May I have your attention, please? The following is not the real Jeff Fox release. If you have ever referred to a presidential election as a super seizure, you might be a beekeeper. If you do more splits than a gymnast, You might be a beekeeper. If you wash your bee suit once a year, whether it needs it or not, you definitely might be a beekeeper. Welcome, welcome to Be Love Beekeeping
presented by our good friends at Man Lake. Today our guest is John Smith from Oklahoma and we'll be discussing his experience in both commercial and hobby beekeeping, how he got started, and his beekeeping in many different parts of the country. But before we jump into that, a listener recently sent in his wild and crazy beekeeping story that really cracked me up. Some of us can maybe relate to this. He's a little too shy to come on the podcast, so please bear with me as
I read it. It's pretty long, but here we go. Okay, just to give you a little bit of background here, we're going to find so many mistakes going on in this story. The first of one being he and his wife live next door to their in -laws. Okay, so here's what's going on. The in -laws got into beekeeping. He's been into beekeeping much longer than them. He knows a lot more about it than they do. They have lost hives over winter and there's only one hive left between the two of
them. The in -laws think they know it all. They think he knows nothing. All right, there's your setup. Mother's Day weekend, he was thinking, I have got to get into my hive. I've got to see what's going on there, check on it. But he just hadn't got around to it yet. And at the dinner table with the in -laws, mother -in -law says, oh, why don't we check on the bees tonight? He thought, that sounds really strange. You shouldn't go into a bee hive at night. That never happens.
and nobody talks about it again for a while so later on in the evening he puts the kids to bed and then at nine o 'clock he gets a call saying hey we're going to check your hive come on over oh he's thinking this is a big mistake but he grabs his veil he grabs his big gloves and he runs over he doesn't take time to get a smoker or his full b -suit now in his words yep they're in my hive father -in -law with a veil, mother -in -law has nothing on for protective clothing,
but of course she wasn't going to be handling the frames. I look around for their supplies. No smoker anywhere. I think to myself this is going to be fun. The feeder is still on and they're taking it off to get to the frames. They get one frame out and check it. The comb is building out away from the foundation in a way that they don't like. I say something about it but they ignore me and then comment how their bees hadn't done that because they used wax foundation. They
put it back in without fixing the comb. I just let them keep walking into their disaster. They
pull another frame closer to the center. it looks good has some brood my mother -in -law is all high and mighty i don't like how little brood there is that's not good so this is just the first of five frames that had come with the nuke so it's fine they pull another one from the outside but on the other side to see the build out and i'm all thinking good they're going to rush this because they can tell the bees are getting agitated I've now got bees checking me out, starting to
get mad, and I'm off to the side. They put the frame back in. My mother -in -law wants to check for brood in the middle. I think, uh -oh, this is going to be the last straw for the bees. They pull up the frame. My mother -in -law gets in there. No veil. pointing her flashlight to see them. She says the brood looks good now, but I can see the bees start to swarm angrily and they're starting to land on her. Suddenly she
is backing away from the hive. My father -in -law, who I think can tell something is wrong with the hive's behavior, now is yelling that he can't see to pull the frame as she left him with no light. I'm told angrily by my father -in -law, you need to get in there. You have a veil and gloves. Now this is only because I was semi -prepared. I grab the flashlight from her, step in, hold the light knowing full well what they've done and that I'm gonna get stung.
I watch in horror as my father -in -law insists on pulling another frame to check for brood and pollen. I can see him starting to get stung in earnest now. No smoke to mask the smell pheromones telling the other bees to attack. I know this is only going to escalate. I've got them landing
on me, trying to find flesh to sting. I have a good two inch gap between my gloves and my short sleeves, so keeping the light steady for him is not my priority as I try to keep from getting that first sting, which I know will compound quickly without smoke. He puts the frame back in while yelling about light. I finally just tell him to close the hive. He puts the top feeder back on. I start casting my eyes about looking frantically for whoever has the syrup to refill
it. My brother -in -law, who I didn't know was there, has run off with it. Wanting to not make this a complete waste, I chase him down, then risk going back in to refill the feeder, which really was all I originally thought we were going to do. But alas, that doesn't help when they're already out of the hive trying to sting us. I fill the feeder about two -thirds full as I can
tell the bees are in full attack mode now. I can see my father -in -law has a half dozen stings already but puts the lid fully on while smacking at his exposed skin and screaming about how the bees have gotten inside his veil. Turning to run, I realize a bee is under my veil also. I can feel it climbing on my nose. While I'm booking it away from the hive, I swipe away the bee and feel the veil catch and roll the bee. The buzz
has stopped. I got her. I think triumphantly, knowing that they're going to follow more intently if I get that first sting. Thinking that the idiots and onlookers would realize that they need to vacate the area also, I don't say anything too assertive for them to leave the area as I approach. The bee is back! I hadn't killed it after all. I smack my nose, knocking my glasses and veil off, but it heroically stings me right next to my nose and way too close to my eye.
My mother -in -law is now screaming about one in her hair, but she and the onlookers have stopped some 15 feet from the hive to check each other for bees. I tell my wife to get farther away and to follow me. She's now decided it's a good time to tell me that I need to make sure I got all the bees off of me before going back into the house. My in -law's house is up the hill in the other direction, so I assume that they've listened and left. At 40 feet I'm still feeling
two or three bees on me. I feel another one land and it instantly stings me on the jawline. I arrive back at my deck which has a good light on and check myself for bees. Suddenly my three -year -old having heard that we were checking the bees comes out of the back door having changed out of his jammies and into shorts and a t -shirt he announces triumphantly he has come to help with the bees. He had received explicit instructions to stay in bed as the bees would likely get really
mad. I send him tersely back into the house, knowing I more than likely have some on me. He's now crying because he wants to help and I won't let him. Getting him through the door, I return to inspect myself. He now has his nose pressed to the glass, sobbing, so I ask my wife to comfort him as I kill another bee before I get stung by it. Disposing of yet another bee, I cast about myself looking for her but she is nowhere to
be found. Yep, she's still back with the others standing 15 feet from the hive and swatting themselves. Convinced I'm now bee free, I go inside the house to console my son and get him to start walking back to bed. When my wife comes in, five minutes later, I rhetorically ask, where did you go? Dumbfounded, she replies, We were all checking each other for bees. I had gotten stung farther away from the hive than where they had been standing. My father -in -law got at least a dozen stings.
I'm sure most of those after we had closed the hive. A few got his face too. All right, final chapter here. Later that night they called and told us how they now believe in smoke and they were going to double check. on their impression that night was maybe not the best time to check the hive. Also mentioning to my wife that they were looking to buy at least one full bee suit now. Okay, lots of lessons learned. Now, what
do you say we get to our guest? I'd like to welcome to the show today John Smith, and that is your real name, isn't it John? Yes it is. Thank God it's not John Doe. And you're in Oklahoma. And so, hey, welcome to the Midwest, everybody. Yep, Oklahoma, south of Oklahoma City. Do you have kind of crazy winters there as far as beekeeping? Overall, it doesn't really get all that cold mid teens. And, you know, we might get lows down to just below zero, but very rarely. is that
the case? Unfortunately, we get ice. So overall, the winters aren't terrible, but you got to deal with the ice. So. Yeah, they do sound pretty rough. Hey, when you and I were talking earlier, I found it interesting that you had done beekeeping in a number of different locations, including Texas, Arizona, Florida, Wisconsin, Minnesota. now Oklahoma. And I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, you worked for a commercial beekeeper
for a time? Yeah, so I worked for a commercial beekeeper about two years after I started beekeeping in 2010. and I worked for a person who he had approximately 10 ,000 hives and I got to learn the kind of the pollination routes and kind of the commercial style of beekeeping. Well the first thing that I want to learn from you and we're going to talk about all kinds of topics today by the way including wild and crazy beekeeping
stories that's where you and I first met. But I'd like to hear what it's like when you're working for a commercial beekeeper. What is a year like? Like, what are you doing in September? What are you doing in November? What are you doing in March, April, May, that kind of thing? Would you just sort of take us through the calendar? Yeah. So typically honey harvest is in August. And August, early September, mite treatments
go in right after the honey harvest. So that's kind of where we decide, are these guys queenless? Are they small? Did they swarm? That type of stuff. So around that period of time, August, September. That's that's kind of where I don't know if you've ever listened to Bob Binney But he says your season starts in August and that's kind of one of the things I learned so getting the mites under control testing so on and so forth by Around this is this is for Wisconsin,
Minnesota. So by around middle of November they will get loaded onto a trailer and hauled down south whether it be Florida or Texas was typically where I went And then you more or less start feeding the heck out of them by middle of December and testing for mites, keeping everything like that under control. And then we would load them up end of January, beginning of February, and then they would go over to California. I've only
pollinated almonds in California. beginning of March ish somewhere in that area sometimes it's a little later they would get loaded back up and hauled back to Texas or Florida where we would go on ahead and we'd start splitting and making nukes up and then from there they would either go on to different pollination contracts or they would go back to Wisconsin Minnesota back where back home and then you basically you know get them up there in April Mayesh and take
them out to your outyards. Make sure they're good on mites and whatnot if you need to retreat. Typically we used Apivar in the fall more commonly and we used Formic in the spring because it gave you a little better knockdown. But usually if you keep the mites low all year you don't really run into too much trouble. Then you just repeat, you harvest, you put boxes out throughout June, July and pull them in August, September. It's
a full -time job. Yeah, beekeepers are the hardest working people, especially the commercial beekeepers. Yeah, I don't envy that. I wanted to stress one of the first things that you said, and that was making sure that the mites were under control starting early, like in August, something like that. And I know a lot of beekeepers have made the mistake that I have too, going, oh. I'll check before winter because I don't want mites in winter. And so come October, yep, got mites.
Let's put some treatment on now. And folks, you got to start a lot earlier than that. Keep them under control. In fact, all year long, keep them under control. Yeah. And one thing I will say, that was my biggest, that was the best thing I learned from going from just a hobbyist. to a sideliner is working with a commercial outfit to where they were very critical upon keeping the mite numbers low. If we had 2 % mite counts, that was way too high, basically. So they were
very critical on that. And it was always taken into account that if you've got sick bees, they're never going to be very productive. And that's what I've seen, too. Then at what point did you decide, hey, instead of working for this great company, I think I want to do some of this on my own and become a sideliner? How many hives did you get up to? 2010, I started with two hives. In spring of 2011, I had lost both of them. I would say failure to treat and failure to feed.
Quick break to thank our presenting sponsor, Man Lake. I've found that Man Lake has absolutely everything I need to take care of the health of my bees. Mite checks and treatments, beetle management, hive health and nutrition, pollen substitutes, food and feeders, and the knowledge base to help you know how to use it. Including Bella, their AI beekeeping genius. Just look for her icon in the bottom right hand corner
of your screen at manlakeltd .com. While you're there, don't forget your discount code MLBlove. It's in the show notes. For $10 off your first $100 purchase. Then 2011, I think I bought five packages and I was started working with the commercial operation a little bit, you know, just helping, helping in the spring split and stuff like that. Cause I was, I was wanting to learn a lot. And by 2013, I believe I had around 50 colonies that I had 2014. And by this point I had had very
good results. I was coming out of winter with a 10 % loss, you know, a 10 % loss rate. So I had very good results. And I went from around 50 up to 200, 250, somewhere in that range. And then I started working with the commercial beekeeper more and we were basically just including my yards into his rounds. And he got me into pollination around the 2013ish, 2014 mark. And that's kind of where I did that for another five years. You jumped in pretty fast. Do you recommend that
for other people? If you have a good mentor, I don't think it's a problem. If you're just going in it alone, I would suggest against it because I got a lot of breaks in regards to somebody who they would buy a truckload of equipment so I could get commercial prices on all my equipment. And I also had knowledge if I wanted to ask a question or I was pondering an idea, I could just shoot a text or give my mentor a call and he would be more than happy to help me in any
way, shape or form. And that's the same way with like queens and whatnot too. I raise them as well and I did supply myself and some of his queens as well. So we all kind of work together. Let's talk about queens. As long as you brought up queens, let's talk about that a little bit. I know you have some experience raising queens. What kind of method do you like to use? Tell me a little bit about your preferences and also the kind of breeds you like. So I mostly did
Carniolans and Italians. They were mutts by the time I got done with them, or they made it and whatnot. But Carniolans and Italians were the most popular. And I would basically start grafting the end of middle of May, end of May. I used starter finishers. I did not move the cells from a starter to a finisher. I made all my mating nukes and stuff like that. You know, I did all
that stuff. I would actually, what I would do is I would take an actual five frame nuke and run a little piece of half inch plywood, dado that out. And then I had my nukes that when I was done with them, I could just pull that out and it was a nuke again. I only run approximately 150 to like 250 queens a year, but that was to satisfy myself and my local beekeeping clubs. Realistically what it takes, this was a learning
experience, strong hives. You want to, for your starters and your finishers, they need to be strong. I would usually do it in 10 frame boxes and I would be swapping out frames of brood, capped brood would have eight or nine frames of caproot in a hive at all times. There were too many bees in the box, basically, is how it played out. I could easily start and finish 50 cells in that colony every about two weeks -ish. I think a queen emerges on day 16. So I would
swap them out about every 12 to 13 days. Okay. Wow. You're cooking through this stuff, John. What else do you think would be important for people to learn about from your experience? Grow with your bees would probably be my biggest suggestion. Uh, I know when I first got started, I had a mentality of like, I wanted to, you know, I wanted to be a commercial beekeeper and have a thousand colonies or that type of stuff. It's not really worth it to do that. In my opinion, I grew very
fast. You know, I went from 10 to 50 in a year and that's, that's a big jump. But if you grow with your bees, and you know you double every year, it doesn't take you very long to get to 250 or 300. So that's what I would suggest is growing with your bees and if you can, go work with a commercial beekeeper for a year or two if you're interested in that type of stuff because they are such a plethora of knowledge that you really don't. you can't get unless you're working
with them. You can read books and watch videos, but it's different than hands -on, being out there, seeing the sights and all that type of stuff. Did you find that some of the things that you learned just came with experience? I'm thinking, for example, If you've got a hobbyist, a fairly new beekeeper and they're in their hives for maybe they've got two hives. And so they're in there for an hour a month or something like that. I mean, they're going to have a hard time finding
a queen. They're going to have a hard time spotting problems, things like that. What kinds of things can you learn by being in hives all day every day? Well, one thing you can learn, in my opinion, which is very important as well, is you don't need to see the queen. Like, I know that's a big thing with new people, because I've taught quite a few people, family members included, about they want to get into bees. And that's
great. I always suggest that they do it. But when they say, oh, you know, I don't see the queen or I can't find her. And I said, well, do you see eggs and larvae? Are they making the
roar, the queenless roar? and usually if they say well no I see eggs and I see larva and stuff I'm like well she's in there just you don't need to see her you know she's doing her job and you just let her be because too many people will go through and manipulate frames and unintentionally cause harm when it's really unnecessary and that was one thing I learned I personally don't rip into a hive any farther than if I see a few eggs that's fine that's all the more I need to see
Yeah, I would suggest don't be in the hives too much and look at the signs around the hive to see if they're looking for queens and whatnot. I've heard the term over -inspecting. There's under -inspecting and over -inspecting. We need some kind of a nice balance right in the middle. Yeah, the over -inspecting is just as bad, if not worse, in my opinion. Yeah. Because then you get bees that are mad at you, and then you get stung, and a bad experience leaves a bad
taste. Well, you're ripping their house apart. You're probably smoking them to death. It's going to put them back every time you get in there. So you need to have a good reason and a plan every time you get in. I couldn't have said it better myself. Hey, I'm just curious, if you don't mind, why did you decide not to be a commercial beekeeper? Why did I consider not to be? That's a question I've asked myself too. Realistically, I didn't like the management aspect of it more
than anything. That was the worst part. I really liked being in the bee yard and working with the bees. I didn't like having to set up locations and having to buy stuff and having to pay your employees and stuff like that. And that's the main reason why. Overall, I'm more of the type of person who would much rather be in the bee yard working with the bees than sitting behind a desk and on a telephone talking to clients and talking to customers and stuff like that.
All right. The first time you and I talked, you were telling me about an experience that you had with some very hot queens. Okay. Let's put that in perspective. We're talking about beekeeping here when we're talking about hot queens. Tell me what was going on. This was one of those wild and crazy stories. Okay. Well, uh, so it was middle of March ish and I got a telephone call from my mentor and mind you, I'm a thousand miles away and he says, Hey, I'm going to need your
help. And I was like, Oh, okay. Well, you know, what, what do we need? He's like, can you be down to Houston by tomorrow? And I'm like, Yeah, I can. So I got on a plane and then I flew down there and I figured out that he, we were talking back and forth and he had approximately 700 splits that were way too aggressive. They were bad. You couldn't, you couldn't be in the bee yard without getting just mauled to death. So I was talking to him and I had never worked with really
hot bees before. And he, you know, we were sitting in the truck. I remember that, that morning we were sitting in the truck and he's like, well, let's make sure you're zipped up. And we pulled into the, into the off the field road and they were already starting to hit the truck. And this is, you know, it's, it's six 30 in the morning. Sun's just starting to come up. We had a heck of a day. Cause the first day we went through
and we had to fix these, these hives. So it was us and five other people, I think four other people. Basically we took the colonies for double deeps and just split them like right in half. One side went to a new pallet and then put lids on all the other colonies that we took the top box off of. And then that next morning we went back through and I wasn't checking the hives to see which ones were queen right, but basically they would just pop the lid and you could hear
if they're queenless. And then that lid would get turned over if it was queenless. And if the other one was not, it got left alone. And then we had another person coming behind them, putting new queen cages into the boxes that were queen -less. We left them alone for a day. And then the next day, we went and shook out all of the boxes that were queen -rate. And that was a new experience for me. And I don't wish to ever relive that. When you say you shook them out into something
on the ground, what did you do? on the ground. Yep. Oh man. The queen right colonies basically got shook out onto the ground and those boxes got combined back with the colony that had a queen, a new queen in it. And yeah, it was blotting out the sun. Like you had to wipe your veil off. It was really bad. I've never seen that before, but that was, I guess, one of the most efficient ways to do it because you can't go through 700 colonies and try and find each individual queen.
But yeah, that was one really crazy beekeeping story that I've had. And I wish that upon nobody. I think you just answered my earlier question about why did you decide not to be a commercial beekeeper? I learned a really good lesson that day. And it was, if you're going to be doing something like that, you've got to be able to take a curve ball. And that was a heck of a curve ball, because. Yeah. it, it, it was, it was terrible.
That's the nicest way to put it. It was, I don't know how many times I got stung, you know, you get stung in the gloves and I had a good suit on and everything like that, but that's, that's just how they did it. We taped up our legs. I remember that was one thing I did. I didn't do it right away because you know, you're wearing your boots and whatnot, but they can still figure out ways to get in. These were strong colonies too, cause they were, they had, they had come
back from almonds about a month earlier. they were fairly strong so you you got to deal with that too and I don't know if you know anything about bees where the bigger they get the more pushy they can get but that's kind of what I've noticed. Well when you told me they were in Houston I assumed maybe they had Africanized genetics and that's why they were so onry but if they had been out in almonds with you did they have that kind of personality then? No these were
these were splits. these were new queens that they had introduced into splits. The old hives were not like that. These were the splits that were coming back. But they, we usually made splits pretty strong because if you make them strong, you can get a secondary nuke off of them instead of, cause we sold nukes in May 15th -ish. So if you make them strong, if you put, you know, four or five frames of brood plus a queen cell within a month, you can make another nuke off
of them. Gotcha. Okay, so folks, if you want to have a real experience, find 700 really angry beehives, pull them in half, shake them out all over the ground. I can't even imagine. When you say blacked out the sun, I believe you. Yeah, I mean, you know, because these are these are all healthy bees and they're all wanting to kill anything that moves. So it was bad enough. To be honest with you, I don't know where the Queens
came from. I wasn't going to push any buttons on anybody, but yeah, they were hostile to say the least. Sounds like they came from hell personally. Yeah. You're in Utah, correct? Yeah. So where do you guys get your Queens and packages and stuff from? Well, you can get some local ones here. A lot of people get them from California. So people that have been in almonds and either kept their bees out there and then shook them into packages or or made nukes out there and
bring them here. They usually come here in April sometime is pretty average. So, yeah, both from out of state and from here. And I prefer ones from here because they've been proven to be able to overwinter here and deal with our climate. It's like I've always thought, oh, I've got to get some of those Kona queens because I love Hawaii. Let's get some of that Hawaii genetics here. But I don't know, can they handle a winter in Utah in the mountains? I mean, I'm at 5 ,700
feet where I live and have colonies here. And they've got to be pretty tough bees. Yeah. And that's one thing I have learned is because I used to use a lot of Florida queens. And that was always my concern was, well, I was back on the Minnesota Wisconsin border, and I wondered if they would be able to winter as well. And I actually found it wasn't all that big of a deal. As long as they had enough food, they're
pretty resilient. And I know I'm way oversimplifying because in Kona, it's not like they have Kona genetics. Right. I mean, honey bees aren't native there either. So frankly, they could take carniolans or Russians or anything over there and raise them there. And they do it there because the weather is so great all year round. I get that. I'm just sort of oversimplifying that genetic thing. Hey, before I let you go, you've done enough beekeeping. I'll bet you have a wild and
crazy story that's going to make us laugh. Can you think of one? My first real experience with working with a commercial beekeeper, I was more or less the labor. This would have been in 2011. I was pulling honey. And I had no idea of what was going on. I was just basically doing what I was told. And that's fine. But I didn't have a suit. So my mentor gave me a suit, which was a single layer, almost like an overall type of
suit, a single layer. And I was trying to count the stingers in my back by the end of the day, but I ran out at 350. In your back or in the back of your suit? It was in the back of my suit, but the stinger still goes through because you're sweating and the suit sticks to you. Then he jokingly says, oh, you should probably buy a ventilated suit so you don't get stung. I'm like, well, I guess you could have just told me that, but I probably would have been too broke to buy
one. I'm using the money I made today to put an order in for a ventilated suit. So were these bad enough? I mean, were these regular stings? Like you, you've got all the venom and everything through the suit. No, they, they weren't, they weren't like I was getting dosed a hundred percent
of the venom. They were, they were just stuck in the suit and when the suit would lay down on top of your back, it would like stick to you because it's a hundred degrees out, you know, and I'm sweating and picking up, you know, 60 pound boxes and throwing them up on the back of the truck. Yeah, well, that's what I had assumed. But if you had actually taken that many stings your first day, I wanted to ask you how you survived
it and how you felt that night. Yeah, no, I was I was actually very sore, but it was I wasn't getting the full venom. They were stinging the suit and I'd pull it out. You know, I'd feel it. Yeah. But yeah, you don't get immune to the response of something stinging you, so. No, you may get immune to the venom, but not to the pain of the sting. You're still getting stabbed with
a needle. That was my first kind of, I laugh about it because, well, I mean, we can all relate to being stung a few times, but when you get stung repeatedly over and over, and then you have the pheromone on you. So every time you walk into the bee yard and pull a box off, you get to experience it again. That is just one of those terrible welcome to beekeeping, John. Yeah, I definitely I learned my lesson though.
It only took it only took one one time and I went and got a ventilated bee suit that next day. So then I didn't have to get stung at all. All right. Hey, John, I really appreciate you being with me today. Any last thoughts? Any wisdom that you'd like to leave with our listeners? I would like to suggest that people get into beekeeping. It's a wonderful hobby that you can
learn something new from every day. You'll never learn everything about bees, so I would suggest everybody take a peek at it and get into it. Amen. Thanks a lot. We'll talk to you again soon. Thank you very much. Thanks again for joining us here on Bee Love Beekeeping, presented by Man Lake. Remember right now to follow or subscribe and share this podcast. Also a quick shout out
to Vita Bee Health for their support. Vita's Varroa Control range of products includes Apistan, Apigard, and now Varroxan Extended Release Oxalic Acid Strips. Thanks guys. Enjoy spring everybody. Enjoy your bees. 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. you