in a world brimming with complexity few creatures embody harmony like the honeybee with tireless precision she dances from bloom to bloom each motion guided by millennia upon millennia of instinct each act in service to the whole and then There are the beekeepers, watchful stewards
of this ancient symbiosis. Part agriscientist, part poet, they move along their hives with the efficiency of mow, levy and curly, tending to the bees' needs as best they can comprehend, and with the infrequency of a waterfall in the Sahara, sometimes running off flapping and flailing like a penguin on a hot sidewalk. This is their journey. Welcome, welcome to Be Love Beekeeping presented by our great friends and partners in
beekeeping, Man Lake. Today we'll have a discussion with two of the most fun beekeepers around, Kim and Steph. If you're thinking about getting into beekeeping, believe it or not there are some big decisions you need to make before you take the leap. What kind of honey bees should you start with? What kind of hive design? Why are you getting into beekeeping in the first place? In this multi -episode series we're taking a deep dive into the 10 decisions you need to make
before you start your beekeeping journey. But first let's take just a minute to go inside the hive this feature presented by Primal Bee. So you see a cloud of bees pour out of a hive and land on a tree branch in a big clump and your first thought is oh something has gone very wrong. Actually it's the opposite swarming is how a healthy colony reproduces. When a colony gets strong enough, starts running out of room or is just ready to reproduce, the workers raise
new queen cells. When those queens are almost ready to hatch, the old queen takes off with about half the bees in the colony. That terrifying cloud of bees, they're actually in a great mood. They've gorged on honey before leaving and they're not defending anything. They're just temporarily homeless. They'll cluster on a branch while scout bees go house hunting and those scouts are incredibly picky. They want thick walls, a small entrance,
the right amount of space. When a scout finds a good spot, she comes back and does a waggle dance to pitch it to the rest of the group. Sometimes you even have multiple scouts lobbying for different locations at the same time. The colony basically votes. Once enough bees agree, the whole swarm lifts off, flies together to the new location and moves in. Back in the original hive, a new queen hatches and takes over. Now there are two colonies instead of just one. In bee terms, that's
a success story. Next time on Inside the Hive, we'll take a deeper dive into the waggle dance. Bees literally give each other GPS directions by dancing. Now how about a warm welcome for our very special guests. I am so happy to have on the line with us today Kim and Steph from Mandalay, Clearback in Pennsylvania. How are you two this morning? Good, how are you? Fantastic. You were asking about our weather earlier and I am so happy to report here in the mountains
of Utah we are finally getting winter. We have a big snowstorm going on and it's fantastic. You guys already got yours a while ago, now it's our turn. We did we did so now we're just enjoying a rainy day today. It's a little drizzly out there What are your bees doing today right now? Well, if I had to think about it, I would say they're probably still a little clustered up It's been a little chilly. Well yesterday was a little warm but with the rain They're probably
taking it easy today. They were out yesterday foraging. I'm sure so today. They're probably taking it easy after those cleansing flights and little foraging they may have done. I wish you would have asked me yesterday. Yesterday they were all out and about but today they are
safely in their hives. Cleansing flights are such a good thing but I worry a little bit about my bees on some of the really warm winter days that we've had here because they go out foraging and obviously there's absolutely nothing for them to find and I'm afraid they're wearing themselves out. That is something that we do worry about. And in fact, seeing them all out yesterday, taking the dead out, their movements you can see around, sometimes they'll drop in the snow and not be
able to get back out. We know this time of year is very tricky in February because they'll be going out on warmer days, but less and less will be coming back to the hive to keep that cluster and keep the queen warm. All right well I want to jump into today's topic because we have a lot lot lot to talk about. What we've come up with is everything that you need to know before
you take the leap into beekeeping. So for seasoned beekeepers out there you might think this is a little boring but hey don't go away because you'll probably be helping somebody or there may be some gaps in your knowledge that you need to fill in too. But especially if you're new to beekeeping or just thinking about it, this is your big list of things to do first. And that's why I have Kim and Steph with me today, because they know what they're doing. They've been beekeeping
for a long time. Have you guys taught classes too? No, we haven't taught classes, so to speak. It's something to think about. We teach more of what we do on TikTok. And you've got a lot of fun content out there. And this is not a beginner beekeeping class today. That's not what this is. This is a whole different thing about things to think about first. And I have a whole big list here. You guys are welcome to jump in with whatever you want. Now these are in no particular
order. So I think people should define why they want to get into beekeeping before they do it. Why is that a big deal? Kim and I were discussing this and it's important to understand why you want to do it because you're going to invest a lot of time in doing it. You're going to invest your summer days, you're going to invest your spring, you're going to invest a lot of energy into doing it. So it's important to really think about, are you doing this for the honey yields?
Are you doing this to pollinate your garden? It's just important to have a, you know, why you're doing it. I do it. for a little bit of everything. I like the honey. I like a pollinated area. I like that we're helping our food sources out there. And of course you invest a lot of money into it. There's that. Let's be honest. There is a financial investment here. Yeah. What would you say for your average beginner jumping in with two hives, what's their investment? Give
us a round number. First year. I'm gonna say easily could be a thousand dollars. Easy. And that's your full setup, though. So that's going to be with us. That's everything with your bees and your heads. A thousand dollars is a very good starting point. Just to get into a little bit more of the why, I think another reason why people need to define their why is because beekeeping is harder than most people think it is. You may get stung. You may get stung a few times. You
may have bees die. You may have neighbors mad at you. There are things that can happen and with that really defined why it helps you keep coming back. It helps you put in the effort that you need to learn what you need to learn. Instead of avoiding, oh man, I don't even want to deal with varroa. I don't even want to know what it is. No it'll help you go, I need to figure out Varroa, I need to figure out the climate where I am, I need to do my homework to do this right.
Because being an irresponsible beekeeper, that doesn't make a lot of sense for anybody. Not for you, not for the bees. So to find that why, like for me it was hey seasonal allergies, and I had read a whole bunch of things about how raw local honey can really help those allergies. And I'm the kind of person that just likes to test stuff. So I bought some raw local honey. It was from some beekeepers about 150 miles from me. And I religiously like ate some of this honey
every day and it didn't do anything. Have you heard this before? Okay, and so I read more and it said no really local like hyper local honey Because what I have growing around me is not the same thing growing around that guy 150 miles from here That's why I got bees at first and I'll tell you what it helps in a big -time way My allergies are so so much better. They're not gone They're not cured. They're like 75 % better. For me, that's a huge thing. Then, like you said,
there's other reasons too. Maybe we can actually help the bees some. We can help pollinate our orchard that we have at our house, whatever it is. And most of us love honey too. Yeah. Yes. I was going to say that that's one of the reasons why I got into it. I have seasonal allergies very badly in the fall. And I remember years ago, riding my bike to a few miles down the way. There's a backyard beekeeper. I would buy their raw honey. And I wanted to be able to use it
in things that I make. I like to make a lot of skin care and natural products and the food. It did help some. But when we moved and I started working at Man Lake and I realized what local truly meant, then yes, I wanted to have bees on my property that would forage in my area. And I have noticed the same, that I hardly have any allergies in the fall. It's really helped tremendously with that. To add on to the benefits of that, I find that beekeeping keeps me grounded
in a healthier state of mind. That's one reason I really got into it. I was, you know, not as healthy as I could have been. And then I got into the beekeeping from working where I'm at. And I found that It really put me at ease and all the other added benefits. It's very therapeutic
for me personally. That is so true. I've had a guest on the show from Hives for Heroes and we talked about the therapeutic aspect and dealing with PTSD and stuff and beekeeping is such a good hobby for that, for your mental health. It truly, truly is. Let's just go with our next thing again in no particular order. One of the decisions that you need to make when you first get into beekeeping is what kind of beehive design or style or philosophy of the hive itself, the
box, what kind do I want to get into. Would you ladies just tell us what are some of the different options and then we'll talk about some pros and cons of them. Sure. Yeah. So we work with the Langstroth hives. That's what I am most familiar with because that's what I've used throughout my entire journey. There are so many different types of hives out there. Just this year alone, I learned about hives that people who are not as able to walk around can use themselves just
by opening and looking. So there's so many different kinds of hives out there. I'm just personally know more about the Langstroth than anything. I have used Langstroth. I've had a top bar hive and I really enjoyed that. We had talked about that a little previously before recording. That one is great. I will say that in using that style, you really need to make adequate weekly inspections. You don't want to miss any inspections because in a top bar hive, you'll want to add a little
bit of wax to the top of the top. far and then the bees will draw everything out themselves. However there's a lot of cross comb that can happen in that situation where they start out really well and then they're going to start cross combing meaning they put comb on one but slide it down to the other and then when you try to lift that out you get a lot of breakage you know and you don't want that to happen but To say I really enjoyed my top bar hive, and I would
definitely go back to that method again. Along with that would be the horizontal hive. So that's also great for those that don't want to do any type of heavy lifting, but you want to be able to use the same frames that are in a Langstroth hive. That would be probably a little bit easier to work with. It's still that long horizontal. hive, but you can put regular frames in there, which would be easier for inspections. I know there's a few others like the Flow Hive, which
I think is just beautiful. I've done research on it. I found it to be a little too expensive for me at this time, but I do, I love watching videos of people using it. And I know it's great for getting that honey and the, I think it was
the RZ method where it's in. Primarily in Europe, which just reminds me of like a library where you're just pulling out the droid But I don't have too much familiarity with that one So I know there's many different methods and I would say you know as much as we always say this do your research On the different methods out there to see what you think you might want to work with and also cost -wise Some things might will be more expensive if you take a first -year beginner
beekeeping class They may push one kind over another. If you happen to have a mentor, they're probably more familiar and like one kind of hive more than another. I will say that Langstroth is really the standard. It is probably, what, 90 % of the hives in the United States and Europe and other places. We have a lot of listeners in Australia. Theirs are very similar. The sizes might be a little bit different, but basically the design is the same. There are AZ hives. and
a lot of other kinds of hives. We've talked about poly hives which are basically a Langstroth but not made out of wood. There's the primal hive which we've talked about on here too. I better not go down that road I could spend 20 minutes on that. But it's a little bit different but the beekeeping is quite similar to Langstroth kind of beekeeping. There are a lot of different designs and part of it's going to be how are you going to learn and how easy do you want it
to be to buy equipment. Langstroth in general is a pretty good place for most people to start. It's easy to get the equipment. Mann Lake and a lot of other places are going to stock it. And then you have to decide do I want to use 10 frame or 8 frame. Why don't you talk about
the difference there? Sure. So I started out using 10 frame equipment and just this past season, I adopted an eight frame hive and I'm glad I did because now I'm going to be able to, for me, it's going to be easier for me to lift just the supers and the box in general. So with the eight frame hive. that's something to look at. Do you want as much weight? The eight frames not going to give you as much weight as a 10
frame would. So it might be easier for some people to have an eight frame as opposed to the 10 frame. I'm excited to see how much honey I get in that eight frame though. And then most people are going to use deep boxes for their brood boxes. I'm transitioning towards mediums for the very reason that you just talked about, which is the weight issue. And that changes things up a little bit. So there's a lot of things going on and a lot of decisions to make even as far as this.
I think, yeah, just just how much weight do you want to manage? That's most important because you don't you're going to you don't want to be out there struggling with a heavy honey box. That's why I switched from one deep. brood box to then the rest medium boxes. Same. And I will say real quick before we move on, when I was a brand new beekeeper, before I knew really anything, I had no idea the difference between 10 frame and eight frame, no idea that it was even a different
box. And so I remember asking some people I work with, like, do you just put eight frames in there? Or how does that work? So yeah, it's not as complicated as it seems to begin with. But the answer is no, you don't just put eight frames in a 10 frame box. You'll be sorry, we'll leave it at that. Are you planning on expanding your apiary this year? Or are you a beginner thinking about jumping into beekeeping for the very first time? Take it from someone who's purchased beekeeping equipment
from many different suppliers. If you want made in USA woodenware, premium feeds, top quality and great prices on everything, give Man Lake a try. And whether or not you're a beekeeper, you can help honey bees and other pollinators by planting bee -friendly forage. Man Lake has that too. In fact, download the free Man Lake app and learn about some of the best plants for your area. Go to manlakeltd .com and be sure
to use discount code getstartedinbees. It's all down in the show notes for savings on live bees, beginner kits, and even seeds. Temperature management inside a hive isn't just a winter problem. In summer your bees work overtime keeping things cool. You see brood needs optimal temperatures. Primal bees insulated hives buffer against temperature swings year -round. Less extreme highs, less extreme lows. Less work for your bees. And right now Primal Bee is offering a 10 % discount just
for bee love listeners. Click on over to primalbee .com forward slash bee love and use the discount code bee love at checkout. I've got one. I think you're gonna love it. Let's move on from there. Let's talk about different kinds of bees. What? There are different kinds of bees? I know, right? That's amazing. They're not just honeybees. There's many kinds of honeybees, for sure. Another thing I have no idea about, I was thinking, what do you mean? There's there's Buckfest and there's
Italian and there's Southern Italian. What? And there's California Italian. What? And there's Russian and there's hybrids. There's a few others in between. Where do people go find information to figure that one out? So actually, if we could just St. Man Lake is a great place to get that information. We've broken it down so well for
the different types of bees that we carry. When you go to the website, you can take a look at the different attributes, their energy levels, how they're going to act as far as swarming. So we've really broken that down for you and put that right out there. Our website is full of so much rich, just educational knowledge and just so much stuff out there. About all the bees really and you can call us and you can call him.
We would be happy to discuss it further So just to give people an idea of what you're talking about. You've got a chart that will say something like Italian bees have more swarming behavior or less swarming behavior and and this kind of bee does better in cold weather, and this kind of bee may be better in warmer weather. This kind of bee, speaking of Russians, they're a little bit cranky. This kind of bee, like Buckfast, they're just sweethearts and they'll come give
you a kiss on the cheek. So you can look through all those traits, find out which are the most important to you, and which fit best with where you live. Hopefully talk to somebody in your area too. that's a beekeeper to make the right decision. I had somebody call me a couple of years ago from up in my area saying, ah, can you come help me? I don't know what's going on
with my bees, but they're just mean. And she was a first year beekeeper and turns out she had bought Russian bees and I wouldn't recommend that for first year beekeepers. Right. And they were just, they were very aggressive and she was scared and I don't blame her. And that's important when you're, you don't want to be scared. You don't want to have that mindset when you're going into your hives. So to be scared, that's,
that's not enjoyable. You're not going to enjoy yourself and ultimately beekeeping should be enjoyable. So what are your favorite bees, by the way? Well, funny you say that because I actually have Russians. They're my partners, but we've loved them. They haven't attacked us. They haven't attacked him. They haven't attacked me. They're just sweet. They're amazing what what they do. But aside, but not for a beginner beaker. I did wait. I did wait. I will preface that with it.
I think it was my third year before I got Russians or before we got them. I started with the Carniolans, which are beautiful, gentle, docile honey makers. They go out on cool days to forage early. So Carnolians, beautiful breed. We are Carnolean lovers over here. Yeah, we are. I haven't worked with Buckfast yet. Do you like them? Well, we haven't either, but this is going to be our first
year doing it. We are actually getting a package of Buckfast so we can take Everyone along with us, we plan on showing some footage of that and going along this season with our buck fast. And we're going to be putting them in an eight frame hive, which is also going to be new for me. So a lot of new experiences. And so even beekeeping for years, you know, you're still going to have new experiences. And we hope to really enjoy
working with the buck fast. And then we'll be able to talk a little bit more about that breed. Absolutely. I'm really looking forward to the buck fast this year. I haven't heard. anything but good things about them. So I'm really excited for our bug fast journey. I don't need new bees this year, but maybe I should get some of those too, just to give them a try. I think you should try them. We could talk about our experiences together. That'd be fun. Yeah. We'll have a part
two of this. Now you mentioned the term package a minute ago, package of bees. There's another term that if you're new, you're going what? And that is a nuke of bees. Why don't you explain what those two things are and why you need to order one or the other? Sure. So I'll actually show a package if you want to explain about it. I'll grab one. Yeah, that's another thing that can be a little confusing to someone who's just
trying to order for the first time. This stuff's going to show you can get a package of bees which come in a bee bus. We like to use a fun little term. They'll be either in a white plastic bee bus such as this one, which essentially is a brand new bunch of bees, about 10 ,000 bees, roughly three pounds. They've just been put together. Right then and there they put them in the package.
The queen is separate will come in a queen cage So has not been acclimated with that particular colony They do come with a syrup can so you can get those either by picking them up at a facility Or you can actually get them by USPS through the mail they go to your local post office where you can just go there and Pick up your bees and bring them home within the bee bus. They're pretty secure in there. So they won't be able to really
get out and fly around. The one thing I like about the bee bus too when you're getting the package is you actually get a chance to see what a cluster of bees looks like in your hive in the wintertime too. They make such a beautiful cluster so it's fun to see. It's nice if you really want to experience it from the very beginning. If you want to really grow along with your bees, a package will help you do that because you're
going to take them home. You'll have your hive set up and you just gently put the bees in there and you all start together really. And a package of bees you can put in any of the hive styles that we talked about. Whether it's top bar, length, trough, AZ, whatever it is, primal hive, they'll work in anything. Now a nuke is a little bit different. Explain a nuke. So a nuke is going to be a set of bees. So it comes in a nuke and it's usually four or five frames that's already
been started. So think of it as a package that has a jumpstart because you're getting a queen that's already been introduced to her fellow bees in there. There's already brood in there. There's nurse bees ready to go. So your frames and then you have you generally have a frame of honey in there too. They'll give you frame of honey. So then that's where you probably will need a Langstroth because these nukes come on
frames already. So you want to make sure you have equipment that those frames are going to fit. These bees are ready to go. So they're going to go out foraging faster. They don't need to do a whole lot to get ready there. That's why a nuke is sometimes a good jumpstart. If you want to see maybe honey production that year. You want to, you know, maybe harvest a little more. A package might be somewhere to start as well. Or a nuc, I'm sorry. A nuc is, yeah, ready
to go. And nuc stands for nucleus colony. It's basically a small colony of bees. It's like a small beehive. You're going to then take the frames, put them into your full -size equipment. And if you're using traditional 10 frame boxes. Well, they don't even have to be 10 frame boxes. They could be eight, but they need to be deep boxes. Then a nuke could work for you. Can you have a nuke ship to you? No, that is never a
good idea. These bees have already, they're probably a little, you know, they want to get to their permanent home. So you can only pick up a nuke from us, but you wouldn't want to ship a nuke anyway. You'd be on the receiving end with some angry bees. Well and it would weigh more and be bigger and all that kind of stuff. It's just
not really practical. So a nuc you're gonna pick up from a local supplier like a man lake in your area or some other bee supplier in your area or even a local beekeeper might be selling nucs. And that's also a really great way to get bees because they're probably acclimated to your climate. Thanks again for joining us on Bee Love Beekeeping, presented by our great friends over at Man Lake. Hey, and don't forget to order your bees. And a shout out to Vita Bee Health for their support.
Vita's Varroa Control Ranger products includes Epistan, Epigard, and now Varroxan Extended Release Oxalic Acids Trips. Thank you so much, guys. If you haven't yet, please subscribe and follow the show, tell your friends about it, and click on over to BeLoveBkeeping .com to sign up for our free newsletter. If you have a guest suggestion or topic that you'd like discussed on the show, shoot me an email, eric at BeLoveBkeeping .com.
And remember, if you're not just in it for the honey or the money, you're in it for the love. See you next week.