in a world brimming with complexity few creatures
embody harmony like the honeybee with tireless
precision she dances from bloom to bloom each
motion guided by millennia upon millennia of
instinct each act in service to the whole and
then There are the beekeepers, watchful stewards
of this ancient symbiosis. Part agriscientist,
part poet, they move along their hives with the
efficiency of mow, levy and curly, tending to
the bees' needs as best they can comprehend,
and with the infrequency of a waterfall in the
Sahara, sometimes running off flapping and flailing
like a penguin on a hot sidewalk. This is their
journey. Welcome, welcome to Be Love Beekeeping
presented by our great friends and partners in
beekeeping. man like. I'm gonna try to keep this
intro today very brief short and sweet because
we have such a good interview coming to us today.
We have beekeepers Joy and Eric McEwen from Oregon
and we're going to be talking about natural nest
beekeeping and a bunch of other really great
things that they do to keep things as natural
and as organic as possible on their beekeeping
journey. And we'll be talking about apitherapy
and their commercial beekeeping business in general.
First, just one little thing, and that is, when
was the last time that you spent some quality
time with your bees? I did it this morning. I
got up early, went for a hike in the mountains,
came back, and just enjoyed some quality time
with a handful of beehives that are right around
my home. And you know, just instead of doing
a regular inspection with a big checklist of
things to get to, today was more like, hey girls
how are you doing and we spent some time just
watching their behavior in the entrance of the
hive and then cracked the lid open pulled a couple
frames oh you girls are doing so great hey i
need to get you another honey super be right
back and a couple others hey you new queen you're
doing fantastic well you're maybe a little slow
but uh no rush take your time things are going
very well just go at your own pace I don't know
I probably sound a little crazy having this sort
of conversation with the bees but it was a very
pleasant morning and please get out there and
do it yourself it's all about the love of the
bees I would like to welcome our very special
guest today we're going out to Oregon in the
US And we have Joy and Eric McEwen here. How
are you two this morning? Very good. Very great
to be here with you. Yeah, give us a big wave.
I like that. And if you don't mind, I'm going
to say this is a compliment. These are hippie
beekeepers, and I think that is so awesome. And
most of Oregon is probably that way. Anyway,
there's my tangent to get us started with. But
we're going to jump in with. My gosh, we have
so much to talk about everything from apitherapy
to natural beekeeping and and that's where I
want to start because One thing that interests
me and you Eric was the term natural nest Beekeeping
which I don't know that I had heard before explain
what that means Well, it is a term that we coined
as an attempt to encompass our style of beekeeping.
And so we really meant it to just sort of be
an umbrella term that encompasses a whole suite
of tenants of best management practices, if you
will. We're the first to say that we're a work
in progress. So we set the bar high and then
we aim to attain it. And so many of the tenants
of naturalness beekeeping are things that we're
still still integrating into our operation. I
guess it all starts with place. And it starts
with the hive. So it's going to mean organic
management practices. It's going to mean pristine
locations. It's going to mean avoiding intensive
agriculture. And then moving inward, it's going
to mean a hive that is comprised of natural materials,
no plastics, no paint. So, you know, wood, wax.
In our case, we use a natural sealant that we
make for our beehives out of beeswax, raw. linseed
oil and pine rosin. It's a concern for the conditions
that the bees are living in, in order to ensure
an utmost purity of the bee products. And that
overlaps into, you know, some of our discussion
of medicinal, of the production of medicinal
quality hive products. And so setting the stage
for producing products like that. And then it's
going to move into how we manage the bees, the
ways in which we interact with the bees and,
and some of the internal architecture of the
hive. So we're a proponent of foundationless
brood nests and we use modified frames to give
us the opportunity to. adhere to biodynamic standards
in regard to the brood nest, having foundationless
brood nests that are of a size and shape that
allows the bees to have a natural organization
to the brood nest that is uninterrupted by frame
parts, for instance. And then it's going to involve
our practices, including queen rearing. So avoiding
of the grafting procedure and kind of a returning
of authority to the bees with regards to the
rearing of queens. And for us, that means In
hive queen rearing, queens being reared by their
sisters from eggs laid by their mothers. I'm
hearing let bees be bees. Exactly. Let's quit
trying to make bees be what humans want them
to be. And then it would be the utilization of
integrated pest management practices for mite
management. So a minimal interventionist mindset.
What are some of those that you use? Because
you also used the term organic earlier. And a
lot of people jump from there to the term that's
very controversial. I don't mind bringing it
up. Treatment free beekeeping. And just so everybody
knows, that doesn't mean ignore the bees and
don't do anything. Tell us about your IPM philosophy.
Well, I'm glad you bothered to make a distinguishment
between. Treatment free and what what joy and
i like to call and other people called do nothing
be keeping right with that's actually kind of
a tenant of our natural nest be keeping is that
we are not do nothing be keepers right we are
we are hands on but we we seek to minimize the
amount of intervention that we do so for instance.
Join i do not interrupt the procedure process
when we find colony superseding we trust that
the colony is aware of a problem. whether or
not it's apparent to us and we leave the bees
to do that. But backing up to your question about
mite management and integrated pest management,
one of the things that we do is we employ brood
breaks. We'll employ those at multiple times
a year in various ways. We also raise a lot of
our new queens from eggs, from worker eggs, essentially
as what we would call an emergency queen, a term
that Joy and I don't really like. that in and
of itself adds several days to the queen rearing
process and results in a more significant brood
break in the starter colony itself and we see
that translate into much lower levels of viable
mites in our new colonies each spring. We also
utilize foundationless frames in our colonies
and so because of that we get the production
of whole frames of drone brood. And then we will
transfer drone brood out of queen right over
wintered colonies in the springtime as a means
of mitigating mite levels. And it's fairly effective.
And we'll move those frames of drone brood into
queenless nucleus colonies, mating nukes, if
you will, and thereby get the drones to, to where
we want them. And also our room are transferring
big proportions of mites out of our queen, right
over wintered colonies. And by utilizing. Those
techniques by making divides and so we'll remove
brood from our colonies two times in the spring
We'll target drone brood in that process and
we'll remove capped brood from our colonies and
that enables us to avoid mite treatments typically
from From about October until like late May or
mid May Sometimes it doesn't work as well and
we'll do a mite treatment in the spring earlier
in the spring March or April but a lot of times
we can go about six months without any use of
any acaricides. And then we will utilize brood
breaks. If we see a colony that's having mite
stress, we will do queen -right divides where
we'll pull the queen into a cavity of her own
and we keep her overhead so we can keep track
of her. We'll move the queen along with as little
open brood as possible into a box of its own
and move her overhead of the parent colony. leaving
the colony queenless. Occasionally, of course,
you're going to get the rearing of new queens
in that process, but you're also going to get
a brood break. By the way, if we have some brand
new beekeepers listening or people just thinking
about getting into it, I know we're speaking
a bit of a foreign language today. Bear with
us, it's worth it. Even if it's helping plant
a seed of things that you're going to learn more
about later on in your beekeeping journey. One
of the things that you mentioned was the term
the size and shape of the brood chamber. Give
us an example of what that is in your apiary.
Well, yeah, when we look at the natural organization
of a colony, when we study like temperate colonies
that are dormant in a non -reproductive state,
you know, they're going to occupy a space inside
the cavity. That's probably roughly a basketball
size, 10 and a half inches, 11 inches somewhere
in there. And then, you know, they're going to
expand from that shape outward in the springtime.
Joy and I like to talk about the thermodynamic
nature of honeybees and how they really utilize
the heat that they're producing as a super organism
to do a lot of work for them. First and foremost,
to incubate their brood. And second of all, to,
to warm their food supply. So we're very much
advocates of a temperate organization of a hive
in a vertical orientation, which allows the nest
heat to warm the the winter stores that are overhead
of the colony. We are in agreement with Warray
that the Layen's hive is a beautiful hive, but
that they got it wrong in the overall configuration
of the hive by encouraging the honeybees to put
their winter stores to the side of the cluster.
You are reducing the ability of the bees to use
their nest heat to warm their winter stores.
So war a was one of the most eloquent people
to advocate for a vertically oriented colony
that then allows the nest heat to pre warm the
honey that that the bees are going to move on
in a vertical direction as the winter and spring
goes on. So we're very much advocates of that.
So while we use a Langstroth format, we are eight
frame and we're trying to keep our colonies narrow
and tall. And so backing up to your question
about brood nest. If we utilize a frame that
is not only foundationless, but also missing
its bottom bar, you can grow out brood frames
that then you can come along with another super
or a hive body, as we say, and you can nadir
or you can take that hive body and stick it underneath
the existing brood nest. And then that encourages
the bees to draw their brood combs in a downward
direction. And you can end up with a brood frame
that in our work, our research, we've come to
the size of about 13 and a half inches as an
ideal brood frame. And what that enables is the
bees to have their brood nest in entirety on
a frame that is uninterrupted and can encompass
the entirety of the brood organization, the natural
organization of brood, where the queen is laying
her eggs in concentric spirals. in an uninterrupted
way, and that even allows a little bit of space
for the peripheral storage of pollen, bee bread
on the comb, and even a little bit of nectar.
We emphasize a little bit of nectar. Our original
iteration of a hive like that, we used to run
16 inch frames, and that allowed the bees to
put a pretty nice two to three inch layer of
capped honey across the top of that frame. And
that actually became a hindrance to our style
of beekeeping, which involves supering for honey
production. And with that two to three inch band
of capped honey, sometimes that would actually
create a hindrance and it deterred the upward
movement for honey production. And we are commercial
beekeepers associated with producing food. So
we want to encourage the bees to produce honey
in supers. And then, yeah, I just want to add
to that by saying the other hindrance was just
it was way too big for our family. Like we have
three daughters and for me out in the hives,
like these huge, huge brood nests are way too
difficult for the beekeeper. And we feel like,
you know, what's good for the bees is good for
the beekeeper and vice versa. So I think that
was one of the main hindrances was just. a workable
size for all of us. And then the other one is
just small colonies. Small colonies don't start
off in that natural basketball size and they
don't really appreciate all that extra space.
These are definitely different things that we
learned along the way. So to be able to start
them as more of it in a smaller, we use Western
Shallows box, right? To start them in one box
that's a Western Shallow. And then when they
grow, we're actually knee -deering with an empty
box. So that's how they're gaining some of their
length. Wow. How long have you been doing this?
This is our 26th season beekeeping and beekeeping
together. Congratulations. And how many hives
do you have on an average year? Well, that number
does vary. I think at the moment we have about
650 colonies. I haven't met a beekeeper yet that
can tell me exactly how many hives they have.
That's so normal. But when you get up into big
numbers like that, that's even more so. I think
we're about 665 if you pressed me. Well, and
it's just a big range, you know? And it may be
different tomorrow. That does lead into a tenant
of natural nest beekeeping for us. as I mentioned,
our natural queen rearing techniques means that
we don't cage queens and we never separate queens
from the family that they were reared in. So
our practices for hive management are different
than a typical commercial beekeeper. And because
of that, our colony count goes up and down a
lot more than an average commercial beekeeper,
because we're not rectifying queen problems by
just depositing a queen in a cage. We're actually
either encouraging those bees to raise a new
queen of their own by the transferring of brood
in the case where they're hopelessly queenless
and don't have what they need to raise a queen
then we're going to fix them up with what they
need to raise a new queen or in the case where
the colony is already so demoralized and the
population has plummeted we're going to actually
introduce a whole starter colony so we're going
to take a queen you know a nucleus colony where
the queen is laying already surrounded with her
her sisters and brood and everything. And we're
going to introduce that. So, so we're utilizing
a starter colony the same way someone else might
use a queen in a cage. So because of that, our
colony count certainly fluctuates, you know,
midsummer. We go up through spring and then we
hit midsummer and then we start going down. Sure.
All right. Let's shift gears. Oh, I'm sorry,
Joy, go ahead. Oh, I was just going to share
like one really nice thing about our range is
we go from Crescent City which is on the coast
with about 100 inches of rain a year all the
way over to Ashland. So this is kind of the range
of our 650 hives where Ashland gets about 17
inches of rain a year. And we have a lot of just
really excellent beautiful bee yards. Some of
our bee yards are like the certified organic
regenerative farms, herb farm, Oshala farm, Pacific
botanicals. Like those together are maybe even
like 500 acres of certified organic regenerative
medicinal herbs. So we work with some really
wonderful farms, along with even Alexander Family
Farm, which is on the coast. And they won National
Organic Farmer of the Year. Quick break to discuss
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at checkout. That's manlakeltd .com. Discount
code MLBLove10. And that climb, if you will,
from east to west also goes from roughly sea
level to like 2 ,200 feet in elevation. So it's
nice being mom and pop beekeepers. It's just
us taking care of this business. And so you can't
be in two places at once. And we're, we're able
to sort of manage our job list, our task list
with regarding to. making honey or tending bees
or applying my treatments or whatever we're often
able to prioritize all of our activities on these
elevational longitudinal climbs so that we can
always sort of be in the right spot at the right
time. We can follow the bloom. As long as we're
on that topic let's talk about your business
a little bit if you don't mind. Not at all. You
don't have to give me any specific numbers or
anything like that that is uncomfortable but
the majority of the profit from your business
is it Honey, is it selling bees? Is it? What
is it? Because I assume you're not going out
and doing pollination all over the place. Actually,
to clarify, we still do one pollination event
in California for the almonds, and that has been
a big part of financing our creative endeavors.
As you know, beekeeping, like all forms of farming,
is Intensive it's equipment intensive. It's it's
capital intensive and we are not multi -generational
beekeepers We started we started from nothing
Yeah, we're first gen and so all of these lofty
ideas of how we wanted to create a bee business
We really had to figure out how to capitalize
them And so we are happy to report that almond
pollination is well under 50 % of our income
and currently honey is competing with pollination
for for taking first place as our primary source
of income. And that is our goal is to create
a diversified business that is primarily concerned
with B products. And so I'm happy to report B
products collectively as a category is the majority
of our income. And those include a candle -making
business, a whole line of hive medicines that
we make that involve propolis and honey as a
solvent for herbal extracts. We make a beverage
called jun, which is a honey -based kombucha.
We sell a lot of that, especially at farmers
markets and events. Yeah, it's a really easy
way to get people into the booth is giving them
samples of this jun. They just love it. Does
it taste better than regular kombucha? which
I have a hard time with. We convert kombucha
beverage drinkers on the daily. I'm not kidding.
I hand out samples at Farmer's Market and I say,
when they're not familiar with June, I say, are
you familiar with kombucha? And then they make
this face. They're like, oh, not for me. And
I'm like, wait, wait, wait, wait. Just try a
little tip. Then they are lifetime customers.
There's something about the taste too, like it's
really alive. A lot of times it's because we're
using all these herbs that we even polemate for
from around here. But just the fact that we are
adding raw honey to it, they're really, really
this just like aliveness to it, this activating
part of it. It tastes great. And really a low
carbon footprint too. Like when you really think
about, you know, kombucha and where it's coming
from, the ingredients are mostly sugar. and glass
packaging compared to live honey and probiotics
with prebiotics because it has honey right out
of a keg. We pour it as a dispenser and sometimes
people bring their own cups. Love it. I want
to shift gears before we run out of time. Oh
yeah. We have talked about apitherapy a lot on
this show I'm sure a lot more than other beekeeping
podcasts and YouTube shows and stuff like that
But no, that's probably just because it's something
that I'm super interested in and so we're gonna
do a little bit of that but I want to start with
the integration with that and your beekeeping
because as you talked about doing your beekeeping
as organic as possible I assume that when you
talk about medicinal qualities of hive products,
if it were me and I'm putting something in my
body or on my body, I want it to be as organic
as possible. Tell us how you have a good balance
of those two things or how they work together,
I should say. Well, I guess first I just want
to point out what you were saying is just the
integration and One of our big proponents in
all of this is sharing with folks that in teaching
natural beekeeping and apotherapy, I like to
teach them together because I want people to
really know and understand that apotherapy is
a part of beekeeping. and that beekeeping is
a part of apotherapy itself. Getting to even
like normalize this a little bit in the beekeeping
community, I really appreciate that you're bringing
all this to your podcast because I want more
and more beekeepers to know that we go back like
this is 4 ,000 year, 5 ,000 year history of beekeepers
really integrating that these hive medicines
are part of our our livelihood, our passions,
what we're doing on the day to day. Our lifestyle.
Yeah. And for them to really get to understand
that this is part of what I think the bees are
even asking of you. So for us, what are some
of the ways that we want to be a beekeeper and
then both be making these medicinal products?
That would then kind of go right into like natural
beekeeping. One little example we could I could
start off by sharing is how we harvest propolis
So like we would use stainless steel tools. We
don't use any paint whatsoever in any of our
boxes That would be something that would be very
important for any scope of organics And furthermore,
we don't use we don't use plastic pollen traps
because we think of propolis as a very strong
substance We don't want it in contact with plastic
before it's being made into medicine. So or paint.
I mean, if it's going to go in your body, sure.
Yeah, exactly. And just really quick, just so
that everyone doesn't think that we're purists,
as I said at the outset, we set the bar high
and then we attain it over time. And so every
one of these goals takes time. Right. So out
of our we have about 2500 boxes in the operation.
And I'm pretty sure we still have about 100 painted
boxes. And so We're not perfect. We're working
towards it. And so what do we do to mitigate
those imperfections? Of course, for starters,
we don't harvest propolis from anywhere. in contact
with a painted box. We're working towards that.
We also have a plastic free operation. And yet
I'm pretty sure out of the 20 ,000 frames in
our operation that we have a few hundred plastic
frames in there still. And I could tell the story
of why, but more importantly, we're, we're trying
to take those frames out of our hives. We're
trying to get rid of them, but we're also pragmatic.
If a frame is covered in a frame of brood, I'm
not going to. I'm not going to dispose of the
brood in order to get rid of the plastic. So
we're moving that plastic to the periphery of
the boxes. We're moving them up into our supers.
And when they end up in the honey house, they're
out of here. We're not perfect. We don't have
lawyers listening in. You don't need the disclaimers.
But I like that you mentioned it because a lot
of us are trying to work towards that. Exactly.
And it doesn't have to be all or nothing. We
can work in that direction. And that's exactly
how do you harvest your propolis? Is it through
some kind of a trap? Are you scraping it off
boxes? What are you doing? Stainless tools by
hand and targeting really only the highest quality
propolis in the hive. So colonies bring in one
to 200 grams of propolis a year, typically. And
when we're doing an average inspection, We might
get a few grams of propolis out of a colony.
Sometimes we'll have colonies that are propolis
hoarders that will get as much as an ounce out
of them, but that's not common to two to five,
maybe 10 grams of propolis as much as we might
harvest. And we're really looking for high resin
content. So, you know, as, as your listeners
probably are aware, bees blend propolis with
wax at varying levels based on their different.
uses of that propolis and we're really working
hard to find these high resin propolis's resin
contents of you know 70 plus percent so fairly
pure propolis as as you might see it on the corbicula
of a propolis harvester. Just hand harvesting
with stainless tools storing it in stainless
containers and then extracting it in organic
ethanol. And for those that don't know, when
we talk apotherapy, we're not just talking about
bee venom therapy. We're talking about all the
medicinal things from the hive. That's why propolis
comes in and pollen and royal jelly and honey
itself. And I'm sure I'm leaving some things
out. But I want to ask you real quick, what are
you doing with propolis? Are you making tinctures
out of it or stabs or what? All the above. We've
had a really popular propolis tincture. for quite
some time and then just this past year we developed
Problis plus a little bit of honey of a throat
spray and we have that just kind of original
and then also with some eucalyptus as well. and
they are going really just like showstoppers
at the farmers market. With that, just the spray,
it makes it just last a really long time. It
has a cute label. And then we're doing more propolis
salves as well. Even a propolis enriched honey.
So for those of you who are making propolis medicine
with your propolis, I'll just say propolis is
it not an easy substance to handle and it's not
a very easy substance to extract so if you look
at the marketplace there's actually a lot of
i don't want to be too negative but there's a
lot of mediocre. Propolis products on the market
out there or even poor quality propolis products
that are really sort of riding on the word propolis
But if you look at the other ingredients you
look at the methodologies used to make them They're
not really resulting in a very high concentrated
level of propolis constituents in the final product
and that is giving a bad name to propolis because
then these products don't have the medical effectiveness
that people might hope or they're not going to
get the tonic qualities that they want out of
them. And so I encourage anyone who's making
propolis to look into the finer chemistry of
propolis and understand some of the constraints
of working with it so that you can make a really
high quality medicine. Or if somebody's just
buying it, how do they know they're getting a
good one? For starters, propolis is a very insoluble
substance, and really most solvents like honey,
vinegar, water, are really not going to make
a good propolis extract. I could give a few exceptions
to that, but basically really the best solvent
for propolis resin is ethanol, and really it
even varies quite a lot. by strength of ethanol
most research would say that you are wasting
your time at anything under 140 proof or 70 %
and I would suggest that that's Still probably
a little low if you look at products out there.
You're gonna find a lot of them are not made
at that concentration So what do you make yours
out of? 80 % organic ethanol minimum and put
how much propolis per how much of the alcohol?
Somewhere between a one to ten and a one to five
weight weight tincture And then let it sit for
what two to four weeks Yeah, three three weeks
is what we usually aim for you can make a pretty
good medicine in two weeks But we like to be
thorough. I want to just interject something
to sort of answer my own question I think it's
also like buying honey Get to know your beekeeper
If you're at a farmer's market and somebody has
a propolis tincture or something else with propolis,
great, talk to them. Find out how are the bees
kept. Ask lots of questions. You're going to
learn a lot more that way than just reading somebody's
label online. I also think like the nose knows,
you know, like if you're able to try it, ours,
it's, it's actually really obvious. If you try
ours compared to one of these other ones. you're
gonna get it, that you're like, ah, this one
is way better, this is more potent, this is more
pure. It becomes obvious too, so. All right,
before we run out of time, Joy, let's talk for
a minute about B -venom therapy. Wonderful. Because
it's something that you do and you have clients
that you help with this. Yeah. Give us an idea,
what are they coming to you for? So I've had
a practice, it's been about... 15, 16 years really
kind of just got started with farm animals, farm
workers, our family, our kids, through some work
with them, going to some conferences at the American
Apotherapies Society and hearing from other apotherapists
of like how to really just get started of wanting
to really with just this simple question of just
wanting to help people. and knowing about the
products or about BeeVenom and how well it works
for so many different types of people, I think
that just kind of compelled me to just start
trying, right? So, started small of like helping
people. I mean, arthritis is a really easy one
to help people with. And then I think through
all these years, it's just kind of building stories.
like building people's actual stories of like,
okay, does this work? Does this not work? Does
it work for some people? It doesn't work for
other people. And for me to just be able to share
like the I statements of like, this is what I've
seen. This is the story I've helped somebody
with. It's hard to dispute someone else's story.
as true or false or why this helps them in such
significant ways. It really differs for so many
different people. It's a panacea. I can't even,
I mean, I really help people in so many different
ways. I would say arthritis and rheumatoid arthritis.
Chronic pain is a real big one. I've helped a
lot of people with Lyme's disease, Parkinson's,
even preventative Parkinson's. Those would probably
be some of the big ones, but I also end up working
with people once I get to know them more and
they get to know B -venom more, their body becomes
more adaptive to it. Then we start also working
on things like chronic fatigue syndrome and depression.
And sometimes we even work with various like
meridian or acupuncture points specifically for
those ailments. Generally in apotherapy or B
-venom therapy, we're working with either like
kind of trigger points. or kind of a typical
like a pain center where you're either like attacking
the dragon or surrounding the dragon but sometimes
we kind of also go to some of the like the farther
reaching points as well cancer yeah cancer as
well yeah if somebody just wants some general
information on Hey, I either want to just learn
more about it or maybe they're a beekeeper and
they want to get some full training into it.
Where should they go? I'm not sure if you're
aware. We actually started this whole apotherapy
certification course. We just finished the first
full cohort. We did it in four months and we
graduated about 65 students. Eric and I do that
course together. It's on KJabi, so most of all
the lessons are all pre -recorded. And it's a
very extensive, thorough course. So each week
the students are getting so much information.
And kind of also what you were sharing about
like that apotherapy isn't just B -venom therapy.
We actually do it on purpose that the first half
of the course is going into all the other products
of the high -vis medicine because that truly
is apotherapy. And being an apotherapist is to
be able to talk. to the clients about integrating
all these other medicines, not just bee venom
therapy. So as an apotherapist, I actually take
that very seriously. And as we get started together,
it really is about like integrating honey. The
more you integrate honey, your body's more even
getting microdoses of the bee venom, but you're
getting to know bees, you're getting to know
beekeepers and all of that starts to become part
of like your healing process. And by the way,
you guys are at digginliving .com. I'll stick
that down in the show notes. You had also mentioned
earlier the American Apotherapy. Is it association
or society? Society. Society. There's a global
organization as well. I'm on the International
Federation of Apotherapists, which is that international
board where Dr. Steffen is the head president
of that board and I enjoy working with him and
all the other. It's a wonderful board. And then
I am the chair, the coordinator of the Medicinal
Beekeeping Commission on the International Federation
of Apotherapy. And then I authored the guidelines
in that way as well. Fantastic. All right. We've
got a couple of minutes left. I want to hear
a fun, wild and crazy beekeeping story or two
from you guys. This just goes way back, but it
does seem to be kind of wild and crazy in that
when we first came from mid -state Corvallis
area and we moved down to southern Oregon, our
beekeeping business was growing. We were already
like organic eaters, organic farmers, and so
we wanted to become organic beekeepers. And so
we showed up at that local meeting and we told
these guys which was like a bunch of really,
really a lot older gentlemen. And it was like
a dark room. I don't know. It should have been
full of smoke. It was just. Yeah. And I was like,
had my little baby. I was like nursing my my
oldest daughter is now 22. I remember just telling
them that we're we're organic beekeepers. And
there was like arms flying. They're like, that's
not possible. That's not possible. You can't
do that. And so I guess that is just my wild
and crazy story to just tell you it is possible.
You can do it. I love people that stir the pot.
That's awesome. All right, Eric. OK, I was thinking
about it. I'll just go with the one that popped
into my head. There was this time that we were.
Just just had just moved to southern oregon.
Maybe had been there a couple years And so we
were still hungry enough for bee colonies that
losing swarms just really bothered me So I saw
a swarm had gone up into this young alder tree
about 35 40 feet up and And I had a witness for
this I walked out there and the alder was only
about this big and it was kind of Getting shaded
out by these bigger cottonwoods. And so I decided
you know what? I'm gonna cut it down And so I
took a Rubbermaid tote and I walked out to the
base of the tree and I looked up at how far it
was, guessed how high it was. And then I just
paced out into this meadow, set the Rubbermaid
down, walked over with my chainsaw and dropped
the Alder and it got perfect direct hit. It landed
the cluster. The swarm went right into the Rubbermaid.
We're gonna watch this happen. We're actually
hillbilly hippies and I got I Got the swarm to
land perfectly in the Rubbermaid ran over put
a lid on it and that that is where the good news
ends because I did take the high I was very Imagine
I was very proud of myself and I caught the swarm
and I deposited them in a hive and Then came
and checked on them the following morning and
they had absconded. They were done with me. They
were not gonna put up with being dropped 40 feet
out of a hive. But I will say, I think that's
probably one out of only maybe a couple hives
that's ever absconded on us in 26 years. So that
is incredible that you can look at it, guess
the height, step it out and have it hit. And
I'm going to tease you with one last thing. And
that is far as I know, those rubber made containers
are made out of plastic. Nice. It's true. You
know what? We have a couple other pieces of plastic
in the operation and I will not rest until we
get rid of them. All right. Hey, it's been fun,
you guys. We are going to do it again sometime
in the not too distant future. That's Joy and
Eric McHugh. And thanks for being with me today.
Yeah, great to be here. Thank you. Thanks again
for joining us on Be Love, Be Keeping presented
by Man Lake. Another big thank you goes to Vita
B Health for their support. Vita's Varroa Control
Ranger products includes Epistan, Epigard, and
now Varroxan Extended Release Oxalic Acid Strips.
Hey thanks a lot guys. And if you haven't yet,
please subscribe to and follow the show, tell
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at be love beekeeping dot com. And remember,
if you're not just in it for the honey or the
money, you're in it for the love. See you next
week.