May I have your attention please? The following is not the real Jeff Vox really. If the veil at your wedding, your wedding, kept you from being stunned, you might be a beekeeper. If you have more than one T-shirt with a bee slogan on it, you might be a beekeeper. If you learned what working, but don't build a stick of furniture, you might be a beekeeper. Welcome, welcome to Be Love Beekeeping podcast, presented by our good friends over at Man Lake.
At Bee Love, we're all about honeybees and of course the beekeepers. And if you're on the beekeeping adventure, we would love to hear from you. If you're just thinking about it, this is a great place to learn from real-life beekeepers. Bee's beekeepers and fun beekeeping stories, it's all about the love. We're going to start it off today with a wild and crazy beekeeping story from Christine.
And then we're going out to California to meet Rob Wright, the CEO of Man Lake, and we're going to hear all about his beekeeping journey. First, here's Christine. I am now a full-time beekeeper, but before full-time beekeeping, I was a middle school math and science teacher. And I like to think I was one of the fun teachers, like we did lots of labs in chemistry, we would blow stuff up. And for biology, when we're working with microscopes, I got the brilliant idea to bring in a bunch of bees.
So I had hives in the backyard at that point. And so I went out, it must have been this time of year, so fall when it's cold in the mornings, but then warms up in the afternoon.
And in the morning before school, I went out and I collected a bunch of dead bees from in front of my hive, and I put them in a little container, and I was going to bring, I had like a container, a little Tupperware, kind of full of them, probably about 100 bees that I was bringing to school so that my students could practice focusing their microscopes and could have a look at like bee parts up close.
When I got to school, science was fairly early in the morning, so I had my little Tupperware sitting on my desk and the bees at this point were still not moving, looking very dead. And students got their microscopes all set up and I started to hand out bees, they would bring over a little like Petri dish and I'd give them a couple of bees and they'd head back to their microscope station. And I will never forget the feeling in my gut when the first student said, "'Teacher, my bee is moving."
And I guess the first thought was like, "'No, you can't be,' and then someone else said, "'No, my bee is moving too.' And I looked at the little cup of bees left on my desk and they're crawling out of the cup and starting to warm up. So they had been in Torpor, which is like a dormant state that's brought on by cold, the insects go through, and when they warm up, they really come back to life.
So it all happened very quickly after that first kid said, "'My bee is moving.'" And soon we had about 100 bees buzzing up towards the lights of the classroom, causing all kinds of mayhem in a class full of teenagers who are generally quite scared of anything that buzzes and stings. So was it just mass pandemonium, just, ah, people are running and screaming? It was half and half. There were definitely students who were like, out the door immediately.
And then there were some who were just trying to be chill and like, you know, I learned that if you just stay still, they won't bother you. And then there was a few that were kind of overconfident and wanted to start grabbing bees and putting them out. And so I was really at that point like focused on them not, like, don't touch any bees, we're gonna deal with this a different way. So there was kind of three different categories of how they dealt with it.
In the end, luckily I had a huge window in my classroom. So we turned off the overhead lights so that then the dominant light became the window. And within a couple of minutes, all of the bees were at the window, you know, buzzing, trying to find a way out. And there were still a lot of bees in there, but at least they were contained to one area of the classroom and not buzzing all around the students. So were you able to open a window so they could go out or did you have to catch all of them?
Yeah, we had to catch most of them. The only part that opened was kind of at the bottom corner of the window and bees are always gonna go up. Like they never find the little outlet. So I did enlist the help of a couple of students who assured me that they had no bee sting allergies and that they were quite confident with it. And we just went around with cups and little pieces of paper and started scooping the bees into the cups and then let them out the window from there. That is so awesome.
Thank you for sharing. When I shared it on social media the other day, I actually had a parent of one of those students say, oh my goodness, I remember my kid telling me about this lab. They said it was the best lab ever. So that must have been one of the braver students. They'll remember that forever. They will, so will I. That's probably enough for that, but just between you and me, a mistake never to be repeated, right? Yes, absolutely.
We are so happy to have on the show with us today, Rob Wright, CEO of Man Lake. The big wig is in the house. How are you, Rob? I'm good, thank you. How are you, Eric? I'm great. I love to embarrass people just a little bit on their intro. Good. CEO walks on water and that kind of thing, and we all know how great Man Lake is, but I'm going to jump right into it. Tell us a little bit about your beekeeping journey. What got you started? Okay, yeah.
Well, I've always been enthralled by the natural world, starting as a kid really, and whether it was from my expeditions as a Boy Scout, all over the great state of Utah, or in fly fishing, which for me was very much about being out in the natural world. And I've always been somebody who is a birder. I like watching birds and have a long list of all the birds that I've seen and whose behaviors have been fascinating to me. With respect to insects, when I was, boy, a young adult,
I came across this book by E.O. Wilson. I don't know if you've heard of him. A well-known entomologist who really made some groundbreaking discoveries in studying ants. And he wrote this book called Sociobiology, which if you haven't read it, for me it just changed my whole view of the world.
It's really his big picture of the CO biology is just studying the biology of animals, and in this case, insects, and trying to understand how the biology of an animal influences the societies they end up creating. And for me, that was the beginning of a sort of a fascination with the insect world. It did not lead me immediately to beekeeping. I only got involved with beekeeping once I started working with Man Lake.
But I have to say, after a crash course that was somewhat painful, I dedicated beekeeper and just fascinated by the whole thing. It can be painful in more ways than one. Yeah, for sure. A crash course in beekeeping. Yeah, yeah. But you kept at it. By the way, you live in beautiful Santa Barbara, right? I do, yes. That is awesome. You did mention you're from Utah, but you've moved west since then. So how did you get into it? Did you mention the crash course?
Did somebody just say, boom, Rob, here's 10 hives for you, go. Well, it reminds me. So when I was younger, I lived in Taiwan for a couple of years. And before going to Taiwan, I took a crash course in Chinese. And for me, that means just reading everything I can get my hands on and studying the language and everything. And I was like, oh, I got this. And I went to Taiwan and got in a taxi cab and they couldn't understand a word I said.
And that whole experience reminds me of my journey with beekeeping because when I started getting involved with Man Lake, I started reading everything I could get about bees. As I think most experienced beekeepers will tell you, that's probably not the most effective way to get started keeping bees. So anyway, one of my colleagues, thank you, Eric Foster, drove a colony down from his home near Woodland, California and gave it to me here in Santa Barbara.
And yeah, it took me a few months to kill it with a lot of hard work. And I felt really bad about it. And that was my question. We all make mistakes. I don't know about you, but I learned more from the mistakes. Yeah, for sure. I've killed plenty too and I hate to admit it, but it's true. Yeah, I felt really bad about it. And I still blame Eric because he drove the bees down on 110 degree day.
And so I liked to tell him that it was because the queen was pretty stressed by the time she showed up at my house, but I think it was just mismanagement on my part is probably the truth. Well, I don't think starting off reading books is a bad thing, but it's only one little piece of the puzzle. Yes. The hands on means everything. It really does. And there's so many places to learn now, besides classes and bee clubs, which are great places to start.
We've talked about this already on this podcast, but there are a lot of good videos on YouTube. Yeah. There's also a lot of bad ones, be very careful. Yeah. And there's some great books out there. We've been trying to contribute to the videos out there and develop some educational content. And for me, that was a big deal. And it was informed by my own journey because I found it very difficult to learn what I needed to know to be effective at beekeeping.
I know how four colonies, and that's probably as many as I want to have, but I just love going out and looking at the bees. What kind of challenges have you found? Well, I had a hive just this week that was robbed very aggressively. I've been trying to figure out how to put a stop to that without losing the colony. So we'll see if I'm successful or not. I think you mentioned to me previously that you've caught some swarms too. Is that correct?
Yeah, this spring I caught three swarms and I kept one of them myself and two of the others I gave to some friends who were interested in beekeeping and they're still going strong. So that was fun. I enjoyed that. Was that in swarm traps or were they out on a tree somewhere? Yeah, I took an old nuke box that I wasn't using and I kind of adapted it into a swarm trap and got all three of them in the same trap over a course of about two weeks, I'd say. That is a very satisfying thing, isn't it?
It is, really, it really is. It is really fun. I got some more than a few times in that process but I got three colonies out of it and they're all thriving. Well, before I caught my first swarm, I was told, and again, you can't believe everything you hear about beekeeping, I was told that swarms are so docile because of course they're not defensive protecting their home. And so why would they come out and sting you?
I've since heard that about one in 10 can be quite aggressive and defensive and I've stumbled over one of those. That's interesting, I had the same experience. The first one, I think I must have read the same thing that you did about them not being defensive.
So the first one that I caught, I put the swarm trap up in a palm tree in my front yard and it was like 10 feet up the tree and I could see that I had some bees in there and I let them establish themselves for a few days but then I climbed up the ladder early in the morning on a cool morning when they weren't flying and I thought, oh, they're not gonna be defensive and put one arm around the thing and climbing down the ladder and they just, yeah, I got quite a few stings
but I managed to hang onto it without dropping it. They had already moved in, that was now their home. Yeah, exactly. And that's why they were defensive. When they're out on a tree limb, they shouldn't be as bad. Right. But you cannot guarantee anything with that. So I had someone on the show recently that's from even further south in California than where you are. And he was saying that most of the bees that they deal with are Africanized at least to some point.
Yeah. Have you found the same where you are? Yeah, earlier this spring, I requeened three of the four colonies mostly because they were pretty aggressive. Yeah, to the point where I really couldn't go out there at all without them just being in my face. So yeah, I have had that experience and I don't know if that's, I don't know if that's universal here but I've definitely felt that.
Well, my understanding is there is a lot of it and they've interbred so much now with our Italians and Carniolans and whatever species or races are out there that they're actually getting a little better but I'm sure one colony to the next there's gonna be differences. Yeah, yeah, where I live, there seem to be a lot of, and I was reading this article about the feral colonies and whether their swarms from managed colonies or whether they've survived long term as wild colonies.
But I see a lot of wild colonies around here where I live mostly in oak trees. It's pretty interesting, lots of bees here. And they're there where they're set up permanently. They're just not just migrating somewhere. It looks that way. Yeah, yeah. Well, that should be pretty easy to catch swarms then I would think. Well, I think that's why I was, I got three in such a short period of time. There are just a lot of colonies around here. Tell me some of the other things you've learned. About bees?
Yeah, whether it was the hard way or the easy way. Well, oh, that's a really good question. You know, I think the thing that I learned the hard way is that when in doubt, you probably should err on the side of feeding the bees. I get the sense from interaction with other people, especially hobbyists, that maybe that doesn't happen quite so much.
But then I was talking to one of my colleagues who keeps 10 hives on his property and had a commercial beekeeper establish a new bee yard, a mile or two from his house, and put 50 colonies there, and they immediately robbed his 10 colonies and wiped them out. So maybe it's not just the hobbyists who aren't feeding their bees enough. But yeah, I think that's the one thing that I learned in my first year is that I think I just didn't feed them enough and at the right times.
So that's always on my mind. You know, I was checking to make sure they have enough stores. And like I said, I've kind of aired on the side of being more generous with the feed. Other than that, yeah, initially I was very intimidated by testing for mites. I just didn't want to, you know, get a cup full of bees and kill them. And I wasn't sure I was taking them from the right place and wasn't sure I was counting the mites thoroughly. And I just kind of stuck with it.
And now I feel much more comfortable with that whole part of it. My understanding is that a lot of hobbyists neglect that. Probably for the same reason that I did, I just didn't feel comfortable with it. So yeah, I think I've learned how to handle that a little better too. That's really true. Tell the hobbyist or the beginner right now why that is so important. Well, yeah, I think that if you think your colony doesn't have mites, you're almost 100% fooling yourself.
The number of mites, depending on the time of year and what's going on, if you don't keep the mites under control, it's just a matter of time until you lose the colony. Yeah, as beekeepers, I think it's our obligation to stay in front of that. Otherwise you're just condemning the bees to untimely death. So yeah, I'd say that to all new beekeepers, you just have to figure out how to deal with the mite situation. And we've got tools for that. There are many ways to approach it.
If you don't like using chemicals or non-chemical ways to do it, there are just a lot of ways to approach it. And not all of them are as effective as others, but I think you owe it to yourself as a beekeeper to inform yourself about it and choose a method and follow up with it. And that can lead to controversial things. I don't know how your bee club is, but if the treatment-free topic comes up, all of a sudden you can have people taking sides and jockeying for position.
And I think the bottom line is, none of us want to treat our bees. Yeah, yeah. But if we've tried to do it without doing anything and just ignore it and say, oh, I'm treatment-free or I'm organic, therefore my bees are gonna do great no matter what, they're gonna be dead. Yeah. In most places they're gonna be dead. And especially in places like, well, and I don't know how it is where you are, but where I am, where it gets very cold in the winter, the mites just weaken the hives.
That's the way I look at it. They're more prone to disease. I mean, winters can be tough and you want them as strong as they can be. And if they're weak in any way, shape or form, whether it's mites or not enough food or a bad queen or something else, they're not likely to survive. So do everything that you can to help them survive. And there are more naturalistic, more holistic types of ways of treating for mites.
And there's very few people that have figured out how to completely raise bees without some sort of treatment. Yeah. So do your research, see what you're comfortable with, use your intuition, see what's gonna work for your bees. And then as you get experience, you'll start to figure it out. Yeah. And in my role at Man Lake, I try to stay abreast of the developments that are coming from all over the place in terms of new approaches to treating for mites.
And there are some new things coming that I think will be very effective and are not as harsh on the bees. So just read the magazine, stay in touch with what's going on because there are always new things coming up. And I think that over time as beekeepers, we'll get a hold of this subject or we'll get a hold of the mites in a way that maybe we're not quite there yet. And then the next challenge will come and we'll have to deal with that one too.
Yeah. I was talking to somebody this morning that's over in France and he was telling me about the yellow-legged hornets. Yeah. I believe that's what they're called. Yeah. It's a huge problem over there. It is. And they've had a couple of instances of having them down in the south here. I hope we can take care of it before it gets too bad. But if not, we'll learn some things from our friends overseas and we'll deal with that one and then we'll deal with the next one after that. That's right.
Yeah. But for you and I that haven't been doing this for generations, it's interesting talking to people that maybe grew up 50 years ago beekeeping and they're just like, it was so easy back then. Right. The California State Beekeepers Association meeting up in Reno yesterday and was talking to a bunch of commercial beekeepers. And yeah, some of the old-timers talk about those days before 1987 when the mites showed up and it sounded a lot easier than it is today for sure. The good old days.
Yeah, the good old days. Yeah. They're always better. Yeah. All right. I want to hear about what gives you joy in beekeeping. What do you love about bees? Oh my gosh, I just love watching the bees. I find myself sitting, you know, I don't want to disturb them too much, but even just sitting watching the entrance, what the bees are bringing back into the hive, what the behaviors of the bees are at the front.
We had a few hot days this summer and I loved watching the bees bearding and what they were doing when they were trying to cool down the hive. But yeah, I think that one of the moments that really sticks out for me is when Eric, my colleague brought that first hive that I got down from Sacramento and helped me set it up on my property and we opened the hive and he was showing me some things inside the hive and we watched as a new bee emerged from a capped cell.
And it just, you know, the wonder of a new life starting, whether it's a human, a dog, a bee, whatever it is, is just an amazing thing to watch. And to see that bee emerge from the capped cell and just immediately get about her business was, it's just awe-inspiring. So yeah, I love to watch the bees. I just, I think I find them endlessly fascinating. Do you have any grandkids? No, not yet. I have two kids and one's 14 and one's 12. Oh, okay. You're a long ways off. Yeah, yeah, hopefully.
I have some grandkids and I'm just, every year I'm like, I, you know, in case they come up, I should really get a bee suit in case they're interested. So some little ones, I'm definitely doing that. Yeah. Come spring, gonna get some junior size bee suits. Yeah. Put the kids in them if they're not afraid. Absolutely. And I don't think they will be and let them get a feel for that. It's fun seeing new people around the bees for the first time.
Yeah, one of the things I've done is taken my kids up to our Sacramento location when we're doing our package bee distribution. And, you know, we'll work the bees for the weekend and mostly it's just taking the packages and labeling them appropriately and getting them off to the post office or handing them out to people who come for pickups. And the kids just, they look forward to it every year. They love it. That's cool.
Yeah. Well, we are absolutely positively not gonna turn this into an infomercial for Man Lake. Okay. But I'm gonna give you a minute to just tell us a little bit about Man Lake because Sure. You're sort of the big dog. How many locations do you have? Give us a little bit about you. Man Lake is such a great business and I don't view myself as the big dog at all. Maybe I'm sort of the air traffic controller or something like that.
But we have so many incredible associates who are incredibly dedicated to the world of beekeeping and to our customers. We've got a lot of them who are active beekeepers themselves and just have as much love for beekeeping as any of us. We have six locations around the country. Two of them are manufacturing facilities and distribution centers. The rest are distribution centers. And all six of them have retail locations as well.
So you can go into our showroom and get to know the products and buy them on the site. So most of our commercial business, we ship directly to the commercial customers. Some of them come and pick up their orders from our locations. And then when it comes to the hobby customers, most of our business goes from our website or our online app. And then we also have a call center where we take a lot of orders by phone.
So we're pretty evenly split in selling to commercial customers and hobbyist customers. Our volume to commercial customers is higher, largely because we sell feed by the truckload. But when it comes to equipment and all the other categories, it's pretty evenly split between hobbyists and commercial customers.
The thing that I've been trying to foster at Man Lake is just to really fan the flames of that love of beekeeping and to try to play a role in the community of beekeeping that's a positive thing. So trying to develop new products, to listen to customers about what we can be doing better. And to just always get a little better every day, the whole idea of continuous improvement. So that's what we're doing at Man Lake.
And there's just a lot of dedication amongst the employees and a lot of eagerness to continue to get better. I can brag for you a little bit if you want. Sure. For people that haven't listened to the episode with Andrew Wagner down in Florida, it was really cool to hear how you guys are helping out beekeepers that have been hurt by the hurricanes down there. Very quietly behind the scenes. That's why I say I'll brag for you since you're not going to do it yourself. Well, thank you.
And you talk about Andrew, he's a great example. We met the Greer Good two and a half years ago. And Andrew has just worked so hard to foster that relationship and to make sure that we were able to bring them into the world of beekeeping in the most effective way possible when there are disasters that affect beekeepers. And gosh, it's just blood, sweat, and tears that he spent without really any thanks for it. And I think it's been very, very effective.
And we've now got this ongoing partnership with the Greer Good that I think will be an ongoing benefit to beekeepers all around the country. Maybe one other thing to mention about Man Lake is that we've really been trying to lean into this role of not only providing products, but trying to provide information that's going to help beekeepers succeed. And as I got to know the industry, I sort of looked around and asked myself, well, where do you get good information?
And I used to go on YouTube and try to find the right video. And there's some really good videos out there. But a lot of times, the thing you need to know is embedded in a 40-minute video. And maybe 39 minutes of that video are not relevant to the thing that you're struggling with. So I really wanted to make it easier for beekeepers to find answers. And there's not really any money in it for Man Lake. But I just feel like in our role, we should be trying to help people succeed in the hobby.
One of the things that really bothered me is that I heard that new beekeepers, pretty much 50% of them drop out in the first year or two. From what I could tell, it's mostly because it's just a difficult hobby.
So we've done a bunch of things to try to contribute to making it easier to become a beekeeper, including our monthly beekeepers buzz, where we're trying to get out, hey, if you live in this region, here's what you should be thinking about this month, including our AI chatbot, which I don't know if you've tried it, but Bella, our chatbot on the website, she is incredible. And I challenge everybody to try to stump her, because she gives really good answers to beekeeping questions.
We have over 50 people who answer the phones. And we actually started a program where we pay for their training to become master beekeepers. And the whole motivation behind that is when people call up with a beekeeping question, we want to be able to give them good advice. That was my motivation also to partner with you in getting this podcast going. We're trying to do as much as we can to help beekeepers succeed. And hopefully in the long run, that'll be good for Man Lake as a business, too.
It almost just felt like our responsibility as the leading equipment supplier to do that. So yeah, I guess other than that, Eric, that's pretty much it. Yeah, I have one last question for you. Yeah. And you've heard the podcast. You know what's coming. I think I do. Any kind of wild and crazy or embarrassing or painful beekeeping story that you want to share with us? You know, I do have some painful ones, but I feel like that's a little more common. So I'll give you an uncommon one.
You may not have heard one like this before. And I don't know. It's just a little point of interest, I guess. So my bees are close to the ocean. And I am obsessed with surfing. I go out and surf most mornings as the sun's coming up. One morning, I was out surfing, and it was a warm day. So the bees were already flying. And it was a slow day in the ocean. And I was sitting there waiting for a wave. And I saw a bee in the water. And I thought, oh, that's one of my bees. She's drowning.
I better save this bee. So I scooped the bee up out of the water. And just as I did that, the most beautiful wave that I'd seen in weeks was coming right towards me. And so I've got this bee in my hand. And I'm desperate to catch this wave because surfers are as obsessed with waves as beekeepers are with bees. So I had this existential crisis where it's like, do I save the bee or do I catch the wave? Yeah. And it was just a split second. I had to make a decision.
Because if I was going to paddle, the bee would go back in the water and drown. So I had this moment where I was like, I can't miss this wave. So I put the bee on my nose. And I'll get out of here. And paddle, I caught the wave. That is awesome. I caught the wave. I surfed the wave. And as we say, kicked off the back of the wave and lowered myself back down onto my board. And the bee was still right there. And then she flew away. And yeah, I thought that was awesome. Best day ever.
Yeah. For me, that was like nothing else had to happen that day. And everything was going to be good. That is an awesome story. All right, Rob from Man Lake. Appreciate you being with me today. Thank you, Eric. By the way, next time you're shopping for Man Lake, take advantage of the podcast discount. All you have to do on checkout is using the code MLBLOV10. It'll be in the show notes. Don't worry. You can check it there to get $10 off your order of $100 or more.
Thank you so much for listening. And if you like what you hear, do us a favor. Hit that follow or subscribe button and be sure to share this podcast with a friend. We are building a community here. And we want to hear from you. Send your crazy stories, guest recommendations, new gadgets, or anything else you'd like to hear about on the show to Eric at BLOVBEAKEAPING.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.
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