Episode 191 – Getting Ready for Bee Season 🐝

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1:01Every day the world gets a little weirder and a lot more awesome. Cool stuff daily takes a look at everything from mining in space to the latest in the fight against cancer to how AI is basically changing everything. It's all the cool stuff you didn't know, you need it to know. Join us for cool stuff daily as we take a quick look at science, tech, and the weight. What stories that make you sound way smarter at dinner? Subscribe to cool stuff daily now because the future's happening fast and it's way too fun to miss. The next day we had a mix of snow and whatever else was going on with that and I think that my phone said 36 degrees.

2:02That would be of course Fahrenheit. That's probably like two or three Celsius. That's the one measurement by the way that I seem to be able to figure out if it's really close to freezing. I can kind of get that that's about zero on the Celsius scale. Anyway, today we're going to talk about the next day we're going to talk about the next day we're going to talk about the next day we're going to talk about the next day we're going to talk about the next day we're going to talk about today we're going to talk about something that is going to be applicable. I would say primarily to your new beekeepers, not necessarily year one. You could be maybe two or three years in because as with anything that you do, and this is one of those things that always takes me back to the army, we did things repetitively over and over and over again to create muscle memory so that your brain doesn't have to consciously think about how to do something that's really, really important under a high stress situation. Now you think, Jeff, we're talking about beekeeping, man. We're not doing a some kind of a rate or an assault on a building or something like that. That's very true. But when you're doing an inspection

3:02or when you're really into something with the bees and there's a little bit of chaos every now and then you drop a hive body, you drop a frame, bees are coming out of everywhere. They're not super pleased with you. That's the time when you have some of these kind of things already taken care of, already ready to go for you already positioned. Now we're not kind of going super deep like on the inspection side, but we do have a dedicated episode coming up in a couple of days for that. It's, yeah, it's within the next couple weeks. We're gonna talk about some inspection details, but what happens is every season, you start to recognize, okay, it's just about bee season. I guess I need to start getting things ready. For year one, you have no idea. You're just like, I gotta get a whole bunch of stuff and hopefully I get everything ready and have what I need. Year two, then it becomes, where did I put all the stuff that I need and then remembering it all? I tell you man, the first, it has to be the first, I don't know, four years, five years maybe in doing this every year for four or five years.

4:05And I would still go out to do an inspection and be like, why is my hive tool, not in my little bag that I carry? So then I gotta go get the hive tool and then I come back and I'm doing something. I'm like, why do I, I'm holding a queen, reaching in my bag and why do I not have my queen marker? Like stupid things, goofy things like that. So what I wanna do is we're not gonna solve that necessarily today. But what I'm hoping to do is to just maybe give you a checklist of things and you can print it out. You can save it as a PDF. You can come back and listen to it later. Like whatever you wanna do, just kind of give you some ideas of things you need to be considering. Whether you're a first year and a couple of years in. Now the first thing I wanna start with, and this is always, and I think this was beaten to my head back in the old EMS days. But you gotta take care of number one. You gotta always be taking care of you. And the best way to make sure you're taking care of you is through your own well-being, your own mindset, your own protective gear, like all of these things.

5:07As I've said many times, you're the more comfortable you become with beekeeping. The greater the likelihood that you're gonna start peeling off some layers, you're gonna say, hey, you know, I don't need the big, heavy, full suit. I think I'm just gonna wear jeans and the jacket with the veil, but I'm still gonna do my gloves. And then maybe a little bit later, you say, well, I'm gonna go to the Nitro gloves and you realize, hey, this is still working pretty well. And I'm not really getting stung that much. And if you are, you look at the trade-off between the dexterity of the, you know, the Nitro or bare-handed versus the gloves. And you realize like, yeah, it kind of stinks to get stung in the hand. But man, you can feel every little piece of the frame and you can feel a little bee move under your fingers without squishing it, makes a big difference. But I don't wanna run off on a tangent here. So you start peeling off various layers and you'll get to a point where your spring gear might only be just a really, maybe just a veil. You might just wear jeans and a, you know, a flannel shirt in the spring and have your veil. Or you may just say, you know, veil and t-shirt with the hair overalls or whatever.

6:09You're gonna find what works for you. And while we're on this subject, I wanna tell you something that is incredibly important. I have heard rumors about this as long as I've been in beekeeping. So we're talking like 15 years. I have heard people say that their bee club or their mentor or somebody has said something like, well, you can't pass our whatever, like whether it's like an eligibility to attend a class or whether it's to become an apprentice or whether it's to become anything. You can't pass this unless you can do an inspection without any gloves. So ignore people like that. If you hear people that are telling you that, if they're telling you like, this is the only way that you can do it. In my opinion, leave those people, smile nice and pretty and big and be like, okay, well, thank you for that. That's a really good input. And then go somewhere else. Because the goal is for you to have, and again, you're not a commercial person. I'm not talking about somebody in the commercial field. I'm not talking about anybody who does it for a living. I'm talking you as an individual trying to enjoy beekeeping at your home, at your leisure.

7:11You wear gloves if you wanna wear gloves. You don't wanna wear gloves, don't wear gloves. But the number one thing is your personal safety and what makes you feel good. If you are stressed out that you're going to get stung, you're not going to enjoy beekeeping. You're not gonna have a good experience. They make gloves for a reason. Like when do you ever see big commercial entities moving lots of bees or having stuff and they don't have the big goofy gloves on? That's very different from when you see experience beekeepers working in their yard. I still love Randi Oliver, dude. The guy is so funny. He'll be in his yard like T-shirt. No, I'm sorry, no shirt. He'll be in his yard like shorts, no shirt, and just doing his inspections and everything is cool. I'm sure he's getting stung every now and then, but it's not a big deal. It's not, you know, as long as they're not getting in the face and stuff, it's kind of not really the end of the world. But again, when you're calm and you're gentle and you're doing things in a very methodical way and you're not creating a lot of chaos, you can do those things. But the whole point I'm getting at with this is, one of the really, really cool things about beekeeping

8:12is it allows people to think for themselves and to explore things in a way that's right for them. And if you hear somebody say something that just makes you kind of feel like, well, that doesn't seem right. Go with your instinct. Across the board, go with your instinct, ask multiple people, you might hear me say something. This is another sidebar tangent because I can't stay on task to save my life. But I was going through my own material. I was trying to clean things up and get transcripts so I can organize things better and have an understanding of what's been covered and what hasn't. I have a list of things I've said where I've been like, what was I thinking? What did I even mean by that? So question things, ask questions and if it doesn't feel right, don't do it. So you've got to take care of you. You are number one. Make sure that you are protecting yourself. Another thing that is in line with that. Now, this was one that people can debate. I kind of think there is some truth to it. I like it. It doesn't matter really in the grand scheme of things. But I do think that bees kind of feel your energy. I think if you go out there and you're working the bees and you're angry and you're irritable,

9:13you had a bad day. I just feel like, think about how to, in tune they are to pheromones and scents. And it's like a dog. Somebody comes into a house and they're kind of a shady guy and the dog doesn't like him because the dog can smell that angst, that desire for that person to do harm kind of thing. It's the same sort of thing in my opinion with the bees. I haven't scientifically studied it. So don't beat me up if you have. But I think that your bees will feed off of your mood and the way that you carry yourself. So be calm, be relaxed. Nice and slow. You know, just take your time. You're not trying to, you know, solve any kind of crisis here with your little inspection, just relax. Now, another thing I want to tell you about and this is really important. And it's something that people have gotten a lot better about like when I was a kid, I think that the only thing that we drank was like, I don't know, like Kool-A, they had the oval teen commercials and stuff like that. But it was like Kool-Aid and soda and, oh, sweet tea. We always had a big jug of sweet tea in the house

10:14in the fridge. We had an iced tea maker and I was cranking out like fold whatever it is, two quart, you know, things of iced tea, three or four times a week. And of course, it was loaded with sugar, man. It was like boom, boom, just a cup after cup of sugar. That's just good old Southern living. But that's all we drank. And I wonder, you know, like why did we have headaches as kids and stuff like that? Or why after being outside for like 10 hours in the summertime, did you feel all light headed and have a headache and everything? Because we weren't hydrated, we weren't drinking water. And today it is so much more available. You know, everybody now has like a hydroflask or some type of water carrying element component attached to their body at all times. Like you just see people walking around now, like phone in one hand, keys in water bottle in the other and that's just kind of, you know, a normal thing. Make sure you're drinking plenty of water. It is really easy to dehydrate. Even if you've shed off a lot of layers and you're just outside and maybe a veil and a, you know,

11:15a light, I like to wear those fishing shirts sometimes when I'm doing an inspection. If I don't have, if I'm just going with the veil, just for the UV protection. So that's something to consider. If you get to the point where you're kind of veil only, you still want to protect your body from getting too much UV, obviously you need to get that vitamin D, but too much UV can have you getting a little crispy in the B yard anyway. Even with lighter clothes and everything, it's still really easy to dehydrate out there in the heat, especially as we get older. I mean, I look back to like my 20s and 30s. I could just be outside for 10, 11 hours, 95 degrees, 90% humidity down in Southeast Georgia. We would be outside all day, like literally covered head to toe with all of our stuff walking around, like just doing whatever we had to do. I have no idea how we survive that. I would do like an hour of that now and I would pass out, have to call 401. All right, so let's talk about the actual gear that you're gonna want to make sure you have. So we talked about the suit in the jacket, gloves or not, if you're a glove person.

12:15Get your smoker ready. And we've talked about different types of smokers, I think in the past, it doesn't matter what you get. You can buy the cheap little Amazon ones for $16, $18, whatever they are. I think they're probably $40 now because everything is doubled and tripled in price over the past few years. But I still like this one that I got years ago from Man Lake and it's got a bellows. The part that you squeeze is the bellows and it's got like a really heavy grade material that is a blue and a yellow color and it's just a nice tall smoker. And I really like that one. I've had that probably for a decade now and it works as well and looks as good today as it did when I first bought it. A lot of those cheaper ones, they're gonna have a really lightweight wood that comprises the bellows. And I leave mine either in the garage, sometimes they end up in like a toolbox in the back of a truck, sometimes they end up rolling around the back of the truck, sometimes they end up sitting in the beards somewhere. If they get a little bit wet and some exposure to the elements,

13:16they will kind of fall apart a little bit quicker. But you can definitely use a cheap one just to get by. The thing you really wanna pay attention to is at the very bottom of the bellows, there is an opening. That opening is pointing directly to the base to the smoker itself. You need to make sure that that is always free of debris and that you are in fact pushing air through there. So test the smoker first to make sure that with the lid open, you're seeing maybe some debris or some ash from a previous smoker lighting. You see things moving around or you can just kind of hear the puff puff of the air. Just test the smoker here early in the season so you're not getting there on day one and saying, oh crap, my smoker's not working. Now as far as smoker fuel goes, the big focus with smoker fuel, I'm not gonna go ahead and tell you all the things that you can use. I wanna tell you some of the things you just kinda wanna avoid. Avoid anything that has a lot of like stickers and labels and plastics on it. So if you wanted to use a lot of people like to use a little bit of cardboard, okay cool, use a little bit of cardboard

14:16but don't have like your shipping label on it. I mean, make sure you're peeling off anything that could become toxic when heated towards your bees because you're blowing it on the bees. They're like wood stove, wood pellets. I used to have a wood stove, absolutely loved it. And those pellets, I've heard a lot of people say that those are really good for kind of keeping your smoker lit, you know, while you're working. I can't speak to it. What I can say is make sure that you're using something that is absolutely 100% does not have chemicals and things in it. Now those are meant to be burned in a home. So I'm pretty sure they're probably okay. But just be mindful of that. I just go into the yard and I look for things that are dry and I usually I end up taking a bag at some point and throwing a bunch of stuff kind of in the bag and just leaving it in the be yard. I just a plastic bag that I reach into every now and then and make sure I have something in case it rained. But I'll use a little bit of pine needle, you know, mostly just, you know, leaves. There's always some kind of grasses around. You do want to have a little bit of a mix. I always tell people to go back to like the campfire.

15:19When you start a campfire, you start with small kindling and get things going. You put a few bigger pieces in there. And then after a while, you kind of don't even have to do anything because you have these coals that are there. It's sort of like that. Now you don't want it to get really, really hot, you know, a real hot fire is not what you're going for. But you do want to have a couple of things in there that will become coals that will slow burn and kind of slow burn the material around them. So we can, I think we've got different videos and things that talk about smokers in detail in another area. But again, get your smoke or in your smoker fuel ready to go. Hive tools. If you're going to buy them, you can go on, I don't know, Alibaba, Aliexpress or whatever it is. And if you wanted to buy a bunch of them for the B Club, they're about a dollar a piece and you can buy them in bulk or whatever. If you can get them in bulk, that's kind of the way to do it. You might have to wait three or four weeks for them. You can get them on Amazon. I've got them linked through some of my affiliate links and stuff like that. If you go to Amazon, they're usually about $7 or $8 a piece. I would definitely recommend buying a two, three, four,

16:19five pack because one, if you buy like a five pack, you're probably going to get them for like three or $4 a piece, maybe. And you will use them. There's going to be a situation where either you're going to need it, a friend's going to need, a neighbor's going to need it. Maybe you have somebody helping you. You are going to lose them, unless you're far more organized than me. I'm pretty confident that I have about 20 of them. And I wish that was a joke. I don't, I have all types. I have the, I've got yellow, red, blue. And then I have all the different types of, you know, endings of them. Some of them just have the 90 degree with the flat on the opposite side. I did buy the J hook style, which if you haven't seen it, it has a regular hive tool flat end on one side that you would use to separate boxes and things like that. The other side has like a J, like the letter J. And it's a pretty cool hive too. I do like it. I've cautioned people about using it because it's really important that when you're doing an inspection that you're regularly removing or at least moving the frames around a little bit

17:21because the bees are going to propel eyes. And when I say propel eyes, if you're a new beekeeper and like, what in the world does that mean? Propolis is that really sticky substance that's found inside the hive that bees use to seal up every crack crevice corner. They use it to protect them from anything that's in there that for whatever reason they may not be able to remove it. Or if it's something that could possibly be a vector for infection or illness, they're going to cover it up with this propolis to kind of in tune it like if you had a dead bug of some sort that they couldn't remove. Or I've seen some interesting images of propel eyes to mice where a mouse came in to establish a home in the wintertime and the bees literally propel eyes the whole mouse. It's pretty crazy what they can do. But they are going to make everything inside that hive sticky. Some different genetics and different races of bees and everything are going to create more or less propolis depending on just on their genetics and how they operate. But if you always just leave the frames in place, they're going to kind of continue to layer this on

18:22and it makes it incredibly difficult to remove these frames. Because you're always going to insert the hive tool and move kind of side to side. You're trying to loosen things up. If you don't do the loosening first, as I learned in my probably first year of beekeeping, and you slide the J hook underneath, because that's what it's designed for. It's designed to lift up the frame and pop it up to make it easier for you to grab. Great idea. But I just stuck in there and pushed down and literally ripped the top bar off of the frame. That is not a good idea. So just be mindful and be aware that you need to make sure that you are getting the frame loosened side by side or side to side before you take the old J style hive tool and try to lift that up. Weight Watchers now offers access to affordable GLP once. It works for members like, I'm Haley and I've lost 100 pounds. Weight Watchers says everything I need from weight loss medications to nutrition support and help with my side effects, it's all in one place. Weight Watchers handles the insurance for you and offers affordable cash pay options.

19:24With our program, our members are losing more weight with expert nutrition and side effects support. I'm Mike and I've lost 135 pounds. Weight Watchers prescribing GLP one medications. It's been life changing. I'm Sharia and I lost 80 pounds on weight watchers. I realized that it would take more than a prescription to lose weight and feel good on a GLP one. Better results, expert support, lose more weight, make it last. I can't imagine doing a GLP one without weight Watchers. Get started for as low as $25 at WeightWatchers.com slash GLP one. Medications require eligibility and prescription patients on 15 milligrams of price appetite and an average of 21% weight loss in a 72-week clinical trial when paired with diet and exercise. First month is lowest $25 with a 12 month mid plus plan does not include the cost of GLP one medications. Hi, this is Alex Cantrowitz. I'm the host of big technology podcast, a long time reporter and an on-air contributor to CMBC. And if you're like me, you're trying to figure out how artificial intelligence is changing the business world and our lives. So each week on big technology, I bring on key actors from companies building AI tech and outsiders trying to influence it.

20:24Asking where this is all going, they come from places like Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, and plenty more. So if you want to be smart with your wallet, your career choices, and meetings with your colleagues and at dinner parties, listen to big technology podcast wherever you get your podcasts. All right, the next thing is lighters. I use a little propane torch. I'm really happy with that. But if you don't have that, you can still use a lighter, a regular, anything that makes a flame will still absolutely work fine. I do recommend the ones that you would use for candle lighting in the house, or maybe grill lighting, where it has the handheld trigger. You kind of get the trigger finger there and the extended end of it that goes out about four or five inches. I definitely recommend using something like that. It just keeps your hands away from the flame a little bit and it just makes it a little bit safer overall. But whatever you have, use what you got. All right, now we're going to move into actual hype equipment. Now we have an entire episode coming up, which is the next episode dedicated to picking out your hype equipment

21:25and what you're going to need. So we're going to go high level here. Make sure that if you had gear last year, I want you to go through and check all the old gear and what you're looking for is areas where maybe there's a crack or maybe from where you are using the hive tool, sometimes the corners have gotten a little bit rough. If there are any cracks or openings, or maybe there's a knot, like a knot to natural knot in the wood, and maybe for some reason it's coming out a little bit. There's some exposed area where it's starting to open up and you can see maybe a little bit into the hive or there's an issue with that. You want to go after those things. So you can do a little bit of some wood putty, especially if it's on the outside, it's really easy. Sand it down a little bit, put some wood filler in there and just let that dry and then sand it down and then paint over that and you won't have to worry about that for a while. Whatever types of frames you're using, get all of your frames prepped. Make sure that you've got enough for everything that you are putting on or putting into service at the beginning of the season. And I would go ahead and plan ahead.

22:26So just make this up and say whether you're brand new or whether you're an experienced beekeeper, you're set up a new hive for this season. You want to be ready for two deep center of medium. Go ahead and do like three deeps and maybe two or three mediums because that way when it's May and you're going, oh crap, I need another medium or something happens and you're like, this colony is just out of control. I've got to split them again. You've got that stuff ready. Bottom boards, lids, all those things. Now one thing I will tell you, a lot of people feel like they've seen the beekeeping for dummies, they've seen a lot of people on YouTube and different places, which by the way, thank you so much for all of you who have been on the YouTube channel lately. We've had a tremendous amount of growth over the past couple of months. I appreciate you all coming there. It's just youtube.com forward slash at beekeeping for newbies. Anyway, a lot of people you're going to see on YouTube, they always have like the migratory cover and you always see the telescoping outer cover. Those are what you're kind of always going to see on the outside. And then when they open the hive, probably about 90% of them have a regular wooden inner cover.

23:29I want you to know that you don't have to use wood. And I've got this canvas I have. I will add it to my ever growing list of videos to do, but it's just a duck canvas. I have I bought a big spool of this canvas. And it makes it really, really easy to just kind of on the fly, custom make a inner cover. So you're not going to need to worry. If for some reason you do a split and something happens, or like I had a season where I had it during the winter, the inner cover got really, really wet and was completely saturated and it kind of messed it up a little bit. You can just cut from a material. There are people who use varying material grain bags and any types of canvas like I was describing. You can use something other than a wooden cover. So having something on hand that doesn't take up space, like I have this spool that lays in the corner of my garage. So it stands up in the corner and I could probably make right now a hundred inner covers from that spool. Imagine if I had to go out of my garage or my B-shed and I had to have like a hundred inner covers

24:32sitting there with like, we have pomato bugs, AKA cockroaches that love to get into nooks and crannies. If I had those in my garage, it would be a cockroach breeding round. It would be absolutely disgusting. Just something to kind of consider as an alternative for the inner cover, but get all of that physical gear ready, new gear and old gear light, check the painting. You know, I still have hive bodies and things from my first year of beekeeping that's in service today. And I've only repainted some of it, maybe once or twice. I have some pieces that I have not repainted from the first season and they are still doing great. Now that was back in the old days where we like literally hand painted with brushes. So it was probably a little thicker than it is now with the power painter that we use, but make sure you're protecting that woodware. It will last a really long time if you do. All right, I want you to start thinking about a feeding plan. Now feeding is something that you may or may not have to do depending on where you are. At this time of year, we're not talking so much about, and it's not that you can't do it. Telling you what I do, what I like.

25:34I'm generally not a huge Polym Patti user anyway, but this to me is really not necessarily the time of year that Polym Patti's kind of year go to. You've got plenty of nectar and pollen that is coming in with your spring flow whenever that's going to kick in. But the feeding that I want you to be thinking about right now is particularly for a couple of scenarios. Scenario number one, you get a package of bees. I strongly encourage you to put some kind of a feeder in with that package of bees. So you can take your package of bees, put a one single frame feeder inside of a nuke, put the bees in that four frame nuke, or a five frame nuke with four frames available for the bees, let them work on that. And probably within no more than two weeks, you're moving them into a full size, eight or 10 frame Langstroth or whatever you've selected. If you're moving them immediately into an eight or 10 frame Langstroth hive, consider maybe a top feeder, or again, you can still do a frame feeder. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. But just be thinking of a plan that you can provide

26:36a supplemental feed to those packages because all it takes is a couple of days of some bad weather and it can be really, really disruptive to their growth and it can be tragic if things get too bad. Lots of feeder options. And again, we have an episode coming up. It's like four episodes from now talking all about feeding. But I just want you to start thinking now about having a good feeding plan in place because your feeder is something that you're going to use. I would say at least three times a year, you'll probably use them a little bit in the spring to get some colonies that overwinter to give them a little bit of a boost if necessary. You'll use it for your package bees. You may even need to use it for a nuke. If for some reason you've got a nuke and then you had three or four days of some more cold weather like we just had, they may burn through some of their stored resources. They may only have one frame of honey in there that they're pulling from and they may have used a lot of it. Let's go ahead and just drop a frame feeder in, give them something that they can have to keep them moving forward and raising new brood and ramping up for the spring. And then of course, if you have any kind of a dirt or anything that takes place in that season,

27:36if you're doing splits in the season, there's a lot of scenarios where you may need to feed. So just start thinking about that and we're going to cover, like I said, we'll cover, I don't know, 15 different feeders in the feeding episode that's coming up. So don't worry if you don't know exactly which ones to be looking for or thinking about. The other thing I want you to think about now is shifting away from the stuff and then just, you know, like your mental plan. I want you to start considering the time commitment and the things that you're going to need to be doing in that first month. And I think it's going to be, tentatively, it's episode 199, inspection strategies for the first year. But what I want you to start thinking about is recognizing, all right, I'm a new beekeeper. Everything I'm doing is brand new. So let me get my checklist, right? Here's all the things I need to make sure I'm looking for. And there's nothing wrong with bringing a three by five card or get a clipboard and bring that with you on your inspection with a couple of notes in there. I want to make sure I'm looking for capped brood. I want to look for maybe the presence of drones.

28:37Do we have any drones at this time of year? Do I see open cells that have these little worm looking things in them that would be developing larvae? If I see open cells that have a grain of rice in there, you're not growing rice. You're actually getting ready to raise new bees. Those are eggs. They just look like a little small grain of rice. If you can see the queen, that's a big bonus. But if you see the eggs, you know she's been there within the past 24 hours. You need to start thinking about what are the indicators of when you need to add space? How are you going to add the space? Because that's equally as important. And then make sure you have a schedule. We've talked about this quite a bit in the past, but it only takes 16 days to go from an egg to a new queen. The only real scenario that you hopefully will be seeing any potential for a new queen as long as everything is going well, would be a swarming condition. If they are preparing to swarm, that queen cell is going to be capped around day eight or nine in that time frame. And once that happens, that's kind of like the go sign

29:40for the colony. OK, you have been cleared for takeoff. You can now start making swarm plans. Now there's a little bit more to it than that. And I would say realistically any time that swarm cell is capped, it could happen. I would say your likelihood really increases as you get closer to that day 16, but realistically, probably between days 12 to 14 in there are probably the most common. If you saw like a bell curve, the middle of that bell curve is probably like right around day 12 or 13, something like that. So you have to be really aggressive with that. You need to be making sure to do inspections every week. If you know that you're, you know, for some reason you're going on vacation, you got to, you know, somebody's graduation, you got to go to in another state or there's something going on that is taking you away one that weekend. And you know, you're going to have a two week gap between inspections. Add a little bit of extra space early. So you're going to do your inspection that is your last inspection before you go wherever you're going to go. Make sure that if you have queen cups in there,

30:41I would be pinching queen cups. I would be eliminating queen cells, making sure there are no cells present anywhere and give them extra space in the form of a wax foundation or drawn comb or something like right in the middle of that brood space to make sure they know you have space. You need to use it. Here it is. And hopefully that will slow things down a little bit. But start thinking about all the things you need to look for. Join us in the Discord room and say, hi, I'm new. What do I need to look for? I'm sure I've probably got it somewhere where I can just copy and paste it in there. But there's a bunch of people in there who are really supportive and quite helpful. And you can get an answer for that. Now, the next thing is, it's probably something that truthfully is going to be the most important thing. And it is hands down without a doubt, the most overlooked and ignored thing in beekeeping. At least for new beekeepers, because I am guilty party number one, you have to have a vero plan. If you said to me, I don't know Jeff, I'm on the fence like do I buy a extra nuke

31:44so that I can have two colonies? Or should I just get one and buy a vero tree? And I would say just get one. No matter what you do, you have to have a vero plan. Now, there are people who are going to tell you, I don't treat for vero, I don't do anything. Now, I think that there are two sides to that. There are two approaches that would involve that statement. And there might even be three, depending on how far you want to go with it. One of them is, I want to be all natural and I just let nature take its course and let nature do its thing and the bees manage to survive just fine in nature without treatment. So I'm not going to treat my bees either. I love that. I think that's really cool and I really think that that is the way that we would all like to be. But anybody who's been beekeeping for more than about three or four months already has figured out, okay, well, we can't do that. You can't just ignore things. Now, like I mentioned, I think on a very recent episode,

32:46there's a lot of research around suggesting that the carbon dioxide levels inside of a cavity, inside of a tree get to a level that might actually be killing off the veroamites over the winter, which is why a lot of colonies are overwintering as unmanaged colonies, which is kind of a neat thing, but the Langstroth hive is not really doing that today in most scenarios in most cases. So unless you're doing some kind of a special setup like that, if you decide I'm not going to treat, I'm just going to go, if all natural to you means I'm not doing anything, then your bees are going to die. Your neighbor's bees and bees around, you are going to suffer. It's going to make their jobs harder because bees are going to be sharing mites as they interact with each other, particularly drones, are very prone to the mites and drones will drift from colony to colony and they will be happy to share their mites with other colonies. Now, if your approach on that is, I don't treat with the conventional treatment methods, but I've come up with a special formula,

33:46there's something I made, there's research being done around some herbal approaches and I went into my spice drawer and I took out a combination of ginger, all spice, oregano mixed that with a little bit of time and put it into this thing and I put a few drops in the hive and I haven't had mites since then, amen, like I'm all for it, let us know. Share that information with us. But if you're a new beekeeper and you have no idea what's going on or you're an experienced beekeeper and you have no idea what's going on, you have to have a plan, figure out what you want to do. I can't stress this enough. It is without a doubt the most impactful decision you can have in your apiary. If you said to me, I am thinking about going with just five frame nukes and just stack them vertically seven or eight high. I think it's really cool. Okay, you know, bees probably don't need to go quite that high in the space and you definitely gonna pull some honey off for yourself and rearrange things periodically but it's easier to manage, easier to lift, have at it. If that's what works for you, not to do like, go ahead. But this is one where whenever you say to me,

34:46I'm not treating, I tune out, man, you'd lost me because that is just so incredibly challenging. Now, as you're thinking about treatment methods, what I would say to you is there are, I would personally divide them into kind of two categories and there are some that have a little bit of overlap but you have like your gentle treatment options and then you have your more aggressive treatment options. I have two of them that I've kind of used now. It used to be three. I used Apovara for a while and I had good results with Apovara and I liked it and it was effective. Unfortunately, the underlying ingredient in Apovara is Amatraz and there has been some known Amatraz resistance in honey bees discovered over the past couple of years and that has been a big contributing factor to a lot of the colony loss we've seen throughout the US in like the past two winters now. I have had people that I know who are still using Apovara successfully and it's working fine for them. So I don't know what other people are seeing. I can't speak to everybody else.

35:47I have no reservations about continuing to use it. I just don't have many and I've kind of gone with a little bit of a different approach. So now what I'm doing is 90 plus percent of the time it's just oxylic acid. I have a vaporizer. It's really easy. You can do them over and over again for pennies on the dollar and it's just it's a great way to go. It's very gentle and it's effective. Now the challenge is it's effective if your mite numbers are low. If you have a really big infestation it is not good at the big knockdown. Because you've got to knock them down before you can get to a good baseline. So formic acid, formic pro, formic, whatever you might use in that category is a bit more aggressive. You really have to follow the directions on those. Whatever those temperature thresholds are, you need to stay in those. If it gets outside of them, just weird things happen. Queens die, queen stop laying for weeks on end. Like it can be really, really disruptive. Sometimes when you follow it as prescribed

36:49not because you did something wrong but because the condition has changed a little bit or the colony was in the right sized box per prescribed but the utilization inside the box might have been less. It's just a harsher more aggressive treatment but you still have to have something like that in the toolbox because when something gets really bad you've got to knock them down. The way I look at that is if you don't do something aggressive they're going to die no matter what. In that scenario you get mite counts where you're pulling 20, 25, 30, 40 mites so if you're getting 40, 50, 60 of them that's going to put you in that 15, 20 per hundred range. You get into those higher numbers like that. The colony's not going to be able to sustain itself but the worst part about is even if they do sustain themselves through the spring into the summer the viral load of those bees is going to be incredibly high going into the fall. They won't successfully overwinter if they do and you see them in the spring. They're going to be black and shiny, have deformed wings.

37:49They're going to be doing the kicking chicken little twitch every now and then if they're still moving at all it's just not fun. This is just something that you're going to get so sick if you're going to be like Jeff, I like you, I think you're a swell guy but you've got to stop talking about the vero and I can't, I got to do that. All right, the final thing I'm going to talk about and again I did touch on it a little bit earlier about some of the mindset and getting yourself mentally prepared and being nice and cool and calm and all of that but there's another kind of emotional component of the things that I want you to be prepared for. Beekeeping is really cool. Like I've really, really geeked out about it. I have a lot of fun with it. I really, the most amazing thing to me that I just absolutely love warms my heart is when I have beekeepers who come into our discord room or when I have people who email me. Like I would love to just list all the names of all the amazing people that I've met over the years and it's just been such a blessing to me. But I love it when somebody reaches out and they're like, hey, I really have no idea

38:51what I'm doing. I'm having a hard time struggling with this and then I have some level of communication and then sometimes it's three months later. Sometimes it's a year or two later but I get these messages where someone says, hey, I was doing what you told me to do here and this worked out. I've now got 10 colonies and I get so excited when I hear how successful all of you are. But with that, I will give an example. I'm not going to do any names but there is a gal up in Michigan and she's been religiously following, listening to the podcast, doing all kinds of her own research and doing things and she went into the first winter and she ended up losing her bees and then she had like her second winter and she ended up losing her bees and I know she's passionate about it. I know she's a passionate outdoors person and she loves her bees but second year, same problem. And I know we've talked to her a little bit this spring and I think that she, like I think maybe all or at least two out of three or something like that of her colonies are successfully overwintering this year and it's great to see that excitement from her and to see the fun that she's having with it.

39:53It can be really demoralizing. It can be painful, it can be sad. There are gonna be things that you're gonna see and happen to your bees and you're gonna be really upset about it. But that's really just kind of the nature of anything dealing with animal husbandry and agriculture, the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat. There are things that are gonna happen that are gonna really upset you. There are things that are gonna happen that are gonna have you absolutely thrilled. It is a very bipolar kind of hobby or undertaking or activity. But I think that what I've found, at least for me, recognizing that you aren't going to figure it out in one year, it's just, it's so much. There's so many moving parts. You're not gonna figure it all out in one year. But take the wins where you get them. And what I mean is let's say that you have day one, you have some packages that show up. Like that's gonna be a little scary. You're gonna have this package of bees, the first scary part is dealing with the postal service because they're scared to death. That's where you gotta walk in and like you have two approaches you can do.

40:54You walk in with no gear and you kinda look a little bit of an angry, like you're getting ready to go into a football game or something and you're like, yeah, I'm here to get my bees. You know, you look all tough and they're like, oh, and you're like, yeah, that's right, I'm here to get them, I'm taking them home. You can go tough guy approach or the fun approach you can do is literally cover yourself head to toe with protective gear. I'm talking everything like where boots and don't have anything exposed and go in and be like, yeah, I'm here to get the bees and just try to be as scared as you can. Like whenever you get near the packages to be like, oh, I don't know, that's again, have fun in the ways that you like to have fun. But what I want you to do is when you get those packages home and it's time to do that install, that's an accomplishment, it's a big deal. At least to me it is, it's a big deal because you've taken this colony that has been shifting you via mail and you have found the way to establish a home for them, get them installed into their new home and they're operational. They are now living in your yard, that's a win.

41:54And then when you go back say three or four days later and you peek inside to see if that queen has been released from the cage, that's a win. You come back at the end of week one and you're just gonna do a quick look in there to see if they are drawing comb, maybe refill your feeder, well definitely refill your feeder probably, definitely probably. Refill your feeder, looking for drawn comb, looking for eggs, hey, I saw eggs today and this is really a great time to see your queen because the queen is gonna be much more difficult to find for a new beekeeper as the colony gets larger and larger. But look near where you see those eggs, whatever frame has the eggs on it, she's probably pretty close by. But again, take the wins and if you're a person who actually likes to journal or if you like to take voice notes or whatever, talk about that stuff, write about that stuff, say hey, I had a great day at an in-be-yard. I did an inspection, I saw this, I saw that, remember those things and enjoy them because they are fun. Then as time goes by, you're gonna start to see the things that aren't as fun and you're gonna start dealing with those

42:57and finding ways to deal with those. I always tell you, we have a lot going on. There's a lot going on all the time and the fact that I'm like all ADHD and all over the place doesn't make it any better. But we have a lot of bright people in our discord room who love to chat about bees, who love to help out. If you're not a chatty person, you don't really wanna get in there. You can always just lurk. I would say 90% of people are lurking. They just hang out and listen, they don't talk. That's fine. You wanna email me, that's fine. But there are resources out there and you can reach out and you can ask questions. You know, you're not alone here. It's tough, it's a challenging hobby. It is going to stress you out a little bit. But again, take the wins, have fun. Try to have fun. And another thing as I wrap up here, because I'm gonna start rambling more than I already am, one thing that I love to do, and this is the first time I've had bees back at the house for a little while. For those of you who really don't know me or the whole story, I had lots of bees for a long time

43:57and then I was supposed to have some here last year and I needed to be with my daughter to get her across the country for some work. She was doing out in Wyoming with the Department of Forestry and they had to reschedule my delivery because of some bad spring weather with the bees. I was gonna be receiving last year to kind of restart things at my house. So I had to cancel. And I thought, well, that's okay. I'll get the swarm traps up. Well, I got the swarm traps up a little late, didn't catch any swarms and I was bee-less last year, which was really mentally disruptive for me. But what I love to do, and when you're thinking about where you wanna put your hives this year, keep this in mind if you're kind of a coffee drinker or a hot tea drinker or whatever. If you'd like to go out in the morning, I really, really enjoy taking a little chair and going out and I used to have a nice horseshoe, which was really cool. It was a horseshoe setup of bees so I could walk into the middle of the horseshoe and kind of do inspections like if it were a clock. I can walk towards the 12 o'clock

44:57and do my inspections from nine to three or three to nine, whichever way I wanted to work. Everything was right there near each other. I could grab parts and pieces and exchange things if I needed to, but I would just put my chair in the middle of that and just drink my coffee in the morning, look around, enjoy the bees, come back inside, fill the cup up, and then by the time I finish with that second cup, then it's time to start the day. But that was like my therapy. Just sitting there and listening to the buzz of the bees and watching them come in and watching them work, it is a very therapeutic thing. So if you recognize that there is a high probability that you're gonna lose your bees this year as a first year beekeeper, that things go wrong, things happen. Don't think about the negative, don't focus on the negative. Remember all the wins that you take and take that joy, take those moments and drink that coffee or drink that tea or drink your water, whatever it is. Take that time and if you're a busy person, you've got a full time job, busy life, whatever, okay, do 15 minutes. Just take 15 minutes every day and sit down with your bees, take a deep breath.

45:58And at least if something doesn't work out, you've had an amazing opportunity to engage with them on a way that most people never do and you'll learn some skills that you can then reapply when you try again next year. So don't beat yourself up when things don't go the way you want them to go. All right, I'm gonna wrap this up because I'd love to talk as you guys know and I'll just keep going. But once you guys remember, this is kind of a multi-part series we're doing to kind of get everybody ready. We have choosing your hive setup is coming up next. We're gonna do both of these this week. So this should be, you should be hearing this one Monday. Thursday's gonna be getting your hive setup chosen. I may still sneak a bee buzz in this Wednesday. I periodically will try to regage bee buzz interest because it's one of those things where some people love it and some kind of don't. I used to do a lot of personal updates in there as well. I've cut that out completely, it's just Q and A. But I did put a survey on Spotify for the last bee buzz episode. I think it was 190. You can just go and take that survey if you're interested in letting me know what you think about those.

46:58I may sneak a bee buzz in this week. It should be the last one for the big round of questions that I had, not sure if that's gonna happen though. But choosing your hive setup will be out this week and then we have all about frames. We have feeding systems, installing the bees, swarm prevention basics. There's a lot more and all of these are coming in the next few weeks here. And again, don't forget, check us out YouTube.com forward slash at beekeeping for new bees. I have a playlist on there called new bees start here. So if you're brand new or just trying to get a refresher as a first or second year, returning beekeeper, go check out that playlist, get a couple tips and pointers. And if you need anything, don't hesitate to reach out. Take care of me kind of one another. Remember that I love you. There's nothing you can do about it. We'll talk to you soon. If you're a podcast host, listen up this once for you. My name is Ally Jackson. I'm the host of Finding Mr. Height, a dating and relationship podcast that I've been doing for four years now, sharing my positive and practical approach to dating that's built on my own life experience. And I wanted to share another experience that I've had. My secret behind monetizing my show. It's called Red Circle. And I was just telling my colleague about how much I love their platform with Red Circle,

48:00not only am I getting a seamless hosting experience, but I also love the support I receive in AdSales. It's not just typical AdSales either. It's targeted opportunities based on my show and my life. And the platform is super simple. You just set your preferences and Red Circle matches you with sponsors that align with your show. You can vet every opportunity and their platform gives you great analytics. More recently too, my Red Circle team has brought me opportunities outside of my podcast on social media to really augment the podcast partnerships, bring them full circle. I just can't recommend them enough. If you want to give it a try, go to redcircle.com to get your free trial. That's redcircle.com for a free trial. This is Mike Voilo of Lexicon Valley. And I'm Bob Garfield. Are you one of those people who sometimes uses words? Do you communicate or acquire information with, you know, language? Hey, us too. So join us on Lexicon Valley to true over the history, culture, and many mysteries of English. Plus some life cracks. Find us on one of those apps where people listen to podcasts.