Regional Beekeepers Spring 2026: Honey Flows, Varroa, and What’s Working (387)

Regional Beekeepers Spring 2026: Honey Flows, Varroa, and What’s Working (387)

 

Oscar Villa

Me llamo Oscar Villa y vivo en Chicago. Bienvenidos al podcast Beekeeping Today. My name is Oscar Villa, I live in Chicago. Welcome to Bekeeping Today Podcast.

Jeff Ott

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

Becky Masterman

And I'm Becky Masterman.

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Jeff Ott

A quick shout out to BetterBee and all of our sponsors whose support allows us to bring you this podcast each week without resorting to a fee-based subscription. We don't want that and we know you don't either. Be sure to check out all of our content on the website. There you can read up on all of our guests, read our blog on the various aspects and observations about beekeeping, search for, download and listen to over 300 past episodes, read episode transcripts, leave comments, And feedback on each episode and check on podcast specials from our sponsors. You can find it all at www. beekeepingtoday. com. Gracias, Oscar, for that wonderful opening. Captured at the Midwest Honey Bee Expo this last when was it, Becky?

Becky Masterman

Was it February or was it January? It was the Midwest Honey Bee Expo.

Jeff Ott

Midwest Honey Bee Expo.

Becky Masterman

Oh yes, because it was Midwest. Oscar, I wish we had that whole conversation we had with Oscar. I wish we had recorded it because he has got quite a story about his beekeeping business.

Jeff Ott

We'll invite 'em on talking about uh business of bees. And speaking of business of bees, we are delighted to bring you our regular Regional beekeepers from around the country. We've tried to get a good selection of beekeepers so we have representatives of all the different regions. And I am going to go around the table and just by alphabetically, just Beekeepers, just introduce yourself. And for our new listeners and our listeners who've listened to us for the last couple of years, they already know you. So Ang, we'll start with you.

Ang Roell

Hey y'all, my name is Ang. I run a beekeeping business called They Keep Bees and we are a 300 hive operation. For the last several years we've been our migratory operation producing queens and honey and beeswax products. We're actually making a big transition this year to being stationary in the northeast. And so that has come with Many winter tasks. But yeah, the season is about to kick out up here and we are slowly, slowly getting ready

Jeff Ott

And Bonnie.

Bonnie Morse

My name is Bonnie Morse. I am just north of San Francisco in California. We help manage about 350 colonies. We do a lot of consulting, a lot of classes for newer beekeepers. private lessons and hive management. Our season has already been going. It starts. Our season is really February to early June. So we are in the middle of it right now.

Duane Combs

Dwayne. Hi, Dwayne Combs, owner of Arizona Beekeepers LLC. We do bees year-round here. We sell nucs, we're selling more honey, and it's good to be here

Jeff Ott

And let's see who we have, Jay.

Jay Williams

Uh hey, Jay Williams. I run the pollination program at a farm-based resort called South Hall Farms, just south of Nashville, Tennessee. Manage a couple hundred hives and we are heavily involved in beekeeping experiences for people, honey tastings and the like. Aside from the honey flow, this is my favorite time of year when I get to jump on the Keeping Today podcast and talk to you all about bees And I'm grateful that you're allowing me to yap on and on year after year and keep on doing this. And I'm still welcome at the table. So thank you

Jeff Ott

Well thank you for joining us, Jay. And Paul.

Paul Longwell

Hi. My name's Paul Longwell. I'm in the Pacific Northwest. I'm just a hobby beekeeper and ready to deal with overwintered hives this year, which was It plus for me.

Jeff Ott

Excellent. Well, thank you everybody for joining. For our new listeners who are new this year. This group of beekeepers have been getting together, I think, for the last two and a half, last three years, twice a year, to discuss what's going on in their particular region, their challenges, what's going well, what's going bad And it's a way for beekeepers to hear other beekeepers what they're dealing with and how they're solutioning them and share their information for with everybody. So This has always been fun and even entertaining at times. So let's open it up to a quick just a general question and just we're sitting. Uh the first half of 2026, how's the beginning of the season been for you? Someone jump in there and state your name and then we'll jump in there. Oh this is Dwayne. Okay, Bobby, go ahead.

Bonnie Morse

Ladies first, Dwayne.

Jeff Ott

This starts already. There we go.

Bonnie Morse

I have sinned and I repent. It's been an interesting year because our rain has been so it's been warm, not as much rain, lots of colonies building up. Usually this would be swarming happening everywhere. In a turn this year, we're seeing more mite and disease problems, which is kind of even though they're big colonies, it's slowed them down a little bit population wise. They're making lots of honey, which in our area we're not really a honey area, so it's been great to see. And it's also great that, you know, we're getting in there and treating, but they're not swarming. So it's it's been pretty good so far Bunny, do you know what honey they're making? You know, our county there are so many microclimates. Like the honey is different from like mile to mile. So it really depends. In some areas they can do eucalyptus We have this one little island where invasive Echium they build a lot of comb on and actually can make it's probably the only true varietal we can get here in Moran. In other areas it's manzanita they get a lot of right now. So it's it's really all over the board and if we harvest honey like in the same week in the spring, it'll range from like almost translucent in the south of our county and 15 miles north, it looks like molasses So it's really all over the place.

Jeff Ott

All right, Dwayne, your turn, buddy.

Duane Combs

All right. I am so excited. We've had the wettest years since the 80s. And if you give me rain in the desert, I will give you honey.

Becky Masterman

Wait, did you take Bonnie's rain in California?

Duane Combs

I think he did.

Becky Masterman

Is that is that what it means?

Duane Combs

But we don't care Because we are loving it. I'm happy in an average year for 30 pounds of honey a hive, and right now we're running 110 pounds per hot Wow.

Becky Masterman

Oh my gosh.

Duane Combs

I have a new problem selling honey. So and I'll talk more about that later.

Jeff Ott

Jay, you look like you're gonna say something here.

Jay Williams

So I feel like hopefully no one turns back the the dial and like listens to me two years ago, but I feel like it's very similar. what's what's happening right now. We were we got hit with a terrible ice storm in the southeast, end of February, early March, knocked out tons of trees, really set us back. And then, you know, March kind of did the March thing. And we went from first gear to like we're in fifth gear right now. The black locus is on full bore. The red bud came and went really fast. The catalpa seems like it's lining up really well. Clover is coming on like clover does. So it's really exciting time. What is the interesting thing about this year is that We are not getting the most amazing starts. In other words, our virgins were late late to the game because it was so cold, so we really couldn't raise a ton of virgins. So now we're actually a little bit later to the game of making our splits than normal And where I think that's going to impact our our local beekeepers is that a lot of the younger hives are not going to make honey this year. It's not going to happen. You can already you can already tell, you know that. And so our overwintered our strong ones are gonna do what they do, but there's no extra bonus that you're gonna get this year, I guess is my point. And I do worry about some of the younger beekeepers who overwintered their first or second years because it was really tough Our mic counts were a lot higher. Again, the winter is pretty rough. So if they made it to this point right now, I think they're gonna be rock stars. But but it's definitely uh it was a tough winner um as winner scope.

Jeff Ott

Paul, how about you?

Paul Longwell

It's been a real mild northwest winter this year, which was really surprising and uh the rain that we usually get in April. hasn't been happening other than one or two weeks, but there's been a lot more early swarming happening in the area and a lot of maple honey is being brought in right now. I'll just let you know those aren't my swarms. Yeah, I don't know. I always kid you about it.

Jeff Ott

Ang, how's your early season going?

Ang Roell

I love this podcast because I just love hearing the different things that are happening when we all convene in the moment. Like, Jay, you're ahead of me with the black locust. Right, so you're like forward in time. And Paul, you're like back in time with the maple, which we just passed maple, we're now into dandilion up here in the northeast. So it's cool. It's cool to like see where we all fall on this continuum. Or don't, in Bonnie's case, who's like getting eucalyptus and all kinds of gorgeous, tasty stuff. Yeah, so here in the northeast, uh we just passed Maple and the bees are growing up that overwintered. It was also a long cold winter here. So we didn't have as much luck with our um nooks. We like to overwinter a lot on nooks. They were they're usually quite small. They did not endure the winter well, but our breeder queens did and their daughters did. And so we have a really nice breeding population to select from this year. And we have been getting ready to do uh we're doing a trial about the heritability of rose sensitive hygienic traits And so we're kind of staging for that at the same time as staging our robot winter tides for a bunch of queen cells at the same time as uh starting queen season. So It's all kind of rolling out at once over here.

Jeff Ott

Well, thanks for taking time to stop and talk with us. That's great. We appreciate it. We're gonna take our first break and hear from our sponsors and we'll come back and we'll talk about uh what else but Varroa. We'll be right back.

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Becky Masterman

Welcome back, everybody. Jeff wants us to talk about Varroa now. We're gonna bring it down a little bit. I but I want to like point the finger at Jeff. Because because, you know, usually we try to limit it, but we're gonna let's let's go for it. Let's talk about Varroa and if you could share what it looks like in your region. Maybe if you're trying something new, there are a lot of new products out there. And what your outlook is. That would be great. Who wants to start us off on this fun topic?

Duane Combs

I can do it. All right. Okay, let's go. 20% of my hives don't know what varroas are, and another twenty percent don't know how to live without them So I ended up using formic acid followed by oxalic vaporization, followed by apigard, to finally get my problem under control. And this is all December to February.

Ang Roell

December to February.

Becky Masterman

Wow. December to February. Wow. That's a lot of a lot of investment and control. And and is it working?

Duane Combs

The treatment of the three did get them under control. I think what I'm going to is creating my own oxalic acid sponges because I've seen results and the stuff that's on the market doesn't really work well. I'd love to try the new product where they claim that they can keep the Varroa from from multiplying, but it's forty four dollars a hive and I'm a poor desert person. I can't afford that much per hive. So we'll use oxalic acid sponges.

Becky Masterman

Jay, why don't you share with us what's going on?

Jay Williams

This past winter was really tough. I saw some of the highest Varroa counts I've seen. Makes my my head spin. A lot of the hives that had those high Virro accounts are no longer with us They had they had a great history and now they're done. But what that means is it's paved the way for hopefully a s a stronger crop, a livestock that's out there. We did a lot of oxalic vaporization and we are testing out a new product this year. So I don't know if it's gonna be the best product ever. We'll see called Norroa. And to what Dwayne is mentioning, it is a pretty high buy-in. It's a little bit higher price than I'm used to, but if it works, it'll be great, and I'm willing to give it a shot. It's essentially two bags or two two treatment that ease. And the challenge with Narroa, I love the idea, love the concept. I really hope it works. But the challenge is you've got to get it in at the right time. And so you you don't want the bees to consume it. You actually want them to store it. and expose the mites to that stored liquid feed. The the challenge that I see for this product and the market is most people don't spend the time to really realize when is the flow starting, when is it ended. A lot of people in my area they feed you know one-to-one in the beginning of the season to start to spike their production and and get things going, but those bees are actually consuming that sugar. They're not actually storing it to stimulate the queens to lay. And so there's this really, really short window where I feel like this thing is gonna work. And I tried to do it this year. I'll I'll get back to whether it worked. But it's really right when the honey flow is a gonna start so that the bees have transitioned from burning that fuel to actually storing it. And that's when, you know, I think this thing will shine if it truly works to to sterilize the rural mite. That's that's the concept behind neurologic.

Ang Roell

How long will a treatment with that last?

Jay Williams

It's supposed to last six six months, uh a long time. If if it works. That's why I think it's you know it's worth giving it a shot, but like like Dwayne, like that's a pretty high buy-in per colony And you know, you sort of you can't just do it's like any other treatment out there. You can't do one colony in your yard. You gotta do the entire yard. And so, you know, we typically run yards that are at least ten to twenty hives per eight period And if I'm doing AD periods, this, you know, it generally starts to rise pretty quick. So again, I'm definitely willing to do it if it works. I'd be willing to give it a shot for the first year, but we'll see. I'll get back to you.

Ang Roell

Yeah, I'd be really interested to hear how the both how it works and then how the honey numbers are, like if it increases their pro productivity during that six-month period.

Jay Williams

It'd be amazing. There was beekeepers in Aria that fed it in the beginning of March and they might as well have thrown the stuff in the trash. There's there's no way that that it was the efficacy is there and it's it's tough to see that, especially after the fact and hear, wait a second, you guys fed at the wrong time. But that's what it is.

Becky Masterman

I had a a beekeeper at one of the expos ask me about, you know, when to apply it and it it took me back and and I was like, this is actually really this isn't easy. It's it's It's a obviously a an effective product if it's used right, but you really do have to know your bees and know your nectar flow and And then you have to have time at at that point to go ahead and apply it. How did you apply it? Because it also fascinates me that one of their ways is to put it on the bottom board.

Jay Williams

Yeah, I don't I'm not a fan of doing that and maybe it's just cause I'm at old old fart now. I I put it inside of a shim on top of the shim. It's just not yeah And I hope that doesn't cost me the the success, but to put it all the way in the bottom, I don't I just don't like that at all. It's too close to the door.

Becky Masterman

I want to talk to somebody who who did it and it was successful because it's uh it would be a ease of application, but Boy, does that make me nervous too.

Jay Williams

You know what I think we should do if we truly get successful at is like like Ang and I network. In other words, typically I feel like every single time we have these conversations, I'm like Ang, I'm like two weeks ahead of her So I feel like this is where like we get together as a as a you know community and we say, all right, if you're two weeks ahead of me, this is what I'm seeing now, this is when you should apply it. You know, a lot of us are in our silos saying, well, I think the black looks is coming on, or I think the red butt, or when's the two of poplar. And I feel like this is when the Southern beekeepers need to take care of the northern beekeepers because that's when like if she were to use it, this is when you're gonna be a rock star at it, not when you're just guessing.

Duane Combs

Jay, if you're y if you're applying it during the flow, how do you keep it out of your honey?

Jay Williams

So you apply it right before the f the flow actually really starts, before it really kicks in. Because I don't really want it to go in my honey. I want them dead to sort of be exposed to it and then basically it's gone. If they eat it within a few days, it's it's not a long-lasting treatment.

Duane Combs

Yeah, 'cause instinctively I'd think that you put you would put it on when they're in a durs so you know that they consume it. But

Jay Williams

Yeah. Yeah, you don't want them to consume it, you want to store it. Yeah.

Ang Roell

Last year we used oxalic dribble and Vapor as well as the standard release pads. We made them ourselves. And we had good success with that. I'm not seeing high mic counts coming out of the winter, but I do feel like Some of our nook losses are due to like not having a standardized treatment for different size nooks going into the winter. So that's something I really want to work on. It's easy for me to understand how much to treat my 10-frame hives with oxalic and Formic if I need to, um, but it's a little bit more well telling it's like an eight frame highs or you know, like a five-frame hive and there's many different sizes. I'd like to get a little bit more precise about that. I think that's impacting some of our loss numbers over winter. And it's just Yeah, for me, the more I feel like I can standardize things, the more I can see the patterns and opportunities. Well, I've just been thinking about that a lot recently. Uh

Paul Longwell

well I first of all I started monitoring a lot sooner than I normally used to do it. So I've already monitored, determined my Vero levels are low, so I put Varroxsan on all my hives uh maintain them at the low s level. And then um like Jay, I'm trying to figure out how to use Nora on one or two of my hives.

Becky Masterman

Have you applied it already, Paul?

Paul Longwell

I haven't applied it to Nora yet. No, I'm I have Varroxsan and everything right now and I have to figure out my seasons on that.

Becky Masterman

Bonnie, here you've already mentioned mites, but go ahead and give us an update, please.

Bonnie Morse

Yeah, usually coming out of winter we don't see a lot or a lot of diseases and you know we've we've uh done a pretty good job in the long term with our breeding program. We have a lot of hygienic behavior, so in general We haven't done a lot of treating in the spring because just by splitting the colonies and getting that brood break, they they tend to do pretty well. But this has been a very different season. So we have used probably, you know, in the past we've maybe had to treat 15 to 20% of the hives. It's probably closer to 6570 this season. But you know, an even bigger problem that I'm seeing than Varroa, not to shift the subject, but are small high beetles, because we've really not had a problem with small high beetles. They've been here about fourteen years now. But I think just with our soil type and the precipitation and lots of different factors, they've never really been a problem except in empty equipment equipment are really weak hives with way too much honey to have to take care of. And it's a game changer this year. We're throwing beetle plasters in pretty much every hive. We've seen slime out uh a couple slimeouts and full-size hives, which we've never seen since they've been here. So I I'm actually a little more concerned with the small hive beetles right now. I mean Varroa is always there and we're always kind of watching it and you know adjusting what we need to do. But those small high beetles, I wasn't expecting what we've been seeing.

Jay Williams

How do you generally treat your small high beetles? Is it just beetle blasters, so you do anything else besides that?

Bonnie Morse

We've never really had to do anything else beside that in the past because it's been really not a major problem I don't know if we're gonna have to look into other opportunities, but it just was never it was never an issue. And that seemed to manage the population enough. in the past. So I'm not sure if we're gonna have to shift strategies. You know, the Beetle Blasters are just easy. They're inexpensive, you know. So yeah, we may have to we may have to look into something else.

Jay Williams

Do you keep your hives in full sun or are they in the shade usually?

Bonnie Morse

You know, my hives are in the full sun, but like I said, we do a lot of consulting for people. We've got a lot of hills. and a lot of big trees. So we tend to there are a lot of hives that end up in shade. And yes, those definitely, you know, have a a bigger problem. But one of these hives that was like four boxes And I I looked at it, it was beautiful, it was packed full of bees. The next time Gary went by, my husband, it was totally slimed out. And it was in full sun.

Ang Roell

We see that in Florida 'cause it gets so full of honey that I don't exactly know what the heck happens, but it's like the bees I guess it's probably when the bees go to the outside of the box to evaporate the honey that the hive beetles can then just like take over. And then you'll have a whole full huge massive hive just abscond and get slammed out. It's like so frustrating.

Bonnie Morse

Yeah, this one was like a queen and a tiny little cluster left by the time we got there and then just larva everywhere So that's that's just not something that we've really experienced much.

Jay Williams

Yikes. Do you guys want to hear a gross story that'll make you uh gag?

Becky Masterman

Well sure. Absolutely.

Jeff Ott

The seventh grader in me really wants to hear this.

Jay Williams

All right, Jeff, there I was. The hive was like seven supers tall, you know, on our way at ten. It was amazing. I went out of town for vacation, came on back. Reached up to my seventh super waiting to pull off the full honey super. This thing was heavy. I was like, I'm in the money, like I've just arrived. This thing whatever. And I crack it open and what do I do? I literally pour Small hive beetle slime all over me and I took a shower in small hive beetle slime. It was just all over me. So I quickly excused myself I might have passed out, but we're not gonna get into that. And then I had to throw everything away. It was horrible. But I will never forget that feeling of covered in small high beetle and then the slime and then that smell and never get out of your nose

Ang Roell

That is disgusting.

Jay Williams

That is disgusting. We're talking this is like six or seven years ago. I'm still talking about it. Inch, I'm telling you, hours of therapy to get through this. That

Bonnie Morse

's a good thing.

Duane Combs

I don't want you to make the same mistake. If you guys move your hives to the desert of Arizona, you won't have small hive beetle problems. They can't reproduce in concrete soil.

Becky Masterman

Jay, did anybody get a picture?

Jay Williams

Oh no, not a uh no one was around, thank goodness, because if they were they it would be on YouTube, it'd be on some America's Funnies Home videos, because it was horrible. I mean it was just there was nothing graceful about it. Did you say a bad word or two? I don't know any bad words, Jeff, so I don't know what you mean.

Jeff Ott

Small hive beetle is a growing problem and they're and they're spreading around the country and especially as I don't know, the country's warming. Let's talk about small high beals since uh Bonnie opened the subject and Jay just slimed us with it.

Bonnie Morse

I want a picture, Jay.

Jeff Ott

You gotta recreate that moment.

Jay Williams

I'm telling you, you gotta get out of your head. Yeah, I don't want to incha introduce that idea in your head.

Jeff Ott

So who else dealing with the small high beetle? Jay raised his hand, Bonnie, Ang, Paul and I haven't yet That I'm aware of. And Dwayne, you you have concrete soil you said.

Ang Roell

Yeah.

Jeff Ott

They can't reproduce.

Ang Roell

Flower to be keeping so many sa they love sand. They love sand and wet.

Duane Combs

We see a few hive beetles in our irrigated land. You know, people have irrigation for their homes and they'll put their bees on the irrigated land and they can have a few hive beetles, but it's never been a real problem.

Jeff Ott

And Paul in the Pacific Northwest, there's come up on packages sometimes, but they're not around by the end of the season, is that correct?

Paul Longwell

They're not around by the end of the season. That's also one reason why we're not bringing nucs into our our yard operation either. We're just bringing packages which are easier to treat.

Jeff Ott

Note to self, don't pull a heavy super off above your head. Just don't go on vacation.

Bonnie Morse

Do any of you have to deal with the Australian sap beetles? Same family as the small high beetles, but smaller No. No. Okay. We deal with them a little. They're not as harmful on the overall colony level, but they create havoc and stored equipment if there's any bee bread in it. And the bees can't clean those frames out then, won't clean them out And it gets like this yellow I mean this orange kind of sawdust looking stuff on it. And it's from the larvae tunneling into the frass. The bee brad. It's not the frass, it's from them tunneling into the bee bread and like everything, I think that's where it's all coming from. But if you stick one of those frames in the in the direct sun for like ten minutes, it will be crawling with small hive beetle larvae.

Duane Combs

Paul said bad things about nucs, so I want to say something positive about them. I I sell nucs, but and I sold the heaviest nucs I've ever had this year But the problem was our flow was so great, every other day we're shaking nectar out of the frames so that the Queens has some place to lay. It was just a horrible problem this year.

Becky Masterman

I think you're bragging. I don't think that's a problem.

Duane Combs

No, no. No. No.

Ang Roell

No, it is a problem though, because like we we have a similar issue when you're trying to make queens that you have like you end up with plugged up nectar frames and then you can only use so many plugged up nectar frames but it's not a honey frame. So like what do you ho if you have big enough hives where you can put it on there to cure, that's great. But otherwise you just got like Nectar frames, you end up having to hose them out so that you can use the wax. It's like totally silly.

Jeff Ott

So is that what you do then as a solution? You shake 'em out, you hose them out?

Ang Roell

In the southeast that's what I did.

Jeff Ott

Yeah, uh

Duane Combs

that's what we were doing. You know, that and we tried to replace frames. I mean we would we would give them built out frames and pull these nectar frames out, put them in a box and let 'em recollect it there and bring it back to their hive so they had you know they weren't on the streets causing problems

Becky Masterman

Little busy work.

Duane Combs

We keep our ladies busy.

Becky Masterman

I have a questi I have a a question you can all refuse if you don't want to, but since we've kind of had like a a little negative trend. One of the things we did at the Honey Producers meeting last year was we had a segment called That Didn't Work and and people shared like something that went wrong and and we had heard some really good stories. I bet you all, in addition to that gross high beetle issue, Jay, I bet you all have something just generally in your operation that you you thought might work or that that it just turned out to be a a little bit of a failure or or something that that happened beyond your control that really impacted your your bees Anybody willing to share anything?

Duane Combs

Oh yeah, I got one. Okay. Yeah. My problem is heat. Okay. And during the day the the Bees can go out, collect water, cool their hive down like an evaporative cooler, and the forager bees can take 122 degrees. Okay? But when the sun sets And it's 105 or 109 in the shade and there's no shade and the bees can't go out and get water. Okay. I watch my I watch my brood die. I mean I don't notice it uh that I don't notice as much that the queen is losing her s you know, her sperm until she no longer you know, well that comes in the fall when she no longer can lay. But I mean you sit there in June first and look at a ten frame, two-box hive with eighteen frames of bees and six frames of brood. Then on July 1st you look at it and now you've got three frames of brood and 14 frames of bees, and then you look at it in August and you've got spotted brood spread over three frames and you're down to twelve frames of bees. And I mean I've tried using insulation I know mistress work, we can put mistress over the bees, but when you're trying to do, you know, more than just a backyard beekeeper thing the finding mistress and finding the water out in the desert gets expensive. So I mean you just I last year I made a deal with a rancher up north and I solved the temperature problem, but it was a dry summer and so I was running up every week with sugar water to keep 'em going. I mean it just heat is just our it's our winter.

Becky Masterman

Anybody else have a sad story?

Bonnie Morse

I have a funny story. You know, we're a fairly small operation and like in our day-to-day when we're consulting, like our uh i we use a van, not a truck. Because, you know, like some areas, bees, you people don't want their neighbors knowing or whatever. So unmarked van, which means we move bees in vans, in closed vehicles frequently. And when we were first starting our operation and building up our own apiaries, uh Randy Oliver and his son would come down with a truckload of bees and make nucs. But the last season we needed them, we only needed like 40. So we took our van up to Grass Valley, loaded them all up, and about 10 minutes after leaving, our van started filling with bees. And we pulled over and it was clear that the uh nuke where the open where the opening had come out was in the center of the van and we weren't gonna unload it. So we drove for three hours with thousands of bees in our van. I didn't let my husband open the windows because I felt really bad about these bees becoming homeless. So I wanted to wait until we got back to the apiary where they could find homes. And the crazy thing is we were on a major like five lane highway for a significant part. I don't think anyone noticed that our windows were moving. And I'm pretty sure if I saw movement in someone's window, I'd do a double take. But I don't think anyone in three hours noticed.

Duane Combs

Oh, that's funny. Monnie, did you get any stings? Did they sting you at all?

Bonnie Morse

No, and that's when we really learned like it's no big deal having bees in in a c in a closed vehicle because they're not interested in you in all. They just want to go to the window where the sun is shining in. So yeah, and they were actually they weren't just in the back window. They were all over the driver and passenger windows as well.

Paul Longwell

That's funny.

Ang Roell

And? Oh, a story? I was just gonna say I've been on the road with a van fill of bees a lot. I always love like driving down the highway with uh people next to you just being like, what the heck is happening? I mean, Sad like sad story for us continues to be recovering from the uh hurricane Helene times, uh, we lost a big set of R Vs there in twenty twenty four and I mean last year because of federal funding freezes and delays and chaos. We ended up not being able to get our recovery money in time. So this year we're, you know, buying a lot of and constructing a lot of new equipment making a big transition into a lot more Langstroth hives here in the Northeast. And so I guess it's a good it's a nice story because This year we actually get to recover, but we did have to take quite a hit last year in both our queen production and our ability to recover from our losses. So I finally feel like we're coming out the other side of that, but man, it was really a walloping that we took there.

Jay Williams

I have a quick one, and if you don't like it, you can cut it. But There I was. And I thought, new beekeeper, and I'm sure everybody in this group has done the same thing. You think, you know what? I gotta move this hive. I'm just gonna be really quick. And I'm gonna go at night when, you know, no one's doing anything and they're all at home, and you park your car up and you're like, I can't see anything, I'll just shine the headlights right on the front of the hive. And I'll just run over the hive. It'll be really quick. No one will even know anything's happening. And I'll grab that hive and I'll move it before they know. And what ends up happening is it never goes that way. All the bees came out, they all sting me, and if you've been around bees long enough, you know that when a few sting you in one location, then everybody else wants to go in that location, right? Because the pheromones are being kicked off. So the whole place stinks like bananas, so you know that it they're mad And for whatever reason, everybody decided that I was bent over at the front of the hive trying to shove um some things in the front door so they don't come out of me, which meant that the headlights were shining right on my ass And so because the light was right on my butt, all the bees were stinging my butt. And then everybody else wanted to sting my butt. And before you knew it, I had 30 beehive stings right on my, you know stingers hanging on my butt and then it looked like I was the road runner because I was running around going, oh and I couldn't move a thing and I ran back to my car and I I kid you not, I got in the car and I was like, well that didn't work. And that was it

Ang Roell

That's where you'll hear beekeeper say the most curse curse words, those nighttime B moves. Oh my gosh. Red craft bombs. Oh my gosh.

Jeff Ott

Minus the the sensitive spot stings that sounds really reminiscent of my very first beehive move. It was the It was late at night and but at that time we used hive staples and it had uh full honey soupers on top 'cause they were abandoned hives and we just thought we'd s hive staple those boxes all together and throw them in the back of the pickup truck and just be done and they don't like pounding on the side of the colony with a hammer and a Staple and oh they were bearding up front too, so that was the other thing. It was fun fun times. Lessons learned, right? Let's take this opportunity for a quick break to hear from our sponsors and we'll be right back.

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Becky Masterman

Welcome back everybody. Okay, we know what didn't work. What's going to work this season? What are we excited about?

Bonnie Morse

I'm excited about honey, because it looks like, you know, Dwayne was saying he gets an average of like 30 pounds per hive. You know, in some areas we get maybe twenty pounds per hive if we're lucky. And we're seeing more apiaries where spring honey is going to be able to get pulled. Hopefully we have a decent summer and get our our fall coyote bush to bloom. So fingers crossed, hopefully it's gonna be a better honey year for our area.

Jeff Ott

Paul, I didn't prep you for this question, but You're doing something that I wonder how many beekeepers are working on, but you're working with a 3D printer to make bee parts or tools. and other experimenting with a 3D printer in your beekeeping. So can you tell us what you're doing and how that's going?

Paul Longwell

Part of the problem is I run a lot of hive IQ hypes. And there's not a lot of things out there like feeder rims or double screen boards for doing your in your queen raising and that. So what I've been doing is I've been making uh three D parts uh like f feeder rims and you know your perch for your frames and that and if I find a problem I just try to design something and make it make it available It's really it's really uh fun. I've made uh bee waters that have sit in their fountain, uh, you know, there's all kinds of stuff out there that already somebody else has done just modifying it. I also teach a lot of classes, so uh you know the many hives you can get for, you know, like thirty nine dollars or so at a B store? Well, I went I enlarged one two hundred percent And now they have uh a couple of bee clubs have hives that they can turn around and take into a school or something that or you know, they only live you know, five pounds. But they have full frames, they have drone frames on them. They can show all the different parts without having to carry, you know, a hundred pound hype around.

Jeff Ott

I really admire that and using the new technology as a way to expand your beekeeping operations and the tools that you have available. I think that's really I like that creativity.

Paul Longwell

Hey Paul, will you will you ship stuff? Oh yeah. Out of state?

Duane Combs

Okay.

Paul Longwell

One of the things I've done if you could see it here is a little cap that your broodminders go into, so you're not sitting there unwrapping everything. Wow, that's cool.

Jay Williams

We could definitely use that. So does that fit in between the bottom bar of your frame and the top bar of the next super? Yes. Huh. It's it's brilliant.

Paul Longwell

It's less than a quarter of an inch, so how do we get pricing and availability?

Becky Masterman

Yeah Do we have a website yet for you, Bob?

Paul Longwell

You know, little little things like like this, you know, here's a little super, you know, people can get. You've done models of different bees the queens and and the workers and varroa I I bought some uh files from somebody that has actually a queen and a drone and uh a worker bee and I've been larger them to sizes. I'm working on what we call Because they're so complicated you have sub sports I have to work on. I'm working on that issue right now.

Jeff Ott

I like that. 3D printing. Who would have funked that ten years ago? Five years ago. Using a 3D printer to create beekeeping tools. Thanks, Paul. Is there anything else we want to talk about?

Duane Combs

Yeah. I'm excited about selling honey. Now, you know, if I can get in front of people, I can sell. I mean We have an arrangement with our chiropractor where we give her honey for treatment. And two weeks ago I gave her cash because she's got more honey almost than I do. And she scolded me and made me promise to bring only honey. So, you know, I've got this honey problem. You know, we've got friends and neighbors and the people that know you have honey that come up to you. How do we go beyond that? And I looked at farmers markets and in my area there's three companies that do farmers market, and I swear they're trying to produce a farmers market on every corner And so it's just they're just not cost effective. And so my wife's the lady that does her hair owns a hair shop and it's in a community and they had a parade. and a farmer 's market going on the other corner. So I just set up my little table and sold five hundred dollars worth of honey for the day. So I I'll I'll go to street corners. I'm thinking about going to orthodox synagogues. for honey when they need honey for some of their holidays. I've got a community college that offers programming to retired for $50 a year. They can listen to all these people talk and I'm now on their schedule and so once a month I go do a honey tasting party. I go to people's homes and do honey tasting parties. I go to groups that, you know, ha have speakers come in and sell honey. And so I'm I'm upping my game.

Becky Masterman

You're the Tupperware of beekeeping.

Duane Combs

I'm working on that. Okay. That's

Becky Masterman

Amazing.

Duane Combs

Right now I'm running I'm running three hundred dollars a month. And I want to get it up to four thousand dollars a month and I wanna have honey ladies.

Becky Masterman

Could we could we make that like more gender neutral, Dwayne? Honey

Jeff Ott

peoples. Honey pedals. That would work.

Ang Roell

Honey pedlers. They could have little like like uh tricycles with like a honey It's kind of bell and go through neighborhoods. Yeah, like a like an ice cream job.

Duane Combs

Yeah. I tried to get my eleven grandchildren to sell for me, but kids today don't want to work.

Ang Roell

The pay's gotta be right. Yeah, the pay has to be right, yeah.

Jeff Ott

Yeah, come on, grandpa, it can't be for free.

Ang Roell

Uh, that's everything's expensive, you know? Her generation has really got a lot to face down.

Paul Longwell

They clean equipment for me for a dollar

Duane Combs

afraid. There you go.

Paul Longwell

Oh, I have a a grandpa one. I'm went to go into some new broodminder sensors and so I'm going like Gee Wills, I gotta put 'em in these hives, what am I gonna name the hives so I remember 'em as a seventy year old person, what they are. So I said, Well I'm gonna name 'em after my grandchids. Well, Nora, Ruby and that Said, is that okay with my wife? She goes, No, you can't name him Ruby because I can't sit there saying Ruby's gaining weight. So I named him after all their old pets that we had. So we have Rufus and Ziggy and Zach and Max and

Jeff Ott

No, no, really, I was talking about the hive. Really, I well that's funny.

Ang Roell

I'm also excited about honey this year. We've been trying to set ourselves up to do more honey production and I've been running my production budgets and capital scaling budgets. I'm just feeling pretty confident in our and what we have planned. So I'm looking forward to to uh pulling a lot of honey Yeah, we also have this, so we're going to be doing a two-year trial where we look at our breeder queens and run different varroa mite assays on those queens. and then raise a bunch of daughters and run those same essays on those daughters and try to map some heritability of those traits, like how heritable are hygienic or uh Varroa sensitive traits. Because we're curious. You know, field work and science, oh sometimes they tell different stories

Becky Masterman

And do you have a market for your honey, your increased honey production, or are you going to

Ang Roell

Yeah, we have a really robust local food scene here and so we are hoping to partner with CSA Farms and sell our honey sort of direct to their customers. We also have a big demand. Part of the reason that we started doing this is because we could sell two times what we produce right now. And so just knowing that we have a big demand, we want to be able to fill that and then also do these sort of wholesale partnerships. Yeah, it's a good moment for honey in our area, so we're excited.

Jay Williams

You know, I'm actually gonna divert from the crowd here. Uh I think selling honey is awesome, but What I'm really excited about this year is, you know, I'm I'm, I guess, the one person in this crowd that's like pretty heavily involved in agritourism. And the overwhelming interest and and level of excitement around these and learning and experiences is incredible. I never thought we'd get to where we are right now. It's it's 70% of our business easily, 70 or 80%. And so people really want to experience what is it like to be a beekeeper? You know, opening up a hive, tasting honey barehanded out of the hive. It's it's definitely hitting. And what I'm most excited this year is we are rolling out like officially something called Be Still Meditations. And so we bring people out to the yard. and essentially put them on a yoga mat and we have a certain yard where hives are higher up and the bees fly over your head as you lay on the yoga mats and we lead you through uh sow bowls and some some grounding work And it is overwhelming how many people want to do this thing and how relaxed they get. It's one of those things where like we are all hustle and bustler, right? All of us are like trying to make this thing work and survive at this amazing hobby we have And sometimes the sort of the hidden bonus, at least that I've learned over the years, is the therapeutic value of these bees. I spent twenty years as a fireman and I saw some pretty rough things in this world, and bees are what slave my life and have kept me sane. And for me to be able to share that and have people tap into how they focus you you know, you have to control your breathing, you gotta be self aware, all these things that you all know, but the the average Joe out there doesn't. And so I'm really blown away by how many people want to do this thing. You know, and they don't necessarily want to be a beekeeper, but they want to be around the vibration, the frequency, and everything that the bees bring to all of us that we are sort of used to. And so that's what I'm really mo most excited about. We're gonna we do it every single Saturday pretty much. You know, that's just the B still. We do APA tours now three times a week, four times a week. Thousands of people were coming through your yards, and it's a great spot to be in. So

Duane Combs

How do you keep the people from being stung?

Jay Williams

We have really docile bees. Our Carnies and uh a carney Italian line is pretty awesome and everybody's in a suit. You know, no one's really going out there without anything on But then the the bee still meditation there comes a point where you're allowed to actually take your veil off and most people take their gloves off and the bees are very, very chill It also helps that we do it in the morning, helps that we're doing it in yards that don't have ten supers of honey. You know what I mean? It's we we do definitely stack the the odds in our favor.

Duane Combs

How many hives do you have in in the location? Brilliant idea.

Jay Williams

Where we're doing the Beastal Meditation, there's probably no more than like fifteen, fifteen to twenty. Nothing crazy. And they're not again, they're not like eight frame big time honey producers, they're more like a nuke yard. Our nuke yard is the most popular one to do it in and and the nucs are no more than like four, five super tall nucs. It's pretty chill. That would be very fun.

Jeff Ott

Anything else?

Duane Combs

Something that happened to me l this year was really exciting. A mile from my house, there's what used to be a horse farm And they've planted all kinds of trees. They have peaches, they've got citrus, they've got uh desert trees, eucalyptus, and we had a tremendous weed crop this year. And so but last year was real dry and so this lady called me in like last November and said, What would you charge me to pollinate my trees? And I said, Well, if I can leave bees there, I'm not going to charge you anything. And so I drive, work all my bees, and drive home and it's 3. 5 miles or less. And we may copy you because they're looking for ways of expanding the revenue streams and so we might look into the B classes. That's great. How many suits did you have to buy to start it?

Jay Williams

We have on property about thirty-five suits. all from Guardian B apparel and they they do a really good job. You want to have ones that you can really like lay your head down. So the, you know, you have to be kind of careful with the type of suit. And they're all ventilated, so because you're laying in the sun. So you gotta be careful.

Bonnie Morse

We do something kind of similar at Hydrin Meadery here in our county, which is a really fun meadery. I think they're the only ones in the country that do a champagne style mead and they do all these different varietals. And we do it's called the bee experience. And I do a short farm tour and talk about forage and what bees forage for and native bees and habitat and then we get everyone suited up. and they get into hives with us. I usually get 'em to get their gloves off and start tetting bees, you know, with a finger, you know, within like five minutes, which is fun. And then they pull frames of honey and go in the meadery and my husband Gary They extract the honey with them and while we're getting it in bottles, because they all get to take a bottle home, they do a tour and tasting. So really fun, really popular. And like you said, Jay, it's not like most of these people, they don't want to be beekeepers. They just want to be experience.

Jay Williams

Yeah, they just wanna know what we're all talking about. And also I don't have to worry that like Mother Nature may throw at me a curveball and I won't make honey 'Cause I can yap all day long. You know, that's endless supply and and I don't have a fixed amount of honey that I can sell that will limit my PL for the year.

Bonnie Morse

Yeah, and that issue that Dwayne brought up about people getting stung In the eight years we've been doing it, I think we've had three people get stung. You know, you like one of them, you know, a a bee fell into the water i in the in the w during the extraction and they tried to like fish it out and it got stung on the finger. Another one th the person wasn't wearing gloves and they they put their, you know, hands on them when they got a frame. So it's very infrequent. I mean RBs are really nice too, and in those eight years there's only one time when I've opened a hive and just the sound of them, it was like, yeah, not using them. Lit back on. Yeah, yeah.

Jeff Ott

Well, I can't believe our time has come to an end. I know we could all go longer, but we all have things to do. You're all busy beekeepers. I appreciate you taking the time this spring to come out and talk to each other, let our listeners listen in, and hopefully learn something from your experiences and from your knowledge and and what you've done with your bees. So thank you everybody for joining us.

Becky Masterman

It's been a pleasure, everybody. Thanks for having us. Thanks for having us.

Jeff Ott

Yeah, thank you. We'll talk to you in the fall.

Ang Roell

Happy beekeeping season, everyone.

Jeff Ott

And that about wraps it up for this episode of Beekeeping Today. Before we go, be sure to follow us and leave us a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts or wherever you stream the show. Even better Write a quick review to help other beekeepers discover what you enjoy. You can get there directly from our website by clicking on the reviews tab on the top of any page. We want to thank BetterBee, our presenting sponsor, for their ongoing support of the podcast. We also appreciate our longtime sponsors, Global Patties, Strong Microbials, and Northern Feedbooks for their support in bringing you each week's episode. And most importantly, thank you for listening and spending time with us. If you have any questions or Feedback, just head over to our website and drop us a note. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks again, everybody.