May I have your attention, please? The following is not the real Jeff Voxworthy
If you wear gloves while beekeeping for no other reason than it's easier than picking the propolis off your fingers
You might be a beekeeper
If you talk to your bees more than you talk to your spouse
You might be a beekeeper
If you smell a newly opened jar of honey before tasting it
You might love honey bees
Welcome welcome to bee love beekeeping podcast presented by our good friends over at Man Lake
And hey a special thanks goes out to the not real Jeff Voxworthy for that fun intro
At bee love we're all about honey bees 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 bees beekeepers and fun beekeeping stories
It's all about the love
Before we go all the way to Hawaii for our interview today with Jasmine Joy
I've got to mention this news story that keeps popping up in my feed. I
Don't know what to think of this. I welcome your feedback
The headline reads artificial light found to disrupt the circadian cycle of vital ecosystems and economic pollinators
Now they're talking specifically about bees here and let me just read you a few quotes from one of the articles
Disrupted sleep cycles are a well-known concern for human health and function and now researchers have found similar impacts on
insects a
New study has found that artificial light disrupts the circadian rhythms of honey bees and
poses a threat to their essential role as pollinators
Now this study comes out of the University of California, San Diego
And it found that light disruption is not only a health concern for humans
But also for honey bees quote our research shows just how sensitive honey bees are to changes in their environment
Particularly to something as seemingly benign as artificial light
Honey bees generally prefer to nest in dark environments
So let me just interject here because I don't really get this because
Inside my beehives. It's pretty dark even during the daytime little little light comes in through the entrance, but
at night
Even if there's a little on beyond light
It's got to be very dark in there. Doesn't it?
So this is what this whole study was about
Now if you read really closely
It sounds like the way that they actually did this study was to keep honey bees in a completely
Lit environment so much much brighter than inside a hive
So take this all with a grain of salt, but I
Yeah, I mean how often at night even in an urban kind of setting
Unless you've got a great big old spotlight on your hive or something. Are they really getting much light from outside?
So as soon as I bring that up I read this
Bees sleep outside when they swarm or when they form beebeards
Outside the nest on hot evenings, which are increasing under climate change
Now this part I thought was kind of interesting actually
It says sleep is crucial for the health and fitness of honeybee colonies
Since they depend on an intricate system of communication
Known as the waggle dance that informs hive mates about the location of food sources in the environment
Here's the interesting part
bees dance more poorly and therefore do not communicate as well if they do not get enough sleep. I
Don't know what you want to do with this information for most people
I don't think it's going to make any changes in what you do keeping bees whatsoever
If you find yourself in maybe a really bright place
Maybe you're in an urban environment
You have a bee hive on the roof of a building that has spotlights on it or something
I don't know maybe you put some kind of a shade canopy over the front or something
So that they're not getting that direct light. Anyway, honeybees need to sleep too
Maybe these days when the girls are just really grumpy. It's because they didn't have enough sleep
Now let's go on over to Hawaii and find out what it's like doing beekeeping in a beautiful place
I'd like to welcome our special guest today Jasmine Joy all the way from beautiful Hawaii Aloha
Aloha Eric
Mahalo for having me on your podcast be love. Well, you're so very welcome
Yes, it's all about the love of bees and when I think of love of bees
You're one of the first people that comes to mind because I visited your apiary about four years ago
When it was in a different location, but it was so beautiful and so peaceful and you are someone so at tune with
Your girlfriends the honeybees
Oh, thank you. Yeah, it was it was great having you in the apiary
You and Gil correct you and Gil came out. Yes the rolls of my girls
Be rolls of your girls and Joey was our cameraman that day. Yeah, we had we had some good fun
And he was brave Gil stayed about a mile away
Joey put on a B suit no gloves so he could operate the camera and he did a pretty good job
Where my girls pretty nice to you guys. They were very nice. They were very well behaved
But as you told me you had told them ahead of time these nice people are coming
Be on your best behavior. You had a whole conversation and before we ever turned on a camera
We sat down with them for about 20 minutes and relaxed and and it was it was a great experience
So thank you again for that
But we're not here to talk about that today. We want to know what it is like to keep bees in Hawaii because it seems like
It would be so easy
Because there's flowers everywhere and the weather's perfect and is that the case? You can be honest
I wouldn't say anything a part of apaculture is easy
It's very much blood sweat and tears, but good tears tears of joy. Yeah, so what kinds of pest problems do you have there?
well, we do have the varroa mite here and
We have the small hive beetle
We got the wax mop, but that's just that's not a big deal unless you just have old equipment in your hives already dead
But between the varroa mite and this African small hive beetle those thrive here
We can we can talk first about the small hive beetle because I have more enlightening news about the varroa mite
Which is which is good to talk about on this podcast. Let's do it the small hive beetle
I remember you were telling me or when you came to the apiary
Eric that
It was your first time seeing the beetles, correct? Well, yeah, I live in a cold climate and we just don't have them
We have plenty of varroa and plenty of other problems, but yeah, the beetles are not there. So tell us how you deal with them
I
Like to call them the Darth vaders of the hive because they just look like little black helmets walking around their scavengers
They come from the grasslands area right below the Sahara desert in Africa
so it the climate there is pretty similar to
here in Hawaii and so they thrive here and
They were originally first found in Florida
outside of
Africa within the United States and then
Just through I guess migratory beekeeping somehow they ended up here in Hawaii
I can't tell you exactly how the beetles got here because the honey bee was introduced to Hawaii in 1857
So that's 167 years ago. We're talking about and
the honey bee being an introduced species to Hawaii that we're talking about Hawaii is the extinction and
I believe in most it has the most invasive and it's the extinction and invasive capital of the world invasive species
and so
the honey bees are great because although they're introduced they're not invasive they're beneficial and
even though they're introduced here
This is one of the most favorable places in the world to keep honey bees Canada and the mainland United States rely on
Hawaii on our queen bee production here
They would be nowhere at their stature of apoculture in either of those regions if it wasn't for Hawaii
And that's mostly on the big island, right? Yeah, that's mostly on the big island and boy
Eric I've learned so much in this past year
We can kind of touch be on the big island
We can kind of touch base on outside of Oahu as well on
other islands because in spring next year, I'll actually be fully
moving to Kaua'i the island of Kaua'i, which is the most
Northern island that's habitable. I mean there's Ni'i Hau, but it's owned by the Robinson family and that's just neighboring it
But what is up there and Kaua'i doesn't have mites. Yeah, they do not have mites
Now I had heard that about Molokai also
I was about to say Molokai is the other one that doesn't have but the rest of the islands have the mites
Finish small hive beetle. Do you have any magic solutions that other people can use?
Well, you know, I'm going on 14 years of being a bee guardian attending to these beautiful sacred honey bees and
I've tried many
Many modalities. I'm a treatment free beekeeper. So that means I'm not using any pesticides
What I do use though when I first started beekeeping and caring for honey girl organics hives, which is the organic skincare company
It was my gateway into apoculture
I go manage their creamery department and made manufactured their whole product line
so they're making skincare from products in the hive the beeswax the honey and
I learned how to rescue I did one structural removal in
For bee rescuers or be removal specialists. We say cut out
I did with the founder of honey girl organics and then I ran with it and started bee leave Hawaii in
2011
2012 I started beekeeping in 2011 2012 I started bee leave Hawaii
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And at the time
Exterminators were still allowed to kill honey bees here and then a few years after that
They were deemed a threatened species and then now they're not allowed to kill them unless they're aggressive and they're considered a pest, right?
So with the African small hive beetle
They thrive here because like I said, the climate is very similar to the grasslands below the Sahara desert
They can smell honey supposedly like miles away
If there's like a thriving hive somewhere they can smell it miles away fly to it go inside of the hive
They'll lay eggs inside of the hive and then so this is their life cycle
The Beatles lay eggs inside of the hive they hatch now they turn into like little little maggots. They're really disgusting
they look exactly like a maggot and
In that form they see the light of the entrance of the hive and they're like, oh
They get all intrat go to the light
I think of like the minions with the big eyes
you should and so
So they crawl out and they pupate in the soil below the hives so one already one way of IPM is I have weed mat
I have one of my apiaries is on concrete like slabs. So that is already
It slows down their prop there just the life cycle of that larva crawling out and crawling into
Infupating in the soil right now in places where in apiaries where my hives are on
They're on high stands, of course
But then there's just dirt grass whatever below them
I have weed mat before I even bring when I'm installing an apiary
That's the first thing I'm doing is clearing the land and putting weed mat down to also
prevent all the weeds from growing around the hives with and you know us beekeepers know
Bees are sensitive to vibration and sounds so they don't like the weed wacker
They're gonna come out all not happy and possibly stings and we're maintaining all our weeds and everything like that. So
There's one one form of IPM already weed mat and then one one thing I learned along the years is
There's this
Spanish they either call it like Spanish or Cuban oregano. It's a pretty big leaf and it's fuzzy and it's and it's thick and
and
We were installing the that oregano below the
You know making foals little pucas in in the weed mat and just installing it
planting it right under the apiary and then we saw that
The the beetle count started to go down
So it must be something in the oils of that oregano that
That they don't like, you know, it kind of burns their exoskeleton or not the exo excuse me
Not that it probably burns the the worms when they're trying to pupate in that soil. That's cool, right?
All right out with the Darth vaders. Okay. Okay. You sounded excited about something you have for Varroa
What are you doing there? Okay, so
every year we have an annual beekeepers meeting at UH University of Hawaii at Manoa and
And UH honey bee project hosts it a couple years ago. They had I want to say his name's dr. Steven Martin
I don't have my notes on me, but I'm pretty sure that's his name and he's from
England area like London England around that area and so
Ethel dr. Ethel via Lobo, she's the founder and she runs the UH honey bee project
So she's been working with him and she she had him
as a like a guest speaker at our annual beekeepers meeting and
it was so
just
refreshing and
It filled my honey heart. I like to say
To because I've been a treatment free beekeeper my whole my whole profession my whole career as a beekeeper now
I think there's way more beekeepers that treat than do not and so at this meeting
he
was speaking about the studies that they've been doing is
that
bees over time because of all the might and
Their their own adaptability in in nature in the wild
What they do is something called recapping and if you were if we're doing inspections in our hives and
You look at the brood and you look at the cappings of the brood if it looks if they don't look seamless
Like if that if that brood capping doesn't if it looks like there's small perforations in it
There's a high chance that your bees are highly hygienic
therefore
the in the recapping process
the bees are
When there's mites in a cell the bees are able to detect it
They reopen that that capped brood cell with the pupa in it and they cannibalize their own brood
And what happens to the mite when they do that?
Well once they cannibalize their own brood that mites scurries out and it's just yeah
You know, I guess the mite is still present, but at least they're
They're they're uncapping it and then the queen's able to lay another egg in there and then they're recapping and supposedly there's
There's no ice. Yeah, the mite doesn't have a host
Right, isn't that crazy?
But it's cool
So how do we encourage them to do that more or or is it just a matter of
Here's something genetic that I'm seeing and I want to keep these genetics going see
That question
If you were to ask somebody else that isn't a bee rescuer or a bee removal specialist as myself
They would probably they would definitely give you another answer for me
Every single colony I've every owned has been rescued and I'm proud to say I've never even bought a queen bee in my whole life
Because having multiple hives, I'm able to if there's a weak hive
I could pull from another hive and pump it pump up that weak hive again
if that weak hive is just really on its way out and
You know, I've in my beginning years of beekeeping
I was crying when my hives got slimed by the beetles and just would lose hives and over time
I've learned that the bees have really taught me
Have how how to learn or to just transmute the grieving process
and accept that
They come and they go and I'm I'm a very spiritual person
And I do believe in reincarnation and I I do believe and so I pray to my bees and the ones that don't make it
I always just pray that
They come back and even more golden healthy holy pumping hive and or something else not be maybe they want to be something else
Yeah, so it's part of the life cycle. It's part of nature and it's okay
Yep, and and bringing it back to that Eric
And that's where I was trying to say is the the difference is if you were to ask just a beekeeper
That's just like a hobbyist or a backyard beekeeper versus somebody. That's a conservationist as myself
Is that it's the bees in the wild here that have grown this adaptability of this recapping process
And so what dr. Stephen Martin was saying is that what he specifically all awful
Has the potential to be the first place with mites but to be mite free
because
Maybe it's more like mite resistant. Yeah, because this
Adaptation I think that's it there can be mites, but if they don't bother my bees who cares
Exactly and so toward the end of this meeting
He made the suggestion to all the beekeepers in the room that if they are treating that they start weaning off their
Bees from treatment. Wow
because
I've never treated my bees so they're already ahead of the game
And I do believe in survival of the fittest so because I'm rescuing these colonies. I end up the strongest
Stocks and genetics of bees end up surviving in my apiaries
So here in Hawaii since the honeybee was introduced in 1857. We only have two genetics
The first the first bees that came
They brought them
First of all, they try to bring a hive all the way from the east coast and the hive melted
Before it even got to Hawaii. So they're like, okay, that's not gonna happen
So they decided to bring it from San Jose, California and they put the hive on a block of ice
On the fanny major is the name of the ship
And and then it came to Hawaii
There were these brothers in new oanu area, you know the Pully area
Yeah, that's why if you go to the lookout there, Eric
You'll see a sign that says flying bees be aware
Because new oanu was the first place that the bees when they were introduced to Hawaii
They were situated in in a yard of these brothers that cared for them and from just I think there
There were three hives those bees started to swarm
And then I want to say a year or two after they brought
More genetics and so the two genetics that we have here
Are dark German and Italian
The Polly is so windy. How do they even fly?
That's what I'm saying
That's why the sign is there because the bees like they could barely fly around because it's so yeah, they're all erratic
Okay, I'm gonna really notice that closer the next time I'm there
Thank you for opening my eyes to that. Are there any seasonality issues?
Are there any dirth times at all?
You know, I've been observing climate change into crisis since
Seriously since 2018 in my journals and my logs
And there was a year
I want to say it was
2021 around there 2020 2021. It was just like the beginning of the pandemic
And I get a call from the Waimanala polo field
And there's a lady that runs an equestrian program. I have so much respect for equestrians
I feel like they're similar to beekeepers where horses are so special and intuitive
If you don't have a relationship and a kinship with the horse that horse is gonna buck you off like the bees state new, you know
So just like the bees always bring me to the coolest most magical places. I appreciate that so much
So what was happening there?
She had a section in the polo field where she was running tours with like children
adults too, but mostly children where it was like that building that relationship
trusting I think it was bear back on the horses things like that
And she calls me up one day and she goes hi. Do you think you could come assess a situation that's going on here?
There's bees that are coming and eating the food that I'm feeding my horses and I said what?
She goes yeah, and one of my horses got stung and won't eat anymore
Because she knows that the bees keep going to the trough there where the food the feed is
And she won't eat and I was like, oh no
Four four horse. Well, then that's smart too. The horse is like check now. I'm not gonna go over there and get stung again
Well, and bees don't eat horse food
No, so check this out eric. What happened is I get there
And I see the bees so the horses eat
soy
Little little pellets that literally look like pollen pellets
And the bees are on the ground with the with the it's basically like edamame pellets, right?
And and so the bees are on the ground packing these soy pellets on their legs like pollen
Which when you think about it if it's like at a moment, this is gmo because
Soy is one of the four major gmo crops
And the fact that I saw that I put it all together that there's not enough pollen in the trees and that year we had a drought
Like we we did not get a lot of rain that season and we had just we were just coming out of winter going into spring
And when I saw that I was like wow the flora around us isn't even producing enough
Protein for the bees which is their pollen intake and they need that
You know, they can't just live off of nectar. They need a balanced diet just as like us human beings
That is really interesting and for those that don't know the geography around there
Waimanalo is a is not a dry place. Yeah, there are dry parts of the island
Waimanalo is green and it's near the mountains and well in fact, that's where your apiary was and it was
Yeah, so so it was just dry enough that even though probably things looked green. They weren't creating pollen. Yeah
Interesting. Yeah, and and to add on to Waimanalo. It is an agricultural
area
So a lot of our invasive species end up concentrated there like there's huge iguanas there right now
And they're not anywhere else on the island and we're like, oh my god keep those iguanas there in Waimanalo
Those are not native to there by the way. No, we can the koki frogs which are from big island anytime they hear one
Uh department of ag will will spend night and they find me it will they come out at night
So they'll go listen to it and then just find it and spray it and
And that's done. I have read about that and I get it where my daughter lives on the big island
All night long you hear the koki frogs, but I love it to me. It is so relaxing
But they're surprisingly loud
And I know they don't want them to hit all the other islands. How are they going to keep um varroa mites from
kawaii
because
They can hitch a ride on a barge or a boat and accidentally get over there
Ask the people in australia. Yeah, it's we've it's been that this way for
So many years now. I hope that we can continue that
But like that's prohibited. We're not even allowed to be
moving
Bees island to island sure and as I mentioned when the bees were introduced in 1857
50 years after that they prohibited any more outside bees from coming in because within 50 years
We were thriving already just
By the bees were coming from those two genetics that they brought in and they must have been good genetics
Yeah, like I had the honor and privilege of rescuing bees from eolani palace in august of 2020
and pandemic and
They were concerned that those were africanized bees because there were there was a beehive at every tower corner of the palace
And they were coming down and stinging tourists and stinging guests and stinging even the security guards
So they took
They they they found a dead one or whatever grabbed a specimen and gave it to you a chinese bee project and dr. Ethel via loboskos
No, they're just dark germans
Oh, thank goodness. There's nothing africanized over there at this point. Tell me about some of the things that you do business wise
So you mentioned removals?
Yeah, and is that the majority of what you do? That's what the elite hawaii is founded on and I
We are we are the lead bee removal
Company on oahu at least the the type of work that we do is historical industrial commercial
We do residential and that's how we started off. So yeah, we help the auntie and uncle and the the tutus and everything and
I give them
More of a personable. I'm very personable with all my clients
but
I like to give the kupuna our elders. I give them a little discount
They're they're just living off of their retirement and they're so grateful for that, you know
And I'm just grateful that them being
At as elders they have the consciousness and awareness of keeping these bees alive because a lot of these older
Generations are like kill the bees. They don't even think about it because they didn't grow up in in the time of this scarcity
of everything kind of of it the whole natural world and
And the pollinators and they're so important
so
I'm founded as a bee removal service
and then
it was
2015 so three years after starting the bee removal business
Was when I started to pivot and expand and then the full circle or full hexagon
I like to say
Of bili, hawaii is a rescue relocate rehabilitate and educate
So the bees that I rescue I relocate them to my partnership farms bee sanctuaries
and then I rehabilitate them with so much love
and holistic methods of caring for them and then the education the last part is what I just did today
I started the first my first outreach class of this of this school year and
this is my seventh
anniversary of doing it's called the pollinator outreach program. So I call it pop
and I've been bringing my rescued bees to schools for over seven years now
and
it fills my heart to
everything everything I do that bili, hawaii encompasses from saving the bees that and that's hard work. It's like being a
demolition construction worker
and cutting open structures and just using my infrared camera to even identify be established beehives
inside of the wall
and the reason I'm able to pick up their where they're at is because they have the same heat as a human body
They're 97 degrees in a wall and that's why my thermal imager can pick them up
So from there to that full hexagon or full circle in teap bringing these bees to schools
And then my latest program Eric and I started it after
We you had come to the apiary is called believe university
and it's a beekeeping school and
I'm about to launch my first virtual course, but it will be my fifth cohort that I'll be teaching
So I just this year were wrapped up my fourth in-person cohort
I have 18 graduates out of these last four cohorts
Each each cohort I max it out at at six students
So I had five in my first one three in the second four in the third and five five in this last one
And is that a one-time class or come all right? I had once a week or
Or how does that work? It's a 16 week program
And they would they would come every Thursday from 10 to 2 to my partnership farm
Hoa, Aina, Omokaha in YNI on the west side 16 weeks. That's pretty thorough 16 weeks
And so how I break it down I break it down quarterly
I'll tell you the titles, but I break it down the first quarter is about spirit of the bee
The second is mine the third is body and the last is environment
And so in that first quarter it's called superorganism psyche
I attune my students to tap into their intuition and
And feel into their honey hearts
And I have this formula that I channeled
I tell my students when it comes to beekeeping
This is the formula. It's 3s before 2t
The 3s stands for sight scent and sound
Before 2t is taste and touch. So these are our five senses and we can smell
We can hear and we can see
We can watch the entrance of a hive. We can smell what's wafting out of the entrance and we can listen to
Their hum their buzz before we even open that hive and touch a frame or taste that honey
The inspection already starts there. Absolutely
We have a good idea of what's going on. Yeah, I mean, I I get it commercial beekeepers
They've got a thousand hives. They've got to just book through it all for those of us that are hobbyists
Or like you that can take the time. I recommend take the time
Spend some time
Quieting yourself before you even get near the bees. So you can be more in tune
We actually consider calling this podcast intuitive beekeeping, but we like be love better
It's so much about being intuitive. I believe I'm not quite as into it
I can't communicate with my bees as well as you can
But there are plenty of times. Oh, don't don't tell some people that you're I'm saying this but
Where I ask them, what do you need? I can tell you need something
You've got a problem here and there's eight different ways that we can approach it
What do you need? What's going to be best for you? And I really try to listen. I can't say I'm great at it
But I'm trying
Just to hear you say that Eric it it makes me happy because
you being a male beekeeper and
In the world of apaculture
there it's there's so many male beekeepers and
I think a lot of them too are are on the more conventional side, right?
and
For me, there's this symbolism in the patriarchy, you know in this last decade
We've all been watching this whole patriarchy just kind of like
slowly crumble in in many facets
And I look to the bees like I look to the world
I look at the super organism of the hive and the matriarchy like if we as a human species
Would honor mother earth the way that her daughters even even the drones like the drone passes on his I call them kamikaze king bees
They mate with her in the sky. They pass on their lineage. They have an explosive orgasm and fall to the ground
What a way to go. Come on. Don't feel sorry for him
and
Did you ever see the meme it said honey mat churio?
Yes
four drones
but
Can you imagine Eric if like?
We honored as a human race the planet as
Her offspring honor her the queen
How much more harmonious this this place would be
All right, we're running out of time. You wanted to talk about the big island. What's going on over there? Is it just the queens?
Yes, it has a lot to do with the queens and I am not going to throw any
Organizations or companies under the bus by naming names
But let's just say that I've learned so much this year about gmo bees genetically modified organism bees
The artificial insemination of just queen breeding already. There's a dishonor just
The the the way that it's done
How they even take the queens before they ship them off and they put them like they gasp them in a bag so that they just kind of
Basically fall asleep for a little bit and I'm just like, oh my god like
If we have a queen breeder on the big island listening
You're welcome to come on the show and give your side of the story
yeah
Yeah, and I have I have no daggers to throw at anybody in that
I'm not doing those things. I'm just
Representing myself and what I believe in and I come from a neutral
stance. I'm not here to judge any other beekeepers
I know we're all very quirky very eccentric and all very different
And that's it. I'm just here sharing what I believe in is bono, which is righteous and just and balance and
and whoever
feels inspired to learn from me. I I just hold the the deepest
space for them and a very safe container of
mentorship guardianship so that
Really what it is
Bee leave university and the way that I teach is is do or chip not just for the bees. It's for the whole planet. It's for
All sentient beatings
By the way, if people want to look you up you keep saying be leave with their whether it's university or hawaii
It's be leave
Hawaii calm. Yeah, by the way, they can find you it'll be in the show
Notes
To I have two more questions for you that I need to let you go
One is I want to hear one wild and crazy beekeeping story from you
Oh one wild
Something that stands out that was like, oh, I can't believe that happened or it was painful or it was embarrassing or
We all have them come on
I mean there was one time where I was in an industrial place and there were at least four bee hives in the building
And it was my handyman and I were just on the job site
And we were on his truck and since it was a pretty big building
He was like, okay, jump on and he thought I had like I was holding on to his truck
And then he just started driving and I just like rolled tuck and rolled off the truck
And he was like, oh my god, I go you're lucky. I'm a retired professional skin boarder and I know how to fall
But I was okay. I just kind of stuffed my elbow, but
You didn't have any bees land on top of you or anything. Oh, they'll believe but no, that would have been even better
Anyway, that's a good one. What Jasmine?
What brings you joy of beekeeping?
knowing that I can provide these
Nature's true alchemists these little fairies these little devas that I can provide them
beautiful sanctuaries to thrive in and that they're going out into the world
creating these beautiful sacred geometric
shapes all around like healing our world feeding us and
I've always known that
I wanted to make this world a better place since I was a little girl and and help humans and and animals
And I get to do all of it through the bees by taking care of them and they're feeding
us
And that is what truly fills my honey heart and brings me joy all the time. Thank you
Well, you even have joy in your name Jasmine joy Mahalo
Mahalo and careful. Appreciate you being with me today. Thank you so much
And our tip of the day is something that I was reminded of while having that conversation with Jasmine
And that is take your time do whatever it takes to be relaxed
Observe the bees smell listen
I once had it described to me as
Pretend like you're doing tai chi slow rhythmic movements your bees will love you for it
And I also have a question of the day
I recently was on a beekeeping social media site where someone posted a photo of their hives already for winter and asked if the ventilation looked okay
Trying to be helpful. I responded that in cold climates bees still need ventilation to control the humidity in the hive
immediately of course
Someone else slammed on me saying that bees self ventilate
So close up your hives almost completely with just one little tiny entrance and that's it
This is one of those beekeeping things where there are so many factors involved and there are so many different opinions
So if you have some profound thoughts on winter hive ventilation in cold climates
Please send an email to Eric at be love beekeeping.com
Same with any other feedback that you have for the show
Thank you so much for joining us here on be love beekeeping presented by man lake
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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