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. Today we're kicking off the year with Matt Malicka from Honey Bee Health Coalition
to discuss the North American Bee Strategy. We'll learn all about the status of so many things related to beekeeping, including the fair market of honey, pests, varroa, miticides, pesticides, forage, diseases, honey authenticity, beekeeping economics. It is a packed episode, but before we jump in, think about this. If you're a beekeeper, you are one of the cool kids. That's right, beekeeping has gone from nerds -ville to totally hip. Just listen to some of the celebs who share your passion.
Rod Stewart and wife Penny Lancaster have eight hives on their estate. Ed Sheeran has bees. So does Stacy Solomon, Sir David Beckham, Beyoncé, King Charles, Queen Camilla, not together of course, Princess Kate. Megan Markle, Morgan Freeman, Scarlett Johansson, Leonardo DiCaprio, Sting, Jennifer Garner, John Bon Jovi, Christie Brinkley, Angelina Jolie, Bruce Springsteen, and of course, Martha Stewart. So don't be afraid to shout it loud and proud, you're a beekeeper and it is
cool. By the way, if any of you celebs would like to be on the show, Send an email to ericatbelovebekeeping .com. I won't be holding my breath, but it would be fun. I'd like to welcome to the show today, we have a really special guest today, Matt Malicka. How are you, Matt? I'm doing well. How are you, Eric? I'm doing fantastic. It is a beautiful day here and you're just across the mountains from me in Colorado. We both need snow. It'll come. Yeah. Yep. It's a little too warm for this
time of year, but it'll come. Always does. We're going to be talking today about the North American Bee Strategy report, which came out recently. And man, there's a lot to it. We'll try not to get too technical or too... or two in the weeds, but give some practical advice that's come from all of this. And why don't you just jump in with giving us a brief, what the heck is the North American Bee Strategy and why do you do it? Sure.
So I run the Honey Bee Health Coalition. And so this is a group that brings together beekeepers in agriculture. The beekeeping industry has You know, a couple different associations, and more when you look at U .S. and Canada. It's kind of a hierarchy, right? You have your local clubs, you have your state associations, and then you have your regional associations like... W -A
-S -E -A -S and H -A -S. And then you have your national associations, American Honey Producers Association and the American Beekeeping Federation. In Canada, they have a similar kind of structure, but clubs, provinces, and the national associations. And the national associations are the Canadian Beekeeping Federation and the Canadian Honey Council. We share a almost all the same problems. Bees don't recognize borders. I was approached 18 months ago or so by the national associations
of the U .S. and Canada to come up with a strategy that they can all lean on together. And so we started meeting and started talking about, well, what are the most important things? And they came up with roughly the three big buckets of pests and disease. the honey markets in research. You can go to Honey Bee Health Coalition, forward slash N -A -B -S, and you can find this document that they really spent a lot of time on. It goes through varroa management and what's needed in
varroa. It goes through tropa lay laps and how do we keep it out? And if it ever gets here, what do we do? It goes through... the honey markets and threats from adulteration and importing honey that's not really honey and how you test those things and how do you how do you prevent beekeepers getting under priced by things that may not be honey. And then it goes through research and how we really put forward more applied research, less hypothetical research, research that can
lead to better bee health outcomes. and give guidance to beekeepers on how to have healthier hives. And that URL that you mentioned, Matt, we'll stick that down on the show notes in case anybody wants to pull it up. It's a really beautiful PDF with pretty pictures and stuff, 29 pages long, but not 29 pages of five point type. It's a really good summary of the whole all these.
Three main areas that you talked about you could do a hundred pages on each one of those easily So if people want more detail, I don't know. Where's a good place to start? When you talk about for example adulterated honey, I think it really depends on What information they're seeking there is resources in the back and references So if they if they go there then they want to learn more I would say that would be a great place to start The Honey Bee Health Coalition,
we focus on bee health. And we know that bees are in and around agriculture all the time. Like beekeepers don't have enough land to own where they can keep their bees. So there's always going to be these interactions with agriculture. And so that's really the foundation for where the Honey Bee Health Coalition is coming from, which
is beekeepers and farmers. like really need to be partners in this so that we can continue providing healthy fruits and vegetables and feed for the meats and all of the things that agriculture does can't be at the detriment of bees and other native pollinators. You can go to the Honey Bee Health Coalition and find a lot of information on varroa and hive management and protecting your bees from pesticides and all the things
that we do. On our website we don't talk so much about honey markets because that's that's more of like the health of an industry and We're more focused on bee health I think it's a very practical hands -on place to go honeybee health coalition org Because you've got the Varroa management guide and the Varroa management decision tool Which I was playing around with this morning and I've used it before and it's a really simple like Okay, what time of year is it? Where are
your bees at in the life cycle? Are they dormant? Is the population increasing or decreasing? Are you okay using chemicals versus Natural techniques or cultural techniques? Thank you. Natural chemicals too, like your acids and things like that. So that Honey Bee Health Coalition website is awesome and a really good tool. It's really practical, hands -on kind of stuff. That's what I like about it for beekeepers of any size. And we'll go back and forth talking about that in the North American
Bee Strategy Report. I have some questions getting back to that report, if you don't mind, Matt. For those that haven't heard much about tropal elapse, give us a non -scientific. What the heck is this thing and how do we keep it from invading? So tropal elapse, I think, are originally from Southeast Asia and like Vietnam and Thailand. And they're a pest or a parasite of Apis serrana and Apis dorsata. So all of our honeybees are Apis mellifera, the European honeybee. This is
like the giant Asian honeybee. They're about a quarter of the size of a Varroa mite and they're incredibly fast. So you look at them on a hive and they are moving around at, I don't know, 10 times the speed of a Varroa mite. If they hit North American beekeepers, it's going to be devastating. They reproduce quickly. They, you know, have the same detrimental effects of varroa in spreading and disease. They can move
through different colonies quickly. And so right now we do not have them and we're trying to keep them out. Incidentally, about this last summer, there was a cargo ship off, you know, the coast of New Jersey that was traveling into the U .S. and they found a swarm. and they destroyed that swarm. And apiary inspector came out, took a sample of the dead bees, and they found AAA labs
on this. So the protocols worked, right? The captain found the swarm, they called it in, they destroyed it, we got samples, but it reminds us, geez, that was a close call, right? So just like the Varroa infestation or introduction in the mid to eighties, Once it gets here, because of our migratory colonies, and the number of colonies, and also just the size of our colonies, it's going to be next to impossible to stop the spread of tropal ellipse. So that's the highest
level of Jesus is an important issue. And we can talk to people in Australia that not many years ago, Varroa finally showed up and it spread through that country so fast that they couldn't stop it. They tried and it was just it was just too late and they also do a lot of migratory beekeeping there like we do here in North America
which is how it spread so darn fast. I did read recently that Canadian beekeepers have asked their government to I believe outlaw imports of bee colonies from anywhere outside of North America. Is that the case? They've asked that They not import bees from areas that have tropal elaps or countries that are adjacent to those countries that have tropal elaps. So I don't think they're saying nothing from the whole world, but we kind of know where tropal elaps is and
isn't. Let's not import bees from areas where it might be, or we know it is. Do we have any in South or Central America? I don't believe so. Okay. So we don't have to worry too much about if we're bringing bees, say, from Mexico up. In the North American Bee Strategy, that's in a link to an evolving map because obviously it's moving. But yeah, you could take a look at that. Thailand, Vietnam, China, India, Georgia, Uzbekistan, Russia is an unknown, Ukraine likely
has it. And then it has not spread further than that. Yeah. Then it shows further south, Indonesia, New Guinea, Vietnam, places like that. And then you mentioned that research is a real big part of what we're talking about. With all of this, and I assume some of the research even going on from here is about these tropemites, because if they get here, we need to know what to do about it. Is that what you're finding? Yeah, there's a ton of research on how Southeast Asian
beekeepers control Varroa. So you have Auburn does a lot of great work with Jeff Williams and Sammy Ramsey out of CU Boulder, Colorado. And a lot of this is funded through Project APIS -M. And they're really just understanding the impacts in the control methods that beekeepers who have tropal alapse are using. And a big one is brood breaks and also formic acid. There are so many parts of this report that I know that
we don't have time to get into all of them. What things stand out to you that we really should discuss, especially with hobbyists and sideline beekeepers? You know, I think the importance of controlling Varroa, being a live and let die beekeeper is not a management technique. that you have your choice on how to manage it, whether through synthetic chemicals, natural compounds like oxalic acid, cultural techniques like brood
breaks and requeening. But just thinking that this European honeybee will somehow evolve to control Varroa without any human intervention is not really a management technique. And that's one thing that these groups came together on is saying, you know, you have to do something. If you don't do something, you will infect your neighbor's hives. You will infect other hives. You're not going to be, you're not a successful beekeeper if you do absolutely nothing to manage
for ROA. I think that's important that they came together and said that. It may seem early, but right now is a great time to order your live bees for 2026 because they do sell out and because Man Lake is offering a discount for Be Love podcast listeners. Wait, what? I know you're saying live bees, they never go on sale. Well, they are now. Click on over to Man Lake, order your bees any variety, nukes or packages, and anything in the
beginner essentials category. And when you check out, use the code getstartedinbees, it's down in the show notes so you don't have to remember, for a discount on everything. So get your orders in early and save. That there needs to be more coordination between the U .S. and Canadian governments. We are in this together. And while beekeepers can do a lot, we also need the help of the federal government and also the apiary inspectors and
others. I would say that it's a really good starting place and it's also going to be a living document as this is an ever -evolving issue. Back to what you were saying about management. I'm going to use myself as a really bad example of someone that was very ignorant when I got into this many years ago. I heard about Varroa and I thought, well, I'm buying a couple of packages of bees. I don't know any other beekeepers around me, so mine aren't going to get infected with Varroa.
I'll be fine not doing anything with them. Like the flu. If I'm not around someone with the flu, I'm not going to catch it, right? The ignorance that I had was that your packages probably have Varroa already, almost for sure do, or your nukes. If they don't, you have neighbors, even if you don't know them, that are within with bees that are within flying distance of yours. or there are some native colonies within flying distance
of yours. To think that you can be isolated and not get Varroa is just silly and is completely not even a thing. So, Varroa is a thing. We do have to deal with it and there's a lot of different ways to do that. We're not going to tell you how to do it. The Honey Bee Health Coalition has a great resource as are a whole bunch of others. And one more other thing, we are just about to release the ninth edition of the Tools for Viroa Management Guide. And so this is a
major update. I think it took a year and a half. There's been a lot of new products since 2021 that have been released and a lot of gaining of understanding of how we control Viroa and what those treatment thresholds are. Look for it in January or so, but we are very excited about this ninth edition of The Varroa Guide that's going to be coming out soon. That's fantastic because there are a number of new treatments. We've talked about a few of them here on the
show. Let's talk about imported honey for a minute. I know there's a lot of adulterated honey out there. I've even seen the term kicked around, honey fraud. And these things just ruin the honey market for everybody now the commercial beekeepers I feel like most of them are resigned to the fact that We're gonna sell our honey on the wholesale market We're gonna get two bucks a pound or some ridiculously small price like that because there's so many Imports, could you talk to that subject
a little bit? Yeah And I am not the expert on this. I will put that forward first and foremost. I'm a facilitator and a mediator of this coalition, but I know a little bit about it. What I can understand is that we can produce about 40 % of the demand domestically. So out of the 2 .5 million hives or so that we have in the US, that can produce 40 % of the demand. from Americans. And this is not just the honey that you see at your farmers markets, at your grocery stores.
A lot of this is the honey that's in like Honey Nut Cheerios or our cookies and various other products that you buy at the grocery store. That honey that is used in products, it needs to be consistent. It needs to be, you know, cost effective. There's 60 % of the honey that we just don't have the bees to provide for our needs and demands within the US. But there's also a tremendous financial incentive for companies around the world to get honey into our markets that may
not be honey at all. It could be high -fructose corn syrup that was blended with honey. They're always playing this game where they're one step ahead of our testers and regulators. It's very, very complicated. And consumers deserve to know whether they're consuming real honey or something that's designed to look like and taste like real
honey. And so I think that's kind of the big takeaway of the North American bee strategy is we need systems in place to test the honey, to understand the floral resources from which it came, and to hold people who are selling things that's labeled as honey, that's not honey, hold their feet to the fire a little bit. Instead of getting a shipment in that's mostly high fructose corn syrup or whatever it is and sending it back, destroy it. Actually have a cost for sending
something to the U .S. that you label as one thing, but it's not that thing. That product should be destroyed. It shouldn't be sent back to whence it came so that it can be repackaged and figured out and sold to someone else. I totally
agree with all that. The economics of this as I look at it if this honey or whatever it is might probably is partially honey and let's say it it's adulterated with a bunch of high fructose corn syrup and So this honey can be produced really cheap in some other country Cheaper than we can produce honey here that comes into the market. It drives the price of honey down Now you mentioned the 40 % I believe is how much
of the honey we can produce here. I believe if the economics changed, if we could figure out how to keep more of that adulterated cheap cheap honey product out of our market, beekeepers here could step up and say I want to produce this much more honey if I can get this price for it. I think we could produce a lot more than 40%. But commercial beekeepers have to make their money on pollination instead. I don't know how that would work. I imagine you're right. You're
a beekeeper. I'm not. Are we at the carrying capacity for how many bees can live and produce honey and have a place to live? We won't know until the economics change. Yeah. And I'm trying to think about it. I don't know if it's... We produce 60 % of our needs and import 40 % or if we produce 40 % of our needs and import 60. I'm a little confused on that. It's one of those two. Either way. We can't produce all of our demand. I'd love to see us produce all of our
demand. Yeah. Yeah, 100%. That'd be good. Is that ever going to happen? Who knows? And unfortunately, there just isn't a way to test all of that honey being imported. And this is where it comes back to what you're talking about, Matt, with these different honey and beekeeping organizations
working. with federal government entities you know that's a nasty word there but there are times and places we need to work together and that's certainly one of them another one is the spread of diseases and things like that so well i'm going to get off my soap box now and jump down And let's talk a little bit about pesticides. Our bees are going to fly farther than we have land for. And I know you spend a lot of time with the relationship between ag and beekeepers.
Tell me how that works. How's the relationship? Do we love each other? Is it kind of tough? How do we make that work better? I think it's getting better. So, in our country, when you have to register a pesticide, whether that's for a crop pest, like an aphid or something, or whether that's the varroa mite, you have to go abide
by FIFRA, right? This is the federal law that says you will need to do these tests and provide us this information and the EPA will evaluate what you've put forward and deem if it's safe for the humans and the environment. If it is safe for humans and the environment, then we will register it. But you know, you talk to beekeepers and they said, but my bees are still dying. And you can see that there's acute effects from pesticides. That's when a insecticide or something that's
been tank mixed is sprayed. using an airplane or, you know, some kind of spray rig. And if you sprayed insecticide on a bee, it's going to die. It's an insect. And then you also have like systemic pesticides, right? So these are the things that are put on seed coatings. So then beekeepers get exposed or bees get exposed to bees. And it really, if it's they can get weakened or they can get killed. I talked to
a lot of farmers and input costs. are a huge part of the equation of them running a successful business. So they don't really have an incentive to throw things into the field or put things down in the field unless there's an issue. And they have a lot invested in that field. And so, for example, you know, Almond Boar did a big
evaluation of fungicides in fields. And if a farmer gets fungus, because they didn't lay down a fungicide, It's too late, so there's a certain amount of insurance that they can have by putting down a fungicide. It gets complicated, but there are ways that you can have healthy crops and healthy bees. Things like spraying at night or when bees aren't foraging have water sources that are free of pesticides. Placing bees kind
of... upwind of crops. And so the prevailing winds don't blow or drift pesticides onto your bees using fluency agents, right? So a big thing is when these seeds rub against each other and when they're planting them and they off gas the pesticide seeds, it drifts onto hives. And that can really have a negative impact. There are a lot of things that farmers can do and beekeepers that can protect bees. Planting forage, that's a huge one, just like the human body, right?
So imagine when COVID hit and you have people that were healthy and strong and they were more apt to be able to withstand or recover from COVID. It's the same with bees. If bees are getting good forage and they're nutritious and they've got good water sources, then when they get hit by pesticides or varroa, they're going to be
stronger and able to survive that. So it's really just human health and bee health have a lot of similarities, but it's certainly a complicated topic and one that we delve pretty deeply into in the Honeybee Health Coalition. It is complicated. Would it be fair for me to put some herbicides in this conversation too. Yeah. You've mentioned the term pesticide a hundred times, fungicides twice. Herbicides can't all be safe, can they? Pesticides usually is herbicides, fungicides,
and insecticides. Herbicides kill whatever plants they come in contact with unless they're like the plants are designed to withstand them. And so when you talk about healthy forage for bees and you have a compound that will kill those flowers, it's incredibly important that those
herbicides stay where they are put down. And so if you have a lot of flowers that are right next to a field and herbicides drift onto them, they're going to kill the flowers and they're not going to be available for bees to forage on. And so certainly it's really important that we control herbicides. Also, you talk to these experts who are bee pollinator forage planting
experts. All they do is create habitat. What they recommend is that you lay down a year or two of herbicides to kill all of the weeds before you plant a pollinator habitat. So you look at the Bee and Butterfly Habitat Fund, which is basically the experts on this, and they have a planting guide. And the biggest thing with forage is that you don't want these weeds coming up and out competing your flowers in like years two and three. And so they say lay down herbicides.
Most certainly an herbicide that doesn't stay where it's intended to is going to kill flowers and the bees aren't going to have those flowers to forage on. Can't the chemical also hurt the bees if the bees get into it? For example, if a neighbor of mine is spraying an herbicide on some weeds that they have on a hot day and my bees are out in those flowers and those weeds
and things. and they're picking up a little bit of that herbicide, plus some is being off -gassed, especially in heat, and then they're bringing that stuff back to the hive. Just because it's called an herbicide, does that mean it is safe for pollinators? You know, I'm not an ecotoxicologist, but I would think so, right? So yeah, yeah, like they're... bees aren't... haven't evolved to be around herbicides, there are certain, across all pesticides, the warning labels on... So the
pesticide applicator has to read the label. Label is the law. And so if there's a symbol on there that says, you know, do not spray when bees are present on a lot of these herbicides. That's like part of FIFRA. And so that is... It happens anyway, Matt. Sorry. No, I hear you. And I think Most certainly, like, all pesticides, fungicides, herbicides, insecticides have negative effects on bees. That's not to be argued with. That is 100 % correct. Okay, thank you. And by the way,
you hit the word of the day. What was it? Eco what? Ecotoxicologist. Thank you. Ecotoxicologist. These are all the people. I am not really an expert on anything except process and bring people together. But there are, you know, there are We bring together beekeepers and ecotoxicologists and habitat development experts and all of these people. And that's what makes up the Honey Bee Health Coalition is all of these people sitting in a room together saying, what are we going
to do about this? It's not easy. You're having multiple, multiple systems that are interacting. Well, I appreciate your time today, Matt. It's good to know that there are some really Verified quality places that we can go to do some of our own research because we can't believe everything that we see on YouTube Even from other beekeepers
Sorry, we can believe some of it. We can't believe all of it problem is you don't know which have to believe but The things that you're working on We appreciate so we have some place to go do the research. I'm gonna give you the last word Leave us with some kind of an overall summary takeaway that we as beekeepers can get from all this. I think it doesn't have to be a either or situation. Like, we can have food and bees.
We can have agriculture, conventional agriculture, row crop agriculture, specialty crop agriculture, and healthy bees. And we're just trying to gain our understanding of how to do that. So I do believe that we're all one big agricultural system and that beekeepers are as much of a producer as a corn grower, an almond grower, an apple grower, and we all rely on each other and we have to work together. And you're helping us communicate and work together with what you're
doing. And the rest of us, let's talk to our neighbors. yeah and a good friendly doesn't even have to be a debate let's get to be friends and let's talk friend over here that has a field of roundup ready alfalfa that's okay let's let's chat and let's figure out because maybe you spray the first monday of every month and so i know to just shut my bees up those days or something anything like that can help yeah go to honeybeehealthcoalition
.org it's It's a wealth of knowledge and it's well vetted, great information that involves beekeepers from all levels in developing it. So we're pretty proud of what we've accomplished, but we know there's more to do. Thanks again to Matt and all the dedicated people contributing to the Honey Bee Health Coalition. And thanks to our presenting sponsor, as always, Man Lake. And don't forget to order your bees. And a shout
out to Vita B Health for their support. Vita's Varroa Control Ranger products includes Epistan, Epigard, and now Varroxan Extended Release Oxalic Acid Strips. Thanks guys. If you haven't yet, please subscribe and follow the show. tell your friends about it and click on over to BeLoveBekeeping .com to sign up for our free newsletter. If you have a guest suggestion or topic that you would like discussed on the show, shoot me an email
eric at BeLoveBekeeping .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.