Dead Bees Don't Make Honey with Theresa Martin (304)

304 - Dead Bees Don't Make Honey with Theresa Martin

Bill O'Hern: Hello, this is Bill O'hern from O'Honeybee Farm, located in Stony Brook, New York. Welcome to the Beekeeping Today Podcast. I would like to start today's podcast with a dad joke. What did the sushi say to the honeybee? Wasabi.

[music]

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

Becky Masterman: I'm Becky Masterman.

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Jeff: Hey, 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.

Hey, Bill O'Hern and Stony Brook, New York, thank you so much for that very nice, well-spoken intro-

Becky: Wait, it was funny. He added humor to our intro.

Jeff: -and funny, too.

Becky: You have to give him credit. He just raised the bar yet again. We've had some great openers.

Jeff: I don't know if a dad joke is raising the bar, but it's good.

Becky: When he sent that in, I opened that email, I listened to it, and I laughed out loud, Jeff. I appreciate it. I greatly appreciate the intro, and I appreciate the humor he put into it, and it was brave.

Jeff: I enjoyed it. Thanks, Bill. New York's already colored in, but your name's out there as well for today's opening. I can't believe it's November. We're sitting here in the cold, dreary Pacific Northwest. October is well done. It's a hard time of year for beekeepers and bees alike in most parts of the country.

Becky: You know, Jeff, I Googled it, and Minnesota has, I think, about 50 or 60 more sunny days a year than your neck of the woods.

Jeff: Thank you, Becky, for bringing this up at the beginning of the worst time of my year, but go ahead, please.

Becky: [chuckles] I'm just saying. November in Minnesota, it still is quite lovely, and, yes, it might be a little chilly, but it's still, we've got those lovely fall days. Fall in our neck of the woods is just really pretty.

Jeff: Absolutely. I'm wrapping the hives and just finishing up. I put a little bit of insulation on the outside just to cut down on the direct wind hits, just getting them bedded down, making sure they're fed and all set for our next couple 60 days or so. Then I'll take a look at them and we'll start the spring.

Becky: See, that's the difference. I will still put an oxalic dribble on this month. My colonies, I really worry that they'll eat through their stores because I'm used to really cold winters, and our winters have just not been as cold so I wait to wrap them until it gets uncomfortable. I wait until December. I still have got some work that I need to do out there in the bees. Maybe I'm just extending it because I like to visit the apiaries but I can't do anything in January though. There's no peaking, nothing. I don't have sensors like you do so I can't even-- I can go out after it snows to see if I've got some potential dead flyers. That's how I know if there's poop on the ground and dead bees. Usually, it's just so cold, we don't have that opportunity.

Jeff: It's a rough time of year. I hope everyone's having a good start of their season and it's not raining or too gray and dreary where you are. We have a really good show coming up. First, we have Dr. Dewey Caron, who's back with his audio postcard on bee communication. Those are always fun to listen to. Then our guest today is Theresa Martin, who is here to talk about her book. It has a very intriguing title, Dead Bees Don't MakeHoney. I'm looking forward to talking to her. She has a lot of BroodMinder sensors or a lot of sensors in her hives. That'll be fun.

Becky: If you just start at BroodMinder, we might not talk about anything except for BroodMinder.

Jeff: I promise, Becky, that we will save that for later.

Becky: No, it's exciting. I'm glad you're going to be able to have that tech conversation.

Jeff: [laughs] Before we get started though, we want to state that Theresa has written in her book ideas and an approach that works for her that may or may not work for other beekeepers. We want to make sure that listeners seek out the advice and counsel of local mentors before they take on and adopt new beekeeping practices. I think that's only wise just to make sure. There's a lot of things that are stated that have been tried and failed before and we want to avoid any kind of problems.

Becky: It's interesting to bring in beekeepers who run operations and do things a little bit differently and the discussions can be really fruitful. I think sometimes we have to be careful because depending upon where bees are kept, the local conditions, for example, those sunny days that one of us has and the other doesn't, but local conditions make your own operations very different.

If you don't have experience beekeeping in a multitude of locations, which most of the sites don't, I think you have three states under your belt, which gives you a really good understanding of beekeeping, I just want to make sure that we're being careful by not sharing information that listeners might think that we endorse and think that they should get out there and do those practices in their operations.

I know that if I adopted practices that the author today suggests, I would be in big trouble. What she does works for her and works for her theory on keeping bees and her management practices, but it wouldn't work for me. It doesn't mean that her operation is good and mine bad or vice versa. It just means that make sure you're following local advice.

Jeff: Yes. Again, it's part of the 5 beekeepers and 10 ways of doing one single thing. It's, as Kim used to say, it's location, location, location. Oh, no, that was my real estate agent. Sorry. What was--

Becky: [laughs]

Jeff: All right.

Becky: Well said.

Jeff: We have Dewey coming up, then a word from our sponsors, and then we'll get right with Theresa. We'll be right back.

[music]

Dr. Dewey Caron: Hi. I am Dr. Dewey Caron. I come to you from Portland, Oregon. Today I present another audio postcard on communication, a continuing series of Beekeeping Today Podcast. I've been discussing communication on three levels in these podcasts, bee Scientist to beekeeper, beekeeper to bee, and bee to bee. Today's communication is the three Ps. We're going to talk about pesticides, preparation for fall, and pheromones. The communication of bee scientist to us as beekeepers I present today is from my colleague at Oregon State University, Dr. Andony Melathopoulos.

In a recent Beekeeping Today Podcast, he discussed how shifts in land use, agriculture, and climate have impacted nectar and pollen availability, leading to reduced honey yields and, of course, challenges for us beekeepers. Andony conducts three major efforts as our pollination extension specialist at Oregon State. His podcast, Pollination, the Oregon Bee Atlas, and the Oregon Bee Project. I have references to all of these so that you may have a look at them.

Today I want to discuss part of the Oregon Bee Project. One element of this Oregon Bee Project seeks to make it easy to find the resources needed to make informed decisions when it comes to pesticides and pollinators. As beekeepers, we make such decisions in our varroa mite control. Two new compounds that might become useful tools include Amiflex, a commercial beekeeper-designed product available only to individuals that have had training in pesticide use and hold a restricted use certificate on their training. Amiflex is a flash treatment of amitraz, the active ingredient of Apivar.

The second product new for us is VarroxSan. That's extended release of oxalic acid. Not yet available in friendly backyard packaging, but from all indications, a good number of beekeepers have been making their own extended-release product, absorbing oxalic acid into sponge materials. OAC, as the extended-release treatment method is called, holds great promise in keeping mite reproduction at lower levels. All methods of use of oxalic acid, it is not a good pesticide tool to use to lower high mite levels, but to help keep them at lower levels when that so occurs.

Beekeepers are well aware that pesticides pose risk to bees and other non-targeted organisms. The risk is magnified when the proper precautions outlined on all pesticide labels are not followed. The Oregon Bee Project is working on several initiatives to ensure that pesticide applicators are better informed about the pesticides they are using and better informed about the potential risks these products pose to bees and other pollinators with all their different pesticide products available and a number of diversity of pesticide applicators in mind.

One initiative jointly by the Oregon Bee Project, Oregon State Beekeepers Association, the Oregon Department of Agriculture is to increase pesticide applicator trainings and create new training materials as part of existing licensing procedures. The new content includes information about how pesticide exposure can occur and pesticide properties like residual toxicity. Training the applicators, including beekeepers applying pesticides, pays off by reducing risk and better-informed applicators.

Trained material developed are being packaged and incorporated in other states. One useful source is an index card-size brochure, Protect Bees Read Pesticide Labels. Further useful aids can be found on the Oregon Bee Project resource directed to target audiences such as us, beekeepers, to foresters, gardeners, land managers, and of course, those that are most involved, the pesticide applicators. Check it out, bee science to beekeeper and beyond communication.

Second part that I do is communication of beekeeper to bees. One consistent communication between beekeepers and bees in the fall is what is expected in organization of the colony and the hive as fall preparations are completed. For the best changes for overwintering success, our bees need rear, the fat fall bees that will survive long enough to protect the hive until replacement bees can be reared come spring. Brood rearing increases with new sources of pollen for the colony and as day length increases. Some colonies do not cease brood rearing as a project organized by Auburn University is demonstrating.

For example, on December 13th, 2023, we had low brood rearing, roughly the equivalent of a third of a frame of brood equivalent at the OSU apiary monitoring site. There was no brood rearing in the later December or to January sampling periods, but by early February, the equivalent of a frame of brood was the norm. Although the project doesn't include all states, you can easily see results with the interactive US map. I referenced this in the end notes that you may take a look at this, and see if there's something near you that would be useful.

The other beekeeper to bee communication we seek in fall preparations is to ensure adequate stored honey. Fully ripened capped honey cells are the fuel supply for the clustered bees over winter. Not only does a hive need enough, which varies from a few frames in the Southern US to the equivalent of whole blocks in more northerly beekeeping areas, but it needs proper positioning above the clustering bees.

How can we communicate to a hive? We can reduce stress by keeping mite numbers and disease brood numbers low. Tough management on both counts. There's no one way to accomplish this objective. It is multifaceted. Bee stock, suitable to your area, really aggressive mite level sampling and control, keeping mites below the 1% to 2% infestation levels, following super removal in July-August when you do that, or at the start of fall management. Usually, we say fall management is Labor Day, but we need to be thinking August because of our mite activities we need to do.

One aggressive manipulation is to consolidate the brood in the bottom box, confining in early fall with queen excluder, remember to remove it before winter, or moving brood to weaker colonies from those from strong colonies, in other words, reducing the brood area so that the colonies get the idea, even caging the queen, but top feeding of heavy syrup is a more common means of pushing the bees into the lowest box. Actually, the ideal beginning cluster location is between the two boxes so the bees can communicate across the top bars of the frames of that lower box. Feeding helps consolidate, and of course, helps provide them with those sufficient stores needed for overwintering. It's better to have too many stores versus too few.

Beekeeper to bee communication. Finally, what about communication of bee to bee? We know the queen is the master source of chemicals in a bee colony that informs hive mates of her status. In the spring, a growing colony has the same need to know the queen is present as a small colony. However, as the colonies grow, the queen's pheromones, that essence of what she is, are not as well distributed because now there's a greater number of workers that need that message, and the flow from her of her pheromones is going to be less efficient as there are more bees, our so-called congestion theory.

Results are the bees raise a bunch of queen cells leading to swarming behavior. Likewise, if we remove the queen or injure her during an inspection, or she falls from the removed frame and falls out of the hive, the bees recognize her absence in a short time and begin to rear emergency queen cells as replacement. In both instances, bees start replacements over a several days period. Worker bees recognize the developing queen cells, and we use the same recognition by looking inside our hives on a regular basis. Clam shelling the spring colony and looking for swarm cells, for example, listening for the colony roar, indicating that they might be without a queen. Our scale is recognizing emergency cell difference from queen cells by closely looking at the developing queen cell bases. Bees apparently can do this easier than we can with their communication.

The enigma in queen and the messages is the process that we call supersedure. How can bees tell their queen is failing? The third queen replacement behavior is not as well studied. How can bees know their queen is failing? Research on honeybee reproduction has focused on swarming behavior and nest site selection. There's a significant gap in our knowledge related to supersedure. Supersedure seems to be a collective decision-making process regarding reproduction of worker bees, daughters of the colony queen. Do they simply replace an old or failing queen? Is it a different behavior compared to queens being reared for the purposes of colony fission, that is our swarming, or when colonies rear emergency queens following queen loss?

Dave Tarpy of North Carolina State published a new concept, a modeling paper, in the journal Insect Science.He argues that queen supersedure is not caused by the poor quality of queens per se, but instead is prompted by the worker's perception of her reproductive potential. He postulates queen supersedure in honeybees is a symptom of environmental factors, both the social factors within a colony and the abiotic factors of the environment within the colony rather than simply an honest signal of a given queen's reproductive potential. Can indeed worker bees somehow evaluate the potential of their mom, the colony queen? Bee to bee communication on steroids.

Lots of thoughts. Now we need some studies to show some truth. I hope your fall management's been successful and the majority of your colonies survive the winter season. Best to you and your bees.

[music]

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Jeff: Hey, everybody, welcome back. Sitting across a great big virtual Beekeeping Today Podcast, table. Sitting down in Kentucky, or over in Kentucky, is Theresa Martin, author of Dead Bees Don't Make Honey.Theresa, welcome to Beekeeping Today Podcast.

Theresa Martin: Thank you, Jeff and Becky. I'm a big fan of your podcast so I'm pleased to be talking with you today.

Becky: We're happy to have you here, Theresa. Thanks for joining us.

Jeff: Yes. Thanks, Theresa. Before we get going, Theresa, I want to ask you, back in October, we had all the flooding and everything going on that was in the Western, like North Carolina and Eastern Kentucky. Were you close to any of that? Were you affected by any of those tragic events?

Theresa: Thank you, Jeff, for asking. Luckily, no. We are in an area of Kentucky that only received about three inches of rain in a reasonable amount of time. No, we were not affected by this past flood. We have been two years ago, some pretty dramatic flooding, but we got lucky and feel very sympathetic towards all the people that were dramatically affected. The tragic losses are hard to fathom.

Jeff: Absolutely. Again, welcome to the show, Theresa. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background in beekeeping and how you got started?

Theresa: I have been keeping bees for just six full years. I just finished my seventh summer. I keep between 20 and 25 colonies in Southeastern Kentucky, as you said. In my entire time as a beekeeper, I have 99% colony survival with only one dead colony, zero absconds, and zero combines of two queen right colonies because one was too small or weak to survive on their own. My bees are pretty productive. The last three years, especially, they have made significantly more than the average for my area in terms of honey. I do sell locally adapted colonies and a good number of those. Yet, I want to say very clearly that despite that pretty good, most beekeepers would think survival and productivity, I am so far from a perfect beekeeper. I think we could do a whole podcast about all the dumb things and the mistakes I've ever made. I'm not perfect.

My bees are not perfect either. They're all caught swarms. They're all locally adapted bees by this point, but they get sick just like everybody else's bees. My locations are far from perfect. I keep these 20 to 25 colonies in four different locations and those locations certainly have advantages, but they got some pretty significant and intractable disadvantages as well. I share all my imperfections with you and your listeners because what it means is that survival and that productivity is at least in part likely due to the methods that I use to keep bees. That is really great news.

I think it's great news because it means it's transferable. I offer humbly to you and your listeners, other beekeepers, the opportunity to, maybe, I can share with you how I keep bees, why I keep bees the way I do in the event that there are other beekeepers interested in exploring increased survival, health, and then the resulting productivity. I always say super early in any conversation that I am in no way suggesting that my way of keeping bees is the one right way. We all keep bees differently.

I want to say, I thought this was so fascinating, Becky, in your dissertation for your doctorate degree. I about died when I read that in the very first introduction, you made a comment about how you were taught how to do inspections by one of your mentors and advisors, and you were taught the right way. Then you were taught immediately after how to do inspections the other right way. I just thought that was a great example of how I feel about beekeeping and how important it is that we acknowledge all the different ways to keep bees and constantly recognize and are willing to learn and explore and listen.

Jeff: Well, Becky, I never heard that your dissertation almost killed somebody. This is amazing.

Becky: I would just like to say besides Marla Spivak, who had to read my dissertation-

Jeff: [laughs]

Becky: -I don't think I know anybody who else who has. [chuckles] No. No, no, my whole committee had to read my dissertation. I certainly don't remember writing that. That was 25 years ago, about. Anyway, so thanks for reading. You didn't read the whole thing, did you?

Theresa: Well, I didn't because it's not available. The whole thing is not available, nor are several of your academic articles, your peer-reviewed research. I read what was out there.

Becky: Library access.

Theresa: You'll hear, if we talk for very long, that I really gravitate towards science and peer-reviewed research in the way that I keep bees and the choices that I make because I just find that it helps me cut through the ask 10 beekeepers a question and you get 11 different answers. A lot of those are certainly valid answers and they're situational. It's based on the priorities of that beekeeper. I do enjoy trying to get to the academic research to understand the controlled studies, and such. Yes, I liked reading what you wrote.

Jeff: Even in our discussions right now, you focus a lot on numbers. Are you, by training, otherwise a numbers-oriented person or you just grab on those things? I don't even know if I could tell you how many hives I have right now or how many live hives I have right now, let alone the statistical average of over a period of time of any one thing of my bees other than 100% sure I don't know what they're doing right now.

[laughter]

Theresa: I doubt, I mean, I don't have a scientific background. It's more business, but maybe it was drilled into me at some point that one of my bosses, he once told me, "Theresa, activity doesn't matter as much as results. Also, how you arrive at those results is important," and so I tend to try and emphasize that. I'm not sure why I am the way I am. I don't know how any of us arrive really at who we are, but I do try and pay attention to the success and the results of what I do and spend my time as wisely as I can.

Jeff: Before we get into the book, tell us a little bit about your environment there in Eastern Kentucky. Where do you live? Are you in a field? Is it a lot of agriculture? Are you urban? Describe where your bees are sitting.

Theresa: Yes. My 20 to 25 colonies, they're in, as I mentioned, four different locations. Two of the locations are very rural. One of them is fairly agriculture and one is suburban. I have my bees in different ecosystems, I guess, we could say. Kentucky is sort of a moderate climate. Some of the locations are in more of a mountainous area so they have more of a northern feel to them. That's the environment in which I keep bees.

Becky: What do your bees like to forage on, Theresa?

Theresa: The poplar is the main honey flow that we get in the spring. There's multiple tree species. We do have a goldenrod and aster flow in the fall, depending on whether or not there was a significant drought. In the July-August timeframe, we'll determine whether or not there's a fall flow. The fall flow is usually pretty marginal. It's not really enough to backfill the brood nest and replace any honey that was taken by the beekeeper. We generally will not see a harvest from our fall flow. The population is still high in the hive, and so there's lots of mouths to feed. We generally are taking our honey early July to June, and then, usually, not harvesting honey again until the following year.

Jeff: That's like here. We have no fall flow to speak of, or at least to harvest from. Everything happens at the end of June, beginning of July with the blackberries. Some areas around here, they're up in the mountains, they'll have secondary flows later in the summer or in the fall, but around here, locally, you got to make what you can do in June, July.

Becky: I'm telling you guys, it's so much easier in Minnesota. [laughs]

Jeff: Where's that mute button? Where's that mute button? [chuckles]

Becky: I'm the spokesperson for Minnesota beekeeping.

[laughter]

Becky: Everything's easier with the nectar flow. [chuckles]

Jeff: It is. It is. Everything's easier with a good environment. We learned that last month in the Habitat series, not just to do a kickback to the series. What inspired you to write a book? I love the title, Dead Bees Don'tMake Honey.

Theresa: Thank you. I think that's the one thing. We beekeepers can disagree on many things, but I think that is one thing we all agree on is dead bees don't make honey. The way the book came about is it starts with my origin story as a beekeeper. We all started keeping bees one way or the other. I started with two nucs that I purchased, as I said, six years ago, and they came to me really sick. I was three weeks in and they were both dying from what Dr. Tammy Horn Potter, our state apiarist at the time, indicated was likely chronic bee paralysis virus. I did my alcohol wash at three weeks. As a brand new beekeeper, I was devastated by the whole thing. I found that both of the colonies were heavily infested with varroa destructor, varroa mites.

I worked with a supplier who gave me the bees or that I bought the bees from and he took back one of the colonies and I decided to keep the other one. I decided if I'm going to go through this difficult time, I might as well try and learn something from it. The colony that the beekeeper took back, that colony was dead by August, unfortunately. The colony that I kept is still alive today and thriving. What happened was I was probably forced or motivated by watching these bees die by the handfuls to learn about things that beekeepers, probably many beekeepers don't learn until much later.

I studied things like the honey bee immune system and varroa reproduction, integrated pest management. I started looking at how bees survive in the wild and how they keep themselves healthy. I looked at local adapted bees and space and colonies farther apart. This was all in 2018. Then in 2019, Dr. Thomas Seeley came out with his book. I got lucky. The timing was great. He came out with The Lives of Bees, which I imagine many of your listeners have read. I know you've had Dr. Seeley on multiple times. I was lucky in that that book brought together a lot of the research that I was already doing and solidified the methods that I ended up gravitating towards and implementing.

In that, I was corresponding with Dr. Seeley about what I was doing and what I was learning, and the results that I was having. He was very supportive and encouraged me to not only give presentations about what I was doing, several years later, I was giving presentations about it and such, trying to help other beekeepers, he said, "You need to write about this. You have something here that may benefit other beekeepers." That's how the book came about. I would never have written a book if it weren't for his suggestion that maybe I had something useful to tell somebody.

That's how the book came about. Dr. Seeley wrote the foreword, put his name on the cover with mine. I'm very honored that he thought it was worthy of his name. I published it this past March. That's how it came about. It was just this sequence of events and the 99% survival and the productivity that came in the last several years, the last most recent years, is how I ended up with a book. That's how it came to be.

Jeff: I could probably write a book on how not to do it, like you said earlier, but that's really good. Let's take this opportunity to take a quick break and we'll be right back and learn more from Theresa.

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Becky: Welcome back, everybody. Theresa, we are not going to be able to go through every tip that you share with beekeepers. I am curious, I think that you addressed it later on the book that you cannot pick your favorite tip because they all work together, but do you want to just share your view of integrated pest management and how you've incorporated that into your operation?

Theresa: Sure. Thank you for the question. Integrated pest management, I think, is all that in a bag of chips. If I did have to pick one, I probably would pick that one. The research would support that as one of the keys to colony health and survival and, certainly, productivity. Early on in any conversation, I always say that I am not a treatment-free beekeeper. I think the reason is because when I share that I practice nature-based beekeeping or Darwinian or sustainable permaculture, whatever, organic, whatever you want to call it, people assume, well, she's probably treatment-free, and I am not.

I call myself, and I say it a couple of times in the book, that I'm a treatment-less beekeeper. It's really more to distinguish that I'm not treatment-free. The way I arrive at this treatment-less aspect of beekeeping is I practice very heavy integrated pest management. What that allows me to do along with the other nine tips in the book, the tips for healthy, productive bees, is it allows me to treat individual colonies when thresholds are exceeded and on the timing that is unique to that individual colony.

For example, I space my colonies as far apart from each other as possible. I don't have whole apiaries to treat, for example, because I don't really have apiaries in the traditional conventional sense. I run, for example, screened bottom boards. That is a part of integrated pest management. Beekeepers will say, and we hear it, that, well, gosh, 10% of the mites that fall through the screen and onto the mite IPM board, that's not very high percentage. That's true.

If you take 10% mites falling through for screened bottom boards, and then you do a second thing that's 10% reduction in mites and another thing that is a reduction in mites, before you know it, you have a lot less mites and so you have to treat a lot less. That's the whole idea of IPM is doing as many things as you can so that the mite load, the reproduction of the mites is as low as possible so you have to treat as little as possible, and hence, the phrase treatment less. That's how I employ integrated pest management.

Jeff: When you use IPM bottom board, do you keep that slider, the corrugated cardboard, do you leave that in all the time or do you take it out?

Theresa: I leave the IPM board, the sticky board, the whiteboard, whatever you want to call it, I leave it in all the time. There's a couple of reasons. One is I do, in addition to alcohol washes, I absolutely do quite a few alcohol washes, but I also count mites on that sticky board 12 times a year at the beginning of every month with discipline across every single colony. I pull the board out and I coat it with a thick layer of Vaseline and I put it back in and I count mites with the magnifying glass. I pull it out and count them several days later and then I figure out the per day drop. I do that with discipline. The board is always in and the mites are always falling and then I'm counting them often.

The other reason that I keep the board in all the time is I have been adapting and modifying my methods. This past year, for example, I have modified all my bottom boards such that I can put a piece of insulation under the colony, as well as several inches of foam insulation on top of the colony. Then I keep them insulated year-round. I'm looking at things like condensing colony, and things like that, the newer research that comes out that explains how bees control ventilation and how they control both the heat and the cooling within the colony and how they change those dynamics in micro changes. The sticky board stays in all the time. It's been in for years. I've always kept it in. Now I've also added these insulating qualities to the top and the bottom that are also now in year round.

Jeff: I still go back and forth all the time, but partially it's because the corrugated plastic, corrugated boards tend to warp. I just hate that.

Becky: I'm just curious if anybody's recruited you to do a PhD in their lab, Theresa, because you've got extreme discipline and data collection skills. [chuckles]

Theresa: Thank you, Becky. Coming from you, that is a heck of a compliment. I'm humbled. Thank you. I do have some ideas. [chuckles]

Jeff: [laughs]

Theresa: One of them is-- I have temperature sensors in all my colonies. I know Jeff uses multiple different types of sensors in his beekeeping operation. One of the things I have that I don't know if it's of any value to anyone, I haven't looked at it, is I have always had temperature sensors in my colony. For, gosh, now, six years and counting, I've had these in my colonies. The sensors, as Jeff will attest to, they can alert you to when a colony has swarmed. I have years of data regarding swarming which includes things like whether or not, because my colonies are spaced far apart, I know whether or not a colony has cast a primary and a secondary swarm. I know the exact time of day that they swarmed. I also know what the weather was when they swarmed.

I have this whole body of data that I don't know what to do with. I don't know if it's anything. I need to get in there and analyze it and then maybe get somebody who's way smarter than me to tell me whether there's anything of value for anybody in it. I really think there's just so many neat opportunities to learn about bees. There's so many more questions and things that we have yet to explore and yet to understand. They're just fascinating. They're just fascinating creatures.

Becky: You'd be a really good beekeeper candidate to write a SARE grant. Have you looked into those at all? You can actually get funding to ask questions and do collaborations with other researchers or other beekeepers. It seems like your ability to organize and stay on the plan and collect the data, I think it would be fun for you actually.

[laughter]

Theresa: Thank you, Becky. I've never thought about it. I just wrote that down. Again, more value from talking to you fine folks. Thanks.

Becky: If we remember we'll put the link in the show notes as far as SARE. We did just put it in for Sarah Red-Laird. We put it in, I think, those show notes. It's definitely out there. It's a great program for being able to ask questions and look at different management and move what you're doing in your operation forward by formalizing it a little bit.

Jeff: I told Becky early on that I'd wait till the second half of the episode to talk about the censors and the hives. Since you brought it up, Theresa, I think it's only fair that we continue.

Theresa: [laughs]

Becky: Do you want to mute me now?

[laughter]

Becky: Just so everybody doesn't get the impression that I'm against censors and technology, because I'm not. It's just that I don't. I go for it. Both of you, I support you both.

Jeff: No, I'm not going to go on and on. It is, I will say, for our listeners and I can share with Theresa, because I know Theresa likes the censors in the hive and the ability to monitor remotely what's going on in the colony. Back in September, I wrote a blog post on the use of a hive scale to watch really the robbing take place. Not only the robbing of the robbed out hive and watching the loss of honey throughout a single day, but also finding within the yard which colony was doing the robbing and seeing that colony go up in weight proportionally in lockstep with the hive being robbed out, just like the interested beekeeper I am and all of us are. If they were ants, they would have been marching on the ground back and forth. It was amazing.

The same thing with the swarm. I've sat here doing my work, had the BroodMinder, and this is not a commercial for BroodMinder, and Rich is going to be on in a couple of episodes, but having my live graph up on the screen, and all of a sudden, you see the alert right in the middle of the, usually, around one o'clock in the afternoon, there's a blip in the temperature and I say unkind words that I won't say on the podcast and I run downstairs and I look out the back window and I can look in the bee yard and I can see the flurry of bees in the back and I said, "But I got a call in 15 minutes." It's just horrible. I mean, it's wonderful but it's horrible. I'm glad to see that, Theresa, you share the same fanaticism with watching your monitors.

Theresa: I do and I often remind myself and others that the sensors are not an excuse to not do inspections. I like to think that they provide additional data and additional scrutiny on top of the beekeeper intervention into the colony. One of the things that I share is that the seven times that-- I've had seven queenless colonies in my time as a beekeeper, seven instances of a queenless situation. Most of those, I was made aware earlier than I would have, than the inspection timing would have allowed. I was made aware of the queenless situation due to changes in the thermal regulation inside the colony and due to the sensor.

Rich doesn't like me to say this, but some of my survival is because of the sensors. We get busy. We are busy people. Beekeepers have loads of things going on, all of us do. The alerting gives me-- It's an early warning system. "Hey, Theresa, stop whatever you're doing over there. Something is different in this colony. You need to go in and see what's going on." Sometimes it's nothing. Sometimes it's something. That's how I think of sensors. Is there yet another tool that you add on top of being a solid beekeeper, being diligent, understanding your bee biology, understanding your methods, your priorities, and how to keep bees?

Jeff: I have the same opinion about those.

Becky: Theresa, we were just talking about how some of your recommendations are different than some of my practices. One of the things that you and I both do that I think was kind of a guilty pleasure for me is that if we have laying workers, we bring them back and get them requeened. Can you talk about your process? I really enjoyed that in the book.

Theresa: I have had only one situation of laying workers, a colony that is queenless and has progressed to a laying worker situation, which, of course, is when workers activate their ovaries and it occurs usually around three weeks after the colony is queenless. It is triggered by lack of queen pheromone and lack of open brood pheromone. That's what causes laying workers' ovaries to be activated. It is their last ditch effort, of course, to propagate the genetics of the colony because those laying workers can only lay drones.

There are lots of different ways to solve a laying worker colony situation. Every beekeeper has a different reason why they pick a different method. I solved my one situation where I had a laying workers' colony by pulling brood from different colonies multiple times and inserting it into the laying worker colony. That shuts down the ovaries of the laying workers. It is a very labor-intensive and resource-intensive approach to solving laying workers. Most beekeepers do not use that method for those reasons. There's a lot of other things you can do with those resources rather than solve a laying workers' colony. I chose that method for a couple of reasons. One is I wanted to see if it would work.

Becky: Right. [laughs]

Theresa: That was the main reason. It was also spring and I had a bunch of booming colonies that I knew had loads and loads of brood. I knew they weren't going to suffer, or at least not much. That's how come I chose that method of solving this instance of laying workers, and I read-- Oh, and I read a couple of places, Rusty Burlew she explained it. Then ABC and XYZ explained laying workers and suggested that was one of the methods. That's how I did it. I'm curious, Becky, about your approach to laying workers and what you do and why.

Becky: I'm just going to quickly say, so Rusty, her website is Honey Bee Suite, S-U-I-T-E, and it is excellent. It's a very good resource. I do the same thing and I don't do it. It's more of a biology. I approached beekeeping, first I got into it just because I loved the superorganism and I loved the pheromonal control of the workers and the dynamics of the hive. Any opportunity you have to transform a hive from a laying worker situation to a productive overwintered colony is fun. It doesn't happen very often, but it was fun to read your approach. Then it took a little bit of work, but then, all of a sudden, there they go, they're raising there a new queen.

I think what people recommend is just that you shake that colony out and you just move forward and cut your losses. If you're a beekeeper who wants to explore the biology a little bit, I think you're a Betterbeekeeper once you've seen that process because you're actually watching a disorganized colony come back together and become functional.

Jeff: It's not let it go and watch it get robbed out. That's not the best approach for--

Becky: Sorry, Jeff. Jeff, that teaches another lesson.

Jeff: Where were you back in September?

Becky: That teaches another lesson.

[laughter]

Jeff: All right. Theresa, writing a book is hard. What did you learn through the process of writing the book about beekeeping?

Theresa: I learned a lot. I learned about the difference between self-publishing and getting a professional publisher. I learned about the feedback process and it was glorious. Again, Becky, with your dissertation, it was practically as long as my book. The feedback process is a lot of fun. I had multiple readers who gave me suggestions, all of which were valuable. Some of it, it took me a couple of days to get over the criticism, and then once I was past my ego problem, the feedback was just so helpful. Each of the people who gave me feedback contributed in a fundamental way that made it better.

For example, there's a part about the science around treatment-free and some of the challenges to arriving at a sustainable treatment-free approach. As I mentioned, I am not treatment-free, but I wanted to present some of the science that underpins those choices. I had a treatment-free beekeeper who read that section, and then I had several scientists read it. That section is so much better because they scrutinized the heck out of that section. Then, eventually, I've received feedback that is one of the best treatment-free dialogues, we'll call it, that those scientists have read.

My point is it's a fun process. It's a lot of work, and I did it in the winter. I started, and I guess I could share this with you and your listeners, I started the book, I met with Dr. Seeley in August of 2023. I started the book shortly thereafter, and I wrote it through the winter. I decided I'm going to write this book, and I published it the following March. It was a fairly fast bit of work. For me, I need to stay focused. If I'm going to do something, I need to get it done and not let it drag out. That worked for me. It was a very fun process. I'm having a lot of fun talking about the book and seeing how it's being received, what parts are harder for people to digest. It's been a lot of fun.

Becky: It's very clearly written. Do you have other writing skills, or did you just pen to paper, opened up your computer, and it looked that good?

Theresa: No, I've never written anything professionally. I wrote in business, and like others, I write when I need to. I did have a presentation that was the 10 tips for healthy, productive bees that I had been giving. There was a launching pad of these tips. They were already there. I already had the BroodMinder section. I had already studied the heck out of treatment-free because I so wanted to be treatment-free and just don't have the environmental conditions to do it. I had the frequently asked questions had come from the presentations that I developed. It really was just a matter of trying to put it together and organize the thoughts and get it out on paper.

I get a lot of positive feedback about the structure of the 10 tips, where I separate purposefully and with a lot of, I think, pretty good clarity. There's a bee biology section. There's a conventional beekeeping section, which is how we were all taught to keep bees. Then there's a process or a part about healthy beekeeping. Then there's my implementation at the end of each of the 10 tips. I really made it on purpose that the biology is super far away from how I implemented it because the biology, each beekeeper can read that biology section and decide to implement it differently or decide that it indicates different behaviors for them based on their priorities and their focus and their objectives with keeping bees.

I really meant that to be that way because, as I say, I am in no way suggesting that my way is the one right way. I just presented as Dr. Seeley recommended I do and as he does. This is a possible idea that may contribute to beekeepers who are interested in increasing bee health and productivity that results from healthier, more alive bees. The title does say it all, Dead Bees Don't Make Honey. Survival and productivity go hand in hand.

Jeff: Theresa, it's been wonderful having you on the show. I look forward to having you back and best of luck this cold, dreary November, December, January, February, and hopefully, get to March and have a great season in 2025.

Becky: Jeff, I think she can write a book in the next few months. She did it last year. [laughs]

Jeff: Yes, she did.

Becky: Keep writing, Theresa. [laughs]

[music]

Theresa: Thank you very much for having me. I've enjoyed every minute of it and I look forward to many more podcasts with both of you listening to you on your show.

Becky: Thanks, Theresa.

Jeff: Dead Bees Don't Make Honey, that's a really good title. I like Theresa's book. I liked the presentation. She has a lot of ideas in her book. Her 10 tips, I like the structure of that. I think some of those ideas would work. They, obviously, work for her. She has the numbers to back it up, but they wouldn't necessarily work all of them here, as stated, in the Pacific Northwest. I don't think they'd work necessarily for you in Minnesota.

Becky: I think some of the benefits of sharing what you do, even if it's very different than what other people do, is that it's thought-provoking and you can at least have a conversation, or if you're all alone reading the book and you're a beekeeper, you can think to yourself, "Hey, wait, would this work or why wouldn't this work? I think that whole process, I mentioned to Theresa, that a lot of her suggestions, her tips wouldn't work for my operation or for some beekeepers in Minnesota just because of the conditions are very different in Kentucky. It doesn't mean that it's not worth thinking about.

Jeff: It's the whole basis of our regional beekeepers episodes is that we have beekeepers from various corners of the country and the Midwest and get them all together in one episode to talk about what works, what doesn't work. In that way we can all learn from each other. I think that's the value.

Becky: I think accepting the fact that we all do things differently and then really engaging in conversations about sharing information will just make us a better beekeeping industry. I think that the differences are okay, but it has to go both ways. We have to be okay that people do things differently and figure out how to all coexist.

Jeff: That sounds very spiritual.

Becky: Isn't it?

Jeff: I'd looked into it on that.

Becky: [laughs]

Jeff: That about wraps it up for this episode. Before we go, I want to encourage our listeners to follow us and rate us five stars on Apple Podcasts 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 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.

[music]

[00:57:45] [END OF AUDIO]