[Bonus] Short - Midwest Honey Bee Expo Interviews: Beekeepers and Innovations (Part 1)

[Bonus Short] Midwest Honey Bee Expo Interviews: Beekeepers and Innovations (Part 1)

Recorded at the 2026 Midwest Honey Bee Expo

Jeff Ott
Welcome to Beekeeping Today Podcast Shorts, your quick dive into the latest buzz in beekeeping.

Becky Masterman
In 20 minutes or less, we'll bring you one important story, keeping you informed and up to date.

Jeff Ott
No fluff, no fillers. Just the news you need.

Becky Masterman
Brought to you by Betterbee, your partners in Betterbeekeeping.

Jeff Ott
Hey everybody, welcome to this special short produced from the floor of the Midwest honey bee Expo.

Becky Masterman
I really enjoyed my time there at the expo, looking forward to next year, and I hope that our listeners enjoy these conversations.

Jeff Ott
Hey everybody, we're at the Midwest Honey Bee Expo sitting next to David Burns. I get let me turn your name tag around. There we go.

I just want to make sure I got David Burns. David welcome to joining us here in the booth.

David Burns
Yeah, it's good to be here and Uh I saw that you were gonna be here and I remember last time we were on the podcast and I wanted to say hi and uh welcome.

Becky Masterman
This is exciting. I love seeing David at the expo because he's got like fans following him throughout the halls. Right, right.

It's a drone comet.

David Burns
That means something else. Well, I don't know. Well, you know why they really follow me is because of the red glasses.

stands out. Yeah, I stand out. It's funny, I went to a conference where I didn't wear these red glasses and everybody was so upset.

They were like, where are the red glasses?

Jeff Ott
So now I gotta wear them.

Becky Masterman
You gotta wear the glasses. Yeah.

Jeff Ott
Well you know what? You could probably sell them as merch.

Becky Masterman
Oh, that's an idea. I like that.

David Burns
At least the frames they can take them back and have their own prescription of it. That's exactly right. There we go.

Good idea. So David, how do you find in the Midwest Honey Beach? You know it's really fun.

Well he, uh Doug and I think Bill, I think they did a great job putting it together. They're second year now. It's growing rapidly and they they know who to bring in to make it fun.

Good vendors, good speakers. A lot of fun.

Becky Masterman
No, it it's impressive because it's a time where you get to actually talk to people who are already following you and listening to you and learning from you. So you get a lot of that connection and when you can bring several hundred people together, several hundred beekeepers into one place. It's just such a nice, nice time.

David Burns
Seven hundred beekeepers or more I think here are here and that means there's probably at least thirty five hundred different opinions. If I do the math right.

Becky Masterman
That sounds pretty accurate. That sounds pretty accurate.

Jeff Ott
Well a lot of people come to conferences to learn something and and to buy from vendors or s at least see and touch and feel what's out there What do you come to these expos for? I mean you're speaking I know but what else what do you find valuable?

David Burns
Obviously I like to listen to other speakers and learn from them. Um oddly enough I like to learn from the beekeepers themselves. If I can chat with beekeepers if I can kind of get a pulse at what they're struggling with.

It not only helps me make more better videos, but it helps me make another talk in the future because I know this is what they're dealing with. I gave a talk this morning on how to maximize your queen acceptance and you know basing that on the fact that so many people email me or text me and say, I can't I've tried five times, put a queen in there and they keep killing her. I thought that's a great talk.

You know, what do you how do you get queen to be accepted in a hive where they just won't do it. So that gives me a lot of uh I guess pleasure to hear what beekeepers are going through. So in the short time we have here, what's the sure fire wave?

You know what? It's not everybody thinks a hive it's ready for a queen because they're queenless, but that's not true. We think they're queenless, but they may not be.

They could have a laying worker, they could have a virgin queen in there, they could have sort of raised their own. And uh sometimes it's big flow, there's a honey production. So you have to the beekeeper's ready for them to have a new one, but the bees might not be so the condition of the hive has to be in acceptance mode.

So you've got to rule out all the other things that may have led to the queen not being accepted and like virgin queens being working with all that and so if you can put them in a state of true queenlessness, they'll accept the queen.

Becky Masterman
David, I think you just saved a lot of beekeepers a lot of money.

David Burns
So that was

Becky Masterman
Nice of you. But I we're not gonna get into it, but we had a really fun conversation about wintering bees. And so would you come back to the podcast so that we could expand on that a little bit?

Because you've got so much insight as far as getting your bees through a winter.

David Burns
One thing to remember though is that what I do is good for me. It may not always work for everybody in their climate or their what their goal is. But for me, the way I overwinter bees is I think it does work for a lot of beekeepers and I love it.

I'd love to talk about it.

Becky Masterman
And you have a lot of insight, so I think that it would be great if we could have a longer conversation.

David Burns
Absolutely.

Becky Masterman
Thank you. Thank you for stopping by. You bet.

Really appreciate it.

David Burns
Good luck on your boot today.

Jeff Ott
Well thank you. We look forward to having you back for a full episode. That'll be great.

Thanks, Dave. We'd like to welcome Amanda Stoltz to the booth here at the Midwest honey bee Expo. Great to be here.

Great to have you here.

Becky Masterman
Amanda of BroodMinder who has It's a new position, correct? I guess. I'm the bee in charge.

It's been a couple of months now. That's pretty exciting. How's it going?

Amanda Stoltz
Has it changed? It's going well. It's changing slowly.

Rich is giving me enough slack that I'm taking on more but I'm still not too much. Do you have

Becky Masterman
More emails than you used to?

Jeff Ott
So now instead of working sixteen hour days you're working twenty some hours now?

Becky Masterman
Just two days at the same time. That's exciting though. But uh so you're here at the expo.

Are you enjoying talking to people about the product and and you got groupies, right?

Amanda Stoltz
Yeah. No, this is I mean we were at the at Nob May uh two months ago, Nabi? Oh we how do you how do we say it?

We were at the North American beekeeping episode. Uh is that just a month ago now? Yeah, only.

Um you'll see that feels like a while. Yeah. Um and I mean that there's faces I remember from that.

So everyone's everyone's around.

Becky Masterman
Yes, yes. There's a very dedicated group. I was talking to a beekeeper a at our booth who brought up Broodminder and then told me chart addiction.

It's real. It is.

Jeff Ott
Sounds like a bumper sticker.

Becky Masterman
It does. It does.

Amanda Stoltz
Yeah, no, it's great to talk to everyone and hear how it's going and who's excited for the spring.

Becky Masterman
So tell me about uh newbie keepers, because there are a lot of newbie keepers at this country. Have you talked to anybody? Like get what's your elevator pitch for what rune miner would do for a new beekeeper?

Amanda Stoltz
The elevator pitch is that it's high monitoring to see what's happening with your bees without having to open them constantly. We're actually talking to someone today who is comparing it to going to your doctor and they take your weight and they take your temperature. They're not cutting you open right away to see what's going on.

Jeff Ott
Well most good doctors.

Amanda Stoltz
Good doctor. That's kind of the yeah, we can use the B biology and their things to know what you're getting into before you show up and not have to disturb them constantly.

Jeff Ott
And that was m always been my joy of the broodminder sensors and having the ability to s have an understanding. what's going on in the colony. So I didn't have to disturb 'em because as much as I like looking at 'em and smelling them as I opened them up and everything else, I knew that every time I did that I risked well, I was disturbing them and I risked killing the queen, which is If you know me that's that's a risk.

And just working with the bees, um, I enjoy that. But sitting back and and having a full-time working day job and being able to say, hey, my colonies are doing really good. I can see the weight coming.

not. I don't need to go out there and open them up. I know that they are gaining weight or they're losing weight.

Amanda Stoltz
And with our temperature stuff with the beginning beekeepers, I mean and I know I didn't know anything about how the temperature works and how it stays and how you can tell so much about your hive just based on temperature.

Becky Masterman
Just on temperature. And you can maybe get a little bit of reassurance that everything's okay. That has to be really valuable, especially for somebody starting out who is so worried about the colony.

Amanda Stoltz
Yeah. And we've talked about like backyard beekeepers where sometimes it's kind of like a pet and your dog will give you feedback when you pet it and your bees don't know what's going on. So having a little check on them is nice.

Becky Masterman
I like that. I like that.

Jeff Ott
So now that you've been at the home for a couple months you said October. October, yeah. So wha I know Rich isn't listening, so which direction would you I mean if you were to if since you're at the helm, which direction you kind of steering this now that you've got decision.

Are you are you do you see diff things differently than Rich? And that's a that you can talk about.

Amanda Stoltz
I don't know. Yeah, I'm starting to s see things from more angles I guess. Yeah.

Jeff Ott
Um you come from a well Rich is an engineer. But you come from the data background.

Amanda Stoltz
I come in from the data background. So I do and I mean we've always been moving in the direction of more like we're a software company that sells hardware. Um is kind of what it is.

Um and there's more we want to do because we have We have this big data set of time series data about temperature and weight and all that. And we could be using it more for high management. And I think that's the thing that we want to move toward.

It's not just chart addicts, although they're welcome to join us, but helping with newbie keepers to tell you actions you can take and how to actually look at that data and what it means rather than just showing it.

Becky Masterman
It it's literally even preparing somebody, they're about to do an inspection, giving them indications and the data that you might need to prepare by bringing you know a couple of boxes or by bringing some feed right it can go both ways because there's nothing like getting your apiary and going, Oh I wish I had now we've got a flower problem. There's not enough flowers out there and so they need a little Right. Or the opposite.

Jeff Ott
Or this time of year. Oh, there's no need to go to that BR.

Becky Masterman
Oh, don't say that.

Jeff Ott
Personal stories aside.

Becky Masterman
Very cool.

Jeff Ott
really fun and well I wish you success at the show and I look forward to talking to you.

Amanda Stoltz
We should have a few new things just this spring.

Jeff Ott
We've had uh anything you wanna talk about?

Amanda Stoltz
I mean we've had s Queen Minder as like a beta program which um It's something that Tea Hartman has been working on. Um where you can start with taking a note that you've had a swarm or that you've changed killed your queen or whatever. And then we're starting this thing of being like, well in a week you should check it in Do an inspection and see if you have this and if not you need to intervene.

Or it's been two weeks, you still don't have any eggs. But just days of like a calendar where you can see when you should take certain tasks. So working on that We hope to put that into the app a little bit by this that by the spring.

But we'll see. And then we also have a plants module that is on the website now and we're hoping to put that into the app so that you can kind of take observations and then we predict nectar flows off. your predictions.

Jeff Ott
Oh that is nice because I have seen both well the Queen Minder, I remember there was that came out last year in beta.

Amanda Stoltz
Yeah. And it's still it'll be fun to work with people using it to make the UI better because it's a complicated problem that we're trying to help with. But we're trying to get some of that into the app so that more people can use it.

Jeff Ott
Yeah, because everyone knows what the queen has heard the term queen calendar or seen it in a book or even used one. But it having that show up uh automagically through the software because based on swarming and m monitoring uh hive temperatures you can tell if there's brood actively or there's no brood actively and being able to tie all that in yes you know it was AI and

Amanda Stoltz
I'll click my heels and we'll be done in a month. Yeah, but we're still working on things, we're moving forward. There'll be more every year.

Excellent.

Jeff Ott
Enjoy it.

Amanda Stoltz
All right. Well thanks.

Jeff Ott
Absolutely. Yeah. Thanks Amanda for stopping by.

Amanda Stoltz
Great, good to see you.

Jeff Ott
Hey everybody, we're sitting here with Tracy Perlmeyer from High Butler. Tracy, welcome to the booth. Well thank you.

Becky Masterman
Yeah. See your booth has been very busy. There's a lot of traffic there.

But tell me what they're looking at. Totally enjoy uh meeting beekeepers everywhere we go.

Tracy Pielemeir
I just I never intended to be a beekeeper. Um I was involved with horses, I was involved with dogs. Um never just really it wasn't quite my job and then man when I ended up becoming a beekeeper uh I just love the community.

Beekeepers are universally motivated, interested in being successful. So the Hive Butler product was just a weird thing. Uh as a beginner beekeeper, my bees magically made honey and I was shocked.

Okay. And then I wasn't able to extract that actual day. So I was like, well where do I put this beautiful treasure?

In that dirty cooler. From last weekend or do I put it in this flimsy office tote from China? What you know, we my husband and I scoured the internet.

We could not believe We cannot believe there wasn't a product for honey. Okay. We wanted a food grade product that could hold the honey when we could extract it at our convenience.

Okay. Simple, right? So uh when we started on that journey of actually how what would this take to make something like that, then we realize honey is only a couple weeks out of the beekeeper year.

So whatever we're gonna make needs to work more than just honey. We realize it would be a significant investment not only for us but for the beekeepers too. So it had to harder so we came up with a ventilated version of the lid and that means now we can use it in the bee yard.

Nice. So it's a food grade tote entirely made in the United States, big handles. It's the only one made specifically for length Strop V frames so the frames hang securely no matter how you carry it.

No more carrying woodware up a ladder to collect swarms. Stores your drawn comb in the off-season without paramouth, and now we've made it into an uncapping tank. So it's just I tell people the Hype Butler makes beekeeping easier, cleaner, and more fun.

I have been, I am a hobbyist beekeeper. I remember all those hurdles, and so the hype butler is just there to assist you. Lifting a heavy super with 10 full frames in it.

You don't have to do that. You can put five of them in the hive butler and then take the box off. We use it at every hive inspection.

If you see that your queen, she's gonna go in the hive butler with the lid on over in the shade and you can tear that hive down. So just trying to make it universal helpful and I think beekeepers realize that.

Becky Masterman
That's a great tool. I want to get back to the holding of the honey. So is it really geared to if you're taking small harvests off the absolute colony?

Absolutely. So this will help beekeepers need

Tracy Pielemeir
be extract over the season absolutely so for instance in the very beginning I didn't have enough woodware to pull the whole box off and I was inexperienced and anxious of course I didn't want to leave the box there until all ten frames or nine frames were ready. So I always pull into a frame here, a frame there. So the high butler's perfect, right?

I can put four frames in it, put the solid lid on it, and leave it sit in my breezeway, you know, and keep it protected, and then go back out and add three more frames to it later. It's perfect. for the small beekeeper, but can do multiple services to the larger ones as well.

Becky Masterman
Right. It sounds like y you might get it in the very beginning, especially with your small harvest, but then it becomes the most versatile tool you have in the apiary because Having that ability to put the queen in a safe place.

Tracy Pielemeir
Exactly. And I will say, um, so we had an engineer design the product for us. We gave him the litany of the list of these are all the things it has to do.

And I remember calling him and saying, Hey, I need an inch and a half below. So if they have a queen cell, you can still hang that frame in there. And he said, Well that's gonna cost you.

And I was like, What do you mean? And he goes, Well, so that's more plastic all the way around the bottom of that box, so material costs, a bigger piece. A bigger product means a bigger mold, so that's steel cost.

A bigger mold means a bigger press, so that's bigger production cost. And I was like, I have to have it. I know that will make me crazy if I say, oh, if you have a queen cell, it'll get squashed.

And sure enough, um, because I remember it, I point that out to customers all the time and their and their eyes just pop open.

Jeff Ott
Oh, you can see that it was the right decision, yeah.

Becky Masterman
Yeah, I also I'm talking actually later today at the conference and I'm talking about biosecurity and protecting your colonies from robbing from being robbed. And so that hive butler is a great way to do an inspection and maybe leave some room in your in your box but keep those frames that you need to take out.

Tracy Pielemeir
Absolutely. So um and back to the honey thing, it's great for people who are doing varietal honey, right? This box is only that and this bo this high butler is only that.

I also had a c uh a client who uh was going to the health department to get approved. for retail sales, showed up with his uncapped or with his capped frames of honey for the inspector in a high buttler and she's like, oh, I really like your box. And I thought, that's really good.

I should get in with all the health inspectors, you know. It's a great sanitary way. I mean No more paint chips, grass bits, bug parts.

You know, that whole idea that I I'm I continue to be astonished that people think it's okay to just hold my honey in this box with no bottom that's leaking into my truck or the counter or whatever. Like, guys, we made it easier.

Jeff Ott
Well, it really does, and I've used them uh and I like the fact that it contains the extracting mess or I used it for an uncapping tank originally. Right. And then it can it helped me maintain my wet supers or my wet uh frames.

Wet frames, exactly.

Tracy Pielemeir
And you can literally carry it out and set it on its side in the bee yard full of wet sticky frames and let them clean it out in the hive butler. I mean that works well. And of course then there's all the beekeepers who use it for other things.

I've taken my cat to the vet with the ventilated lid on.

Jeff Ott
And the ventilated lid. Yeah, right.

Tracy Pielemeir
And um Valerie and her husband collected a swarm that was hanging on a tree branch at on the edge of their quarry lake. So no bank that they can and they boated up to it and dropped the swarm in and I have a great picture of them in their boat with their high butler full of a swarm. So yeah, I just love um what beekeepers do.

I have a beekeeper in North Carolina who uses it to feed his bees. And he told me it holds 15 gallons of syrup. And he uses the gate hole for uh he has a hose nozzle on there to run syrup into all of his feeders.

So it's more stable than a bucket.

Jeff Ott
I think as a beekeeper that's a great having a multipurpose. Exactly. It's not a one-time Exactly.

Becky Masterman
I actually also yesterday my talk recommended that beekeepers get an extra set of equipment. Yes. But this would serve that extra set because I mentioned the if you're collecting a swarm exactly if you need a temporary

Tracy Pielemeir
Well and we do encourage we're like okay if swarms are your thing, you can have a hive butler with some old drawn comb in every other slot in the back of your car just riding around. And man when they call you're ready to go. The lid snaps on very tight So exactly that and we did have somebody in the very beginning call it the Swiss Army knife of the bee yard.

So I wish I could patent that but I can't. I think you illustrated that really well. So uh But yeah, we're just trying to make beekeeping more fun and especially we all see lots of senior beekeepers and lifting is always the thing.

And I just keep saying guys just take half the frames out, set them in your hive butler. It slides really well. We have big handles on all four sides.

Jeff Ott
to make it easy and as I mentioned doesn't matter how you carry it everything hangs securely so I do like that suggestion of if you go into your hives and there's and you want to just take out a couple frames because that's it's full.

Tracy Pielemeir
Yep.

Jeff Ott
Uh and you have a safe place to put it.

Tracy Pielemeir
And they are all They are all made in Indiana. We're from central Indiana and we moved the molds to a plant in Fort Wayne and very happy with our production there. So even the plastic is made in the United States, nothing imported.

Jeff Ott
So well Tracy, it's been a Wonderful talking to you. Absolutely. Thank you for being here with us.

It's fun to see you here at the show.

Tracy Pielemeir
Well, thanks for having me guys. I really appreciate it.

Jeff Ott
And I'm glad to see you guys here as well. Thank you, Tracy. Yep.