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. Welcome, welcome to Be Love Beekeeping presented by our great friends over at Man Lake.
Today we're concluding our discussion with the two giggliest beekeepers around, I hope that's a word, giggliest beekeepers around, Kim and Steph. We will finish up our top 10 list of decisions to make before you take the leap into beekeeping, plus hear their wild and crazy beekeeping adventure that they had while doing a live video over social media. You won't want to miss the fun, but first let's take a minute to go Inside the Hive, this feature presented by Primal Bee. Did you know
that beeswax doesn't come from flowers? Bees make it from their own bodies. Young workers, between about 12 and 18 days old, have glands on the underside of their bellies that produce tiny clear flakes of wax, each one about the size of a pinhead. The bee grabs a flake, chews it soft with her mandibles, and carefully places it wherever the colony is building. Thousands of bees doing this one flake at a time is how you get comb. The engineering is absolutely wild.
Honeycomb is made of perfect hexagons. This shape uses the least wax to create the most storage space. Mathematicians have been fascinated by it for centuries. Here's the expensive part. Bees need to eat about six to eight pounds of honey to produce one pound of wax. So when you see fresh white comb or wax cappings in a hive, you're looking at a serious investment. That's why experienced beekeepers treat drawn comb like
gold. It's not just wax. It's thousands of flower visits converted to nectar, converted to honey, converted to wax. one tiny flake at a time. Next time on Inside the Hive, we'll discover how bees run their own air conditioning system in the summer heat. Now, let's get back to Kim and Steph. Okay, as long as we're on kind of the mindset thing, let's discuss a little bit about how do you feel about bees? Is there a fear going into this? Are you sure you're not allergic to bee
venom for starters? What else on that line should people think about? I would say my first year, I did not have any type of fear. I wasn't stung. I had a beautiful experience, which can be good and bad. because the next year will be much different, can be very different. And unfortunately, you don't know your tolerance to stings until it happens. So again, wearing proper PPE is very
important. Getting checked out if you feel if you've gotten stung and you feel you've had a certain reaction, you want to go get checked out immediately. What else? I think you should be honest with yourself about how much time you're willing to put into it. I think that's important that you to know how much time are you willing to put into this for your bees and for yourself because it is time consuming. Yeah, that's good
advice. Are you two the type that are just normally very calm like the first time you were around bees? Did you feel very calm or did you feel
some anxiety? I was definitely anxious. there's a lot of energy when you're going into your hive for the first time whether it's nervous energy or oh my gosh is this so cool kind of energy but i was apprehensive because i i knew like this thing could potentially be you know i could hurt them they could in turn hurt me so i was apprehensive for sure i went into it a little more calm Learned kind of what we talked on earlier that my mindset has everything to do with how
my visit in the bee yard is gonna go if I go in nervous and anxious I'm not gonna have a good visit if I go in without love in my heart I'm not gonna in turn show my bees that same love that they they show us so I Just have to take a moment even now to this day before I go into the bee yard I just take a moment to collect myself and say We're going in with the bees.
We need to be calm. They can pick up on that So let's make it a beautiful day and we go in and we have a great time but always I always take that moment to make sure that my mind is calm and That's where I'm out with it now Kim, how about you? I went into it a little more calm a little I wasn't nervous. I just thought it was amazing, but I have gained a lot of respect for bees, and each experience that you have is
going to be different. And when you do get stung, which will happen, and you just learn to try to get through it, the bees are doing what they do. And you want to try to be as calm as possible. Because if you're calm, it does help, as Steph said, your mindset can affect how they react. And you want to have respect because at the end of the day they're still wild creatures that
you cannot control. So we can talk about how they act during the season but you'll get that couple weeks in the summer where there's a dearth and you've got a whole different kind of bee behavior going on and you want to be able to recognize that and if you're a backyard beekeeper and you and you need to check your your hive that week and you open that hive and they're just coming at you, they're not having it, then you have to respect that and think, you know
what? I'm just going to close it up and I'm going to leave and I'll check a different time. They're just not, they're just not having it. You don't want to force it if, you know, if you can help that. I love that. Commercial beekeepers don't have that luxury like hobbyists do. And so if you have the time, it's really nice to be able to do that. We forgot to talk about how many beehives should someone start with a beginner? Because the natural tendency is I want to get
one. See how it goes. I'm a big fan of let's get two. Two is a great place to start with because What if something happens to one of them? That's always everybody's like fear. And it might, I mean, honestly, it could happen, but having to, you also learn a lot. You can see what is this high doing? What is this high doing? And kind of compare them. Also, it's just, I think it's so much fun to have two highs. There's just a huge learning experience having them. How about
starting with 10 or 20? Oh, yeah, don't start with 10 or 20. That's a way to not want to be a key. Although we kind of did that because when we were at our location in Pennsylvania, we would take the packages that weren't doing well that we didn't sell and we would try to. We would just try to help them survive. So we kind of took on a little more than we probably should have just because we're trying to get the bees a fighting chance for sure. But I would recommend
for most everybody else. I understand that cost is definitely something to consider and. You want to just start with one because of course, it's so expensive But ultimately having at least two will help you because you never know if you're going to need to take resources From a hive to help one that maybe is failing or not doing as
well. I completely agree Also, if you only had one Whatever it does you would think is normal That's exactly yeah, and it may not be Mm -hmm I started with two and the kind of Langstroth boxes that I have or had at that time, they had the regular entrance in the bottom and they had a small entrance at the top also, which is fairly normal. One of the hives would only use the top entrance for some reason. So I would have thought that that was normal if that was the only hive
that I had. You wouldn't have now. But they were just... Yeah, they were just goofy bees and they just did that. So we're going to be wrapping up here pretty soon. One of the other things that I think can go with your why you get into beekeeping is also take a good look at what are my long -term goals? Do I want to always have two hives because maybe it'll help my allergies? Do I want to get to a point where I'm making
a little bit of money at it? Do I want to get to a point where maybe it's a full -time business? Or as you were saying, I want to make some skincare products. What advice do you have for people to really look ahead and set some goals right off the bat? Well, just keep in mind that if your bees overwinter and they come through winter strong and the queen starts laying, then in spring, you're going to want to make what's called a split, which obviously we'll have to touch on
that another time. But essentially you'd be turning one colony into two. So right away you'll have two. So you want to make sure that you wouldn't get ahead of yourself. If you go over winter with four hives and that's all you wanted, but come spring all those hives did well, you're looking at potentially eight hives, which is more money. more time, more resources. It could be a little bit above what you feel comfortable
in. You may also live in a place where you just don't have space for more than a couple of hives. That's true. Like in my example here, I have four hives, but I can't have them in my yard. So my bee yard is separate from where I'm at. How did you find that other bee yard? Because lots of people might have to do that. So I was lucky and we had a family member who has a lot of property and a lot of it they don't use. They're not utilizing other than just to walk around
and such. So we were lucky enough to be able to put our bees there. So family was our option,
thankfully. What if you live in a city? Hmm Well, I mean again, you'd have to check with your county to see but a lot of people I know that if you can in your your county you can do rooftop beekeeping Which is something I thought of so there's there's that or I mean you can I don't know maybe reach out to Some other places to see if you could put your hives on there on their property I know some schools in such will allow for that Are you planning on expanding your apiary this year?
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code Be Love at checkout. I would definitely join a Bee Association if you live in a city. because if you end up with your hives doing really well and You cannot keep all of those on your property Having someone local that could maybe take them for you. You could make nukes out of them You could also use it as an opportunity to make some money if that Would be something you did more research and looking into All right.
Let's wrap up with a couple of other things and that is just in general, things that we've left out, such as preparing for potential predators, what else should people be thinking about? Prepare for having honey. You're going to want to look at the containers you're going to want to get. Are you going to want to label your honey if you get honey? Can you sell your honey where you're at? What's behind that for you? So you definitely need to look at what you're going
to do with your honey. How are you going to extract it? Are you going to do it by hand? Are you going to put it in an extractor? So I think that's important. Like you're going to have some product at some point. What are we going to do with it? And of course, you want to look into electric fencing wherever you may have your bees. I can speak from experience that maybe the bees or maybe the bear don't find your bees that first year. Maybe they don't find them the second year,
but they will find them eventually. And they will wreak havoc all over the bee yard. And that's something that's devastating. for anyone that's involved. So of course you don't want anything to happen to your bees, but all that money and all that time you may have spent putting your equipment together. So that is another expensive investment, but one that is extremely important. And is there anything besides bears we need to watch out for? Because a lot of people live where
there's no bears. You can watch out for other people. We've had instances where people take hides that don't belong to them. You could have other predators such as, I said, skunk or raccoon come by. Oh, could be mice. Yeah, oh, mice. Mice are going to be careful. Get yourself a mouse guard in the winter. Yeah. Oh, and the don't forget the European hornet. So and the yellow jackets for in robbing season, which is another
topic we could probably talk all day. And again, if you're in touch with local beekeepers, you'll hear about some of that and how to prepare for those kinds of things because predators aren't all big. Some are little and also fly. And some are even birds and things like that. Do either of you have a fun, wild and crazy story you'd like to share with us? Well, we do have quite the story. Steph and I go live on Man Lakes TikTok every Thursday afternoon. We try to do for 12
Eastern time. We were told to go live, funny enough, during a dearth. And this is when we did live hive inspections. And we set the camera up, went live. I'm inspecting the bees. They're not really appreciating it, but all is well at the moment. Steph decided that she wanted to try a new veil that she really liked, and she wanted to see what it was like. However, it wasn't connected to her jacket, and the zipper part,
I don't think, was pulled up all the way. And as I'm inspecting and trying to focus, she is getting stung in the head. So she had gotten stung once, and you know, let me know. We just kept going. But of course, that pheromone had been released and she got stung probably eight more times as I'm trying to go live and the hive is open and did not know how to handle that.
So had to wrap up the live and not and thinking back, maybe we should have included that in the live stuff is that's a real thing that happens to beekeepers. I mean, it does. But I didn't know how to handle it. So I kind of just hit it and did it and then tended to stuff. I wanted to make sure she was OK. She was. Yeah. Right. And we jumped right back into it. We within like 15 minutes, I think we are back to her. I had her up. We made sure all the stingers were out.
She didn't have any bad reactions, which was what we were most concerned about with that many. I know it's hot. We're in August T. Pennsylvania. heat. So that was quite an experience, which we do talk about now fondly, but at the time was pretty scary. Now we just laugh about it. Well, I don't know. I do. And if you had left that in, you would have had a lot more views on that video. I know we say that all the time. How we regret that because we would have got
so many more views for sure. But I was more concerned with her realize she's being a very good friend. Well, you guys are brave doing live stuff. This podcast is not live. I guess I'm just not as brave as you guys. Or I'm not as talented. I need editing to fix stuff. No, no, you'd be great. Yeah. All right. I'm coming on your live sometime. I would love to have you for sure. I hope you do. I hope you do too. Be a disaster. Okay. Hey, any other last thoughts? I do want to say thank
you so much for having us. This has been so fantastic. Never thought I'd be on a HUD cast. So this has been just made my made my year actually. Thank you. This was a lot of fun. I was a little nervous going into it, but you are so sweet and just getting us to talk. We are talking about what we love, which is actually beginning beekeeper.
We love talking. We have a lot of knowledge in beginning bee keepings and a lot of people we talk to over the phone are calling for the first time asking questions about how do I get bees and what do I need to do. So we just we love to talk to them and let them know that have fun with it first and foremost. Yes, it can be scary. You can get some anxiety with it. It costs a lot. But ultimately, we just want the backyard beekeeper to have fun as we have fun. Absolutely.
All right Kim and Steph, thank you so much for your time. It is fun. Sometimes we take beekeeping too seriously. It's fun, it's about the love, and one other thing that I was going to throw out for advice is get the family involved. This doesn't have to just be you. It can be the spouse, the kids, the grandkids, the whoever. It's fun to get other people together doing this with you. Absolutely. Find a beekeeping buddy for sure. All right, take care you two. Thank you
so much. Thanks again for joining us on Bee Love Beekeeping presented by our great friends over at Man Lake. Hey, 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. Thank you so much guys. If you haven't yet, please subscribe and follow the show, tell your friends about it, and click on over to Be Love Beekeeping dot
com to sign up for our free newsletter. If you have a guest suggestion or topic that you'd like discussed on the show, shoot me an email, eric at Be Love Beekeeping dot 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.