Kamon Reynolds and NAHBE 2025 (292)

292 - Kamon Reynolds and NAHBE 2025

[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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Hey, everybody, welcome to the show. Becky, did you notice anything different about the beginning of this show?

Becky: It was very, very quiet. Nobody welcomed everybody to the Beekeeping Today Podcast.

Jeff: What is this? Everyone thinks it's August and it's vacation month.

Becky: We just asked for a few seconds, right?

Jeff: Folks? It really is easy to do. You can use the voice memo app on your phone no matter what. Apple, or Android, or whatever you have, just pick it up, hit that memo option and say, "Hey, this is Jeff from Washington state. I'm a beekeeper and I listen to Beekeeping Today Podcast, welcome." Whatever you want to say, but don't say Jeff unless, of course, your name is Jeff and you live in Washington state.

Anyways, Becky, I'm going to go in circles. Another thing, Becky, is I wanted to talk about, since we're kind of talking about business on the podcast, openers, everything else, we have the newsletter that you work on every week.

Becky: Every Monday, we send out. It's really just kind of a lovely Beekeeping Today Podcast plus other episodes from Honey Bee Obscura and 2 Million Blossoms, and we give people a heads up of what's coming up. We share some news that's pertinent and timely, and so we do have that newsletter. I'm hoping that people are subscribing to it.

Jeff: Yes, you do a really nice job, and it really does fill in the-- If you want a quick synopsis of the show, you can read the newsletter, share it with your friends, neighbors, fellow beekeepers. It's a good option.

Becky: Sometimes there are special discounts included in the newsletters, which is kind of fun.

Jeff: Yes, always worthwhile.

Becky: Yes.

Jeff: Well, Becky, it's August. It is hot. It's a month of vacations. I'm planning a couple weeks off. What are you doing with your bees in August?

Becky: August means I will take the honey off again. I've been extracting all season long. I'll put on a mite treatment, and I will super them up so they get that fall nectar flow. There are winter bees right now. I think we've been talking about this, but if you're a new beekeeper or an existing beekeeper, your bees have been making mites all season long, and so this is a good time to make sure you test and see what that mite level is, and make sure you're managing them to keep them below the level that which will damage your hives, which is a very, very low level.

Jeff: Today's standard is much lower than we used to do, even when mites just a couple years ago. What's your approach to managing mites? Do you go strictly by numbers, or do you just assume they're full of mites at this time of year and treat everybody the same?

Becky: I have two factors that are kind of important. One, I'm in the Twin Cities metro area, and we have so many bees in this area that I'm not on an island, I'm not on a mite free parcel of land, and so we can't keep our colony pressure low if we just manage a couple of times in the spring and summer, we have to keep treating. I'll always know that I have my pressure coming in.

Then the other thing is that I've got upwards of 14, 15 colonies in one apiary, and so I'm at a point where I know I have to manage those apiaries regardless of what my sampling says, because, again, I'm not going to find low levels of bees, and so it won't take me long to sample to find that threshold, and then everybody in the yard gets treated, because that's just a standard, best management practice. If you're going to treat one in the apiary, you should treat everybody in order to keep those levels as low as possible.

Jeff: Just a quick correction, you said you expect a low level of bees, but you really meant low level mites.

Becky: That's a great correction. If I have a low level of bees, I'm in trouble.

[laughter]

Becky: Especially this time of year.

Jeff: Yes, that's an issue too. It's a different issue, but it's a different topic.

Becky: It is a totally different. I meant low level of mites. Yes, thank you. Thank you for catching that.

Jeff: I don't look forward to the fall. I don't look forward to the end of summer, but if we're going to do that, you might as well find those fun things about the fall and the coming year, and one of those is it's the time of bee conferences. You have state and local regional conferences, and then we also have later in the season and later in the year, beginning of the year, we have the big national conferences. One of those, of course, is the North American Honey Bee Expo presented by Kamon Reynolds in his group. We have the pleasure of having Kamon on in just a few minutes.

Becky: That is so exciting. I can hear the fans roar and clap when they hear Kamon's name. I've never seen such excitement for a conference, and I've seen excitement for a conference before, but what this last expo was to so many beekeepers, it just is really fun to read what people are saying about it, and then to read the anticipation for those people who are beekeepers who are signing up to attend in 2025.

Jeff: It promises to be something special again. I look forward to talking to Kamon about his bees, his YouTube channel, the conference, and we have them coming up right after these messages from our sponsors.

[music]

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Jeff: Hey, everybody, welcome back. Sitting across the big virtual Beekeeping Today Podcast table is none other than Kamon Reynolds. Kamon, welcome to the show. Welcome back to the show.

Kamon Reynolds: Jeff, Becky, thank you so much for having me. It's going to be a blast.

Becky: What a pleasure. I think this is the first time I've met you, Kamon, so I'm honored. You're a celebrity.

Kamon: Oh, boy, I don't think so. Small time beekeeper.

Jeff: Sorry about the condition of our green room.

Becky: I'm not going to ask for your autograph, or the M&Ms separated as you like them.

Kamon: I don't like M&Ms.

Becky: Oh, good then. The lack of them is probably going to be right in our favor.

Kamon: That's right.

Jeff: Kamon, many of today's beekeepers know who you are, but for those who do not know who you are, can you give us a little bit of your background and history with bees, and then we'll delve into your other endeavors.

Kamon: Sure thing. I started when I was around 14 years old with bees. I was already into raising free range chickens, organic gardening, and I saw some bees at a farmers market, and they had an observation hive and it just blew me away. I had to get some, and it was definitely a trial by fire. Just jumped into it too fast. Fast forward through that point, I really just thought I'd keep about 10 hives for a sideline business, and eventually just 10 wasn't enough, and I wanted 20, and now I think the most I've ever had was around 600 at one time, and basically just learning how to keep them alive, making my own splits, making my own queens, figuring out how my season works.

As I got into my early 20s, I met Laurel, and she was keeping bees as well. When we married, we put that energy together and eventually created a full-time business doing bees. We primarily sell nucs and honey. We do a little bit of other things, but that's primarily what we started doing. That's what we thought we would just do, and then my wife looked at a couple of YouTube channels and she's like, "Kamon, you can do this." She obviously saw something and believed something that was there that I did not. I put it off for about two to three years because I'm like, "Laurel, I don't want to do that." I also knew, I still know, that there were beekeepers better at beekeeping and had more knowledge, and that's still the case. I spent a lot of my time these days for my YouTube channel and everything else that we do, trying to learn more so that I can share more. Now at age 35, we run a couple of hundred hives still, we run a YouTube channel with 70,000 followers plus, and we have the North American Honey Bee Expo, which is the largest regular conference going in North America.

We really want to just be a part of the bee community. We've helped companies get going and sustain growth and bring new products to the market. We're just all about education and beekeeping. At the end of the day, we love beekeepers and we love bees, and we just want to be involved with them.

Jeff: You're located in North Central Tennessee, is that right?

Kamon: That is right. I'm in north central Tennessee, right in between Knoxville and Nashville, and just a little south of Dale Hollow Lake. It's in the middle of nowhere. If the traffic is bad, Milton's cows have got out of the fence again.

Jeff: That makes for a rough commute.

Kamon: It does. It's been a weird transition because this is the way I like to live, small town, USA. I went into town today to get some queens that I had shipped in from a buddy of mine. The post office lady, she's like, "Here we go again. You get these damn bees out of my post office." Then the people that were waiting behind me, they're like, "You're the bee guy." No one ever knows my name, but the bee guy, but I love that. It's a small-knit community.

What's been bizarre with all of this is, the last three trips that I've taken that were not for beekeeping, just went to The Gulf with my family for a family vacation. I was lying on the beach and someone's like, "Hey, it's Kamon Reynolds." My wife was like, "No." Then we went to a small theme park to take our kids to some rollercoasters and water rides when we were in line. Of course, it's even more bizarre when you're just in swim trunks, and then someone's like, "Hey, is that Kamon Reynolds?" I'm like, "Dadgummit." Anyways, it really is fun. Beekeepers are so great and nice. I love getting to experience so many new beekeepers and hear their stories, and I love it. Absolutely love it, but it is really bizarre.

Becky: It's bizarre because people know you but you don't know them. They have this relationship with you that you actually didn't know you had because you haven't met them yet, right?

Kamon: It is, and sometimes people make it a little awkward. Sometimes it'll be like the husband going, "My wife really loves your videos." I don't know how to respond to that. "She's a huge Kamon Reynolds fan." I'm like, "Oh, thanks." Then sometimes it's the wife going, "Hey, my husband watches your videos every night while we're in bed together." I'm like, "Hmm, sorry. You're welcome." I don't know.

Becky: A lot of information.

Jeff: My first question would be, are you sure he's watching Kamon's videos?

Kamon: Who knows? People are like, "I go to sleep watching your videos." I'm like, "You know what? I go to sleep listening to nature sounds. I guess for some people, a boring YouTube video does the trick. Hey, however we can be useful, be information or sleep therapy. We're there for you."

Jeff: Tennessee. Besides varroa, well, maybe it is just varroa, but what are your biggest challenges as a beekeeper?

Kamon: Definitely queens. One of the things that I've been pushing really hard in a lot of the classes or lectures I've been giving when I go speak is splitting is fundamental. It's not just so we can have more bees, it is that too, but it's having these backup queens, because queen issues are very common. As you guys know, if you go to a bee club and you ask people to raise their hands on, how many of you have had a hive go queenless this year, just about everybody does. It's part of it. Queens don't live very long, and there's a lot of things that can happen, of course, with swarms happening and various other things to where sometimes the queens don't make it back.

For new beekeepers, this can be very difficult. Even for beekeepers who are wanting to be a sideline business, or especially, if you are a business full-time, the queens are the engine. You can have all the varroa taken care of, no problems, no nutritional problems, but if you don't have a good queen, you're just not going anywhere fast. Queen issues is definitely our number one problem once varroa is taken care of. In the springtime when it's easy to split bees and get these high quality, well-mated queens, which for us in north middle Tennessee is April, May, and June. Once we start getting into July and August, it's very difficult. We have the weather for it, but because there's so little nutrition out in the field, there's robbing going on and the bees just don't want to raise as many drones or queens, the quality and the percentage of getting a good queen is difficult. We really focus in April, May, and June when nature makes it easier to get these high-quality queens mated.

We'll have them in a five-frame nuc. It might just be three frames of bees, but we rarely introduce a queen with just a queen and a cage with a few attendants. It's almost always we are requeening our operation with these nucs that have young queens in them. They're so much more accepted because they have the whole package of pheromones. They have the brood pheromones, different stages. The queen's, at full capacity, are very close on her pheromone production because she's actively laying, and that queen never saw a queen cage either. This is how we keep our operations sustainable and successful. Splitting is not just about growing, it's also about when we have these queenless colonies or we need to requeen having a really high proven queen ready to go at any moment's notice. I believe splitting is fundamental for that reason.

Becky: Kamon, are you doing a hive transplant with that nuc where you're taking the bees and just putting them right into the colony? Or are you combining them with newspaper or something like that?

Kamon: That's a great question, and as you know, different times of the year require different techniques. When we're in a good honey flow and pollen flow, typically it's just an instant transfer. Everything's just so much easier, and the bees are easygoing with that nutrition coming in. They're just so focused on that. During robbing season, it is definitely a paper combined that I actually did one yesterday. If you can find a newspaper, though, it's getting really hard to find those.

Becky: I paid $2 for the smallest newspaper. There wasn't a price on it. It was, I'm sorry, this is a little off track, but it was $2 and I think I have six pages. That's it. It's amazing.

Kamon: It's mind-blowing how fast things have changed where you can find newspapers. Thankfully we still have a couple that are running around here locally, but they've really diminished. I'm just wondering, at what point am I not going to be able to get newspapers anymore? We're already starting to think what we can have on hand for that. I've used paper towels, but they get through it a little too fast, and they make a lot bigger of a mess with it.

We've done several paper combines this summer, and I've had really good success with those. If we're really concerned, maybe we're combining a three-frame nuc that has a really good brood pattern and a young queen, and we're introducing this during robbing season to a 12 to 16-frame colony, then I may cage the queen for that. It'll be a double layer of defense.

A lot of times, we're not necessarily putting her in a regular queen cage, but we're using those push-in cages, and that way she can still lay a little bit, and then we'll feed the colony during this period so everyone gets along a lot better with food in their stomachs. Then we'll come back a week later and remove that. That's definitely our number one problem once we get past the honey flow, is keeping colonies and good queens. We always have those backups ready to go.

For new beekeepers who don't want to kill a poor performing queen, I really think that's where, okay, I want to have three hives, and that's my number, but I know there's going to be issues at some point. I'm going to make two, maybe five over five nucs. These are my backup colonies, and I've got these queens that I've ordered. Or maybe I've made some splits with some swarm cells that were in spring, whatever, and I've got these backup queens.

Worst case scenario, well, I think worst case scenario, you're going to have too many bees. If you take care of them, they're all healthy, and then you have to sell them to a local club if you have-- Because some people don't want that many hives to manage, but I really think if you want three, you need to have four or five. A worst-case scenario is you lose all your bees. If you do a good job, a lot of times you end up with, okay, I didn't want to kill my queen so I got these backups. One of them died for whatever reason, and now I've got a big queen list production hive. We can just plug that in and we're back where we need to be. Bee math is basically if you want to have 5, you've got to have 7, you want to have 10, you've got to have 15 or whatever.

Jeff: I think I see how you got up to 600.

[laughter]

Kamon: My wife is so trying to get me to reduce the operation to a degree. We talk about issues and stuff. Losses is part of the game. I used to raise chickens. You lose chickens all the time. Out of raising 2,000, we might lose 50 if we do really good, but we may lose 100 out of that number. We always have a few extras to make sure that we could handle orders back in the day. With bees, they're also very short-lived and fragile. Queens can run out of gas in October. They can run out of gas in March. I had a couple run out of steam in March this year. One went full-on drone layer, and the other one, they tried to supersede. I have these over-winter nucs that I plug in, and I got a full honey crop off of both of those hives because I was able to have those backup colonies.

Losses are part of the game. I think as good beekeepers, understanding that is of paramount importance, and knowing when it's easy to make these blitz is also important. We have a plan that if we have 100 production colonies, we need to turn that into 300 hives throughout the year. We'll sell 100 or so as nucs, that's part of our profit. We'll make a honey crop, and then we are going to break those in half after the honey flow. Then we are going to drop queen cells so we can afford to lose colonies. We do. We are able to maintain our numbers and still make a profit and ultimately feed our kids. I've got an 8-year-old and a 12-year-old, and they just eat everything.

Becky: Kamon, when is your honey flow over in Middle Tennessee?

Kamon: Typically around-

Becky: Or Central Tennessee?

Kamon: -the 10th to the 15th of June. That's one thing that I'm a big fan of, is keeping records of the plants and the flora. If you really enjoy that kind of stuff, it's quite awesome. I'm still learning about some new plants that are smaller contributors. Yes, it ends at that point, and it's amazing the difference. We really try to get our honey pulled quickly so we can make these splits and feed these bees and treat the mites. It's a short season. We have a couple of buddies around here. I have a couple of buddies that have some scales, and they're sending me the data biweekly. I can see how much the colonies gained during the honey flow, and then how much they lose throughout the dearth period. Boy, this is really interesting information over the course of multiple years because it gives me an idea on how much I need to feed, or when our biggest flows are.

There's a variable or two over a week, maybe the blackberry blossoms a little early this year. Maybe it's a little bit late, but it's a lot of fun. We have found that pretty much 90% of our crop comes over about six to eight weeks in Tennessee. It's not that we don't have a flow a little bit before that or after that, and sometimes in between, but there are periods where it just trickles in a little bit. It's just basically enough to sustain the colonies' weight. It's still a nice honey flow because the bees aren't robbing and stuff, but the actual weight gain is over about six weeks typically. You have to have these really robust colonies if we want to produce an average of 80 to 100 pounds, which that's our goal here. You can do it if you have good strong bees and plenty of comb. You can't be two weeks late with your bees, or you've just lost maybe a third of your crop.

Becky: That is a crazy long dearth period that you have to contend with, and robbing. Your robbing season is at three or four months?

Kamon: Yes, it's about three months, and sometimes worse if we don't get a fall flow and there's been a drought in summer. Where are you at, Becky? I know where Jeff's at.

Becky: Minnesota.

Kamon: Oh, okay.

Becky: The land of season-long honey.

Kamon: Yes, you guys have sweet clover and all kinds of stuff up there?

Becky: We have all kinds of stuff, yes. Basswood, black locust. We definitely we have robbing at the end of the season, but we still have a fall nectar flow, and our robbing season is pretty short, a month.

Jeff: Our robbing season starts middle of July and goes through to the following May. [laughs]

Kamon: It really shocks a lot of Tennessee beekeepers because for whatever reason we talk about, in Tennessee of all places, we'll talk about wintering and how bad our winters are. We get like, "Oh man, it's 15 degrees tonight. Oh, this is the worst winter ever." Occasionally we'll get colder than that. Literally within five days, it's 60 degrees Fahrenheit in the middle of the day. This is December and January. Our winters aren't a big problem from being stressful, in my opinion. They do burn through a lot of resources because it's warm, but the dearth period is what I really hammer quite hard because it's green.

We get some rain in summer, it's very lush here, and we do have some flowers, but they're really all for bumblebees in the native pollinators that have a longer tongue to be able to reach the resources. A lot of it depends on, are you a hobby beekeeper and you've got two hives, maybe there's enough trickling in where it's not too rough in our summers. I run 40 colonies to a yard, and no, it's full-fledged robbing. We spend a lot of time on our YouTube channel talking about the harder bits because it seems like a lot of people want to avoid this stuff because it's controversial. I feed pollen patties in summer, even with small hive beetles. Even our state inspector and state apris says do not do that. I do a lot of stuff that you're not supposed to do, but it seems to work pretty good for me.

Becky: If it's a small enough piece of pollen, so then they should be able to protect it for the most part, right?

Kamon: Right. If it's a strong double-deep and you take a pound and split it into four strips, the beetles don't have a chance. We just blanket everything. I think a lot of times we do it for the new beekeepers. It's like children, you don't want to overload them. I don't believe in that type of teaching. I'm trial by fire, and if you can't handle the stress, then maybe chickens is probably better for you. I want everyone to stay in. We are very gentle about it. We do push the advanced stuff, and we just want people to be successful.

Jeff: You're doing mostly extracted honey at this point, right? Are you doing any comb production?

Kamon: I did comb honey production for the first time last year. This is my 23rd year. I've really kept it simple because I always have too many things going. I really don't put a lot of focus. I'm one of those beekeepers that really doesn't dress up my jars. I don't get fancy with cream stuff and comb honey. I wish I had the time to do that. I'm hoping to eventually, because I find it all so awesome and fascinating. I want to just get out there, work the bees and I wholesale everything. We just do extracted. I did do comb last year so we could test out the Pierce comb cutter. I wanted to try that out. It is a really cool USA product. We did go to one farmer's market this year and one festival, and that comb honey sold really well. We did two-by-four sections for $8 a piece. I believe out of two supers, I got 170 good sections. That was off of one colony. It took a lot of work to get that. We had to just get in there every five days for a while trying to keep the swarming down. That was $1,000 or something. It was about $1,000 odd in comb honey off of one hive. That really blew my mind.

Laurel and I are really wanting to open up a storefront here on I40 because we really believe that we could do these specialty things and do quite well with them. Oh, we're just waiting for our kids to get older. That investment of having those kids, we're just waiting for that to turn over. It's like apple trees except worse. It takes even longer. [laughs]

Jeff: Let's take a quick break, hear from our sponsors, and when we come back, we'll talk a little bit about your YouTube channel and North American Honey Bee Expo.

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Becky: Welcome back, everybody. Kamon, I'm guessing that everybody listening to the podcast is now searching for your YouTube episodes that cover comb honey production. I'm assuming they're out there?

Kamon: Yes, they are. I definitely am not a master of it, but we did have good success our first year, I believe, because we do understand why Bee Swarm, and we also have spent a lot of time reading old literature. Eugene Killian's book, Honey in the Comb, in my opinion, is a great read for even non-comb honey producing beekeepers because there's so much about the art of managing bees for certain things.

Back then before varroa, they were breeding for bees that would do the dry white cappings, and they were doing very successful with it, and that's what they were selecting for. It was just really hardcore, and a lot of the equipment, they show you how they made it, which as a carpenter myself and I build a decent bit of my own bee equipment, I just love the old bee books. They're still very relevant. The techniques in there on how they deal with swarm management, the Killian family was absolutely amazing. I do have some videos on it, but I'm sure there are better things out there. We just show how we did it, and then maybe people can go and then watch someone who's definitely more skilled.

Jeff: The fun thing about YouTube, what you do that I find useful, is you do the different product reviews and how to use different pieces of equipment, not necessarily product reviews. One of the first videos I remember was, I think you had a wax melter, and one of your children spilled the wax?

Kamon: No. I spilled the wax. [laughs]

Jeff: Oh, you spilled the wax. You show the good bad and the bad on your YouTube channels. That's the fun part. It's not all glossy.

Kamon: That's what we want, is a real YouTube channel that people can relate to, because if we dress it up every time and everything looks perfect, we look like we're something that we're not, and also we look, I think to a lot of people, like we're not something that they can relate to and approachable.

23 years, we've made a lot of mistakes. I mean to tell you, I can't even number them. I think if we're successful now, it is because we're maybe starting to run out of the majority of them. Whoa, trust me, I'm creative. I'll find a couple more, and my wife will be sure to document all of those into her memory banks. She's the one that keeps me from going too far off the rails. It's a great thing we've got going.

I was doing a YouTube video and loading it up and I filmed part of it and I opened it up to drain the water out from the previous batch, and then I started filming the video and loaded up full of wax and then turned the heater on and then went back inside and woke up the next morning. The first thing, I mean before I even got out of bed, I knew what I had done. It just hit me.

Sure enough, I looked out there and there's just sea of yellow, and it's a dirt floor too. There was gravel in there. There was everything. Thankfully, we were able to filter that out, and it took a lot of work, but it was fun. We turned it into a family experience, and my children still talk about that. They got paid an ice cream. I think they learned a lot about getting fair wages, and ice cream sounded like fair wages prior to cleaning it all up. By the time we were done, they were ready to go to a tub of ice cream.

Jeff: They're like, "Dad, forget the ice cream, we want some hard cash."

[laughter]

Kamon: That's exactly it. Though we want to be relatable. We have so many friends. I go speak all over the United States, and we have real relationships with a lot of different people. I learned so much from them. The product reviews is my favorite part. We do share a lot about bees, and we do want to help with that. We have over 500 videos. We've covered a lot of the basic topics multiple times, and so you can find those.

The new products get me excited because as a beekeeper, I want new things, and I want things to move forward. As a teenager, I had some people telling me, "Get out of bees. There's no future in it." I didn't like that at all, and so being the rebellious American that I am, I said, "Forget that. I'm going to do it anyways," and we did.

There are products, like this gentleman here in Tennessee, he's got the, it's shbtrap.com. His name is Marius. He has a small hive beetle trap, and he's working with the University of Georgia as they develop a poison that they're trying to get to be made legal. It's safe for bees. It's already used in applications around bees outside of beekeeping, but this stuff, if the beetles eat it, it kills them, and they're really attracted to it as well because it has some pollen sub-like characteristics. That's the bait. Then there's the poison. For southern beekeepers, this could be huge, especially.

Jeff: That's a fun part about the YouTube videos. I encourage anybody who's not seen your videos to definitely go out and scroll through all the different topics that you have. They're both entertaining and informative as well.

We're talking about equipment, and I will tell you that I was amazed at the amount of equipment at last year's North American Honey Bee Expo, and that was the first one I've been to. I think there was three. That was the third one or two prior to that. I can't remember.

Kamon: Yes, this was our fourth one, actually. The time has flown.

Jeff: Tell us the North American Honey Bee Expo story.

Kamon: When we started the YouTube channel, I think we were around 7,000 subscribers, and we had people reaching out going, "Hey, why don't you put together a meet and greet type event, or a little conference so you can do some education and we can get to meet you." I just didn't really think that would work. I honestly didn't think the YouTube channel would work either. I remember betting with my wife when she finally got me to start and I said, "If we make 1,000 subscribers in the first year, I'll take you and get the biggest steak dinner money can buy." I think we had 7,000 by the end of the year, and so she's like, "Does this mean you've got to take me out seven different times?" I'm like, "Whoa, ho ho now."

[laughter]

Kamon: That's where it started. At that point, I was going to conferences. We have a state conference here in Tennessee, and sometimes it can be really good, but more often it's not very good. I'm a lot close and I'm involved with a lot of the movers and shakers in Tennessee, but the problem is, and I think that we're having with some of these things, is some of the people just aren't super motivated to put a lot of work into it. I understand. They're not getting compensated for this. There's a lot of drama with putting on an event. There's a lot of stress. Whenever I see these events going on where I'm speaking at them, I look and some of these people are 75, 80 years old and they're lifting all this heavy stuff. They shouldn't have to do these things. Someone is like, "Kamon, we really want to do something more for the state. We just don't really know how to do it." All these factors together pushed me towards running our first event, and it was really Laurel that really pushed me again. Laurel is the one that really gets everything going.

200 people, 225 our first year, and then we ran one that had 850 the second year, and then the next year, we hit just about 2,000 people. Of course, the North American Honey Bee Expo this year that you were at, Jeff, had a grand total of 3,200 and something odd people. That includes vendors and speakers. I really lump it all together.

Most of the vendors and the staff are beekeepers too. About 3,200 beekeepers, and it's a lot of fun. The reason it's fun is because there's so many people who create products. There's folks like you all who create content, and we just want it to be this huge collaboration of all the creative things in beekeeping. It works really good. Beekeepers love talking about bees. Have you noticed that before, Jeff?

[laughter]

Becky: Even on the beach and in line at the water slides. [laughs]

Kamon: That's right, Becky. As you both know, everyone wants to talk about bees. I don't understand how a boring conference could be had, but a lot of it is not because of the people. It's about the execution of putting one of these on. It is a ton of work. It takes Laurel and I at least six months of labor each to be able to do that. It's becoming increasingly difficult to run a beekeeping business, and YouTube, and speaking gigs, and run the North American Honey Bee Expo. We love it, though. The innovation and the trade show is my favorite part, if I had to pick one thing.

Becky: Kamon, was the draw, even when it was 250 people, was that a national draw, or was that more local, and then when it tripled the next year, was that national?

Kamon: What really helped is having a YouTube channel where I can reach so many people so fast. I don't know if we would have been able to do it. I think that's a lot of the problems with the bee industry. I'll get to that in a second. Yes, the national draw really started once we hit around 1,000 people. Beekeeping is mostly word of mouth, and so YouTube does help. Once you can get 1,000 beekeepers to go to their bee clubs and talk about it, as long as they had a good time. Because if they don't, they're still going to talk about it, [chuckles] and it'll just be bad publicity.

We've really tried to keep it affordable. We've really tried to work with the companies to have the best deals in North America so people can afford to come multiple times if they're within driving distance. Getting to the other point I was wanting to hit, is just the fact that marketing is tricky in beekeeping because we're a small market. I have 70,000 people on my YouTube channel, and that's not all the beekeepers that there are for sure, but it's a pretty good chunk of the group of beekeepers that are very active. It's a small crowd. What makes it very hard on innovation for products, and research, and beekeeping, is that it's a big risk sometimes to spend six figures or even $1 million on getting a product to the market.

I think one of the best things that we've been able to do with the YouTube channel, is be able to work with these companies and connect the beekeepers who already really wanted these products anyways. We're able to put the companies with the people, and merge those together. Because of that, we have brought and helped bring so many products to the market. I spend so much of my year now working on those types of things because we can really help companies get a good ground swelling on their product, and justify them forking over $200,000 before they even sell the first product.

The expo really helps with that a lot too. That's why we put so much effort into the trade show, because the economy of the trade show really sets the tone for the event. I think it's a good boost for the beekeeping industry in general in January. That's what our goal is anyways.

Jeff: At this point in time, you're probably still finalizing some of the details of the show, but can you let our listeners know more about how big of a trade floor space you have in mind? There are speakers there perhaps? How many speakers you might be presenting at the show?

Kamon: Last year, we had about 20 speakers. They range from researchers, layman type beekeepers who are like me who barely have a high school education, but we can talk bees, and we can work bees. One of our speakers was Natalee Summers. She's 16 years old. She gave a presentation, did a very good job. We have a big range of speakers. One of them was Phoebe Snyder, and she's with the, oh goodness, the Optera product. Her and, I believe it's Kaira Wagoner. I've really worked hard on bringing that product to the market.

We're always looking for outside of the box stuff. It's not always, "Here's how to split bees, here's this," but, "What's the cutting edge research on oxalic acid strips?" and maybe, "What's going on in the creamed honey world?" Because we're seeing more and more interesting things in the creamed honey sector, flavors, and also hot honeys. You can expect to see about 20 speakers. This year I've got Randy Oliver. Bob Binnie is always going to be there. I'm actually going to give a couple lectures this year. I haven't done that since the first event. I'll keep it probably pretty simple. I really want to talk about splitting is fundamental, and how we go about always having queens in our back pocket, and we always have these insurance colonies, and the different ways throughout the season we make these things up. The nice thing is if they don't want to listen to me talk about that, then they can go listen to Randy talk about research, or maybe they can talk to, I don't know if I've got Priya yet. We're hoping to get Priya. She does a great talk on nutrition. We're going to have all kinds of talks.

The cool thing is, you get the recordings with your ticket. Everything is professionally recorded at a very high level. You can't make all the talks, but you don't have to miss them. You can just watch them after the expo is over, and we send a copy to you. You'll have 20 to 30 hours of content to get to enjoy. We really want people to get educated. We also want the pressure to be off. We found with the recordings that people are super excited like, "Kamon, I really wanted to hear this presentation by Bob Binnie, but I had this great conversation with the Beekeeping Today Podcast, and I didn't want to leave."

[laughter]

Kamon: No, I never heard anyone say any good thing about you, Jeff. I'm just kidding.

[laughter]

Becky: Oh, ouch.

Kamon: No, but seriously.

Jeff: Oh, look at the time. Look at the time.

Kamon: Yes.

Becky: [laughs]

Kamon: That's right.

Jeff: [laughs]

Becky: Wait, does that mean we are going to be at the conference this year? Or, Kamon, are you going to make a different announcement?

[laughter]

Kamon: No.

Becky: I was packing my bags for early January, but--

Kamon: We'll figure out a way to get you all there. People love this podcast. I'm one of them. I've said this before. Some of the speakers that I don't know and I'm trying to figure out what they sound like and how they're presenting potential, I listen to the Beekeeping Today Podcast to scope them out. I appreciate you guys helping me with speaker selection.

Jeff: The one last thing about the show I want to talk about, how many vendors are typically at the show? Because I know that is a big draw for many of the attendees. Being able to touch, and feel, and see, and sniff, and smell, and all the products that are out there.

Kamon: Yes, and pick the brains of the vendors. We had about 142 vendors last year. This year, we definitely are going to have more based off of the feedback that we've been getting. We have a lot of new companies and some that we just couldn't fit last year because we sold the whole room out. That room was 129,000 square feet. It was just packed from one side to the other. We actually had to borrow a little bit of space from another room. We had over 30 semi-loads of product at the show. I just got a call from one of our buddies who is wanting to bring a semi of glass jars in that really big bulk pricing.

It's a lot of work to do those type of bulk buys. We buy a semi-load of global patties, and we do a few other things. We're looking at having our feed depot, is what we're going to brand it as, where you can get pollen patties. You can get bulk syrup. Of course, for people who fly in, unfortunately, they can't take advantage of this. For those who drive, they can. What we tell people is, "Hey, this trade show is awesome for anyone to buy and save. We have this extractors for $300 to $400 off because of shipping and whatnot. Even if you can't make it and you have a buddy who's going, tell him or her, if they have space, to bring that back for you."

We expect the trade show to grow by at least 25% to 40% over last year. It just keeps growing. I'm sure it will eventually top out. The trade show is definitely fun. There's a lot of stuff like your podcast, you all's podcast going on in there. It is interactive. You get to talk to these companies and get your ideas. Honestly, that's the best part about the whole thing, is the networking, because someone can have a really good idea, and the companies maybe just would have never found out about it. There's a lot of new products that we have launched there, and they get thrown into the honey show, who has the best new gadget, and gets an award for that and all that kind of stuff.

Jeff: It is fabulous. The biggest trade show I've ever seen, even over Apimondia when it was up in Vancouver. Anyways, another big thing you do is the awards program for the young adults or the kids?

Kamon: We call it the Next Gen Bee program, but it is our youth program. This year, we are going to have at least 30 spots for young boys and girls between young men and women, I really should say, because some of them are quite a bit taller than I am. It doesn't take much though. I'm 5′ 6″. Some of these girls and boys are quite a bit taller than me. Anyways, they're always blown away because they watch my videos and they meet me in person and they're like, "This guy's a shrimp." The kids are always great. I love their personalities. Between the age of 11, and I believe it goes to 20, once you hit 21, you're--

Becky: Your website says 21, Kamon. You decide now and then switch that website.

[laughter]

Kamon: Yes. I'm going to have to edit that. I appreciate you bringing that to my attention. We never make mistakes like that. Those guys and girls, what we want them to do is send in a little application, a short video, like a 3-minute video, or it could be a 10-minute video if they're like me and they can keep it short. They can send in some pictures, that's all private, and it's a big challenge. Some of them, like me, don't have a lot of nerves about doing YouTube videos and being in the public. When I was a kid, I definitely did, but it still wasn't as much as some of the other kids. Some of them, this is just the biggest Mount Everest they've ever faced to send a YouTuber like Kamon Reynolds, that's what they call me, a tuber. When I was a kid, if someone called you a tuber, that was an insult.

[laughter]

I was thinking inspired.

Jeff: Me too.

Kamon: Anyhow, they send this stuff in, and we go through it and see what they've been up to. Really what we want to see, we don't want them to say, "Hey, I want to be this 10,000 colony commercial beekeeper." If they do, that's great. What we just want to see is them being active, and we want to be able to see a desire on their part to continue. That's what we're looking for, is putting this free ride for them, the free ride for the Guardian, and then the $300 hotel reimbursement and all the gear that comes with it. Usually, we have, like last year, everyone got a bee suit, and we also, I think had some books and some other things that went along with it, and some of them got some other gear that the companies donated.

We want to put this effort into the guys and girls who are really serious. This isn't really for new beekeepers who are just figuring out, hmm, do I want to be into this or not. This is for those young men and women who are like, "I'm a beekeeper, and it's just a matter of how many years I'm going to live on, how long I'm going to keep bees." That' where we're wanting to put our money and efforts into that. This comes from our silent auction, a lot of this, so the companies donate products. Individuals like Larry and Maryanne Sears always make all these cool crafts. It's just beautiful.

We raised thousands of dollars through that, and these people help us, and people donate throughout the year, so this program is my favorite part. We also have special classes for them too. It's not just about how to keep bees, it's how to accept the losses, and also how to face that. We want them to understand that we've gone through that stuff. Because when you're a teenager and you lose all your bees or a lot of your bees, sometimes it's a lot harder to deal with that versus being an adult, so it's more than just about basics. It's also about adversity being part of the road to success.

Yes, pretty interactive. Don't forget our Honey Show, Jeff. I'll just say that real quick. Last year we had like 1,300, 1,400 entries. The black jar was like 600 entries itself, and cotton candy honey, I didn't know you could even make that, we had cotton candy honey. We had creamed honeys from Canada. We definitely have a lot of Canadians come down. I believe it was 60 or 70 Canadians that we had, very excited about those fellows coming on down, so it's fun. Every year, it grows a little bit. The only reason it does is because we've just created a space that economically I think makes sense, and people want to hang out and talk bees. That's really the bee expo in a nutshell, is let's have fun, let's see all the gadgets, let's see the personalities, and this is the place to do it and it's just a blast. Three days is really too short, but that's all we can do.

Jeff: I will say that just standing there in the Beekeeping Today Podcast booth and just watch you people go back and forth in front of the booth, everyone had a big smile. Then a lot of them were pushing their cart along full of swag and products that they purchased, and just beaming with a smile. It was a very positive atmosphere which was really a joy to be a part of.

We've talked all about NAHBE, except when and where is it?

Becky: Oh, that's important.

Kamon: It is important. You can go to the website for more information, I'll give that later, or we'll put that down in a comment somewhere, but it's in Louisville, Kentucky, January 2nd, 3rd and 4th, and it's going to obviously be in 2025. We're going to probably extend Thursday to a full day this year. Typically, Thursday's been a partial day, and we're going to go just full Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, and we'll have all kinds of lectures.

We've talked about maybe having some shorter sessions, and maybe you all having some involvement with that. We're always looking to do something new and creative, because that's really what makes the bee expo what it is, is all these guys and girls that come in with new products or new ideas and share. It's a sharing environment. I think that's why a lot of people smile because it doesn't really give you the old crusty beekeeping attitude of, I'm going to withhold information, and I'm afraid of creating competition for me. That was from a totally different time back when it was a lot easier to keep bees, and it's difficult now in some ways.

I just want this to be an encouragement for the new beekeepers that come, and then for the old seasoned veteran beekeepers, for them to be able to take part in it. Because some of the real personalities that have morphed over the last four years of doing this, they don't have a YouTube, they don't have a big Facebook following, but they're really good at maybe it's creamed honey and they'll do creamed honey there, or maybe they're really good at comb honey production or whatever it is. They've become personalities that people just look forward to coming and seeing that person each year. It's all about relationships at the bee expo, and that's why I think it works.

Jeff: It's been a great pleasure having you back on the show this year. Look forward to talking to you again in January because I know we'll be there.

Kamon: Becky, Jeff, I appreciate you guys doing what you're doing. There's a lot of information that needs to get out there. This is my first time meeting Becky. Jeff, you're an old hat, I've seen you so many times. I talked to you so many times. Jeff, you're perfect for this. You have a face for podcasting. Becky, though, I think she's being underutilized here. She should be on YouTube or something. She's got a lovely smile, and I'm going to [unintelligible 00:57:28] for this too.

Jeff: I don't know how to respond to that, Kamon.

Kamon: There's no good way to respond, Jeff. Just take your lumps and move on.

Becky: [laughs]

Kamon: Thank you guys. It's always a blast.

Jeff: I don't know how he keeps track of everything. Oh, no. Yes, I do. He says Laurel provides that guidance.

Becky: He gave her an awful lot of credit, so that's pretty exciting that it's a partnership. Wow, it's one thing just to have a beekeeping operation of that size, but then to have 3,000 or 4,000 friends at a party.

Jeff: [laughs] I always feel like I'm underachieving after talking to Kamon. He has a lot of activities going, not to mention just the bees.

Becky: I don't want to know how many phone calls and texts he gets every day. I just don't want to know that number because I think that it would be a lot to have so much going on, and we can just be thankful that he's willing to step up. He and Laurel are providing a service for beekeepers and beekeeping vendors that everybody appreciates as you can tell by the attendance. I'm looking forward to meeting him in person in January.

Jeff: It's a wonderful thing. He's doing the educational series and the focus on educating the beekeeper, I think is the big part both in the YouTube channel, the show, and his youth program that he has going. Kudos to Kamon and Laurel.

That about wraps it up for this episode. Before we go, I want to encourage our listeners to follow us and rate us five stars on Apple podcast, wherever you download and stream the show. Even better, write a review and let other beekeepers looking for a new podcast know what you like. You can get there directly from our website by clicking on the reviews along the top of any webpage.

We want to thank our regular episode sponsors, Betterbee, 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 at the leave-a-comment section under each episode on the website. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks a lot, everybody.

[00:59:54] [END OF AUDIO]