May I have your attention please?
The following is not the real Jeff Vox really.
If you smell a newly opened jar of honey before tasting it,
you might be a beekeeper.
If you can tell the difference between a honey bee
and a fly just by listening, 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 friend,
over at Man Lake.
At Bee Love, we're all about the honey bees and of course the beekeepers.
Today, we're going to learn from our guest another way that we as beekeepers
can do some good in the world through beekeeping.
But first, as you've probably already heard, there's something a little scary going on with honey bees this winter.
Massive die-offs are being reported.
In fact, depending on which source you read, anywhere from 50% to 70% to even 100% of bee die-offs with commercial beekeepers.
This last week, the Honey Bee Health Coalition sent an email outlining some of the concerns,
saying that commercial beekeepers are discovering quote, alarming colony losses.
These losses are severe, broad, and may impact food security through inadequate pollination services.
It continues, the symptoms of loss are reminiscent of colony collapse disorder conditions,
which occurred in 2007 and 2008 when bees suddenly disappeared from their colonies.
During recent inspections by field scientists, decreased colonies often died with ample honey stores,
leaving small patches of brood with most or all of the adult honey bees missing.
Another symptom has been the rapid dwindling of surviving colonies, often within 10 days of passing health inspections.
Immediate action is being taken in the form of a study sampling of commercial beekeepers.
I have reached out to those involved with the study, including the USDA, and I can't get anyone who's in the know to comment.
The only thing I got, and sorry for the rant, but the only thing I got was the following from the USDA's PR department.
Quote, please see the statement from the Agricultural Research Service.
Please attribute the statement to a USDA ARS spokesperson.
By the way, they wouldn't give me the name of that spokesperson.
So here's the quote, USDA is aware of the unusual losses to our nation's honey bee colonies and is concerned about its potential impact on food production and supply.
USDA Agricultural Research Service scientists are working closely with federal partners, stakeholders, and impacted parties to identify the source of this agricultural challenge.
USDA will share more information when data is available.
Okay, all right.
I realize the research is far from being completed, but I have questions.
Beekeepers have questions, and I think we have a right to ask them, and I think we have a right to get answers on what is known so far.
But instead of being able to do that, I'm getting the bureaucratic two-step.
But listeners, fellow beekeepers, I promise as soon as I know more, you will know more.
And if you know more before I know more, please reach out to me so that we can both know more.
In the meantime, I'll try to get over my rant with a little fun here, and the best way to do that is with some wild and crazy beekeeping stories from our listeners.
This was six hours after inspection. I did an inspection in the late morning.
It was 100 yards from the hive in my garage doing something entirely un-bee-related.
The bees came and found me and went straight for my eye.
This was the beginning of the end for that queen.
I had been tolerating this overly aggressive hive for months, but this was the final straw.
She was stomped in the driveway three weeks ago and replaced.
Next one.
I got out of the truck one day without my veil on and immediately got stung in the ear.
Fine, I thought. It happens.
We were extracting from a yard that we had expected was pestered by a skunk during the night, so they were really pissed off.
One of them found its way inside my veil and that bastard went straight for my eye.
I'm just quoting here.
My coworker and I decided we were just going to call it eventually.
They were relentless as we got into the truck and removed our veils.
One of the bees that got into the truck sent after me and stung my ear again.
He was saying how he wishes he had a picture to show us.
I don't know, maybe the theme today is pain.
Here we go with another one.
I put the grass around my hives without a suit on, stopped 20 yards away, proceeded to be flogged by a swarm of angry bees from about seven different hives at the same time.
I ran 300 yards as fast as I could while simultaneously flailing my arms around my head like a maniac.
Literally had to dive into one of my storage sheds and shut the doors.
While laying on the floor in my shed trying to recover, I noticed the wasp nest in the building covered in about 20 angry wasps.
It was a long day that day.
And the only thing I have to say and this is not an easy thing is when you are getting chased,
sure run as fast as you can, but don't do the flailing.
That's like an attractant to them. They go after it.
Alright, let's end on a happy note. Here we go.
I held a frame up for inspection once and a hummingbird showed up and drank right out of it.
That sounds cool.
Alright, let's get to today's guest.
And a special welcome all the way from across the pond.
Sir James Wilden, how are you?
Hello, I'm very well. Thank you.
I hope that's a compliment and not offensive to call you sir over there.
Oh, not at all. No, no.
Alright.
Never get called sir. It's nice.
And you're in Warbling. I don't know if I can even say it. Warblington?
Perfect. Yeah, Warblington. Yeah. So down in Havond in the very bottom of England, the very bottom.
Very south end.
Yeah, the very south.
Alright, we're going to talk about your beekeeping journey in a couple of minutes and sort of like, like, what's the weather there so we can learn about it for other beekeepers around the world that may be in sort of a similar type of client.
But the thing that I got my interest in wanting to talk to you is your charity, which I think is so cool. It's called Beekeeping for Hope. And from time to time on this show, we like to feature beekeepers that are giving back.
And that's exactly what you're doing. And you are a registered charity in the UK, but a fairly new one.
And we don't mind giving you a shout out. Tell us just a little bit about beekeeping for hope. Where did the idea come from and how can people participate?
Well, yes. So I went to Moldova in 2021. And I saw it like extreme poverty. I saw people so poor their houses powered by a car battery.
Their bed was covered in mold. So I wanted to help the people out in Moldova, Ukraine, Romania, all those sort of areas.
It's just sort of, I couldn't think of a way to help them. So I tried to use the fundraising where I went for a run all the way around the place named Paul Smith, all the way around.
It's like 14 miles. I didn't raise a lot. I didn't raise a lot of money. So I thought, how else can I help them? And then beekeeping started to, because I'm big with insects and wildlife and bits and bobs like that.
So when I saw random advert on the internet about come and have a beekeeping course. So I thought, why not I'll go on this course and see what it's like.
And I went on the course and just came naturally. I knew a lot about bees anyway. So it all came quite naturally.
And then I got my first swarm in May of 2023. And it was a prime swarm. So a nice big yellow mark queen was in this swarm. They caught, they gave it to me. I put it in the hive.
And it soon grew. I had another guy who gave me a hive. He said, I want to help you build it up a bit. So he gave me a big polystyrene big hive with a queen in there, a red queen at this time.
And then I caught my own swarm. I put my now caught a swarm. So it started to build. And then I suddenly thought I can actually use my beekeeping to help people.
So I started to send. So all the honey I was making from the hive, I started to make course a profit out of it. So I wanted to give all of that to hope for in more over Ukraine.
And then I had a guy reach out to me in Uganda saying, can you help our orphanage? So I talked to him for a little while back and forth and saw all his legal documents and everything to make sure he was genuinely legit and stuff.
And his name was Synoga out in Uganda and yet an orphanage just full of young orphan children. And I started to dedicate one of my hives to that cause. So one of my highs was to, it's called the Greenlight Foundation Uganda.
So every bit of honey that came off that went straight to them. Not the honey itself, but I sell the honey. Then that way straight to them or the money.
And then I gave one to hope for the guys out in Moldova. They had their own beehive. And then since then, sorry, this December, December just gone. Sorry.
I had another people come out to me in Pakistan. See if I could help their orphanage out there. Again, we went for the paperwork together and so it's the Holy Purpose Gospel Ministry in Pakistan.
So they feed poor children, orphans, dry families. And I help them with highly from another hive I've given to them.
That's awesome. The idea of taking something of your bounty, right?
Yeah.
And I think it's, you know, scripturally, we'd probably take the first jar of honey from every year and donate it or something. But you took a whole hive and did it. And I just love the whole concept.
Now, now people can look you up at bekeepingforhope.org. There are ways to donate there. And I hope you don't mind me just adding this.
In your community, if it's too hard for you to go online and do this, take a jar of honey to your local food pantry or sell your first couple of jars of honey at the farmers market and donate it to bekeeping forhope where it'll go to a good place or your local food bank or something like that.
So now you've had people do these donations from not just the UK, but Australia. Give me an idea of where some people are jumping in from already.
Yes. To try and get people to help and to get our name out of there a bit more. I put on social media on Instagram just to say that I'm willing to give you one of these, which is a little tag called, it says, I'm bekeeping for hope.
They stick on their beehive and it's a little like it's metal metal tag. And they stick on their beehive. Then that beehive sort of becomes my beehive as well.
So they donate how as many jars as they want, they can do one jar to me so they sell that one jar. And one of the ladies who so I got in touch with me was a lady called Christian from Australia.
And she donated two jars of honey. So she sold these jars and then she got the money and transferred it to me. I sent that one to Uganda.
I've got people locally as well. So one guy in Little Hampton, which is about 40 miles away, he donated a whole super of honey to me. All jarred up, everything already.
So what I've got to do is put my label on it and we can start selling that. I've got some guys in the UK who as well. So they get one of my jars and they put it up for auction.
So they have a stall to see how much money they can get from it. And then they donate the proceeds to me and they go off to wherever they want it to go to.
I love it. And I like your sticker idea that you talked about because whether you have five hives or 25 or 2005, kind of fun to put a sticker on one and say, hey, this one is going for a good cause.
This one's not going in my pocket.
Right. Yeah.
And if you ever give tours or have people come over that want to see your hives, it's something to talk about too.
So anyway, nice job, James. Tell us what it's like to do beekeeping where you are. First of all, what is the weather like? Does it rain a lot?
Yeah. So it rains a lot. The skies are always gray. It's cold, especially now. And it's just quite stodgy everywhere. So my April at the moment is just waterlogged.
So that's pretty much it. It's just really cold. It doesn't start to warm up till sort of the end of March, April. And then it gets quite mild.
We don't get very hot summers here. We have a whole week where it's like intense heat. And then it goes back to being cold again or big storm or something like that.
One whole week.
Yeah. So our listeners in Arizona or Houston or someplace like that are actually going to be very jealous.
But is it cold enough in the winter that you have snow or just cold enough to keep the bees in?
It's, we don't really get snow where I am. We've not had snow here since about 2012. All we get is just a dust of the frost sometimes. That's all we seem to get.
But the bees do generally stay in. You get your one or two coming out for to like relieve themselves or whatever, then they come back.
But it's not many really. But we do get a really cold snap. For us, a cold snap is minus three or something.
Yeah.
Sometimes we'll actually.
And we're talking Celsius here, not so that's.
Yeah.
High twenties or something Fahrenheit. Yeah.
That's right. Yeah.
We don't feel too bad. But of course the bees there, they're okay. They're in the hive. They're keeping themselves warm. Do you have to feed them quite a bit in winter?
Yeah. So what I do, I don't take off all the honey. So I leave one super on for the bees. So I take off the excess. So I take off say my main hive last year did five supers.
So I took four off and I left them one on for the winter. My nukes are smaller colonies. I do feed them with Bakers Fondant. They take that down quite well.
Okay. You and I, when we talked previously, we were talking about Varroa a little bit. And just a minute ago, you were showing me, go ahead and hold it up again.
Audio listeners can't see it, but describe what you're holding right there.
I'm holding a freely printing of a Varroa mite. So it's a life-sized Varroa mite as if this was on me. If I was a bee and this thing was crawling all over me drinking my plasma.
So, yeah, it's a pretty good teaching tool. But there's one thing I've learned about Varroa mites is you really can't underestimate them.
Just a quick break here to thank our presenting sponsor, Man Lake. Hey, if your weather is anything like mine, it is freezing out.
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And don't forget your discount code MLBLOV10, it's in the show notes, for $10 off your first $100 purchase. I'm feeling better already. Now, back to the guest.
I mean, I've left. The first year I did that, I treated my bees and all of them survived. All my seven colonies in my first year survived.
This year, I was a bit, we went through a bit of a phase where I was moving house and moving our bees to the apiary.
I got the treatment in a bit too late, so I lost a few of my hives this year already, and it's all down to the rower.
You go in there, we do it in investigations, we get a frame out of some capped brood.
We open it up and inside there, it was just the poor little thing in there, it was just covered in varroa mites, all dead of course.
But yeah, just don't underestimate them, get them treatments in.
So what do you use for treatment over there?
So we have a, I haven't got any on me, but it's a, we've got this stuff called api-bioxal, so it's an acid, and you just, you fill it up to a certain amount and you spray it between the frames, up and down.
And the first year, it wiped out all my mites. My bees came out into the spring really healthy, really strong.
This year, I did the same treatment. It didn't seem to do anything to the mites.
So I'm actually currently running a GoFundMe to try and get this, is it alloxic acid?
Axolic acid.
Axolic acid, yeah, that's right. So it's this big like, it's a mist that goes into the hives and it killed them.
So I've been advised to get one of those. So I've almost got enough to pick up one.
Well, good luck on that. And just a reminder to everybody, the way you put it, I loved it, do not underestimate varroa mites.
But that one, the 3D printing one that you were holding up, I saw something similar to it at the North American Honey Bee Expo recently.
And it's kind of terrifying when you see it in human size, because if you were to hold it up, it'd probably cover your whole face.
It's about that size. And then imagine if it's say, on your back and you're like a bee that doesn't have arms that can reach to their back and knock things off.
And it's the things nightmares are made of. In fact, let's make a horror film. James, let's do it.
Yeah. Varroa Destructor.
I'm not sure if you can tell, but it's just a shame that these things are here and they just, they weaken the colony so much that they just can't fight off disease, can they?
Yeah. Yeah, that's the problem. They can even carry some of the disease with them from one hive to another.
Do you have the yellow-legged hornets that I'm hearing are all over Europe already?
Dude, I've got one here actually. So I use these as teaching aids for the kids. So this guy here, that's a queen, they call them yellow-legged hornets, but sometimes they get called Asian hornets as well.
So they could be El Vespa Valentino.
I've not seen any here, but we have had some about 40 miles away in a place called Southampton. They have some there this year.
But nothing down my way, which has been good.
Yeah, I've got lots of size comparisons. I've got what you would call a yellow jacket here, Asian hornet in the middle, and we've got our European hornet. I think European hornets are your way as well.
They have found some down in the southeast in two or three states. They're trying to eradicate them before they spread all over the country. So we have our fingers crossed. We're wishing them well.
You had mentioned just in passing a couple of minutes ago about catching swarms, a yellow queen and a red queen.
Now, for brand new beekeepers, they might go, what in the world is that? So why don't you explain what you mean by that, the colors?
Yeah, so as you know, well, as some most beekeepers know, when you have a queen, of course, you give them a color mark and the color is determined by the year. So when I first got my bees back in 2023, the swarm was from a 2022 queen.
So she was yellow. And then 2023, the universal coders red.
And I think this year is it blue. I think it's blue.
So we call our queens by that. So we've got the red queen. It sounds like something of Game of Thrones, the red queen, the yellow queen.
And yeah, I got again, I put my queens in resin.
So because I don't like killing queens, because I find I get a little bit of relationship with them. So we name all of our queens.
When they die, I'm devastated when they die. We had one queen, our very first one called Queen Phoenix, the yellow one.
She was our best queen. She produced literally all the queens in our apiary and she started to lay drone brood, which is where they where the queen starts to lay just drone eggs, boy bees.
And everyone was telling me kill her, get rid of her, replace her. And I thought now I'll retire her. So I put her in a little nuke with a few bees.
Now she got better. She started to stop laying drones started laying workers again.
So the other bees didn't like her much. They kept on trying to overthrow her by making queen cells, but she just killed them and killed the other queens.
Sadly today, I found her dead in her beehive.
Oh, James.
Yeah, she died. So that's Phoenix. So I'm going to get. So at the moment she's an alcohol solution.
And she is going to be put into resin as well.
I'm quite sad she died. She was a lovely queen jet black, the bright yellow shape of a Phoenix on her back because where they the bees nibbled the mark of yellow circle and they nibbled it into a Phoenix shape.
So that's why we called her Phoenix.
So it's a very common term again if we're talking to brand new beekeepers here, it's a very common term to just pinch an old queen and replace her with a new one.
As if it's no big deal. And I love to hear someone that absolutely loves their queens like you do.
It's almost like you formed a retirement community for her.
Yeah, that's why she was there. She was doing so well.
Again, the reason I think she died again was for over again. I underestimated him this year.
We got quite a few colonies left, which is good, which is fine, but I just didn't want her to go this year.
I want to have to literally have another year in her to see how she goes.
How many colonies did you go into winter with this year?
I went into winter with 11 and we got six left.
We lost, I lost one early on in September to wasps.
They literally, they found a weakness in the colony and they piled in there in the autumn and they just, there's a strong colony as well, but obviously not strong enough for the wasps.
So yellow jackets got in there and wiped them out.
Yellow jackets are horrible. We have them where I am too.
And I used to hear they can only kill a weak colony and I have found that did not be true.
I've seen strong colonies get wiped out by them.
Definitely.
And I have learned when they, what time of year that they attack bee colonies where I am.
It's right around September 1st every year.
And so I've learned to put some kind of an entrance reducer.
It's still hot here. So I just use like a screen, leave a small opening because a healthy colony, they can protect a small opening.
Just not a big wide open opening.
If there are that many voracious, ready to go into winter yellow jackets.
Oh, and it's an ugly thing just to see it happen.
Because you'll see the guard bees come out, try to defend the hive and those yellow jackets just take them out.
It's not a fair fight.
Well, I used to have my bees. I used to have them in my garden.
So I had seven colonies in the garden, tucked around the back and I could watch them out of the window.
So I could see if I saw a wasp walking around there, I got there getting that catch it, dispose of it.
Normally the bees would, I'd give it to the bee or injure it, but he'd give it to the bees and they would just all pile on it.
So I thought, well, then I had to move my colonies because I can't see them all the time.
I come that onto it as I used to be on that on it at protecting them from stuff.
But like I said, I got a job now where I'm working with my bees in the same area.
So if I get a sneaky five minutes, I'll have a quick pop over there and have a look, see what's going on.
So tell us a little bit about that. What kind of place do you work at that would allow that?
So I work at a retirement village. So when people retire, these are like very, very well off rich people.
So when they retire, they downsize into a small community and I'm like the gardener, I will go around and do our jobs around everywhere.
Plus my bees are in the corner. So in the summer comes in, a lot of them want to go get a bee through Island, I'll take them into the hives to have a look.
That is awesome. Did you have a hard time getting permission to have bees there? Were they worried about the liability?
They seemed to, where I had my bees before, because they were at my old work, I lived there on a school paying field, a massive big sports field.
And when I moved out, my bees were asked to go and my bosses were getting a bit funny and they said, we want these bees to go, they're a danger,
but they've been there a year or so, they hadn't stung anyone. So they got a bit funny. So I went on BBC radio and put our plea for anyone who can offer me some land,
ASAP this coming Saturday, I will move my bees there and this lady reached out to me in the retirement village and said, you can put your bees here.
And ended up me getting a job there as well. So I moved him in there literally two or three days after the radio went out.
So the people in the retirement community, what do they think about it? I mean, they put on a bee suit. What kind of experience do they have?
Well, I haven't, they haven't had a bee suit on yet, but they love the four bees being there, being around the bees, having honey produced where they are basically.
So if they do get hay fever or any allergens to pollen or anything, then they got some honey right there they can, you know, they can use.
But our lessons are going to start this summer. I see I go by duties, children talk children for two years now, and that's good fun.
Tell us about that. Is that through the local school or your city?
Yeah, so I we home educate our children. I've got two sons. We home educate them. So it's that community. And then we get weekly we used to get seven or eight families coming in.
All kids of all varying ages, none under six because I found the six year olds were a bit, they didn't really listen.
I was like, I remember one girl, she she got some honey on her finger and she wanted to lick it.
So she started to take her veil off as the bees have all out flying around to lick the honey. So I said to my wife, no under six.
And since then it's been fine. I've had people who are absolutely petrified of bees, some children who are petrified. But I find the key to getting them sort of to break that scaredness.
Getting them to hold a drone bee because there's no male drone bees don't sting. They're quite cute looking. They've got big compound eyes.
So I would always catch a drone bee on the on the frame and put it in their hand and the confidence this gives them, then when other bees start landing on them for a rest,
they're fine. They don't mind their holder frame as well full of bees. And yes, the drone bees key for children, I find, for building confidence.
Cool. Well, I love talking to people that love honeybees. That's what this show is all about. You obviously do. You definitely qualify.
I'm going to give you a chance to tell us a wild and crazy beekeeping story. And you haven't been a beekeeper all that long.
But have you had anything unusual happen to you?
So before I got my own eyes, I was helping an old chap a little way away from me up on a hill. It's called Portstown Hill near where I live.
And he had beehives everywhere, but he was getting on. So he said, can you have some help? So I didn't really know what to wear.
So I had just my my bee suit on, but I didn't have wedding boots. So my ankles were showing.
And I wore cotton gloves for some reason. So we're going to this hive and it was really aggressive. They were so aggressive.
They literally pulled all over my hands, stinging my hands. I got about 30 stings on my hands, on my ankles.
I'd never been stung by a bee before. So I came out on a rash and everything.
But I had trigger finger, which is where when I woke up in the morning, my middle finger was always stuck down.
I had to prize it up. Something happened. Not every single night I'll get this trigger finger.
But for some reason, the bees concentrated all their stings on my middle finger.
And ever since I've had them stings, I've never had trigger finger again. So I find that quite crazy.
That is so cool.
It swelled up like a big balloon. I've had a massive big finger. But since then, I've never had a problem with my finger.
I think that is awesome. And apotherapy is something we've only touched on a little bit on this podcast.
I do want to get into it more. It's something that I personally have experimented with it myself.
And we're not giving medical advice here, but wow. So if that trigger finger were to come back, what would you do?
Purposely sting?
I was thinking this the other day because I was going to test it. Just get a bee on my finger and try and get stinging me.
And I couldn't do it. I couldn't get it because I know it does really hurt when it first stings you.
But if they attack me again, then it'll be all right because I wouldn't notice it as much because I'm concentrating on other things.
But if I'm trying to get it to sting me, I couldn't do it. I was trying to test it, but I couldn't do it.
I've done it. The first time is really hard.
Yeah.
If you've been stung a bunch, you'd think, oh, it wouldn't be a big deal.
But when you get a tweezer or something and you hold a bee and you're like, okay, I'm going to sting, get stung right here on purpose.
It's like everything in your DNA is saying, don't do it, don't do it, don't do it.
And you have to overcome that. It does get easier after you do it the first time.
But yeah, our human nature is just to avoid it at all costs.
But how crazy that they actually went for a place where you needed help?
Yeah, because I've read somewhere that some bees know that a beekeeper is going to look after them and protect them to the best they can from, like, say, mites and wasps and hornets and hive beetles and stuff, all stuff like that.
Somehow I think they do know that.
So they want to help us.
And in a way, they don't help us in the way we can help them.
So I guess by stinging me, they sort of doubt my hand in the only way they knew how.
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
I guess we just don't give them near enough credit for how smart they are.
Yeah, I've read some of the recognized faces as well. I don't know, smells.
I've read that as well. Faces and smells.
And so don't get on the bad side of your bees. They may recognize you next time around.
That's one thing your beekeeper said to me when I first started.
He said I was too clunky. I was too like lifting up the crown board or moving a box.
I was too fast to do it nice and a slow, gentle pace just so it doesn't make the bees too mad.
Clearly fast movements. They're going to start coming up, aren't they?
The guards will come up and have a poke at you.
Well, that is exactly right.
And there's more advice for new beekeepers today.
I did the same thing.
When I was new, I had great big gloves and they made it so it was hard to pull out a frame without squishing a bee.
It was hard to not drop one and kind of hard way back in and those kinds of things they do not like.
And either use no gloves or nitrile gloves now because then I can be precise.
I can keep from squishing any bees accidentally.
I'm not dropping frames. I can just go.
And also just the fact that you get used to them means you can go slower and not be as much in a hurry and not get your anxiety up because they love calmness, don't they?
That's right.
When I was teaching a guy last year and he was reopening a nuker box to transfer it into a big national hive.
We use nationals here. That's the most common one here.
You guys are Langstroth, is that right?
Yeah, Langstroth is the most common here.
Yeah. And he was so known.
As I said, all you've got to do is just concentrate on the task of getting these bees from the nuker into there.
Don't worry about the bees buzzing around us and all this.
And he said it was fine.
After that, he's focused and he's just got the frames out.
I mean, took one out, another one in and he was fine.
He says, that's what you've got to do.
Just don't worry about them all buzzing around because you're sealed up tight.
So they're not going to get in.
And yeah, he did really well actually. He was really good.
Nice and slow and just focused on the task at hand.
All right. Any other advice for new beekeepers before I let you go?
New beekeepers. Well, that's what I think.
Got a good advice.
So when you come into beekeeping, you're going to get a lot of advice from you.
Some one beekeeper wants you to do a certain thing this way and no one wants you to do the same thing, but a different way.
And then if you do it one way, the other one gets mad and so much information comes away.
My best advice is listen to every bit of advice you can get and just adapt it to how you work.
You know, I found when I first came into beekeeping, I was getting so much advice and a lot of people were getting mad at me for doing advice differently to what they told me.
If that makes sense, because they wanted me to do it their way.
But I was learning so many different things. I was doing it away.
What I could work well with, if that makes sense.
We have a saying here, ask 10 different beekeepers and you'll get 11 different answers.
Yeah, that's totally right.
Yeah. And it's so true. So I think you just have to somehow get in harmony with your bees, be intuitive.
If you're really there and you really care like that, I think it's going to come to you to know how to take care of them.
That's right. Yeah.
I realized commercial beekeepers, they've got hundreds or thousands of hives and it's a matter of just bang, bang, bang, get in and get the work done.
But for hobbyists and sidelineers that have the time to take and to really get in tune with those bees, I don't know how to explain how to do it.
But yeah, it works.
The one thing I don't like doing either is when you had to move, say you got your brew box and on top you got your soup of honey, when you had to put them back, I would try my hardest not to squash a bee because I hate the...
Because it can be completely clear and then you put the box down and you hear, it's like, ah, I got one.
And I feel, again, I feel really bad for that bee.
So how do you avoid that?
So what I try and do is I give a really big puff of smoke so that honey soup is quite close to me, the big puff and then get on slowly but quickly.
That makes sense.
So it's slow movements, but at a fast pace.
And then when I put it down, you might get one.
I really try my hardest not to squash a bee because I don't like it.
I found in addition to that, also just sliding that box on slightly.
In other words, put it down instead of straight down exactly where it's going to fit.
Have it off just a little and then kind of slide it into place a little bit.
Yeah.
Can also help.
Yeah.
Good advice.
All right.
Well, it's great to talk to you, Sir James.
And we'll put in the show notes, be keeping for hope if anybody wants to get involved.
Or just read about how they can do something similar in their community because it's a great idea.
And the educational side, we didn't talk about much, but I know there's that too and they can learn about that as well.
So thank you for being with me.
No problem.
Thank you very much.
Thank you so much for joining us here on Be Love Be Keeping presented by Man Lake.
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