How To Get Started With Bees in 2024, Part 4 of 4 (S6, E39)

S6, E39 - How To Get Started With Bees in 2024, Part 4 of 4

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Jeff Ott: Welcome to  Beekeeping Today Podcast and our special series  How to Get Started With Beessponsored by Betterbee, your partners in better beekeeping. I'm Jeff Ott.

Kim Flottum: I'm Kim Flottum.

Jim Tew: I'm Jim Tew.

Betterbee: Hey, guys.  Beekeeping Today Podcast is proud to welcome the folks at Betterbee as a beginning beekeeping series sponsor. Betterbee's mission is to support every beekeeper with excellent customer service, continued education, and quality equipment. Just how? Many of their employees are also beekeepers who know your needs, challenges, and answers to your beekeeping questions. From the colorful and informative Betterbee catalogue to the support of beekeeper education including this podcast series, Betterbee truly is beekeepers serving beekeepers. See for yourself at www.betterbee.com.

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Jeff: We want to thank our regular sponsors Bee Culture, Global Patties, and 2 Million Blossoms for their continued support of our podcast and welcome Betterbee as our  How to Get Started With Bees series sponsor. Betterbee, beekeepers serving beekeepers. Hey, guys. Welcome back to the fourth and final episode of our  How to Keep Bees series. It's been busy several episodes, hasn't it?

Kim: Yes, we've done three so far Jeff. I think it'll probably pay to do a real quick recap on all three of them before we get started on this final one.

Jeff: Let's do it.

Kim: I'll go back to the first one where we talked about where you're going to put your bees, locate them, dealing with neighbors, ordinances, and then the types of equipment and the types of bees you're going to get. If you're still wondering about is it legal to put bees in my backyard? Go back and check that first episode because we put out a lot of information. Jim, I think on the second one, we were talking about races of bees and things, weren't we?

Jim: We did give that a shot. It was an overview. We decided basically, if you're a beginner, just go with what you've got, more often than not European. I'm sorry, Italian. I'm sorry. Italians are common stock. We went through all of that. I hope they remember.

Kim: Sometimes I hope I remember.

Jim: Don't get involved in that, Kim. That's a forest of discussion.

[laughter]

Kim: Then we talked about once you decide it's okay to put your bees wherever it is you're going to pick them, what kind of bees and equipment you're going to use, then getting your bees into your equipment. Jeff, we had several ways to do that one.

Jeff: We did. The most popular way is just to shake them into the hive and put the queen in there and close them up and walk away, give them a couple of days to get settled down. That's always an exciting time. That was a fun discussion.

Kim: We touched a little bit on top bar hives and some of the other equipment that people might be getting into, but I think we'll go back to our standard piece of information is if you can start with traditional equipment because that's what most of the information is, that's what most of the people in your club are going to be working with it, and if you've got a mentor, probably that's what your mentor is going to be working with. With some of these other pieces of equipment and styles of beekeeping, go there. Don't start there. I think that's probably a good place to leave that.

Jeff: I think one last thing on just getting started, we suggested as everyone does, or most people do, start with at least two hives or start with two hives in case something happens.

Jim: Yes, that's right.

Jeff: All right. In our fourth and final episode, we're going to talk a little bit about managing growth the first couple of months, and a couple of issues that beekeepers may or may not address as their hives grow and as they learn to live with their bees. Let's get right into it. The last episode we ended off with when to add that extra brood chamber. How do you manage the growth? Where did they go from there? Should they consider about adding honey supers going on? Do they have to worry about swarming? How do they manage all of that?

Jim: Depends on the season, wouldn't you say, Kim? If it's a very vibrant season, and the flow is great, and the queen drew good, and all the stars are aligned, a lot of things can happen. More often than not especially where I am here in northeast Ohio, I'm just trying to get enough bees build up and enough honey in place to have those guys survive the winter okay. I'm really probably just working in two deeps ideally. If the supers are required, that's the boxes that goes on top of everything where the honey is stored, if I need those, it's just a very lucky thing, but more often than not, two deeps will get me through here. I don't know how about you or where you are, Jeff.

Jeff: In Colorado, I was able to get packaged bees to grow fast enough that I could get a honey crop off of them. Around here, I've not been so lucky, at least in my location. It's taken them a couple of seasons to get to the point that I can pull a crop off of them.

Kim: I'm not far from Jim. I'm in northeast Ohio, but there's a couple of things that you want to watch for. Adding that second super is once you got four to six frames with comb on them. The first super you put them in, the first box you put them in, then you add your second one. Then you start looking at how are things going this year. Jim, I'm always optimistic that things are going to go well. When I'm looking at six to eight frames in the bottom box, four to six in the second box, I'm going to add that honey super because if you get an explosion on a honey flow midsummer.

Which we can do around here on clover after some of the early trees have bloomed, clover and some of the summer crops like Jeff in Colorado, you might get a box of honey at the end of the first year. Don't bet the farm on it. The caveat is that you're probably not going to and if you do, you're lucky, but if you do, then you're prepared for it. Be ahead of the curve instead of trying to catch up.

Jeff: Especially if they're pulling out foundation. If they're pulling out foundation, they're putting a lot of energy into that. If you're able to put them on a drawn comb, then you might get a crop.

Jim: I suppose we could end our discussion by saying if you're not really sure what you're doing, I think I would tend to put too much equipment on rather than find out you didn't put enough on. I suppose if you're brand new, you don't have your mentor close by, you've driven your mentor crazy or whatever, then go ahead and put on too much. A lot of it depends on the season. First of the season, middle of the season put everything on. Last of the season, you know that the dry spell's coming and it's pretty typical for your area, you might want to slack off on putting it on them. Any questions?

Kim: What about feeding, Jim? You just mentioned dry spell at the end of the season. How long do I keep feeding these guys once I get them and establish from that packet?

Jim: This is just one long series of guesses and estimations. Let's put some parameters on that. Flow is slowing down, and it wasn't much of a crop, and you put feed on, and they take it. If they take it, leave it on. If they don't take it, they're finding something else.

Kim: One of the things that I learned early on, on a package in a box like this when you're drawing foundation, not that comb, you feed them until they quit taking it. They will choose natural nectar and pollen over sugar syrup as soon as there's enough available, but if there's not enough available, they're going to keep eating what you're feeding them, and better to have it there making sure that there's always enough food, maybe a little bit more than enough, always enough food for them, so that there's not one minute of being hungry.

You probably get some of that stored in your honey super, and yes, some of that may end up up there over winter, and yes, that's okay because you're going to have bees with enough food to make it through that winter, I think.

Jim: This first year brings unique challenges and unique rewards. Number one, it's your first season and you're all keen on it and you're excited about it. Everything's fresh and new and you love beekeeping. At the same time, there's a lot of responsibility on beginners to get those colonists' position for winter. Even a mild winter, there's a dearth. If there's a dearth of nectar, and it's just cool, it doesn't matter if it's frigid or cold if they don't have enough. I would feed just like super. If you are not certain, uncertain, let the bees decide. They'll let you know quickly.

Kim: One of the things is, editor a call that I get-- several calls every spring. Somebody stole my bees. I went out there today and there's nobody in the hive what's going on? I'm going to bet that both of you guys have had that happen at least once and maybe more than once, but sometimes you'll go out and take a look on your bees. It's what we call absconding. They've left home for reasons. What reasons would they abscond?

Jim: They don't have any food. They may go look for greener pastures or sometimes there's various maladies and diseases, in some cases, a small hive beetle. I know they're not all over the country. Uniformly, the small hive beetles really take over and slime everything that can encourage them to leave. I guess it needs to be discussed, but it's gloomy, isn't it?

Kim: It is. Another thing that can lead to this is, believe it or not, skunks. You get a mother skunk and her kids will come and visit in the middle of the night. That happens three or four nights and the bees are just going to go, "I'm out of here," and the whole colony will leave, queen and all. They'll just leave whatever wax and honey and whatever they've collected. They're looking for a place that's going to be a lot less troublesome, but there's other reasons that they're going to leave. You mentioned some of those. Jeff, have you ever run into this either in Colorado or out west?

Jeff: The skunks? Yes, definitely the skunks. That's one of the reasons I like to put my hives up on a hive stand so that the skunks have to stretch up to expose their belly a little bit. It's something I learned long ago that discourages skunks, is if they have to reach up high, that exposes their belly and they don't like being stung there. The other thing I've noticed with some other beekeepers is that they think their bees have suddenly disappeared, but when in fact they slowly disappeared over a matter of weeks due to a number of reasons that could be out there and often maybe the queen quit producing.

The package queen wasn't real viable and then quit producing or she died and they were unsuccessful in raising a new queen. If the beekeeper's not observant of the hive, is not into the hive enough, or is just not practiced enough, they may not notice that in the weeks proceeding and can run into issues that way.

Jim: That is true. It's slow and insidious and you think your bees should be building up maybe if you bought two or three packages. Two look good, one's run down. We told you to look for eggs and those big fat larvae and ideally a little bit of capped brood. That not being there, it may be time for some medical intervention by the beekeeper. Check out that queen why she's not working.

Jeff: Again, [laughs] we go back to knock on your mentor's door and ask them to come out and take a look at your colony. We talked about the skunks. Obviously, if a bear's in the neighborhood, you'd know that. They're hard on equipment. There'd be no question about you have a bear, or as we heard back in January, Kim with Naomi, wolverine, any of those--

Kim: Wolverines. That was new to me.

Jim: I'm familiar with that.

Jeff: Can we touch base real quick on varroa mite? There's just so much information out there that wouldn't do a service to spend just a few seconds on it, but just a highlight on the Varroa and its impact to beekeeping.

Kim: You touched on two different directions to go here. One of the directions that some people choose is, if the bees can't handle the problems that they're encountering, then they're not tough enough to be around and we need to select another strain of bees. That's a choice. I'm not sure that you'd want to do that with your dog or your cat or your cattle or chickens or ducks. Just let them be what they are, but it is a choice.

I think, Jim the other one is to monitor and monitor and monitor, and then when the numbers from monitoring them get to the point where the people who know about mites are saying it's time to do something about the mite population, that's when you step in as a beekeeper and rather than let that colony die, you're taking some action.

Jim: I completely agree. Any new beekeeper starting now will start out knowing and hearing about these mites. We have some decent control procedures, not the end of the world, but if you let it go and you don't treat mites, they will get you sooner or later, if not this season, next season. You got to do something, but the good news is you got a menu of controls. I don't know if it's proper to go into that here, because there are so many of them, but if you do choose to do something about the mites, then talking with your bee club, listening, going to meetings, reading bee magazines, talking to your mentor, you won't be left cold with this. You won't be in the dark.

We've all been through this over and over again. Yes, mites are there and they're going to need some attention. I have found in my hardheadedness that you can't ignore them. You can justify, "I'm going to be going to some vacation," or "My job is doing something." If you sleep through it, they will not sleep through it.

Kim: Probably the best way to look at it at this level is that dealing with mites is a bell curve going from hardcore chemical to nothing at all and choosing something in between that works for your bees and works for your philosophy on beekeeping. You can treat with chemicals, you can treat with management, and you can not treat it all. The people in your club are going to tell you what's working for them. You can make the decision, but know that poison isn't the only way and know that completely ignoring them isn't the only way. There's something in between for everybody.

Jim: There is.

Kim: That brings up diseases because the varroa isn't the only thing that's going on up there.

Jim: The thing is, I don't know how to handle or what to say. I don't think people are just telling me a falsehood, but it's not uncommon to hear someone say, "I've done nothing for the last five years and my bees are fine." I do nothing and my bees are not fine. I don't argue with people who say that. I don't doubt them. I just don't know why or what the protocol is that's making them be so successful. If you're that lucky one, how about it, but most of us are going to have to take our vitamins and flu shots to stay healthy.

Kim: There are races of bees that exhibit a lot of tolerance for mites. Resistance to mite might cause problems. They are out there and if you can find somebody who's gone five years without treating and they're just fine, that's the person you want to talk to about getting some bees from, if you're going in that direction. They're out there. There's not enough of them out there by any stretch.

Jeff: For a beginning beekeeper, I think that the best advice is to work with your club to determine what the area practice is because you really don't want to be the beekeeper who's next door to another beekeeper who treats their mites and you don't treat your mites because you'll definitely get into arguments on philosophical approaches and on bee treatment or mite treatment.

Jim: Well, that pretty much goes for all of the problems we're talking about here, I think Jeff. I started talking about diseases a second ago.

Jeff: Yes, let's go on.

Jim: It's the same thing. If you're watching your bees, there's some bacterial diseases that they'll get. There's wax moth and there's small hive beetle and there's all manner of things that can cause bees trouble. If you're on top of the situation watching them and making sure that you're doing the management things that help your bees control these problems, then you're not using poison in your hive and you're doing things right. If you're not watching, any and all of these things can get ahead of you.

Jeff: I would offer that if your bees and I'll offer that your bees-- and you guys, I'll offer this and debate me on this point. If your bees are healthy and you're taking good care of them, other than a varroa mite, you're going to do pretty good. If the problem comes in, if they get weakened, just like any animal, if there's any stresses on it and the body is stressed, then you're going to be susceptible to diseases and greater infestations and other problems that we're talking about.

Kim: The analogy that I use on something like that, Jeff, is you. Imagine you've been working 60 hours a week and you're tired and you're hungry and you've got a lot of stress at home, and you get in an elevator to go home one day, and that lady in the back of the elevator is coughing and hacking and sneezing and coughing, guess what you're going to come down with before you get off that elevator? [crosstalk] stressed.

Jeff: You're describing my last week and being in an airplane.

Kim: [laughs]

Jim: You're describing all my grandkids who show up with all that mess, give me the neck hugs and the cheek kisses, and go home. They get over it in a day, and I've still got it four weeks later.

Jeff: That's exactly it.

Kim: That's what your bees are doing. If they're stressed by food, by the weather, by whatever it is that's going on in their life, and suddenly you introduce one more thing, it's one thing too many, and they're going to be more susceptible to that. Being a good animal husbandry is what it is.

Jeff: Let's touch real quickly on some of the bigger diseases. The American foulbrood is one that comes up and was the bane of beekeepers before Varroa approached. Who wants to take that one?

Jim: I can start, but I don't want the whole thing by myself. Isn't that interesting that that used to be the biggest thing? That was the biggest thing that we had. It was just a small percentage of American foulbrood really well adapted to bees. It doesn't just wipe them out in great numbers that wipes out hives. It doesn't just come through like a scourge and take everything out the way that Varroa did for a while. It's very contagious and it's so persistent.

If you find a real good deal on some old equipment and some guy's barn loft at an estate sale that's just going for pennies on the dollar, you kind of know where that equipment's been and what's happened to it. This is spore-forming bacteria, and those spores can last for decades and decades. It upsets your neighboring beekeepers if the word is out that you're dealing with American foulbrood and you're not dealing with it very aggressively, but it's a traditional, well-established disease. There's things you can do for it. Even though I say all that, it does demand your respect. You need to have mentors there and don't panic.

Some of the appearances of American foulbrood you can see other times inside the colony. They don't always mean that you've got this malady, but always be looking for that and the other diseases too. One of our jobs as beekeepers is to keep our bees, protect our bees, help our bees, and always help and do no harm. American foulbrood, yes, watch for it, understand it. Don't go right to it as the first line of impression of what disease you've got. Just stay calm, have somebody else look. Most states have bee disease inspectors that'll come out and have a look and confirm it or whatever. Help me, Kim.

Kim: That's exactly where I was going to go is that if you do have an inspector in your state, they can help you. They can identify these things for you either by sending a sample of your comb into them or having them come out and visit. Your mentor certainly is one of those people, people in your club. If you've got a situation that doesn't look, and I use the famous quote marks, "normal," on both sides of that word. If it doesn't look normal to you, then get somebody else's opinion, and three opinions, if they're all the same, then you know you've got something. If they're all different, then get a fourth.

The one thing I also want to address with this is that if you've got any of these problems in your hives and they are slowly declining, they're going to get robbed by bees from other hives. You've got a neighbor who's now robbing his bees or robbing your bees and they're bringing your problems back to their home perhaps, so that's one of the reasons to stay on top of them also, is you don't want to share.

Jeff: We've talked about beekeeping as being a visual and an audio-type hobby, being aware of those things, American foulbrood has a uniqueness in terms of smell. Who wants to describe the uniqueness of the American foulbrood smell?

Jim: That's the name, foulbrood. It does have a sour pungent odor and the smell of decay.

Kim: Some people say rotten eggs.

Jim: Yes. Dirty--

Kim: There's a resemblance to rotten eggs. There are people, and I am not one of them, who can drive into a bee yard and say, "There's foulbrood here." They're that sensitive to be able to pick up that smell from one hive in a crowd of five or six. I can't smell it with my nose right next to the frame, never have been able to. It runs the whole curve and don't rely solely on smell, but also the other forms of identification for any of these problems.

Jim: I didn't know that, Kim. That's interesting because I've seen people like you. When you're passing around an American foulbrood frame and the whole room smells like it, and people like you put that frame right to their nose and take a deep hit. I think, "Oh, my stars. That must have taken the hair out of that man's nose when he did that," but is it a third? There's some speculations that some people really can't smell the odor.

Kim: I'm one of them.

Jim: Since I can't hear, I've always thought that maybe what little brain power I've got is allocated to my sense of smell. I've only smelled it a few times when you get out, and boy, if you can step out of your car and five, six feet from that colony smell that thing, it is cooked. It is toast. You're done.

Jeff: It is a smell that once you smell it, you won't forget it. You know immediately that something's wrong. It's like walking down the street and smelling a dead animal in the culvert, it's just identifiable. There's no question about it. All right. That's enough. American foulbrood, it has an identifiable smell. There's some other tests you can look for, but those are better to be seen through video or on pictures in a book. There's a lot of information for that.

We touched on some of the pests. I can't remember who did, but who talked-- small hive beetle? I don't have that here in the Pacific Northwest, or at least in any of my hives. I won't say that they're not in Washington state. Anybody want to talk about small hive beetle? Because they are problematic.

Jim: I'll-

Kim: That's a good word.

Jim: -take a shot.

Kim: Go ahead, Jim.

Jim: That is a good word. If they were like the other diseases and they were everywhere, I think it'd be easier. I think there'd be grant funding and more possible solutions for these things because they're spotty. If you got them, they're bad and they're annoying. If you don't have them, then you just want to stay away from that person, but a lot of people don't have them at all. In Alabama, one of the states that I'm familiar with, they were serious there, and you do have to change the way you manage your bees. You can't just bring in honey supers and let them sit around until you get to it. You got to bring in those supers and process them and get on with it.

They don't always come back with the same ferocity every season to these people that have them. Here where I am, when I see a small hive beetle in the hive, I'll run back from my yard to get my camera, and then when I get back out there, I can't find them again, so that's the extent to which I have them and I guess I should what? Knock on wood, knock on something that that's how it stays. Do you have them in Medina, 26 miles from me, Kim?

Kim: Yes. I've got them like you do. I see when it's an event because they're just so uncommon. It has to do with primarily where you live. The further South you are in the US, the more issue you're probably going to have with them. It has to do with soil type and it has to do with the length of the season. The soil type that I have up here in Medina is granite. It's that hard all of the time. The lifecycle of the small hive beetle is that the larvae generally leaves the hive, gets into the soil, digs down a little bit, pupate there, and then emerges as an adult and goes on to affect more hives.

If it can't dig into the soil, it's not going to survive, so we don't have a big problem. I'm going to guess that's where you are too, you're a little bit south of us, but you still got some lake bottom down there, lake bottom soil. When you get into the Midwest and certainly the South where the soil is softer, sandier, loamier, as opposed to clay, you're going to have more of a problem and a longer season for them to produce a population and a milder winter for them so that they don't completely hibernate all winter. It tends to be where you are.

The next thing about small hive beetle, I'm not sure I can use that in the same sentence. A good thing about having small hive beetle is that there are lots of ways to manage them without poison. There are, what are those cleaning pads that people use?

Jim: They're microfiber cloths. I wasn't expecting that. You get them at automotive supply stores. You get them at the big box stores. Microfiber cloth. They have annoying clinginess to them. It's beekeeper-derived. You cut a small piece of it, three inches, four inches square, and you put it on the inner cover where the bees like and where the beetles like to hide in the corners. I guess they get their tarsal claws or something stuck on those microfibers. Then you come take that away. Bees will get stuck for a while, but they usually can dig their way out. There might be two or three weak bees there that didn't make it.

You're right, there's all kinds of things. We make this a gloomy discussion, but every one of these issues, if you have it, has some solution.

Kim: You can get really complicated. There are small hive beetle traps that go on the bottom of your hive. Pretty effective, but it's one more piece of equipment you have to have if you're looking at costs here. Then there's the cost of a small hive beetle infection. You have to weigh the cost of managing them versus the cost of not managing them and go with what you've got. If you're living in Louisiana, the cost of having them is going to be high. If you're living in Ohio, the cost of having them is almost non-existent.

Jim: If we could, I'd like to put some perspective on this because I took my flu shot. I do the best I can to keep myself healthy. It's not like that I can just walk around with impunity and never do anything to maintain my own health. I too, as do many people, try to take care of themselves. It shouldn't be surprising that bees have issues too. I'd like to suggest we keep it in perspective and not make it sound like this is just going to be the death of my bee thing. Before I even get started, I got diseases. Maybe you will, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll have one or two of these issues and not others. You need to know, just like I need to know about myself, that there's things that need to be watched for in the hive.

Kim: Be aware and be prepared, I guess, is probably the best way to look at it.

Jeff: It is. Llike you guys are saying, it's like if you're getting a puppy, you know at some point, there's going to be problems with that puppy along the way. You deal with it as it comes along. Most of the time, it's an enjoyable little thing [chuckles] most of the time. Until it tears up the furniture or something. For the most part, we get them for enjoyment. The same thing with the bees. It's more of an awareness. Make sure that folks know that these issues can come up and they're not the end of the world. There's ways and means and a lot of research going about finding solutions for them.

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Jeff: We left off with a small hive beetle. The other pest that a lot of folks will have to deal with are wax moths. Is that something that they'll really need to worry about out in their apiary or is that something really more for stored products?

Kim: Wax moths are really easy to deal with. It's just fundamentally, they don't like light. Anytime you're storing equipment or anytime you've got a hive or colony that isn't big enough to protect itself from wax moth, all you have to do is get the supers and expose them to light and air. You stand them on end, exposed on both sides, the wax moth problem is going to go away. If you don't, if you're storing them, stacking them in the back of the garage all fall and winter and they're dark and it's closed up, you're going to come back next spring to a bunch of garbage at the bottom of the box because that's all that'll be left.

It's light and air and store your boxes so that light and air can get at both sides of all of your frames and wax moth ain't a problem, keep your colony strong enough so that they can keep wax moth out of a closed colony that isn't getting light and air. If wax moth are a problem, you're not paying attention at all.

Jim: Now that really stings, Kim, because [laughter] I don't want to call any names, but I know some people very well who've had wax moth problems who thought they were doing the right thing. They are, they're a beautifully adapted pest. The reason I think that they are a pest is because we've just given them a king's buffet. Normally they're just finding a little nest somewhere in a tree and it's fairly poor rations. When we bring in deeps and deeps frames of comb and stack supers and put them in a nice dark warm room, they must think they're in heaven. A lot of the huge population and raising them to a pest status is because of our basic beekeeping procedures that we do. They're there.

Kim: I will add one good thing about wax moth. You mentioned bees in a tree or old equipment that's sitting in a barn someplace. Wax moth gets in there, and if there are any pests or diseases in there, wax moth is going to essentially eliminate that environment for them. They're going to eat foulbrood comb. They're going to eat all of the comb and foundation that the small hive beetle are living on. Once they run out of food, they're gone. They're out of there. There is some value to wax moth in terms of cleaning up other messes that we make sometimes.

Jim: Indeed, Kim. I even know it's beyond the scope of our discussion here, but I know beekeepers who routinely use wax moths to destroy the comb. This old comb, they want to get rid of it. It's not useful. It's not pretty. It's beyond its scope. Been damaged by something else. They encourage wax moths to eat that. Then once it's cleaned up, you pressure wash it. Put a light coat of wax back on that foundation insert. In theory, you can reuse it. I suspect it's just like the first time. Sometimes you can use these things in special situations to your advantage.

Kim: Then you harvest the larva and go fishing.

Jim: I wondered who was going to say that. There's even recipes outside of beekeeping for raising wax moths for the larvae or fish bait.

Jeff: They are a double-edged sword. Usually, it's just a matter of really the equipment. A healthy hive is going to take care of the wax moths. It's not something a beginning beekeeper needs to worry about. They will score equipment. They'll put a groove in your frame or in the side of the hive box. As we're finding now, that's maybe a good source for the bees to put some propolis for that propolis envelope. This has been a heavy discussion today with the bees leaving and the mites and the diseases and the pests. There's something we haven't really talked about in first-year beekeeping. Why do people keep bees?

That's the products that are produced from hives and from honeybees. Let's just spend the last couple of seconds here of this episode, introduce on the honey and the honey crops, wax, propolis.

Kim: This first year is a launch pad. It's getting your ducks in a row if you will. Because most of us who keep bees are looking for working with that beehive to harvest some of the extra products that they produce. Bees will make more honey than they need. They make propolis to align their nests with, but they make more than they need. They make beeswax that we can harvest and make candles and all sorts of things. All of this that we've been talking about is getting ready for maybe the end of the first year, certainly years afterward.

Honey and pollen and propolis are the three big products that we use. Wax for candles and ornaments. Honey, of course, to eat and cook with. Propolis is a tincture or one of those products that you can use that will aid in your health and the bee's health at the same time. The first year is the launchpad, afterwards you and the bees are going to enjoy what you're able to produce every year.

Jeff: The only thing I'd add to that list would be the pollen too. A lot of people who collect pollen from their bees and dry it, and sell it.

Kim: Exactly right. It is one of the things that you should be eating or you could be eating to enhance your diet. The one thing you got to remember is all pollens aren't created equal. The pollen that you're harvesting in the spring is going to be different than the pollen you're harvesting in the fall. Some of those things are going to taste awful. Some of them are sweet and mild and nice but know that you're going to get seasonal variability on this product. That's okay because what I eat in the spring out of the garden is different than what I eat out of the garden in the fall.

Jim: The propolis thing is interesting because it's made in the colony. They collect that gum and resin and bring it back. It's a natural caulking compound that has some antibiotic resistance to it. Of the big sources of honey and wax and whatever you mentioned, pollen collection, propolis is the unloved product. I'm not sure what to do with it. Years ago I tried to make a varnish out of it because there's rumors that some fine musical instruments had propolis in the finish, pollen grains. I made this tincture and built a small piece in my woodworking shop, and something like nine months later, it finally dried.

There are all kinds of uses for making propolis, woodworking finishes and tinctures, and whatever, but you have to commit to it to find the recipes. I think propolis deserves more attention than it gets across the board from experienced beekeepers.

Kim: It's been getting a lot lately. There's a whole lot of things going on in the beekeeping world as we speak that people are beginning to look at. Do the bees know more about taking care of bees than we do? Sometimes I know that they do, and this is one of the products that they do. In the natural nests and the side of a tree, they're going to completely line the inside of that nest with propolis. It has some antimicrobial properties that you mentioned, some waterproofing properties that you mentioned. It plugs the cracks and crevices so small hive beetles and wax moth don't have a place to hive.

It has a whole lot of value to bees in the beehive and we systematically remove it so that they can make more of it. I think we need to pay more attention to what bees are telling us about this product.

Jim: I agree. The thing I'd add, especially for people just considering starting beekeeping, is that it'll take those bees several seasons. In fact, they never get finished. They're always adding more propolis. You'll still have nice clean pine smelling wooden wear for a year or two or three before you really begin to see that propolis communicate. It's like through the bad bee, you did something horribly wrong and you get put on gum collecting detail to go out and prop out the gum that's needed. It's miserable stuff to work. While you're flying back, it can chill down and it requires the bees and the colony heating it back up so you can get the stuff off. It just has to be the job that no bee wants to be assigned.

Kim: I never looked at it like that. [laughs]

Jeff: I don't remember seeing that in a Disney movie about maybe the bad bee who had to carry the propolis. All right guys, this has been quite the series. We've talked about a lot of the good and touched on the bad. What are your thoughts about the future for the beekeeper? I'll start with you Kim and then Jim.

Kim: Jeff, I spent a week in September up in Canada attending the 2019 Apimondia meeting. When I go to one of those meetings, my attention is always in the vendor area as opposed to listening to the talks because I always get the feeling that the talks are what is, and the vendors are what's going to be. I pay a lot of attention to what these guys are thinking. A lot of it you can discard offhand, but a lot of it you got to pay attention to.

I think the thing that I noticed the most in the vendor area at Apimondia, which is an international meeting by the way, there's several thousand people that attend this meeting was the good solid beginnings of electronics and beekeeping. Of monitoring hives, of being able to watch them from afar, of being able to keep track of what's going on, and being able to act instead of react because of this equipment.

We've had Jerry Broman Shank on our show a while back, who's talking about listening to bees and talking to them, listening to what they're telling you. I think there's going to be a lot more of that. I think it's going to make life easier for us to let bees be bees so that we are acting instead of reacting.

Jim: I'd like to build on that a little bit because the bees have always been bees. We have come a long way as their keepers. That word keepers may have to change because I have a hard time telling who's in charge. Are the bees managing me because they're making me go out and buy supplies and buy wooden wear and paint and come back? I'm not always sure that I'm the one who's managing the bees so much as they're managing me. Bees and their keepers have kept up and are keeping up nicely.

We're electronifying the hives and we're understanding much more about their personal life and how that benefits us. The more we learn, the more we realize we had no idea we didn't know this much. I do get philosophical about it. Beekeeping is adapting, it's keeping up. The bees themselves, while they're not changing all that much, we're getting better at the job. I'm the most least objective person you could ask about the future of beekeeping. What am I going to say? It's dire. No, there's never been a time when beekeepers have just said, "Oh, my stars, we're in heaven here."

Every phase of beekeeping has had its issues. Just because we have issues now, when we have our pity parties about where we are in the industry and bees fading away, others have been through this, just become a bee historian and look at the old literature. We're just doing what's always been done. We just know more and we can communicate about it faster. I think beekeeping is evolving, keeping up.

We are getting more and more pests and that's making a newer and newer model beekeeper that doesn't just keep bees, but they also manage this plethora of pests that we've accumulated from the world, homogenized a pest of the world, but I don't see the end being at hand. I just see us adapting and the bees doing what they do.

Jeff: I look back on when I just started a lot sooner than you guys at the end of the '80s, and the names have changed, but the problems are still there. There were problems back then and there's problems today. It's what you manage and it's just getting through the time and space that we all live in. For the bees, I think we need to focus on the enjoyment that we get from them. If you're making honey crops or the wax products or you're into all of that, going to fairs, contests, competitions, such as the honey shows, all of that is part of the enjoyment. I think personally it's positive. As Jim was saying, the more we learn, the more we respect the honeybee for what it is. I think it's all really good.

Kim: I'll take yet another half a step real quick, Jeff, is that one of the things that have been going on in the last, say 10 years, there's been a realization that bees are being challenged in the environment that we're providing for them. Agriculture and not enough food and lots of pavement and some of the pests that are around. At the same time, a lot of people in the world are beginning to go, "Wait a minute, we got to change some things here."

We're seeing a lot more people being involved with providing more food, better safer environments, easier places for bees to be, better places for bees to be. Almonds is a good example. All the almond growers this season are planting acres and acres and acres, thousands of acres of extra food. That's just the beginning and that's just almonds. It's been a bumpy road, but like Jim said, it hasn't been terribly bumpy and I think it's getting a lot smoother.

Jeff: Listeners to this series have a lot of resources that they can turn to, to further their sturdy of bees. There's probably, not a probably about it, the honey bees, there's more written about the honey bee than any other insect without a doubt. Several episodes ago we had Jeremy Burbidge on and he has a whole company built around selling bee books and Wicwas Press is all about selling books on honey bees. There's a lot of resources out there. I would encourage listeners to be critical. Don't always believe everything on the internet. Don't believe everything on YouTube.

Be selective in what you listen to. Listen to your mentor and go to a club and join and find other beekeepers out there and ask lots of questions. Any closing thoughts guys?

Kim: It's been fun.

Jim: It has been. It's been challenging because you've got a time limitation but that's common. You want to say a lot more but you just can't.

Jeff: There's a universe of things we could talk about and that's why we have the podcast. Let's just drop right into it because this about wraps it up on this episode and for this special series on  How to Get Started With Bees. Before we go, I want to encourage our listeners to rate us five stars on Apple Podcasts wherever you download and stream the show. Your vote does help other beekeepers find us quicker. We really want to thank our sponsor for this series, Betterbee for sponsoring this four-part series. They've been with us the entire time. As always, and as always, we thank  Bee Culture, the magazine for American beekeeping for their sponsorship of the  Beekeeping Today Podcast in 2020.

We want to thank our regular episode sponsor Global Patties. Check them out at www.globalpatties.com. Finally, we want to thank you, the  Beekeeping Today Podcast listener, for joining us on this show. Feel free to send us questions and comments at questions at beekeepingtodaypodcast.com. We'd love to hear from you. Anything else in closing guys?

Kim: I just want to say welcome aboard, Jim. It's good having you here. Another voice, another background to add to our comments, and the programs that we do here. I look forward to working with you.

Jim: Thank you very kindly.

Jeff: I second that. All right guys, we'll catch you next time. Thank you. Bye-bye.

Jim: Bye-bye.

[00:52:23] [END OF AUDIO]