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.
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