicle you're using so having a dedicated truck is really nice for it.

Becky: We've been talking a little bit about it, but I think it's a good idea to address it with the little time we have left, how do you determine how many yards you need and how do you find those yards?

Ana: We keep about a dozen or so colonies per yard. We are in areas where it's rural, but people have homes and we don't want to have too many hives in the same spot. That's just been a nice number for us. We've been really lucky with having good landowner relations and good yard owners.

We got connected with one yard owner here in Michigan when I moved, and then he connected us with someone down the road who connected us with his brother. Then we have another and another coworker. That's been something that's really nice is they connected us with new yards.

We really prioritize having good relationships with them, but it just depends on the area. There's some places that are a little bit more tucked away and we know have really good nectar flows where we can put more hives, whereas just there's others where we maybe try to keep fewer hives.

Meghan: I wholeheartedly agree with having nice landowners who are going to give you permissions and make it really easy and not have a ton of gates and things like that. I would say the one thing in determining how many, a lot of it is how many hives they could get through in an evening after work. I do a lot of beekeeping outside of my other job.

For me, if I have more than 20 hives in a yard, sometimes I can't get to them in an evening if something's up. I usually keep between 10 and 20. That makes it worth the drive in the diesel guzzler, but it means that I don't have to go back so I can get through it. I usually try to have, I would say, around 10 to 20 in each yard and then however many yards I need to get rid of all the hives.

Jeff: Are you paying rent for the yards?

Meghan: I pay in honey usually. Some people want different amounts, but yes.

Ana: We also pay in honey. We just try to be generous and make sure that they're not having to buy honey at the grocery store when they have bees on their property. Normally when we do yard rent, we'll do some jars of honey and then we also like to give them some smaller jars of honey just before the holidays so that they can use it as gifts. Then because I like doing beeswax candles, from time, we'll often throw in some beeswax candles as well.

Becky: Do either of you ever have conversations with your yard owners about planting for the bees and do they look for recommendations sometimes?

Ana: We have had some conversations with landowners or yard owners about planting for bees. One of our yards likes to plant some flowers every summer. The nice thing is that Michigan State University has a lot of nice resources on large-scale pollinator habitat.

Meghan: I'm in a really rural egg area and I have had sometimes it's just general like, "Oh, did the bees like this?" question. I have had a couple of yards get set up as part of the NRCS EQIP program where people were actually actively looking for hives in the area, or I was able to offer hives because some of them required to have beehives nearby. I do send a lot of people to the NRCS for looking at their conservation programs.

Jeff: NRCS, I'm not familiar with that.

Meghan: Sorry, the USDA has a county office in each county that will have the farm service agency and then the natural resource conservation service. We're not talking about the business side of it, but farmers can go and sign up to be part of the FSA, and then that gives them access to the Conservation Reserve Program, and then there's different programs through the NRCS as well. They can give people money for putting land into either conservation or pollinator habitat, specifically too.

Jeff: A sneak preview to the business side of upscaling your operation. This has really been a fascinating study, and I could continue talking about this. Well, we have two more episodes. Unfortunately, Meghan and Ana, you won't be with us for those episodes, but I hope you'll listen in. I'm sure we've not covered everything, so maybe you'll come back next year or the next time we can expand on some of these topics because all of them require their own in-depth review. Thank you so much for joining us.

Ana: Thanks for having us. This was a blast.

Meghan: Thank you for having us.

Becky: We appreciate it, you two. Thank you so much.

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 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 web page. 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 Beekeeping Today 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.

[00:32:45] [END OF AUDIO]