May I have your attention, please? The following is not the real Jeff Fox review. If you failed freshman science, but now teach honeybee anatomy at your local bee club, you might be a beekeeper. If you use a queen clip to keep your hair out... your face during hive inspection, you might be a beekeeper. If you go to the car wash and the attendant there says, I can't get rid of these orange spots on your vehicle, you might be a beekeeper. Welcome welcome to Be Love Beekeeping
presented by Man Lake. A very special thank you to all those who contributed ideas for the new versions of the not real Jeff Fox worthy intros. If you sent one in and didn't hear it today keep listening over the next few weeks you will probably hear it. Our guest today is a special representative from Man Lake to discuss what we need to do for our bees in the spring. plus new beekeeping inventions, wax -dipped woodenware, and much, much more.
Before we check in with her, let's hear a couple new wild and crazy beekeeping stories from our listeners. From Arizona. I've had hives get so hot that frames of honey have melted and bees have come surfing right out of the entrance. And this from Oregon. The first time that I got stung was the day that I got a swarm call. Now realize that this day I was just hanging out at home in my underwear. So at that time I just put on a whole bee suit, socks, boots, and went
out. I didn't even realize that I had forgotten to zip the ankles closed until we shook the swarm out onto a sheet and a bee crawled up my leg and stung my left butt cheek. Alright. Enough for the silliness today. Let's get on with our guest. I would like to welcome our special guest today, Jenna Prozoski. How are you, Jenna? I'm doing fabulous. I'm excited for spring. Definitely ready to get into the beekeeping season this
year. Well, speaking of that, I want to jump into where you live and what it's like beekeeping there. You're in Minnesota. Yes. Are you sort of in the middle part of the state? North Central. So if you put a pin right in the center of Minnesota, we're about an hour north of there. So we do have harsher winters, colder temperatures in the wintertime. We just wrapped up a pretty nasty cold stretch where there was a lot of below zero
temperatures. So I'm glad to be past that. I'm hoping that that's the last of it for this year. for the listeners. We're recording near the end of February. This isn't going to come out until in March sometime. Hopefully by March, you've got flowers and 60 degrees and who knows. In March, where we're at, we usually get at least one good snowstorm. It's usually around the big basketball tournament, college basketball tournament. We seem to always get a snowstorm beginning of
March. And even sometimes we've gotten snow in early April, so our winters do last a long time here. I don't feel that sorry for you then. I thought it was a lot colder in Minnesota, but we've had snow in May. And a couple of years ago, we had a freeze in our garden on June 30th. I as long as I've been gardening, I don't think I've really had a hard freeze after the beginning of June. So I I'm lucky to have at least a little bit more temperate climate once we get into into
June. Anyway, any idea how your personal bees are doing this year? So I have three hives. It's not a huge beekeeper. I like to keep bees for pollination in my garden because I'm an avid gardener. So far, so good. All three colonies were really strong going into the winter. Just as a preventative, I always add in extra winter feed just to be safe. I need to get into my hives yet to see exactly how much of that they have
left. Because yesterday was really the first warm day that we've had this winter where I could do that. So I'm hoping this week to get in. But so far, so good. All three are still buzzing inside their boxes. That is awesome. In fact, I'm doing the same thing today because we may hit 50 degrees here today. We're having a little warm snap, so I'm going to go see how they're doing on food. And you should have bees even flying then doing their cleansing flights at
50. Yeah, yeah, so I'm pretty excited for this afternoon and it's a nice sunny day, so I think it's going to be a good one. So I'm going to let people know up front you are marketing director for Man Lake. We're in love with Man Lake around here as people know I'm not gonna apologize for that one little bit But I want to hear and we
are I promise listeners. We are not turning this into an infomercial today, but I think there's some things that People don't know about Man Lake that'd be good for them to know for example your app and your AI tool Can you just give us an idea of some of those things? Yeah, so over the past year and a half, two years, we have really put a lot of energy towards building resources for beekeepers because we know, especially when you're first getting started, it's not necessarily
an easy hobby to get into. There's tons of information out there. tried to just become a reliable resource for beekeepers. So on our website, we have Bella, who is an AI chatbot, and we have put a lot of energy into training her. So she's giving good information. So if you have just a general beekeeping question, you can go on and just type it in and she'll give you an answer. Some people are in Florida, some are in Alaska. How does Bella know how to answer their questions? It is helpful
if you can provide that information. So I'm in Florida, when should I feed my bees pollen substitute? So the more information that you put into your question, the better answer that you're going to get from her. And we have really put Bella to the test and we've asked customers, even commercial beekeepers to just throw some crazy questions out there. And the feedback has just been phenomenal on the answers that she's giving. She's very, very good. Very, very smart. Yes. Thanks to all
the good information that went into it. Yeah, exactly. How about your app? What can you do on the app and why do I want the app versus just looking up things on my computer? Yeah. So, you know, a lot of people would think, oh man, like has an app that's just for shopping. You can shop on there. Absolutely. All of our products are available there, but there's also a full resource library. So We have our videos on there,
blog articles. There's also a plant identification feature, which we layered in a list of bee friendly plants. So if you're out in your garden, you want to take a snap of that plant to see if it's bee friendly, pull up the app, identify the plant, and it'll tell you whether or not it is good for bees. So what if I'm out on a hike? in the hills and I see some kind of plant that is just
covered with bees. So I'm like, I want to get that in my yard, but I don't know what it is Will it do that also or only tell me if it's
good for bees? No, it will identify and tell you what that plant is There's also a feature if you were to build a pollinator garden in your area You can select your region and it will list out all the pollinator friendly plants that are native to your area So you can focus on native plants that are bee friendly as well Okay, what if I'm somebody that doesn't want to use an app?
afraid of AI and I want to talk to a live person, is there some way to call Man Lake and say, hey, I'm a brand new beekeeper or I've just been doing this a couple of years and I have a question about such and such. Yeah, we have a dedicated customer service staff that will answer your phone calls. One really exciting thing is that a lot of them are also beekeepers and we have also put them. through the University of Florida Master Beekeepers course. Not everyone has completed
the course yet, but they are. That's that's part of their their training is to learn about beekeeping. So if you are getting started and you're uncertain of what to get, how many hives to start with and just those basic questions, just give us a call and we can answer those questions. OK, here's one thing that I want to know, and this may or may not have anything to do with Mad Lake. but it has to do with equipment. How do we know what is good equipment to buy? And I'm talking
wood and wear for starters. Boxes, frames, for those of us that have bought them from different places, and some of them seem to hold together real well. Some it seems like, oh, when the frames get propolized and I pry that thing up, it's splitting apart. Yep. How do I know what's quality so I know what to buy and not? So my best advice is make sure that you are buying from a trusted supplier that manufactures in the US that is not importing their woodenware and is especially
not importing their frames and foundation. And I say that specifically because there are quality control efforts in place with the beeswax coating that we put on our foundation. And that is not in place in other countries. So if you are buying products from Man Lake, I can confidently tell you that it's safe for you to use in your hive. It's safe for your bees. If you're ordering off of some of those Chinese apps where you can get
things super cheap. I cannot confidently tell you that what you're getting is quality and what you're getting is going to be safe for your bees. Speaking of foundation, how do I know when to replace it? Can I just keep foundation forever? You can't. And the reason is, is that your bees are out foraging and when they're bringing things back to the hive, they're not only bringing nectar and pollen back, they're bringing things from the environment. So over time, pesticides and
will build up in the hive. A general rule, five years, you can stretch it out a little bit further, but I think if you try to hold yourself to that five -year mark, chances are you'll be switching it out around six or seven, if you're a beekeeper like me. Well, and it's hard to ever switch it out because it is the bees work so hard to draw out all that comb. And at some point, it's true
what you're saying. You do have to realize there's a buildup of pesticides and stuff in there, and there's times to just throw it away and let them start over for their own health. Exactly. And you can see it in the color of the comb. It just darkens over time. And at a certain point, you
just need to replace it. And one thing that I've done that I've found Helpful is I don't replace an entire box at one time So I'll just rotate certain frames out every year so I'll pull two or four frames out and replace and basically just you know move move the frames that were in there in put my new frames on the outside and then Just just rotate them out Speaking of that. What's the deal with black foundation?
If you have not used black foundation, you definitely should It's not necessary in your honey supers, but in your bird chamber, it is so much easier to see the eggs in the cells. It just provides that contrast to where it's night and day difference. It really is. So I'm guessing also in what you're doing, and I know you're going to all the trade shows and. and the Honey Bee Expos all over the
country and stuff. Tell us about some of the new products you see out there, because I'm kind of a gadget guy, and I love hearing about anything new and whether you think they work or not. Give us an idea. The newest thing on the market, and everyone, I think, is offering some fashion of this, is the wax -dipped woodenware. And I actually would like to talk a little bit more about that and how you know that you're getting something
that is wax -dipped. Because if you're looking at our wax -dipped boxes, the finish on it isn't all that different from just a regular box. I mean, if you have an untreated box next to a wax -dipped box, there's just a slight color difference. So you actually have to spray water on to see whether or not a box is wax -dipped.
Because with the process, the boxes or woodenware, because we have tops and bottoms that are dipped as well, are dipped at such a high temperature that when you dip it into the solution, it actually almost boils the moisture out of your box and then the wax permeates it. So you don't really
see it on the outside. But with the new wax -dipped products that are out on the market, those boxes, tops and bottoms, they're going to last 20 -25 years out in the fields because you've sterilized but with that high temperature and you've removed all the moisture from the wood -aware. And you don't have to paint them, right? You don't have to paint. It is a beautiful natural finish. You certainly could paint if you wanted to and there's
people that will. I know there's a lot of beekeepers that like to paint the outside of their boxes if they've got several hives. next to each other, just so there's a little bit of differentiation. When the bees are coming and going, they can orient and identify which hive they belong to based off of what's on the outside of the box. But you don't have to paint. You can just leave it as that nice natural look for your backyard. They really are pretty. They're beautiful, absolutely
beautiful and functional. And I've thought about taking some before I had heard about the whole dipping process of taking some that were like, quote, ready for paint and putting a nice varnish on it. But most varnishes are toxic and you don't want to do that to the bees. And even some paint, you have to be careful. You have to pay attention to what you're doing. And I think it's a bit of a misconception to new beekeepers that you can just paint your boxes and put your bees in
there right away. I would strongly recommend against that because there's also the fumes and the smell. So if you have a box that you're putting a brand new package of bees in and it's freshly painted, I think that you are increasing the chance that that package could abscond and just up and leave. So don't want to encourage the bees to do that in any way. Well, yeah, off -gassing definitely is a thing. And they may leave or they may just not be quite as healthy. Yeah.
Because there's so much of it. So, so yeah, if you want to paint, paint, leave it outside, let it be in the sun and air out for a few days. Yeah. Air out, dry out, then put your frames in and put your bees in. Yeah. I think that's really good advice. Any other new type inventions? New inventions. I'm trying to think the biggest things. There is a new mite treatment that is coming out. this spring, we're waiting on EPA approval. It's called Naroa. And I think that
that could be a game changer. As far as new inventions, we also have a new high stand that's going to be coming out on the market. That's all the legs are adjustable. So you can put it on an uneven surface and adjust the legs to make sure that your hive is level. I'll take a couple of those. Yeah, we should have that in the next couple of months as well. There's a few other things that we're working on. I just can't talk about them yet. Top secret. We'll let you know when
they come out. Top secret. I don't want to promise something, and then all of a sudden it's two years before we have it. Yeah, because if it's still in development, it may not work first time out. Yep, exactly. You don't want to be selling them until they're really tested and working well. Yeah. We've talked quite a bit about overwintering bees, and so I don't want to get into that. right now, even though you're in Minnesota. I want to talk about spring. What do you do for your
bees in the spring? Really, as as my bees are coming into spring, it's our spring can be very late. So there's not necessarily a lot of forage available. So my my first thing is is it starts to warm up. I'm putting a pollen substitute honey on there. At Man Lake, we have a feed mill here in Hackensack. And so we make all of our pollen substitutes, both the dry and the patty formulas.
And we did just come out with a new one last year called our Rocket Fuel Patties that has natural pollen as well as the Apis Biologics supplement in it, which adds vitamins, minerals, enzymes to really mimic the profile of natural pollen. So that's one of the first things. that I'm putting out there as a pollen substitute and then syrup as well, just to allow that colony to build up before there actually is a nectar flow. One of the saddest things that I've ever
seen was in February. Oh, yes, the bees are doing great. And in March or April, they're dead. And they ran out of food in March. Yes. And that, believe me. If you are so fortunate as to have your bees get through winter, do not let them starve in the spring. Please. Please check if they need food, feed them. It's OK. It is OK. And if you put extra feed on there that does not get consumed and your bees make it through winter, I guarantee you you're not going to regret
that because. It's expensive to replace bees, but at the same time for anybody that's new to beekeeping and you do lose your bees, don't get discouraged. It happens to everybody and it's okay. It's okay as long as you learn from it. So make sure that you're going in and inspecting that hive thoroughly as you clean it out to try to figure out what happened. If your bees have their heads stuck in the comb with their little butts facing out, chances are that they did starve.
And so you know next year that you need to add additional feed. So whether it just be sugar added on the top of the frames of the mountain camp method or use the winter patties that we sell, it's just a cheap insurance policy to make sure that your hive makes it through winter. And also moisture can be such a challenge, especially as we get closer to spring. Here the temperatures will bounce up and down one day. It'll be 50
degrees the next day. It'll be 20 degrees and That can cause moisture issues in the hive So as you're coming into spring checking your moisture boards to make sure that they're not saturated to where they can still help control moisture levels can also also be a cheap insurance Just replacing out that moisture board So how do people know when to stop feeding bees? Really the bees will decrease their consumption. And you can also just watch them as they're coming and going.
If you're watching your bees and landing on the entrance and you can see that their pollen sacks are full, you don't need to be offering a pollen substitute at that point because they're out there and they're finding it. There's one thing I love to see. It is. I'd love to see bees coming in with those big. Yeah. Hunks of pollen stuck on there. I think it is one of the most amazing and beautiful things you can see. It's fun to watch and it's also really interesting to watch
the different colors that they'll bring in. Yeah. And if you don't notice it on the bees themselves when you're doing an inspection and you take a frame out and you're like yellow, orange, red, and all these colors in between, here's something to add to your app. In addition to the plant identifier, a pollen identifier. I will take that note down. Pollen color chart. I know that's probably impossible, but it'd be cool to take a picture and go, oh, well, that's from such
and such a tree or something like that. Ask Bella to do something along those lines. We all experience dead outs from time to time and you mentioned how to tell if your hive starved what other things if somebody has a dead out and they're Inspecting what else could they find that would help them learn from what happened? For example, if they went into fall with their Varroa counts a little high How do they know that in the spring when
they have a dead out? That's a tough one I would strongly recommend that you're monitoring and treating early before going into winter as far as knowing for sure what your levels were when that colony perished. I honestly, I don't know the answer to that. Anything else from looking at a dead out that could teach us something about what happened? If moisture was an issue, a lot of times you'll see just your bees down piled
up at the bottom on your bottom board. A lot of times you'll see mildew in the hive and it just, if moisture was the reason that your hive perished, it can be a pretty - It's gross. Gross thing to clean out. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of yucky. One of the things that I've done is bought a power washer. Yeah. So I can really scrub that stuff out really good. Some people use a flame, burn it, which seems like a really good idea
too. You've been beekeeping long enough. I'm sure you've had some wild and crazy things happening to you. Give me an idea of one. Yes, I will tell you about the first swarm that I caught. It was my second year of beekeeping and I was out working in my garden and I keep my hives right in my garden and I noticed a lot of activity and I thought, oh great, they're swarming. Something's going on here. And I ended up leaving for a little
bit and coming back. And the swarm was in a tree just next to my hives, probably about 25 feet up in the air. And I am very fortunate that my husband owns a construction company. So I called him up and I said, these swarms, we need to get up there. And we actually took a scissor lift and drove it to where the swarm was and lifted up and cut the tree branch into just a cardboard box and I was able to catch my first swarm with
a scissor lift. So it was pretty cool. You know how many swarm catchers would just absolutely kill to have access to a scissor lift? It definitely made it much easier and safer to get up to where they were because honestly they were high enough up in the hives. I wouldn't have felt comfortable climbing up there with the ladder. There's no way I would have just watched them go wherever they were going to go at that point. Twenty five feet is high. It was really high in the air.
I couldn't believe it. I mean, even if you're up like 12 or 15 feet on a ladder and you're holding a box and if you're cutting off a limb, you've got some kind of cutting tool and you're trying to hold the ladder. Yeah. And I'm surprised more people don't die doing that every year. Sorry, that's not funny, but that's really everyone needs to. exercise caution when catching swarms that are high up in trees. Yeah, okay. Well, thank you for everything and for all the advice.
And lastly, I know you've been at Man Lake for a long time. And I don't know very much about the history of the company. What do you know? What do you want to tell us about it? So Man Lake was founded by Jack and Betty Thomas in 1983. I started with the company about 13 years ago, and they were still actively involved at that point. So I was fortunate enough to be able
to meet them and work with them. And they started Man Lake Bee Supply in their garage at their home on Man Lake, which is where the name came from. So there is a lake. or a chain of lakes in Hackensack that's Man Lake, Woman Lake, Child Lake. So that is where the name came from. Shortly after they started their supply business, they moved into the town of Hackensack, which for those of you that have not had the chance to visit here, there's about 300 people in this
town. So it is a very, very small town. We actually, at certain points in our history, have employed more people than what actually lived in the town of Hackensack. So it's a pretty cool place to work because it is just a small town environment and we are just the biggest company here. So it's really been a pleasure to work and work for this company and just seeing how we've been able to grow. Jack and Betty founded the company. They expanded into California, then Pennsylvania,
Texas. We bought Kelly Beekeeping. So now we have a location in Kentucky and also Florida. And I've been able to be a part of that growth with the exception of the California location. We had that when I started here, but everything else has been added on since I started at the company. So how many retail stores and how much of your business is online versus retail? So we have six retail stores. The majority though is still online just because our locations are
not necessarily in really populated areas. The locations that we have were more so centered around commercial beekeeping and trying to have locations that are convenient for commercial beekeepers to access as they're moving around the country doing their pollination. Any other advice for new beekeepers or someone that maybe
isn't one yet, but is thinking huh? That sounds interesting and by the way for people in that category It is wonderful and it's harder than you would expect Beekeeping definitely is harder than what you would expect and I would strongly encourage anyone that is thinking about getting started in beekeeping to take a year and do some research, so read some books, take a beginner's class, find a mentor if you have one in your area, or join your local beekeeping club, and
take the time to learn about beekeeping in your area before you actually get started. Then, once you get started, my best advice for a brand new beekeeper is when you are doing your hive inspections, do not feel like you have to find the queen. everybody goes in and I can't find my queen. I don't think she's in there. I didn't see her. And if you look at the frame, it is full of eggs and larvae, a beautiful brood pattern. You don't have to find your queen. Just make sure that
she is laying eggs. If you see eggs, you have a queen. If you see eggs, you have a queen and don't take the time to tear apart your entire colony looking for her. You know she's in there. What if somebody just wants to take the time?
If you want to take the time, absolutely. Tips for finding your queen is look for a frame that has eggs in it, eggs that are just laid so they're going to be very tiny which they're the black foundation comes in very handy it's going to make it much easier for you to see those and just slowly scan. You can watch the worker bees as well because oftentimes they'll circle around her so if you just watch their behavior sometimes
you can spot your queen that way. And by the way if you want to see the queen so bad and you're new at it so it's taking you an hour or two you are not making your bees happy. And they will likely let you know when they have reached their tolerance point for Joe Beekeeper and it's time to go away and you start getting hit in the face, you know. Exactly. One last thing that I wanted to mention that has never before come up on this show or today. And that is I know a lot of beekeepers
also like to keep backyard chickens. Seriously. Man Lake has poultry stuff too. Yes, you can do all of your shopping for your bees and your chickens on our website. Let's face it, the two hobbies go hand in hand. You have your little backyard farm. I'm sure a lot of you are gardeners as well. So hopefully someday down the road, we'll be able to get into that as well. And compared to bees, I can say from experience, chickens are much easier. They are. They are. They're
dirtier, but they are much easier. Anyway, Jenna, I appreciate your time very much. Thanks for being with me today. Yeah, happy to be here. Thanks again for joining us here on Be Love Beekeeping presented by Man Lake. Another great place for more information on everything related to this podcast is in our email newsletter. You can sign up for it for free 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.