May I have your attention please? The following is not the real Jeff Vox review. If you refer to your bees as the girls, you might be a beekeeper. If watching close-up slow-mo video of bees doing the waggle dance gets you in the mood, you might be a beekeeper. If you think that Varroa Mites were created by Satan himself, you might be a beekeeper. Welcome to Be Love Beekeeping Podcast presented by our good friends over at Man Lake.
Special thanks goes out to the not real Jeff Vox worthy for that fun intro. I think he just may end up being a regular on the show. At Bee Love we're all about honeybees and of course the beekeepers. We're going to have conversations with beekeepers from all over the world, from small hobbyists to large commercial operators. We'll review new products, try it in true methods, and hear horror stories. And we're going to have fun. If you're on the beekeeping adventure, we'd love to hear from you.
If you're just thinking about it, there's no better way to learn the pros and cons, blood, sweat, and tears than from real live beekeepers. Bees beekeepers and fun beekeeping stories, it's all about the love. On today's episode we're going to have a great discussion with my new friend, Cayman Reynolds.
We'll be talking about what it's like to keep bees down in Tennessee, what it's like to be famous on YouTube as a beekeeper, and he's going to tell us all about the North American Honey Bee Expo, which is coming up in January. Cayman is awesome, I think you'll really enjoy it. But first we're going to review a brand new product. By the way, I am a gadget junkie, and from time to time we're going to feature new gadgets, new inventions for beekeepers here on the show.
And this week I want to talk about one that I am trying for the first time. This thing is called Hive Heater, it's put out by Honey Haven Supply. And I had a chance to sit down and speak with the gentleman that invented it here in the States. He is a multi-generational beekeeper, but he was an engineer for his whole career. Now that he's retired, he's trying to fix something that he struggled with for his entire life. And that is winter die off here in a very cold climate.
So in his experience, the reason that most bees are dying in cold climates during winter is not so much that it's super cold outside, as much as it is the condensation that builds up inside. Bees get wet, they freeze, mold grows, all kinds of nasty things happen. So what he's done with this is it's not like a hot plate or something that sits under your hive. In fact, he was telling me that he tried things like that, they failed miserably.
Let me just put it in a very brief explanation that they have on their website. It says that the hive heater assists your bees in surviving winter through solar powered convection. Your hive will be warmer and increased circulation will lower the hive humidity drastically. Now, they believe that that is what it takes for bee hives to survive winter. So I'm going to give it a try. I'm taking two of my personal hives.
I've put these hive heaters on and come April, I'm going to let you know if those bees are alive or not. I realize this is certainly not a big enough sample to be anything scientific or anything else. This is just going to be what happened with my bees up in a mountain climate in Utah, where it gets below zero a lot of nights during the year. We have a lot of snow. By the way, this thing is super easy to install. It's almost like a small box, okay?
It's the width of your box, so you take the top box off, you plop this thing on it. There's a solar panel that hangs down the side. You put your top box back on, boom, you're done. That part is super easy. Now, whether the bees are going to survive winter or not, I promise come April, I'm going to let you know. I'd like to welcome to the show today Kamin Reynolds, the one, the only, the quite famous in fact. Kamin say hello.
Well, I was just so shocked because I'm not used to such a grand entrance and I appreciate it, but definitely infamous, maybe famous, I don't know. We just like to keep bees and somehow a few people know who we are. Well, for those that don't know, Kamin is all over social media, especially YouTube, some kind of a celebrity. So get his autograph next time you see him. Are you feeling embarrassed yet? I'm trying. You're succeeding quite great at this. Yeah. All right.
We're going to be talking about the North American Honey Bee Expo, which is coming up in January. But first, I want to hear what is it like keeping bees in Tennessee? Well, it's great. We have the best honey in the world, actually, which many people don't know this, but the few who do are quite jealous of our wonderful biscuit honey, a wonderful tulip poplar honey that is wonderful on barbecue, but all jokes aside, I have about 50 to 60 varieties of honey in my office from all over the world.
Obviously, what makes beekeeping so cool is the diversity and the honeys and other experiences that we have. And in Tennessee, we have quite a bit of diversity too. If you go over more towards Memphis, the Delta region, Mississippi River, you have a lot of plant diversity. You also have cotton and soybeans. And so those guys are going to perform really good. And so we have more commercial beekeepers over in that region.
And then we have the sourwood honey that's produced up towards the mountains on the other side of the state, and the smokies, and the sourwood honey is absolutely prime. I'm right in between just a little east of Nashville, and we don't have a lot of agriculture. And what we do have is cattle. We're mostly hills and very, very small pastures. If you have a 40 to 50 acre section of pasture in my county, that is massive.
And so most of the time it's seven, 10 acre little fields and lots of creeks running through them. The Royne River and the Cumberland River run through this town or this county. And so because of that, we don't have... It's nice because we don't have a lot of the sprays that come with commercial agriculture, but we also don't benefit from any pollination opportunities or any additional pollen or nectar flows because of that. So we have a very short season when it comes to production here.
We start producing nectar off of the autumn olive around the first day of April, and then it ends usually by the second week of June. And depending on how the season starts, this can vary a week early, a week or so late. And that's it. So the rest of the year is mostly a dearth of nectar, robbing season, and mostly a dearth of pollen, and this year it has been very unique in our late summer beekeeping for a lot of people in this region. But it's fun. It's a challenge, but it's good.
So do you move your bees around? I do now. This was my first year. So this is my 23rd season. I've never moved my bees from place to place. And this year I took them to Wisconsin. I really enjoyed that. It just was like a totally extra flow on top of it where typically after June, I'm finished for the year. I take my bees up there and I have a whole new season to begin with. And it's really better for the bees. Some people say that, you know, trucking bees is terrible to do that to them.
But honestly, they're going to sit for two and a half to three months in Tennessee just eating on their stores. And they're going to be stressing each other out. They're going to deal with other creatures that are fighting for resources as well. And in Wisconsin, there's five, four different types of pollens coming in up there in early spring. There's nectar coming in. And that's the best nutrition. Down here, I'm feeding bees artificial foods. Up there, they're getting the real stuff.
So I think you can definitely argue that it's better for the bees to be in a good flow like that. And they did perform quite well for me. That makes a lot of sense. A couple of days of stress, trucking versus three months or whatever. Pretty much. Of dirt kind of stress. Sounds like a good trade off. Was, were you close enough to the hurricanes, especially Helene, that it affected your area, even though your bees may have been gone?
And I feel guilty saying this, but it was actually a good thing for us. We have had a bad drought this year. We started the year low on rain. It was much rain in winter. And then this summer has been extremely dry and we haven't gotten any rain so far in October. And so what little rain we've gotten recently came off of that hurricane and we were far west of it by about two and a half hours to three hours.
That happened really more, you know, Tennessee is not a very tall state, but we're very wide. And so there's a lot of distance between us and Memphis and a lot of distance between us and the Smokies. So unfortunately for those folks, they just got absolutely hammered with way too much rain, but we only got about four and a half inches out of that hurricane. And we didn't even get mud puddles out of it because we were so dry.
So our bees and in the plant life, you can almost hear them sign with relief. And they just got rain. But yeah, a lot of my friends have been affected. There's a lot of beekeepers that I know in North Carolina and in East Tennessee who lost a lot of their bees and some of them lost their homes. One family, they weren't acquaintances of mine, but they were friends of some of my friends and it was a family of four. And they unfortunately lost their life and they had a beekeeping operation.
And it's just been terrible for them. Of the beekeepers that you know in that area, give me an idea of how they've been affected. It really kind of varies. I mean, some of them, the bees is their, the least of their concerns with their homes being gone. Or if it's not gone, obviously, there's still other issues like the roads are completely shut down, the ones in the mountains, they can't, they won't have electricity for months. Road access is terrible or non-existent.
And some of them have lesser problems, which is still a problem. I know one guy who lost 50 hives. I know another guy who is still trying to figure out what he's missing because he can't get to all the roads still. And he's lost over 100 hives that he's aware of. And then on top of that, there's sheds full of bee equipment, extraction lines flooded and barrels of honey and stuff like that.
So just, it varies from individual to individual, but I've got to throw a little plug out there to just beekeepers in general. There are so many good beekeepers out there who aren't getting a lot of credit. And, you know, it's, I can't even begin to list all of their names. So I won't, but do you know who you are? They're the quiet people. They're the ones who aren't getting funding to do this or anything else.
They're just of their own good will going out and helping and supporting these people in need right now. And one of the bigger companies is Man Lake. The guys at Man Lake have really stepped up and donated a lot of syrup and a lot of patties and gear to help these beekeepers out. And there's still a lot more being done. So, you know, we have a group talking about maybe doing something at the expo for these people.
So, yeah, it's just, it's a huge job, but many hands make light work. And that's what a community is for. And so that, you know, when these things happen, hopefully there's a ground swelling of good people who will quickly help. Well, and we'll also, for those that aren't in the area and can't do some hands on help, there's some good ways to donate to the cause.
There'll be a link in the show notes where you can get more information on how to help the beekeepers in the southeast that have been just so devastated with these two hurricanes. Let me just take a minute here to thank our presenting sponsor, Man Lake. Years before they became a sponsor, I was buying bees supplies from them. While they don't have a store near me, I've had great experiences with their customer service and shipping right to my home.
They're passionate about bees and dedicated to helping beekeepers. You can tell. American made products with a commitment to quality craftsmanship and innovation. From woodenware to feeds, you can trust Man Lake. And maybe the best part, Man Lake is offering a discount to bee love beekeeping listeners. Click on the link in the show notes and use the special discount code to get $10 off your purchase of $100 or more.
Let me shift gears for a second because I did some teasing up front about the social media stuff. I talked to a lot of brand new beekeepers and they feel like they're learning how to do beekeeping on YouTube. Now, without putting anybody down, can you just give a little advice on how people can know what advice they should believe and what advice they shouldn't believe? Because there's good info out there, there's bad info out there, there's everything in between.
And some good info doesn't apply to me because geographically it's so different. So, but any overall advice for people? Yes. If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is. And on top of that, fundamentals travel. Now, there are going to be some variables because if you're keeping bees in a very cold region or high elevations, lots of cold weather, you're going to have to do some things that I don't have to do in Tennessee. But fundamentals still travel.
We say great queens, dead mites, good nutrition. You have to have a great queen or you're just not going to have a great colony. You're not going to make honey, you're not going to be able to split very good. And eventually that queen, if they aren't able to replace her and make a great queen, is going to collapse. And we lose bees just due to things like that. Sometimes colonies go queenless. It's our number two reason for loss is queen issues.
So we want to be queen rich, always have a backup plan for queen loss issues. Then there's the dead mites part. And that really encompasses all disease. When we say that great queens, dead mites, good nutrition, the dead mites is more about making sure that any stressors that we can prevent are kept low enough so our colonies can still thrive. But mites are our number one reason for loss. And as a new beekeeper, it can be very tempting to ignore this.
And many times you lose bees because of this and monitor. And then nutrition is just important for everything. I think all we have to do is study other types of critters, creatures, livestock, whatever. And if you look at wild horse populations or any wild populations that we've taken from that creature and then brought it into a domesticated setting, well-capped horses live way longer than wild ones do. And it's because they compete against each other. Some years it's like this.
We have a terrible drought. My apple trees, if I wasn't watering them, I grafted those. They probably wouldn't have survived. With bees, it's no different. Nature, some years, is extra benevolent and we can make 120 pounds per hive. This year I made 50 pounds of surplus per hive. So it varies from year to year. And as beekeepers, our job is to focus on the fundamentals of what it takes to help our bees thrive. And that's to have a good queen.
It's to have low pressure inside the hive and it's to have good nutrition. Now there's a lot of different techniques in beekeeping. There's a lot of different styles of hives and there's even different types of bees, Russians, Italians, Caucasians, you name it. That's all fine and dandy. There's always little tweaks there, but the fundamentals encompass 98% of your beekeeping and that travels. You got to do the same thing in Canada, Florida, everywhere.
You just have to tweak it a little bit for overwintering and all that kind of stuff. So just focus on the fundamentals. If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is. Amen to all of that. Good advice. All right. Tell me about the Honey Bee Expo. I'm going for my first time this year, so I'm really looking forward to it. What's going to happen? Oh man, how long do we have? So thank you first of all for 32 seconds. Thanks for coming to and giving our Expo a shot.
We definitely love beekeepers and the industry as a whole. I say we, my wife is a beekeeper as well. She was beekeeping before we got married. This industry has been very good to us. There's a lot of kind and good people in it. And so the bee expo is really just a reunion, so to speak, of those that love the bee industry and love beekeepers.
And so we have just a massive trade show full of everything that you need from big, expensive extractors down to hand crank extractors, bee suits, wood and wear, the latest innovations in technology, whether that's controlling mites, whether that's a different style of hive tool. We even have a different style of smoker coming this year. We have multiple products being launched. I can't tell you about darn NDAs. And that's just the trade show.
But the trade show is kind of the crown jewel because you can go to a lot of places and hear good lectures. I do believe we have amongst the best. However, we not only have lectures, we have that trade show. We have the biggest honey swap in North America, maybe the biggest in the world. And last year we swapped about 8000 total jars where you can bring some of your honey and little containers.
And we have that on our website and you can bring it and we'll swap it for you or you can find friends to swap it yourself. And you can now try Colorado honey and Tennessee honey and Alaskan honey and Canadian honey and various honeys from around the U.S. And it's quite fun to be able to get your collection. And then of course we have the largest honey show in North America as well. And it's not just honey. It's beeswax. It's beeswax used for paintings and caustic paintings.
We also have antiques in there, antique extractors, smokers, various things. We have quilts, bee themed. There are cotton candy. There's flavored creamed honeys. It is just a beekeeping jubilee, so to speak. So we have a lot of other things like a microscopy class where some people are going to be able to go through that and be able to pull bees apart that have perished. They go, okay, they have really high nozema spores or they have tracheal mites.
Or maybe you want to identify pollen. What magnification do you need to use to do that? We're going to have a lot of hands-on things at the expo. Some of that is done by us. Some of that is done by the vendors. It's very interactive. And these people just love to talk bees. And so if you like to do the same thing, you're in the right spot. That's pretty much the bee expo. Well, you mentioned it's for everybody that loves bees. So, hey, this podcast is the right place. It is.
Anyway, I'm really looking forward to it. It's three whole days, right? It's like two and a half Thursday. It starts about midday. Now, we are going to probably be opening up a little bit earlier this year. But yeah, it's a little over two and a half. We also have a lot of researchers there. I was just on the phone with one from Penn State. And she and several other researchers provide a lot of value there.
So you get to see a lot of the cutting edge research that's going on by these universities. And that's what we also want to be as a platform to where you can not only listen to their lectures, but you can ask questions. It's, again, very interactive. And we'll ask some Q&A panels as well. We'll bring multiple researchers or multiple beekeepers. And if you're wanting to listen to a commercial beekeeper or if you're wanting to listen to a smaller beekeeper
that's running 20 hives successfully, we'll have it. But we're really focused on success. And we do have some tracks for those who are looking to treat for mites and different styles like brood breaks and better bees and stuff like that. But everything's really focused on being successful. Because if you have two hives, maybe success for you is keeping your bees alive and making four to five gallons of honey a year for your own pantry. Maybe a couple gifts for Christmas for your family.
Success for some people is a small sideline and you're that bee man or that bee lady for your community. And that's extremely important. That's how I got into it. I had a husband and wife team who were doing it at an affair. I saw them. They let me try the honey and they had an observation hive. And I was 14 years old and had it not been for that family running like 20 hives, I may have never got into beekeeping. I probably would not have.
So, you know, those, all of these smaller beekeepers are playing a super important role in cultivating the next generation of beekeepers. And then of course, if you want to become a commercial beekeeper, we have tracks for that as well on how to make and sell nukes and move bees around the country. So we have a lot of different tracks. And one last thing that really comes to mind that is super important to me is our next GenB program. And that is for use between the age of 20 and 12 years old.
And so we will have, this year we have about 45 of them coming and we have a silent auction and people who bid in that and people who donate towards that, all the money goes towards supporting these kids.
They not only get special classes, but they also get, of course, stuff that, you know, teenagers like, they like hats and t-shirts and we get them bee suits and various other bee gear and really just encourage them and give them lectures from some of the most inspiring, successful men and women in beekeeping because some of these teenagers, they're running 100 hives already and they're grafting queens and making splits
and they're already thinking seriously about being a sideliner or a full-time beekeeper and some of them want to become entomologists or researchers. So we want them to come to the expo to fall in love with beekeeping again, be inspired and also collaborate with other youths their age to know that you're not the only 15, 16, 17 year old out there. There's not a lot of them. Trust me, when I was in my teens, there wasn't a whole lot of guys my age that were into it.
But I ended up marrying a girl who was a beekeeper. And so obviously we put our efforts together and since then the YouTube channel and the expo have come from that. So we definitely want to support these special use throughout the United States and this Next Gen Bee Program does that. When you were a teenager and your friends found out that you are doing all these bee hives, okay, was this a cool thing or was this a nerdy thing? Oh, totally nerdy. 100%. And it still is.
I literally have a shirt that says official bee nerd. And the idea came from not myself or my wife, but from some friends who like, he's a bee nerd. So as a kid, a lot of times you see the stuff on TV and the nerds are the ones with the glasses and they're on a computer or something like that. But honestly, the older I get, the more I realize that there's a lot of nerds out there. And I'm definitely a bee nerd. And we have a lot of bee nerds at the bee expo.
Let me tell you, if you don't want to learn about bees, you're going to be tortured beyond belief. Bee nerds unite. Okay, the expo is January 2nd, 3rd and 4th, I believe. It is. And it's in Louisville, Kentucky. Sorry, Louisville, Kentucky. Almost. For those that live there. Oh, please say it properly. Louisville. I wouldn't even attempt it, Erica. You weren't born in Brad to say words like that, I don't think. I shouldn't attempt it. I'm very sorry. I'm a West Coast person.
There will be a link in the show notes so they can go to the website, look at everything there is to look at there by tickets if they choose to go. I have a couple other questions for you before I let you go. You ready? I didn't tell you about these up front. Oh, sure. Why not? Okay. Every beekeeper has some kind of wild, crazy or embarrassing or painful kind of story that sticks out in their mind. Can you tell us one? Oh, it's the trick is picking which one because they're all quite good.
Okay, you got two or three. Let me give you the top two because I can definitely get two that are just cool, I think. So this is pain and interesting and crazy all at the same time. I play bluegrass music and so I'm about 18 years old and we're playing at two set lists in Granville, Tennessee, which has a really nice bluegrass festival and old time festival with a lot of Andy Griffith Mayberry themes. And so I'm there.
We played our first set list and I knew that there was this hive of bees in this bank because I've had people ask me to come remove it and I'm like, folks, it's behind so much antique brick and mortar. I mean, this building is like 100 years old. I'm going to have to do all kinds of damage to it. I said, well, it's just it's way up there. Just go ahead and leave it. We don't want to do damage to the old building, but I knew they were up there. We play the first set list.
It's late April, which is a good time for the bees to swarm. And sure enough, we're walking in the bee swarm and they take off and I'm just in my mind. I'm thinking of movies I've seen with bees and everyone just starts running and screaming and it's mass chaos. Nobody noticed these bees. There must have been at least 15,000 bees because it was several pounds. 12 to 15,000 bees in the air floating around, flying around, excuse me. And they're right over the tops of hundreds of people's heads.
I'm not talking like 10 feet over their heads. I'm talking like two feet over their heads and it's just they're big, but it's so loud. Nobody noticed. And then to my surprise, they just went into a bush right below the bank and then I didn't have a box or a bee suit. Of course, I was very giddy at this point and my band members, I pointed to them and they were like, what?
So I grabbed a box, poked some holes in it where they couldn't get through the holes and I shook those bees in there without a bee suit. The problem is, as many times swarms are super gentle and you can probably actually get away with not having a suit. But the problem is, is one times out of 10, that's not going to work out for you. And this is one of those one times out of 10. I took them in the box and got stung about 18 to 24 times within about a 10 second period.
I think part of the reason was is they had just swarmed and they were so close to the original hive that a lot of the bees hadn't settled down yet. And yet you were close to the hive and they were pretty aggressive. Still defensive. Oh yeah. I just got drilled and all in my hair and everything on my face and keep in mind, I have another bluegrass session to play. So I get, but I did get them in the box and we did. I did take them home.
I wasn't taking that many stings and not walking away with something, but I had to get people to dig the stingers out of me. My finger, we're starting to swell up a little bit. And then of course we go and play another set list and I, I had taken a lot of venom prior to that, but nothing to that extent. And I was a little bit lightheaded for about 10 to 15 minutes and I was able to perform, get on stage.
And that was a pretty wild story. The, the next one's quite a bit shorter, but I was catching queens. This is just a really at the start of my YouTube channel. A lot of people discovered us through this crazy video. It's always the crazy videos. And I have queens in my pocket. I'm going through mating nukes, catching queens. And so I have all these queen pheromones in my pocket. And all of a sudden one of our production hives takes off and swarms and man, it was a good cluster.
I didn't want to leave that. So I go and try to get these bees to line on some comb and sure enough, it's, it's working out perfectly, except they're overshooting the comb and going down to my left pocket. And, but some of them are hitting the comb. And so I'm mostly focused on that. And then before I realized it, I have about 3000 bees going into my left pocket.
And I wear pretty loose pants because many times you want it, you know, because if you're getting, if a bee tries to sting you through a loose set of pants, a lot of times you don't get stung. Yeah. The problem of it is a lot of times they can go up your pant leg or various other things. And those were some holy pants to a degree. So I ended up with a few hundred bees inside of my britches. And of course, all of these bees on the outside of it. And it was very tedious.
We made a short video of that. I did catch the swarm, which was great. But I've, it's never taken me so long to take off a pair of pants. And I was praying the entire time. I'm like, I just don't want to get stung, you know, of all those places, tender places. So anyhow, that was an interesting experience as well. I didn't get stung that time miraculously. But yes, if you're going to do bees, I promise you you're going to have some interesting fun stories. We all have them.
All right. Very last thing. Bottom line. Kamen, why do you love bees? I love bees because after 23 years, there's still so many things to learn. There's still so many things they do that excite me. It's very addictive and a healthy way. Everything that the bees produce is healthy for our bodies. Honey, beeswax, gropalus, pollen. There's so many good things that they do for the environment. So I think there's, we're helping plants produce seeds that's feeding birds and mammals.
We're also taking care of ourselves. It's a wondrous thing to be able to see how they change throughout the seasons. And it's, there's so many flavors of honey. There's no way you can put it into one thing. And bees are very unique and very fun. And beekeepers are a great group of people too. We always have a few weirdos in each crowd, but there's not near as many in beekeeping in my opinion. And so we just have a great group of people to get to work with.
And so it's just, it's a wonderful thing. It's so much so I wanted to make a career out of it. And I haven't regretted that decision. It's always interesting, always fascinating. And I know I'm never going to get bored with it. So that's why. Great answer. The community aspect is awesome. People really do want to help each other. It's not competitive. Like I want my bees to live in yours to die so that I win. It's nobody feels like that at all or shares any of that kind of sentiment.
Anyway, thanks a lot, Cayman. Appreciate you being with me. I appreciate you for having me and we'll see you in the next video. Thank you so much for joining us here on Bee Love Beekeeping presented by Man Lake. Please, right now before you forget, hit that follow or subscribe button and be sure to share this podcast with a friend. We're building a community here and we want to hear from you.
Send your crazy stories, guest recommendations, new gadgets, or anything else that you'd like to hear about on the show to Eric at Bee Love Beekeeping. Eric at Bee Love Beekeeping.com. And remember, if you're not just in it for the honey and you're not in it for the money, you're in it for the love. See you next week. You might be a beekeeper. Now who from hell was that?