Western Apicultural Society Annual Conference with Etienne Tardiff and Ron Miksha (S6, E09)

S6, E09 - Western Apicultural Society Annual Conference with Etienne Tardiff and Ron Miksha

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

Kim Flottum: I'm Kim Flottum.

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Hey, everybody. Thanks for joining. We have a great show lined up for you today. Kim and I recently spoke to Etienne Tardif and Ron Miksha from Canada about the Western Apicultural Society Annual Conference in Calgary, Alberta. Stay tuned as that's coming up real quick. Imagine this scene in an educational apiary, bees buzzing, inbound and outbound, the skilled beekeepers tending to their hives with a focus connection to their little darlings. As contributor to the podcast, Ed Colby refers to his bees, everything, and everyone working to make the most and provide the most.

Today's episode is about the discovery of the triad of education, the symbiotic blend of training, mentorship, and in-person conferences that propels beekeepers towards mastering. Beekeeping, as we know, transcends the simple harvest of honey. It's a dance between humans and nature that requires a rich understanding, the honed skills and experience that can require years or a lifetime to fully realize. The truth is, beekeeping proficiency flourishes when we embrace the full spectrum of learning, including mentorship and the immersive experience of conferences.

As we navigate the complex realm of beekeeping, newcomers often find themselves navigating through challenges, hive intricacies, bee health, pests, nectar flows, and the like. This is precisely where mentors step in as harbors of wisdom. In today's deluge of information, the knowledge shared by experienced beekeepers becomes a guiding light, offering novices the confidence and the know-how to navigate the multifaceted landscape. That said, mentorship alone isn't the only piece of the puzzle. A structured framework of training programs, the workshops, courses, and resources serves as a bedrock upon which beekeeping for efficiency is built.

These programs can offer critical insights, from understanding hive dynamics to decoding the fascinating communication dances of bees, to understanding regional and seasonal weather dynamics. All of this and more impact a colony's success or failure through any period of time. Of course, mentors cannot provide everything a new beekeeper needs to be successful. Something has been lost in the past few years, and that is the significance of national and regional conferences to the individual beekeeper. These gatherings draw beekeepers from diverse corners, uniting them in a shared pursuit of knowledge and networking.

These events are transformative, igniting innovation, fostering camaraderie, and offers a fresh perspective that often defines beekeeping for the individual beekeeper. What I'm talking about is the need for a well-rounded educational journey. Our intent isn't to discount the wealth of information found on YouTube videos and books. Rather, we're urging you to take your education beyond the screen and page. In-person meetings at conferences offer insights, interactions, and experiences that digital media just can't replicate.

As you continue your educational journey, I invite you to immerse yourself in a holistic beekeeping education, engage in mentorship both as a mentor and a mentee. Advance your insights through structured training and take a leap into the vibrant community found at national and regional conferences. Embrace the three pillars I've unveiled today, mentorship, structure, training, and the rich interactions of in-person conferences. In doing so, your experience beekeeping will become more rewarding and as a whole, more successful. Okay, let's get to our discussion with Etienne and Ron, but first, a quick word from our friends at Strong Microbials.

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Jeff: While you're at the Strong Microbial site, make sure you click on and subscribe to The Hive, the regular newsletter full of interesting beekeeping facts and product updates. Hey, everybody, welcome back to the show. Sitting across this virtual beekeeping today podcast table, I have two guests from Calgary, Alberta, and I may have that wrong, but Etienne Tardif and Ron Miksha.

Ron Miksha: Now, let's please say Ron Miksha. Hi.

Jeff: Thank you. It's not an actual podcast unless I really screw up somebody's name, so I'm glad.

Ron: Everyone does that.

Jeff: Thanks for joining.

Ron: Well, we appreciate being here and I am in Calgary, but Etienne you're not.

Etienne Tardif: No. Thanks for having us. I'm up in the Yukon in Whitehorse, close to Whitehorse, so a few hours north of Calgary.

Kim: Nice to have you guys here today. We don't get nearly enough information from Canada as I would like. I think lots goes on up there that we don't hear down here enough of.

Ron: Well, we could fix that, Kim. We've got a conference coming up here in a few months and you should be here. Everybody would love to see you and you'd learn so much about Canadian beekeeping.

Kim: Tell me more, Ron. This sounds exciting.

Jeff: For our listeners who may not know either of you, Etienne, you want to introduce yourself and then we'll throw it to Ron and then we'll get into other topics.

Etienne: My name's Etienne Tardif. I live up in the Yukon. A few years back, I was approached by Dr. Bromenshenk to be the Yukon director for WAS, the Western Apicultural Society. Just to go back on my beekeeping story. I've been keeping bees for close to 15 years now, 15, 20 years. I can't remember when I started. It was in another province in another northern place.

I completely fell in love with beekeeping. My wife calls me an obsessed person. I love everything to do with the science, the biology, the management, and the people associated with beekeeping. We'll get into WAS in a bit there, but in a nutshell, that's myself. I have a background in engineering, and I try to apply science in my beekeeping. Also, I teach leadership courses. I do a lot of teaching and training and mentoring in beekeeping also.

Jeff: Ron, we've not ever actually met, so it's nice to have you on the show.

Ron: Jeff, we have not, and I appreciate being on the show too. You guys do an awfully nice job and I try not to miss any of the episodes. I have a very long history of beekeeping because I grew up in a beekeeping family in western Pennsylvania. I've been working around bees for at least 60 years and really working around bees. When I was 16, the family took a bit of a shift on the farm and we went into a greenhouse business, but that left 300 hives of bees hanging.

My father asked me, he said, "Well, you got your driver's license. Try not to run into any beehives or people on the road and you can take care of the 300 hives." That really hooked me at that age to really have the responsibility, start producing honey. I ended up working in Florida and learning from my oldest brother, whom you may know is David Miksha. He's in central Florida, raising queens. You also know his daughter, Monica, because she was part of an interview on your show not too long ago, that's Monica King.

Our family's been around for a few generations in beekeeping. I moved to Saskatchewan because the crops are so big there and I eventually ended up out in Calgary where I live now, and I just love this city. It's a beautiful city. I have an opportunity here to teach beekeeping, and I'm working as a research bee ecologist, doing research in bee-ecology at the University of Calgary. I've written the occasional article and this and that but really bees have been the background of my life since I was a little tiny kid.

Jeff: Welcome to the show. The winters are a little bit warmer in Calgary than they are with Etienne, aren't they?

Etienne: I'd say generally, yes. Despite me being on the one side of the Rockies, it's on the cold side, we do get the occasional Chinook. Chinook, those warming winds in the winter. We get them maybe once every 20 years, so we're not as lucky as what they have in Calgary. Calgary actually has to deal with both extremes.

Ron: We do have more extreme winters. We do see -35 every winter or something very close to that.

Jeff: That's Celsius, right?

Ron: Oh yes, that's Celsius. You know what? -35, it almost doesn't matter.

Jeff: It doesn't matter, does it? [laughs]

Ron: During the summers, we're in the 70s Fahrenheit. Today, right now, it's very pleasant. We will top out in the mid-80s and that's about it. Very dry climate here, so it becomes really pleasant in the summer. Even actually in the winter, when you have the cold weather it's not damp cold. Did I say that right, damp with a P at the end? It's not damp cold, it's just really very nice. You can do things outdoors even when it's quite cold. It's a great place. Yes, I think Etienne wants to talk a little bit about the WAS itself.

Jeff: We're talking about WAS. What is WAS?

Etienne: What is WAS? WAS is Western Apicultural Society. It was started before my time. I believe it was in the '80s in California. I don't know all the history. I think Dr. Eric Mussen was involved and there's a lot of other people that were involved in getting the organization going. In recent times, like I said, I joined up maybe four years ago and Dr. Bromenshenk stepped down as president about two years ago, and that's when I stepped in. It was still during COVID. One thing does do is we do run monthly--

We're all about hobbyists and the smaller sideliners. We're about education. We're about trying to bring the different regions together. One way we've been doing that during COVID days was to set up monthly mini-conferences, where we bring in beekeepers, scientists, to share their knowledge. Usually, it's two speakers, I'd say facilitated by-- Last year was mostly by myself and Dr. Karén and Melanie Kirby. Then this year they've taken the reins on that while Ron and I organize the conference. They're available on our YouTube channel.

We're a full volunteer group, and we're going to talk about the conference. The conference is organized by volunteers and by Beekeepers for Beekeepers. Our goal is just to bring people together, share ideas. The theme this year is, because it'll be in Calgary, one challenge is usually the president. We host it near the president's location, but the Yukon is pretty expensive and we wouldn't have enough hotels and rooms that all folks. There's only 40,000 people in the Yukon, 30,000 of which are in Whitehorse, and we're the size of Spain. It's a beautiful place and the best way to visit is via RV and those types of things. We'll save the conference for Calgary.

Ron: I can give you just a little bit of background on the beginnings of WAS. There were graduate students at Cornell working with Dr. Roger Morris. Roger Morris was heavily involved in the Eastern Apicultural Society at the time. When these people left Cornell, graduated, they took jobs in different places. One of them ended up in Davis, California, and using the model of the Eastern Apicultural Society annual meeting, they started that out there. You're second generation.

Jeff: Who was that graduate student?

Ron: Well, Eric Mussen led the pack. He was one of Roger's prize grad students at the time. When he was done, he went to Davis and he brought all of what he learned about EAS with him and got this organization started.

Jeff: The WAS meeting this year is in Calgary, and that's gateway to Banff. Also, it's a beautiful area, if I recall. What's the date of the conference?

Ron: Our conference is going to be in the early fall. Friday, September 29th is going to be a day of workshops. The following two days, Saturday and Sunday, September 30th and October 1st, are going to be presentations from the various speakers whom we have been really, really thankful and lucky to have landed for this conference. We've got a really great lineup of people that I think Etienne will talk to you about. Calgary sits on the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, but it also faces out into the Great Plains.

We're a very mixed city geographically. We have a lot of little mini ecologies and mini climates going on, which gives us a nice diversity of beekeeping styles and production amounts and so on. It's a very vibrant city for beekeepers. We have about 600 people in the immediate area who are either inside the city limits of Calgary or in one of the adjacent towns who are beekeepers. There is also the thriving beekeeping group in the Tsuutʼina Nation, which borders on Calgary. It just right touches the western edge of Calgary. Towards the mountains is the Tsuutʼina Nation and Chief Crowchild there is a beekeeper.

Our conference is going to be at something called the Grey Eagle Resort, which is on Tsuutʼina Nation land. That's where we're going to be meeting, and we're going to try to tie some cultural events in with our activities as a showcase for Western Canadian beekeeping. We have a lot going for us. It's a beautiful, safe city, easy to visit. Just in the last days of something called the Calgary Stampede, which I think a lot of people know about. We had our opening day. We had 170,000 people showed up. Now, that was a record. That was the most we've ever had for an opening day at the Calgary Stampede, but the numbers are always over 100,000 for each of the days, which gives us about a million visitors to the Stampede.

In addition to Stampede, if you're not just into cowboys, we've got all kinds of fun stuff. Lots of great museums in the city, art museums. Calgary is one of those cities that has a high percentage of immigrants living among us. I'm one. I came up from the United States to live in Canada. The immigrants have got some of the most fantastic restaurants and cultural festivals and so on. Calgary is a great city, and the guests who come up here I think are going to be really nicely surprised with the amenities and just the beauty of the city itself.

The Economists Magazine, I think you may have heard of that, it's a big business magazine. They have a special entity associated to them which analyzes cities all over the world and finds the best cities for people to live and work in. Calgary ranked number three in the world last year after the cities of Vienna and Copenhagen. Calgary was number three in the world in terms of just affordability, safety, cleanliness, family values, education. It's just a really great city. Beekeeping and our 600 beekeepers around our area are very into beekeeping. They've got the educational background, the enthusiasm.

Our city is a real volunteer climate to it. People love to volunteer for things. That's where I think I should mention the Calgary and District Beekeepers Association because they have teamed up with the Western Apicultural Society so that the two are coming together. Western Apicultural Society supplying a lot of the background and brains and organizational skills, and me and local people are more involved in just getting things done on the ground, finding that venue, making sure that the guests are going to be well taken care of, and those sorts of things and enjoying themselves in Calgary.

Kim: Well, that falls back on the way EAS works. All the states east to the Mississippi River belong-- and as a group, they pick a state or a state applies for holding a meeting every year. EAS does the financial background and legwork, and the local people get it organized for speakers and hotels and those sorts of things. It sounds like the pattern has remained pretty constant. It always worked for us and it sounds like it's working for you too, but what you bring up, Ron, is a couple of things in terms of the diversity of the population that you have up there. I'm going to guess that a beekeeper's meeting with people from that many different backgrounds can be confusing. Am I close?

Ron: Not really because of their backgrounds in the different countries that they've arrived from. We do have beekeepers in the club who learn to keep bees in India and in Central Africa, and a lot from Holland and England, but the majority are from Canada. Where we find our conflicts and diversities in skills and styles are more along the social demographics in our city. We have a large proportion of people who are involved in business. Alberta's a very business-oriented area. The city of Calgary is the center of the energy-- it's the energy capital of Canada.

We have a large group like that but the beauty and the lifestyle has attracted a lot of people who have a much free lifestyle. When we get together at the beekeeper's meeting, it's not unusual to have engineers talking about how they design the bees and the beehives and their systems. They have things developed and written out in very great detail. About half the people are going to counter that with, "I love my bees. I have a hive in the backyard and I just like to go sit in front of them and dwell among my bees."

They may be people who are strongly or one time were strongly against using chemical treatments and requeening with purchased queens and so on. We have a real dichotomy in that sense where we have two different styles of beekeeping, and it is a big city. We have a million and a half people living here in Calgary. With the city that large, you do have a wide diversity of folks and that's definitely reflected in our beekeeping club.

Kim: I'll throw this question up to both of you then. My experience goes back to EAS. Typically, not always, but typically we had a theme that our speakers and our programs and the rest would follow during the several days of the meeting. Are you guys looking at some theme? It sounds like any theme you pick would work, but do you have some theme that I can try to understand?

Etienne: The main theme or the title of the conference is the Northern Lights Beekeeping Conference. There is a northern theme to it, but we will have aspects on four main topics, urban beekeeping, because we are working with CDBA, our partnering group, pollinator habitat, which is a big problem in agricultural areas in having that diversity. Alberta's a great place for honey. Sometimes it's canola myself up in the Yukon. There's no pesticides, there's no monoculture, there's no big agriculture. It's a very mixed honey, smaller crops, where the big commercial beekeepers in Alberta. Once the canola or once a certain type of flower is out of bloom, there's a dearth.

We will have a theme on pollinator habitats and because we're talking urban, we will have some themes around native pollinators and that discussion. Hive management is-- we've kept the themes fairly high to give us some leverage downwards so we can cover more topics. Hive management will have groups of talks. For example, we'll have one on wintering because it is in Canada. A lot of folks wonder how we, or even I, keep bees at -50 for 7, 8 months and get big clusters out and even still get honey crops on most years. We're going to cover that.

We're going to have the provincial apiaries from Saskatchewan, Geoff Wilson. He'll cover because he does sideline beekeeping also and he does singles. He's in Northern Saskatchewan, so colder than Calgary, similar climate to myself. He overwinters in singles. There's no honey super on top. Folks in the US, a lot of times you put a medium on top. We don't believe in that. It's just a single standard-size brood box is my preferred wintering. Same with Mr. Wilson. Then we'll have Dr. Debnam, for example, from University of Montana, covering the topic of moisture. Is hive moisture really a problem? Is it really killing my bees?

Ron: We'll come out to the Pacific Northwest and I'll let you know. [laughter]

Etienne: Again, we can get into the science of moisture, and we can go back to first principles. We're going to do some of that. We're going to have some technical streams and then we will have a stream on urban beekeeping where we'll have Ron, Julia Coleman, our director from PC, as well as Dr. Karén, do a grouping of verbing beekeeping talks. Each of these groupings will be followed by a round table for-- there'll be a topic to discuss with opportunities for Q&A. We'll have another one on honey and what is honey, which I love. We'll get a bit about the science of honey, but how to also maximize the value of honey, how to market your honey, and all that type of stuff.

I'll cover the Yukon honey, but I've analyzed 70 Canadian honeys with some international honeys and I've got a big data set. I'll talk about honey in Canada and my findings. Then we've got our director from Hawaii who is emulating my project for Hawaii and Honey. She'll cover that. Then those are our main themes. Then on bee health, because we'll have some really good speakers. We've got Dr. Andony Melathopoulos. I have trouble with really long multi-syllabic words. I think that's the best one I've done so far. He'll be facilitating the round table for the urban beekeeping, and he'll have a talk on the considerable obstacles to increase bee pastures.

For example, most North American cities, and urban rural areas have these big highways with right of ways and lots of ditches and all these unused spaces that for a commercial beekeeper, we're talking acres and acres of land that could be used to help not only honeybees but native pollinators. We'll have Dr. Medhat Nasr. He'll be discussing, on queens on different things during the conference. Since I spoke at Hive Life this last-- in January, it's been almost a year now. I'm connected with Kamon. I've actually asked Kamon Reynolds to come and participate in the conference. He'll be doing two talks, still working on topics. I've got Kamon.

To replace Andrew, I've got Kevin Inglin, the Beekeeper's Corner podcast from New Jersey. I wanted people who are good at speaking around practical topics, hive management topics, making splits for the hobbyists, for the sideliners, for the people trying to try things. They'll both have some workshops, meaning workshops and a couple of talks. Rich Morris from BroodMinder will be speaking. I've asked them to do a talk on-- you've collected data, it's all good. It'll be agnostic to whatever system, but you've got data, so what do you do with it? It'll be around hive management and what you might be missing.

We'll have Dr. Olav Rueppell, from the University of Alberta and Edmonton, covering his research. We've got Dr. Juliana Rangel from Texas. She'll be doing things a couple of workshops, one workshop and some things on queen management and essentials. We've got one of our big Alberta commercial beekeepers, Reece Chandler. It'll be around a year in the life of a large-scale beekeeper, just to give people context to say, "Okay, you got 10 hives. What do you do with plus 1,000, 5,000, 10,000 hives? How does your life change?" Ron, if you can correct me, how many hives does Reece have?

Ron: I don't know for sure, but it's in the 10,000 range. One thing really interesting about what Reece does is he has three steel sheds and each one can hold close to 3,000 colonies of bees. Those things are kept 100% dark during the winter. Temperature is modulated so that it never strays from, I don't remember the number, but maybe 8 degrees Celsius, which would be about 45 or so Fahrenheit. It's 100% dark except for some red lights that the bees can't recognize. That helps people get around in there. Air movement is really important.

You were mentioning the Chinooks that you occasionally have up in Whitehorse in the Yukon. We have them not every 20 years but about every 20 days during the winter. The temperature can go from below freezing up to about 50 or even 60 Fahrenheit within just a few hours because of warm winds coming down off of the mountains. We're close to the Rockies. He has to be able to control for that because his hives have to stay at that really steady temperature and being able to keep the airflow, huge volumes of air moving through but not warm air. It's quite an art.

Reece is going to be really interesting to listen to because he talks a lot about how he manages a large crew of-- Again, I don't want to speak for him, so I don't know how many colonies or if he has 15 or 25 people working for him. It's really interesting to listen to him. He's a very, very conscientious, very good beekeeper.

Jeff: Let's take this opportunity to take a quick break and we'll be right back.

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Etienne: Just to close that topic off, we've got over 12 speakers. I think we have 14 speakers. A lot of us have presented, and we've got a lot of topics in our head. One of the main topics or objective is some of the groups have asked us, "What's the ROI on a conference? What's the return on investment?" Then I said, "Okay, you've got these 16 speakers. You've got 100 to 200 beekeepers all together for three days." I said, the networking and the sharing-- in the Yukon right now it's about C$440 to bring up a nook.

If you're replacing your bees every year, basically it pays for your trip. If you buy two nooks a year, it pays for your plane ticket, and if you share a room with somebody, it helps you cover the cost of the conference. In a nutshell, we've tried bringing speakers. We've got BC's tech transfer program lead, Dr. Morfin, who's coming. She's going to cover some of the work that she does, and then she'll have a workshop. You'll have access to all these speakers and people. We're all happy to talk to bees.

HiveLife was great. I had a chance to go to Apimondia in Montreal and speak there but also the networking and meeting folks is-- that's the experience. Once you go to a beekeeping conference, it's like, "Wow, what have I been missing?" It's worth the investment. It's not free, but just put things in perspective. We're covering lunches and coffee breaks. Our ticket is C$150. The exchange rate is 1.33, so you can do the math. It's pretty cheap in US dollars. 100 of that covers the meals. You don't have to feed yourself during those two days.

On the workshops, what we've been trying to do or what we've done with the workshops is, it's having smaller groups. We'll have three or four streams where you have access to the presenter/speaker presenter, where you can do-- We'll have themes. They'll probably do a 5, 10-minute, 15-minute talk, like a show and tell. Then it's an interactive discussion. We'll have props and different things. For example, I'm pushing to have a microscope set up permanently somewhere in the venue. During my workshop, I'm going to do basics on my crosses, just around diseases, pollens, to show what people can do.

We'll have Kamon do, and Snelgrove, Cloake boards, 3D printing, bee economics, are you break-even? One of Ron's talks. We'll have our director from Wyoming do hive inspections. Chances are if the weather's nice, we'll have a bee fence out there, an electric fence, a bare fence with some colonies for some demos, so for some hands-on. You can actually go out in a bee yard and ask your question in front of a beehive. In a nutshell, there's a lot. Winter prep is a big one, so we'll cover winter prep, disease monitoring, Dr. Nasr. Lots of different topics.

Kim: You are going to have a bee yard on location?

Ron: Yes, we are going to have a bee yard on location. At least that's our effort. It'll depend a bit on the weather, but yes, we'll have something there.

Kim: There'll be classes in the bee yard, people demonstrating different techniques to do things. For the person who still can't find the queen to that guy with 30,000 hives in an overwintering shed, you're going to have a full range of topics and things that people can discover.

Ron: That's correct, and because we're located at a resort that's on the Tsuutʼina Nation, they have offered-- and they will have a huge teepee set up. Inside that teepee, there will be activities such as constructing equipment and so on. We're trying to put as much experience and fun into everything. The bees themselves, if that all works out the way it's being planned, beekeepers who are participating will have a chance to experience professionals from the Alberta Wildlife Agency who are responsible for bear damage. They're going to construct fences so that people can see what goes into putting up a bear fence that will keep a grizzly out hopefully.

Also, now Etienne winters his hives in one single box, but most of us aren't that good. We put them in two boxes and we're going to have people show how to prepare the insulation materials for wintering through these cold temperatures. These are all things that we are going to be having as outdoor activities, weather permitting, but typically the fall weather in this part of the world is not too bad. Highs may be 45 to 55, and certainly, sweater weather outdoors is typical.

Kim: Just a quick follow-up on that. Many organizations now and many in the past have, as part of the program, a master beekeeper program. Do you guys have something like that where there's a written exam, and then a field exam, and then an oral exam? Are you headed in that direction?

Ron: Not yet, are you interested in setting it up for us? Yes, you would be the perfect manager for that.

Kim: I'll put that on my to-do plate. How's that?

Ron: Okay. We don't have it. We teach beginning courses and for people who want to keep bees in the city of Calgary, they are required to have taken one of the courses that our Calgary Beekeepers Association puts on. That's a requirement, a two-day course, and after that, they get a certificate that allows them to at least take the risk of putting bees in their backyard.

Etienne: I guess due to our geographic span from the Yukon, Alaska, all the way down to New Mexico, southern US, we'd rather support local programs, universities, different groups that offer that education because to put a program together that applies for me up here versus somebody in Calgary versus somebody in BC, Vancouver, BC, Oregon, Washington, down south, requires a lot of time and effort. We are a volunteer board, so we do our best with what we have. Our goal is not to make money with the conference. The goal is to break even. Any surplus or go to research to support local programs.

Kim: If I want to find out more about this, I know there's going to be a lot more. You're out there for several days. I'm going to guess you have a web page that has all of this that I can find and look at the speakers and backgrounds and topics and days and places and everything. Am I right?

Etienne: You are right. The easiest way to find it is just Google WAS beekeeping or Western Apicultural Society. You'll notice the second tab on the website says 2023 conference. If you go to that screen, you scroll down, you'll see where we have our list of speakers. One thing we didn't really mention is we will have a trade show and we're going to have some of our major vendors in Canada attend, a couple from the US.

I'm attempting to work with some of them to set up pre-orders so that if people want to buy equipment or widgets or things beforehand, they can pre-order, have a vendor code, so then it's easier for the vendor to deliver and do things. If you go to the website, you've got a button there to register, and you've got a button there if you'd like to become a sponsor. We do have a nice list of sponsors.

Jeff: If a listener doesn't want to Google it, you can just check the show notes and we'll have the links directly to the WAS show. In the show notes, you click on from the podcast itself.

Ron: That'd be great, Jeff. We really appreciate that. We're looking forward to a lot of folks showing up from all over just to find out what beekeeping in the Great White North is all about. I do want to mention just to in cap and something that we didn't talk about at all is first of all, we are going to have a honey show as well. Any participants who are coming in, we'd love to have honey from all over from our guests and there will be probably some small prize, but on top of that, bragging rights is the best in the West, so there's that.

Jeff: For the participants coming up from the States, what are the border crossing requirements for bringing honey into Canada? It'd be what, three pounds, three kilos? Probably wouldn't get past friendly border agents, would it?

Ron: These days you're not going to fly with it in your handbag, but it'll get past the border agents as small samples of honey that are being brought in. They're highly regulated when it's anything bigger than that, but I think the Canadian Food Inspection Agency is allowing samples to pass back and forth across the border without much difficulty.

Jeff: That would be the small show size, the Queen Lion jar show size?

Ron: Yes. That's right. The guidelines will be posted on that web link too, so people can look that up. Just that summary then again, yes the trade show and the honey show, going to be going through most of the conference. Friday will be workshops, which will be mostly hands-on, or at least open enough where people should feel comfortable to stand around the presenter, ask direct questions and check out how things are done. That includes somebody's going to be using a 3D printer to make, manufacture, you know how beekeepers like to tinker. Etienne with his microscopes and showing how to diagnose diseases, and look at pollen grains to see where the pollen source might have been. That's the first day.

Second and third day are the core of the conference, which is presentations from 16 speakers and all them high caliber. I'm really looking forward to that. I'd like to also, as we're wrapping up here, just remind people that beekeepers like to know about how things are done in other places. This Northern Lights Beekeeping, we have really, really long summer days, and the bees will start flying at 8:00 in the morning and still be flying at 10:00 in the evening bringing in honey in those days. It's not uncommon at all to see 20 and 30 pounds of gain in one single day, net gain of honey.

Average up here is, for good beekeepers who have been at it for quite a few years, 200 pounds is what they aim at year after year. Our provincial average is only 140 pounds, but the reason for that much lower number is that almost a quarter of all the colonies of bees in Alberta, and a quarter is about 80,000 colonies of bees, are holed into a summertime pollination gig where they don't make honey. When we factor that quarter of the bees out where they're not being productive while they're doing pollination, then our average for most beekeepers who don't pollinate is really quite high.

The honey is water white, typically, because we produce it from alfalfa, sweet clover, and canola. Those are our main sources of nectar here. These phenomenal crops, to be able to just brush shoulders with some of these people, I love it. I learned all the time. Even a farm boy from Western Pennsylvania, makes you drool sometimes to see what good beekeepers can do in a place like this.

Kim: Quick question for those who could care less about bees and beekeeping and beekeeper meetings, I see you have some tours listed. They could spend their time doing-- What are you going to show me when I come up there?

Ron: A lot of the touring can be done by yourself. If you're renting a car, we are going to be providing all sorts of ideas and maps and locations to go to. Those include such things as the United Nations Heritage site, which is called-- I'm going to forget the name of it, but it's a buffalo run where 100 years ago, people were chasing the buffalo over a ridge and then they would fall down, and indigenous people would gather from hundreds of kilometers around and come and have a great party, and a great harvest of meat, and bones, and fur from the buffaloes. This is quite a sight to see. It's just south of Calgary, not far.

To the east of Calgary is one of the most phenomenal dinosaur museums in the world. It's called Tyrrell, T-Y-R-R-E-L-L, Tyrrell Museum named after an early paleontologist. We just happen to have the right Badlands to expose the bones of some of the most phenomenal dinosaurs. They've created a $20 million museum that you should tour while you're here. Most people seem to head to the west and that's the Rocky Mountains. Skiing might be started by that time, but hiking probably will still be quite a good opportunity.

It's a bit off-season in the early part of October, so a person might want to be looking at a cabin for a few nights in the mountains, waterfalls, hiking trails all over the place. It's just gorgeous, you might run into a grizzly or two but maybe a buffalo. It's a prime place for holidays. We are organizing some tours that will include a tour of the Tsuut'ina Nation. They have a museum there with some astonishing history of what the people went through and how they live, so that's part of it.

We are expecting and hoping that there will be some Native dancing at the venue itself, and we have beekeepers around the area who have opened their doors, so people can walk through and see what it's like to-- just one outfit just south of Calgary that runs about 3,000 or 4,000 colonies of bees, and they are really looking forward to having guests come in. For that, we're going to try to organize tours that people can sign up for, so they don't have to do too much extra homework or thinking. I really encourage people to rent a vehicle. The city at its size has great infrastructure, it's extremely accessible, easy driving around the city, and then to get out on your own is going to be a lot of fun for anybody.

Kim: I think, Jeff, what more could we ask for?

Jeff: Two tickets would be great. That would be wonderful. Etienne, Ron, it's been a true pleasure having you on the show. I'd like to have you both back at different times to talk more in-depth about beekeeping in the Great North, especially winter preparations. It's an extreme place to keep bees in many ways for many beekeepers down here in the States. Thanks for talking to us about WAS annual conference in Calgary. I'm really sorry now that I won't be there, but I look forward to getting up to Calgary at some point in my life.

Kim: Jeff, I got to go back to one more question that I forgot to ask. I'm going to guess that your group has a social media organization that's going to be before, during, and after this conference. If I can't be there, I might be able to sit in on a Facebook live thing and listen to one of your talks, or somebody will tour me through the vendor. You're going to have something like that?

Etienne: We're hoping to. We're looking for volunteers, so we may have a few of the talks, Zoom. I might buy myself a new iPhone and set up a tripod and record some of the talks. We're looking for ways of actually-- because that's been one of the requests, for most conferences now is, will you have a product after the conference that we can buy to view the talks. It's something we're discussing with the technology and the tools we have available now. It requires a dedicated person per room to do the recordings. If there's somebody out in audio land, listening to the podcast, who have that specialty, and they'd be interested in helping us out on that, don't hesitate to reach out.

Jeff: I'm sure Kamon will cover part of it on his YouTube channel too. He does a fine job. Look forward to watching that. Gentlemen, like I said, look forward to having you back.

Ron: We really appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Kim: Great to get to talk to both of you. Again, I look forward to watching some of what you're doing out there this summer.

Ron: You bet.

Etienne: Thanks a lot.

Jeff: Now, I'm really sorry that I could not make plans to attend the Western Apicultural Society meeting up in Calgary. It sounds like a really, really good meeting.

Kim: It's a good meeting, a good location, and good people running it through for three. Having never been in that part of Canada, that would have been good. What I know about Canada and overwintering, so it'd been good to pick that up also. I'm sorry, I can't make it this year, but we'll look down the road.

Jeff: Yes. The overwintering made me think instantly. I know Etienne does a lot of research and posts a lot of research on overwintering extremes. I think he does use a lot of the insulated hives too. He does a lot of work with installation. Should have gotten him and our guests from a couple of weeks ago from Australia together on talking about the value of the insulated knives. It would have been good discussion. That about wraps it up for this episode. Before we go, I want to encourage our listeners to 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 along the top of any web page. We want to thank our regular episode sponsors, Global Patties, Strong Microbials, and especially Betterbee for their longtime support of this podcast. Thanks to 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 or comments at leave a comment section under each episode on the website. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks a lot, everybody.

[00:48:54] [END OF AUDIO]