Latest / Honey Bee Obscura Podcast / A Novice Teaches Beekeeping (285)

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A Novice Teaches Beekeeping (285) · Honey Bee Obscura Podcast

• 0:02
  Hey, good morning, podcast listeners.
• 0:05
  It's Jim here again, so it must be Thursday morning.
• 0:09
  This is a treat.
• 0:11
  I got my grandson here with me, who's
• 0:14
  boy, well, a novice beekeeper.
• 0:17
  That'd be putting it
• 0:19
  nicely
• 0:20
  for me, .
• 0:21
  I'm still young.
• 0:22
  It's gonna be back though, still still dealing with struggles, but
• 0:26
  .
• 0:26
  Still dealing with struggles.
• 0:27
  Well, that's just life.
• 0:28
  Yep.
• 0:29
  But there's always gonna be ups and downs of beekeeping.
• 0:31
  And
• 0:32
  so, I am just excited that I've gotten the experience early.
• 0:38
  You know, last episode that I was on, we'd talked about one of my second colonies struggling with potentially American Foulbrood
• 0:46
  and
• 0:46
  things of that nature just
• 0:48
  Really detrimental you
• 0:49
  to your colonies and also to your psyche in a sense
• 0:52
  because your colonies keep dying.
• 0:54
  Like is it your fault?
• 0:55
  What
• 0:55
  whatever, but
• 0:56
  I wanna talk about that.
• 0:57
  I want to talk about that.
• 0:59
  Listen, we're gonna talk about all of this.
• 1:00
  We're gonna catch you up.
• 1:02
  I'm Jim Tew.
• 1:03
  I come to you here at Honey
• 1:04
  Be Obscure once a week
• 1:06
  where I try to talk about something to do
• 1:09
  with plain talk beekeeping.
• 1:11
  I'm Will Ditka and it's good to be back.
• 1:13
  Welcome to Honey Be
• 1:15
  Obscura, brought to you by Growing Planet Media, the producers of the Beekeeping Today
• 1:22
  podcast.
• 1:23
  Join
• 1:24
  Jew Tew, your guide.
• 1:26
  Through the complexities, the beauty, the fun, and the challenges of managing honey bees.
• 1:32
  Jim hosts fun and interesting guests who take a deep dive into the intricate world of honey bees.
• 1:39
  Whether your
• 1:40
  seasoned beekeeper,
• 1:41
  are
• 1:41
  just getting started.
• 1:42
  Get ready for some plain talk that'll delve into all things honey bees.
• 1:47
  Will that you bring up a good point.
• 1:49
  I I was panicked
• 1:50
  all those months ago.
• 1:51
  It was
• 1:52
  back before Thanksgiving, wasn't it?
• 1:53
  Yeah
• 1:55
  It was a really
• 1:56
  peculiar looking situation and I
• 1:59
  thought it might be American Foul
• 2:01
  brood.
• 2:01
  That just did not seem to make sense.
• 2:03
  And after I thought about it and looked at it again
• 2:06
  It seemed to pretty much be a a mild var
• 2:09
  varroa
• 2:10
  bomb, where they had a heavy varroa mite load, but it wasn't enough to kill them right away.
• 2:16
  Of course I think they died during the winter.
• 2:19
  So
• 2:20
  Well, it that's just beekeeping.
• 2:22
  It starts over again.
• 2:23
  What was sh what was your take on it?
• 2:25
  I'm always glad it happened in a sense.
• 2:28
  Obviously not for the bees, but I think for the experience to be able to see
• 2:33
  such a confusing hive in a sense
• 2:35
  to where you we thought it was potentially American Foulbrood, but even you
• 2:38
  with all your experience had to take a second look at it.
• 2:41
  So I think the ability to be able just to watch
• 2:43
  you
• 2:44
  were
• 2:44
  just to
• 2:46
  soak in the all this information and the experiences I think
• 2:49
  is
• 2:49
  much more important to me now than anything else.
• 2:51
  So I guess I'm just really looking at it as a building experience because I've
• 2:55
  I'm still so young into the beekeeping experience that I I really think
• 2:59
  It's something beneficial that will be helpful to me down the line and I'm sure I'll encounter a situation similar to it at some point and I'll be better prepared for it because of this.
• 3:06
  So
• 3:07
  I guess
• 3:08
  I always just try and think of it with glass half full and not glass half empty.
• 3:11
  Try always try and take the the good side of things.
• 3:14
  Alright.
• 3:14
  Well
• 3:14
  so far so good, but it
• 3:16
  's a good idea.
• 3:17
  That was an
• 3:17
  experience.
• 3:18
  Well, that was not that wasn't easy going.
• 3:20
  I'm sorry we got off on a difficult foot
• 3:23
  right away, but
• 3:24
  It is beekeeping.
• 3:26
  So I guess I'll just talk a little bit about me
• 3:28
  since the last episode.
• 3:29
  I
• 3:30
  I decided to change my major
• 3:32
  and
• 3:33
  I transferred schools just at community college because
• 3:35
  here in the state of Michigan, community college is completely free.
• 3:39
  So
• 3:39
  might as well, right?
• 3:41
  Yep.
• 3:41
  It saves a lot of money.
• 3:42
  Do you have any interest in in biology?
• 3:44
  Have you taken a bee
• 3:45
  class or bee
• 3:46
  bee biology or anything along that line or is this still
• 3:49
  too soon?
• 3:50
  it's still too soon, but ironically
• 3:52
  bee
• 3:52
  snuck my way into
• 3:53
  a communication class and I actually wrote a speech.
• 3:56
  and presented that about bees.
• 3:58
  Just talked about various things, just an overview.
• 4:01
  I brought you up multiple times in it.
• 4:03
  Because it
• 4:04
  you you were supposed to use references and I feel like you're the ultimate reference for the field of beekeeping.
• 4:10
  So yeah, just talked about that and I talked about just some dangers of beekeeping just because a lot of people are just unaware of the Varroa
• 4:17
  issues and whatnot and
• 4:19
  how s how scary the future of bees
• 4:21
  looks,
• 4:21
  especially with how big their impact is on our planet and just things like that.
• 4:25
  Just kept it very general
• 4:27
  because
• 4:28
  Honestly, like I'm pretty general in my knowledge as well,
• 4:31
  still young.
• 4:32
  So I can't get too deep into it just because I'm I'm still trying to learn
• 4:36
  figure it out myself.
• 4:37
  But
• 4:38
  things like that, just being able to
• 4:40
  include
• 4:41
  beekeeping in a communications class.
• 4:43
  It's just something you would never expect.
• 4:45
  Just a s
• 4:46
  two
• 4:46
  combinations of things.
• 4:48
  But
• 4:49
  I feel like that's almost a good thing.
• 4:51
  Like this beekeeping ha is able to be applied so far outside of beekeeping, I'm able to use it in a beneficial way.
• 4:58
  How long was the f
• 4:59
  how long was the presentation?
• 5:01
  So it was supposed to be four to six minutes, and I talked for a solid seven minutes and fifteen
• 5:05
  seconds.
• 5:05
  Four to six minutes, and you talk seven minutes and sixteen seconds.
• 5:10
  Was there a penalty for that?
• 5:12
  Yeah, but it was only ten
• 5:13
  points.
• 5:14
  And
• 5:14
  I feel like I was and
• 5:16
  there was only ten
• 5:16
  points I got off.
• 5:17
  So I was thorough enough
• 5:19
  that, I didn't get anything else off.
• 5:22
  So I guess
• 5:23
  Better too long than too short, I guess.
• 5:25
  Well off
• 5:26
  just quickly I want to get off the subject and then get rubb back on it.
• 5:29
  But I remember my first talk that I gave as a graduate student at the University of Maryland.
• 5:34
  I had all these notes worked out.
• 5:36
  It was pre-PowerPoint.
• 5:38
  We used photographic slides.
• 5:40
  And so I was deep into it.
• 5:42
  And I
• 5:42
  began to get the notice from my professor that my time was up.
• 5:46
  Well, I was hardly halfway through.
• 5:48
  It'd be like s sitting down with half a sandwich
• 5:51
  made.
• 5:51
  So I kept going
• 5:53
  because I thought I had to keep going.
• 5:54
  You can't leave the audience wanting more.
• 5:57
  Well, if yes
• 5:57
  you can, because there's speakers coming up behind that I'm
• 6:00
  Trashing the schedule, so
• 6:02
  I finally stopped after I went seriously over.
• 6:06
  And I've got a verbal reprimand, so my first talk was two
• 6:10
  times too much talk
• 6:12
  Well you beat me.
• 6:14
  It's interesting that you went over.
• 6:15
  I went over fifteen, twenty minutes or so.
• 6:17
  It it really threw things off.
• 6:19
  Going over by fifteen minutes.
• 6:21
  How how long
• 6:22
  you said it was four to six minutes.
• 6:24
  How many people were in your audience
• 6:26
  It was just my small class.
• 6:28
  I think there were about eighteen to twenty of us in there.
• 6:30
  I'm not sure how many were present that day, but probably somewhere around that route.
• 6:34
  Did they go
• 6:34
  did they go glassy-eyed while you were doing this?
• 6:36
  I sure hope not.
• 6:37
  I I tried my best to keep it funny.
• 6:39
  I tried to write some jokes in there, just to try and keep people engaged.
• 6:43
  I tried to
• 6:44
  I used the PowerPoint to my advantage.
• 6:46
  I tried to make it as interesting as possible.
• 6:48
  That way they're looking at something.
• 6:50
  You know what I mean?
• 6:51
  They're not just glassy eyed, like you said.
• 6:53
  So
• 6:54
  I really hope they enjoyed it.
• 6:55
  It seemed like they did, because I was the only speaker that got follow-up
• 6:58
  questions.
• 6:59
  So
• 6:59
  I
• 7:00
  I'll take that as a good sign.
• 7:01
  What were some of your major points?
• 7:04
  like I said, just the dangers of beekeeping.
• 7:06
  And then I just talked about
• 7:07
  what
• 7:08
  what are what's dangerous about beekeeping?
• 7:11
  just like we had touched on, like the Varroa
• 7:14
  American Foulbrood, like yeah.
• 7:17
  and then another main point I just talked about was very basic beekeeping equipment, just veils, smokers, boxes, the
• 7:23
  Deeps versus supers, whatever, eight frames, ten
• 7:26
  frames, just those kinds of things.
• 7:29
  And
• 7:29
  I mean it was really surface level just because
• 7:32
  It's not like I was giving it in a
• 7:33
  like a biology course or
• 7:35
  something like that where they were well
• 7:36
  versed in insects or bees in general.
• 7:40
  So I really just kept it surface level.
• 7:42
  I'm sure a lot of the things I talked about
• 7:44
  w
• 7:44
  a lot of people already knew, but
• 7:47
  Just kept it simple, broad, and just tried to include as much as I could in a basic sense, just because I did only have that four to six minutes, so I couldn't really go fifteen minutes over like you did.
• 7:57
  Yep.
• 7:57
  It's a lot to pack in to just a few minutes.
• 8:00
  I had to keep it pretty surface level.
• 8:01
  What were some of the other talk titles?
• 8:03
  What was your competition
• 8:05
  Some someone was a history professor, someone was an electrician.
• 8:10
  Like it was like this profession thing, and I just talked about entomology.
• 8:14
  So a lot of them were really boring, like
• 8:17
  people
• 8:17
  talking about electrician work in specific, that's not a a very
• 8:21
  gravitating speech.
• 8:23
  So
• 8:23
  I definitely think that my
• 8:25
  approach
• 8:26
  and trying to keep it fun and creative and the bees in general, I think, are interesting enough
• 8:30
  That it was able to keep it interesting.
• 8:39
  Because I have lit myself up several times by not knowing how to wire as a
• 8:44
  shock
• 8:45
  person.
• 8:46
  But I I didn't realize it was occupationally driven.
• 8:49
  It's a clever thing.
• 8:50
  And your professor had
• 8:52
  positive comments, positive responses.
• 8:55
  Yeah, nothing but good things to say.
• 8:56
  I also talked about just
• 8:59
  sorts
• 8:59
  of the forms of communication of these.
• 9:02
  Yep.
• 9:02
  Just because that's I mean, still even to us now, we still really are not fully aware of everything.
• 9:08
  But just talked about very basic again, like the pheromones, h like how large the radius of the colonies
• 9:14
  search.
• 9:14
  Just very basic
• 9:15
  facts.
• 9:16
  Hold
• 9:16
  hold that hold that thought for just a minute.
• 9:18
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• 10:22
  You were talking about pheromones.
• 10:24
  Go back to that and pick that up again.
• 10:28
  So
• 10:28
  I feel like I'm not well versed enough to be talking about pheromone communication on a beekeeping podcast, but
• 10:35
  I I talked about keeping it funny, so I guess I'll just touch on this example.
• 10:39
  So I just
• 10:40
  as I'm walking around and giving my speech, I'm using pheromones and I just like
• 10:44
  pretend I'm a bee
• 10:45
  and I
• 10:45
  fart at somebody.
• 10:46
  Oh god.
• 10:47
  Just as a joke.
• 10:48
  You know what I mean?
• 10:48
  So I like that was
• 10:49
  and then there were a couple things throughout this speech and that's what I'm talking about.
• 10:52
  Just trying to keep it light and fun.
• 10:54
  But just things like that, just
• 10:55
  a very basic sense because the communication of bees is so drastically different than the way we would communicate.
• 11:01
  Like they're not just sitting there chatting hump
• 11:03
  having conversations.
• 11:04
  And I also touched on the things like the little whittle
• 11:06
  dances they do and washboarding as well.
• 11:09
  They're such interesting little creatures and there's just the hive
• 11:12
  mind
• 11:12
  is such an interesting concept.
• 11:14
  The hive mind
• 11:15
  is an interesting concept
• 11:16
  that is
• 11:17
  a
• 11:18
  super
• 11:19
  organism, essentially.
• 11:21
  Everybody doing what's best for them apparently and it ends up being beneficial to the whole unit.
• 11:27
  So it went well.
• 11:28
  I'm glad it went well for you.
• 11:30
  You have anything else planned like this, but nothing else has come up that's opportunistic so far, I guess.
• 11:35
  Yeah, I mean
• 11:36
  that's what's nice though, I can always keep it in my back pocket.
• 11:39
  It's
• 11:39
  something I'm well versed in compared to the average person.
• 11:42
  So it's something interesting and somewhat unique about me, especially at my age in particular.
• 11:47
  So I r I I
• 11:48
  I really enjoy it.
• 11:49
  I
• 11:50
  earlier we were talking about my struggles with being an early beekeeper
• 11:54
  and I just
• 11:54
  I guess I have a question for you.
• 11:56
  I just want to compare
• 11:58
  my early beekeeping versus your early beekeeping and how much things have changed and what
• 12:09
  Well, you
• 12:10
  you
• 12:10
  m mentioned early on that
• 12:13
  not
• 12:13
  in the podcast, but
• 12:14
  we were talking that beekeeping was an expensive hobby and that
• 12:18
  and
• 12:18
  that's unfortunately true in many cases, but that that's one of the things that's changed.
• 12:24
  There was a type of apiculture
• 12:27
  When I was just starting this at 21 and 22 years old, there was just box
• 12:33
  hive beekeepers.
• 12:34
  And I'm
• 12:34
  late in my life, I'm really intrigued by that
• 12:37
  because I transitioned
• 12:39
  At a time when beekeepers were moving from box hives to Langstruth equipment.
• 12:45
  So if you wanted to keep bees, you'd just tie
• 12:47
  four boards together, thirty-six inches high or so, and put an
• 12:51
  X
• 12:51
  brace in the middle and put a
• 12:53
  Top and a bottom on it, and a few slips in the bottom, and you picked up swarms
• 12:57
  because they were everywhere in the spring
• 12:59
  before Varroa
• 13:01
  and
• 13:01
  Africanized V's and boom
• 13:04
  You were a beekeeper.
• 13:06
  So you wore some old painter coveralls and you got some gardening gloves on
• 13:10
  and you
• 13:11
  probably had to buy a veil and a smoker, and that was it.
• 13:16
  And I have slowly watched as beekeeping became, has become
• 13:20
  more and more modern, cleaner, more professional, and
• 13:25
  more expensive.
• 13:26
  And I was part and parcel to tearing those old bee-boxes apart, and I made precious few pictures
• 13:32
  because
• 13:33
  to me
• 13:34
  they were junk.
• 13:35
  And I was helping the bees improve their lives.
• 13:38
  And in retrospect, the bees liked that box hive a lot better.
• 13:41
  They had a natural nest, and I made them live on straight cones.
• 13:45
  That was then, this is now.
• 13:47
  Do I want to go back to
• 13:48
  early beekeeping and homemade protective gear?
• 13:51
  No, I'm happy where I am.
• 13:53
  What was your beginning like?
• 13:56
  I feel like it's almost ingrained in the podcast at this point.
• 14:00
  Just those two hives.
• 14:01
  I lost that one early
• 14:03
  and then obviously the American Foulbrood, what we thought was, and then ended up being a varroa
• 14:09
  with that second hive.
• 14:10
  So I mean it's been a
• 14:12
  I guess a rough go of it, but not really.
• 14:14
  It's all been learning experiences, but I almost feel like it's
• 14:19
  especially
• 14:20
  as a young person nowadays, I I really
• 14:22
  feel like if I didn't have access to you and equipment, I wouldn't have ever been able to get into this, even if I really wanted to.
• 14:29
  I feel like you almost need to have
• 14:32
  your
• 14:32
  life set up, you need to have some income
• 14:35
  because this is
• 14:36
  it's
• 14:37
  it's really is expensive, especially if you're purchasing your own s
• 14:40
  queens
• 14:41
  or whatever.
• 14:41
  It can
• 14:42
  it can quickly get expensive.
• 14:43
  D especially depending on like
• 14:45
  what quality of equipment you want to use.
• 14:47
  Like if you could go s
• 14:48
  buy some big company equipment, I'm sure
• 14:50
  it's it gets more expensive.
• 14:53
  But I think that's the biggest
• 14:55
  notice for me is that it
• 14:56
  it's
• 14:57
  really feels like a
• 15:00
  a hobby in a sense
• 15:02
  where you really need to just like invest the money and the time into it and enjoy it.
• 15:07
  You can't really just throw a box together and go pick up a swarm
• 15:11
  anymore, I guess, in that sense.
• 15:12
  Like you really gotta commit hard to it 'cause it really is a big commitment now.
• 15:18
  Yeah, and
• 15:18
  it's you're going to take a spanking almost every time.
• 15:21
  You know, this
• 15:21
  you
• 15:22
  first two colonies out are gone.
• 15:23
  I thought
• 15:24
  I had three or four colonies die this one or so bees die
• 15:27
  all the time.
• 15:29
  Will I always enjoy
• 15:30
  talking with you.
• 15:30
  I'll check back in
• 15:33
  probably sometime later this summer
• 15:35
  and get another update
• 15:37
  And see what you're doing and how your
• 15:39
  life's going.
• 15:39
  You keep saying you're you're youth, you're young.
• 15:42
  How old are you?
• 15:43
  Nineteen.
• 15:43
  I'll be twenty
• 15:44
  the end of August.
• 15:45
  Torn
• 15:45
  at
• 15:46
  the end of August.
• 15:47
  That is
• 15:47
  young.
• 15:49
  So
• 15:50
  I got a beekeeper in
• 15:52
  training I named your session
• 15:54
  a novice teaches beekeeping
• 15:57
  so don't be offended when you see the cartoon work on that this
• 16:00
  in production
• 16:01
  right now.
• 16:01
  Listeners I always enjoy talking to you.
• 16:03
  Well
• 16:03
  tell them bye.
• 16:04
  Thanks for having me on again.
• 16:05
  I always appreciate it.
• 16:06
  Listeners
• 16:07
  I appreciate your support and
• 16:08
  I hope to see you guys again soon.
• 16:10
  Thanks a lot, Will.
• 16:11
  Until next week, this is Jim telling you bye.