Best Beekeeping Practices

Sponsored by Mann Lake

By Podcast Team and Tara Dawn Chapman
Published on January 30, 2025
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Best Beekeeping Practices

Tara Dawn Chapman: [00:00:00] When you’re talking about splitting a colony, you can do it in a proactive sense and that you’re trying to get ahead of swarming or perhaps you need more colonies, want more colonies.

There’s a lot of different reasons why you might make a split. split from your existing colonies. But in terms of an artificial swarm slit split, which is a type of split, it’s more of a reactive split in that we have a colony and swarming is eminent, right? So swarming cells have been created.

The colony has not yet swarmed and if you do nothing that colony will swarm And so of course for a lot of beekeepers, that’s not a great thing You know, you’ve got this investment You can watch your bees your money fly right out of the yard and you also miss out on the opportunity to make another colony in your apiary.

And so what a beekeeper can do is basically do the swarming on for the colony. So again, it’s just a type of split in which you would do all the things that would happen if the [00:01:00] colony swarmed anyway, but rather than the swarm leaving and making a home elsewhere, perhaps in the eaves of your house, right? Which nobody wants. Now you’ve got the two colonies in your apiary instead of just the one.

Josh Wilder: Welcome to the Mother Earth News and Friends podcast. At Mother Earth News, for 50 years and counting, we’ve been dedicated to conserving the planet’s natural resources while helping you conserve your financial resources in this podcast. We host conversations with experts in the fields of sustainability, homesteading, natural health, and more to share all about how you can live well wherever you are in a way that values both people and our Mother Earth.

Thanks to our sponsor, Mann Lake.

Thanks to our sponsor for this episode, Mann Lake. At Mann Lake, they have a love for bees and a mission to provide beekeepers with beekeeping supplies and tools they need to succeed. Whether you’re looking to expand your colony with new honey bees, setting up a hive, or to equip your operation with smokers, tools, or protective [00:02:00] gear, explore their categories to learn how you can enhance your beekeeping experience with the right equipment.

Visit mannlakeltd.com today and discover why Mann Lake is the trusted name in beekeeping supplies. That’s mannlakeltd.com.

Hello. Hello. Hello. Welcome to this episode of Mother Earth News and Friends. Josh Wilder here. With me today is Tara Dawn Chapman who launched Two Hives Honey by running hive tours for meetup groups on two neighborhood hives in Texas. And it’s evolved into a socially conscious business that aims to educate her community, support other local businesses, and offer some of the most excellent honey Texas bees can make.

She is also the author of this new book For the Bees that offers practical explanations for anyone starting their beekeeping journey. Thank you for joining me today, Tara.

Tara Dawn Chapman: Hi, thank you.

Josh Wilder: So tell us a little bit about the book.

Tara Dawn Chapman: Yeah, [00:03:00] thanks again. So it’s several years in the making but I’ve been teaching beekeeping classes here in Austin and all over. I’ve gone to a lot of Mother Earth events. I’ve been teaching for a long time, for about a decade. And I had this immersive beekeeping program and I was never quite satisfied with the text available for that program. And I found that the texts tend to fall in one of two categories. They fall into the kind of dense reference index, it’s the kind of thing that you’ve read it after you’re five years in and maybe you’ll start to pick up on it. All the information’s there, but not approachable. And then there’s the other side. The flip side is the really beautiful, but not a lot of substance. And I thought, I really feel like we can have fun and also have the nuance and substance that beekeeping requires to be successful.

So yeah, I started writing the book and I’m very excited about it. It’s very biology forward. I’m a big believer that you cannot be a good [00:04:00] beekeeper if you do not really, truly understand the nuance of honeybee biology first and foremost. So we start there and it’s great for, obviously for beginners. But this also is a great book.

If you’re even a few years into your journey, it’s gonna cover a lot of the really advanced skill sets as well.

Josh Wilder: That’s great. Thanks. Speaking of that kind of approachable accessibility obviously you’re in Texas. Can you speak on it’s accessibility to people across the country?

Tara Dawn Chapman: Yeah, for sure.

It was also really important to me that we being in Texas, Texas is the biggest, hobbyist beekeeping state in the country. And very few of the beekeeping books are written by Texas beekeepers. So I had this firsthand experience of not feeling like all of the texts were speaking to me, but I also believe that we can talk and write and teach about beekeeping in a way that it really addresses everyone’s needs, no matter where you are. And so I really worked hard to make sure this book works for anyone, no matter where you are [00:05:00] in what climate, because really beekeeping, hear this phrase, all beekeeping is local.

That is true, but the fact of the matter is that generally speaking, bees will respond to resources or lack thereof in the same ways, right? The reason bees swarm is the same, no matter where you are. And so in the chapter where we talk about seasonal beekeeping, for example, instead of talking about seasons, because, because what’s in a winter for you means something very different for me, of course, rather we talk about resources and how do bees respond or react to resources or lack thereof.

And that kind of philosophy of teach it, we’re not going to give a man a fish, we’re going to teach a man a fish, really allows you and empowers beekeepers to make decisions in their bee yards based on what they’re seeing in their climate.

Swarm Management

Josh Wilder: A couple of things you just touched on I wanted to go into.

First of all, what you mentioned about swarm prevention. First of all, I gotta say, the illustrations in this book are amazing. You have this your illustrator, what was her Carolyn Brown. So this this [00:06:00] illustration about swarming, it’s excellent. People have to get their hands on this thing. By the way, the link is, will be in the comments here and is available on the landing page.

But so about swarming in general could you talk a little bit about some of the signs that a hive is preparing to swarm?

Tara Dawn Chapman: Yeah, so swarming for the uninitiated is It’s a really misunderstood concept, I think by many, but really it’s a colony’s way of reproducing. So you have reproduction, the colony, and then our queen bee lays eggs.

It’s one form of reproduction, but then the colony itself, the superorganism can also swarm. And really, the reason behind swarming is because we can make two colonies out of one, spread the genetics of the colony. And so what really causes swarming is the inability of the queen’s pheromones to permeate the hive because her pheromones and there’s, several pheromones that she emits all the time. The queen bee emits. It is what [00:07:00] prevents rearing a queen cells, right? So if you go queenless, your colony will immediately begin to rear queens. So her pheromone is what prohibits that in a swarming situation, you’ve got congested the colonies, big, lots of bees come in and out. The pheromones can’t adequately permeate through the colony. And that in of itself is what causes them to start rearing swarming cells. And so when you talk about how do we prevent swarming again, this idea of teaching a man to fish really, it goes back to if you understand the biology of what is going to start initiation of queen rearing cells in the first place is this congestion. So what can we do to ease congestion in the colony? And then you can go from there about how do we work to prevent swarming in our colonies.

Josh Wilder: So what should someone do if they come across a swarm? Is that especially if they’re interested In adding to their hives, is that something they should consider or is that something [00:08:00] they might try to find someone else to take care of?

Tara Dawn Chapman: Yeah, so if you’re, you come across and you see this like ball of hanging bees somewhere that is a swarm, so what’s happening is a colony has swarmed.

When the bees leave the colony, they don’t know where the new home is going to be. So they go and they rest somewhere together while they send out scalpies looking for new homes. So if you can intercept that process and catch that swarm and bring them home and convince them to stay, which honestly the hardest part of being a beekeeper catching swarms is making sure that they stay. They don’t leave. They can be a little bit flighty. Good on you, right? You can start your beekeeping journey with what we call “free” bees. Whether or not it’s safe or smart, swarms are actually really quite docile. I think that’s like a risk reward that someone has to assess for themselves.

But I will say that I have found that the chances that you come across a swarm seem to exponentially go up once you’re already a beekeeper. And I think it just because [00:09:00] once you are a beekeeper, all of your friends know you become known as the crazy bee person in your circle. And so when a swarm pops up, they’re going to call you first.

So absolutely possible to come across the swarm. And then of course, there’s a whole matter of baiting swarms. Like you could set traps to try to bait swarms for sure. And I encourage any new or wannabe beekeepers to do that. But I do find that your chances of happening upon a swarm do tend to go up once you already have bees.

Josh Wilder: Yeah, I’ve I’ve heard that too. So what’s your take on swarm lures? And can you describe those a little bit?

Tara Dawn Chapman: Yeah, so we have a recipe for the lure in the book. I think it’s important to preface this conversation by making sure everybody knows I am a minimalist.

There’s all sorts of gadgets and things that you can buy. A lot of gadgets can be replaced by a stick. A stick can do a lot of things for a hive. We’re minimalists here. We like to keep your money in your pocket. There’s certainly some [00:10:00] things that you must buy. But swarm lure is one of those things that’s really expensive.

So you can buy swarm lure on the market at beekeeping stores. But it’s something that we make ourselves and it’s literally as simple as lemongrass, essential oil, a little bit of beeswax and some oil we use olive oil and those three things is what we use to bait all of our traps and we’re really successful with them.

I went over to Malawi in Africa a couple years ago to teach beekeepers and they were very frustrated that they were never catching swarms and they weren’t actually using more. And I shared this very simple recipe with them. And then they reported that half of their traps by the end of the year had swarms in them. So I think it’s actually quite effective. Lemon grass, essential oil mimics the pheromones of the queen. It’s very attractive to bees. Another thing that you can do is use old equipment, used equipment is rather a better term, used equipment. Smells like home. There’s all sorts of other things that you can do to make that trap smell [00:11:00] really nice and attractive.

But this homemade lo, I think works pretty well. You do though need to apply it every two or three weeks. You can’t apply it at the start of the season and expect it to last for the rest of the year. You do have to reapply fairly often.

Hive Ventilation

Josh Wilder: Great, thanks. So you had talked earlier too about just different seasons that people might experience depending on their region. Let’s talk a little bit about ventilation and how upper ventilation in a top bar hive. Especially what the benefits are possibly using like a strained inner cover or something to that effect.

Tara Dawn Chapman: Yeah. So we, this is definitely something that becomes, boils down more so to like specific climates here in Texas it’s very hot. And so our concern is not so much. The cold and a lot of condensation forming, a lot of the colder climates they’ll use boxes and they’ll put like pine shavings and cedar shavings up on the top to absorb all this condensation. For [00:12:00] us it’s really hot here and we do know that one half of the heat lost in a colony, and of course that goes both ways, helps them stay cool in the summer and warm in the winter is lost through the top entrance. And one of the things that’s become a little bit more popular these days as, the Appomattox brand hives are like hives made out of that like thick double walled plastic.

And there’s a lot of folks that don’t love the notion of using that material in their colonies, like we don’t. One of the things that you can do, you can certainly use different sorts of ventilation, but something that people often do is I’ll recommend if we know that more than half of the heat is lost through the top cover.

And so you can use just the top cover. Of these plastic designs and then use a wooden inner cover, and then you’re keeping a barrier between the plastic and your bees, but there’s a lot of different ways to do that. We certainly follow more of the natural approach here and mimic what bees would do naturally in nature. So anytime you’re [00:13:00] using, pine of course, has the least amount of insulation. And so if you can do some of the more, the more expensive, of course, but like cedar and such will always help with better climate control.

Josh Wilder: Yeah, and just fun ventilation in general. How do you monitor that environment? We’ve talked about condensation. Are there any other factors you look out for?

Tara Dawn Chapman: We don’t really hear. It’s not a huge issue that we have here in Texas. You’ll often see going back into the example about condensation forming on the inner cover. A lot of times what we’ll see in the early spring months is you’ll see mold growing on your inner covers, your top covers. And that’s because again, that condensation has to do with the fact that as the temperature swings, in that early, those earlier spring whatever spring means to you, but the early in the season, the temperatures are cooler at night, warmer during the day.

And of course, the cluster is always kept at the same temperature. And so this [00:14:00] can form condensation and then it can cause mold to grow. And this is where my stick example comes into play. When we see a lot of condensation forming, I ventilate the inner cover. And I just use like you can use a two or four like dimes or pennies in the corners or a small stick also helps and that just allows some of that like really hot, wet air to escape.

Josh Wilder: Okay, so getting back to what you’d said about your book early focusing on biology. Obviously, big thing to think about is health and nutrition. What are the most important things for people to keep in mind when they’re first getting started when it comes to health and nutrition.

Tara Dawn Chapman: Yeah, specifically just learning about nutrition, you’re going to be further along ahead of the game than so many, the fact that I had a whole chapter in the book on nutrition very early in the book, it’s the second chapter in the book, second or third chapter in the book is honeybee nutrition.

And this is before we get to the beekeeping because again, this [00:15:00] goes back to that we must understand honeybee biology and understand it well to be successful beekeepers. And so I was flabbergasted by people teaching at these schools all the time about feeding bees, and I’ve always thought how do you know if you should be feeding your bees if you don’t actually understand the nutritional needs of your bees? To begin with, right? And so I think just really understanding, I still see so many beekeepers that are under the misconception that pollen is what’s used to make honey, right? It’s not, it’s nectar. And really just understand the ins and outs and honeybee nutrition is not that tricky. And, you’ve got pollen and you’ve got nectar.

And then, of course, the honeybees make royal jelly and be bread off of those two nutritional elements that are coming into the colony. But it’s really not that difficult. But understanding how they are each used in the hive and what happens if the system doesn’t have access to those as a result. And then you’ll [00:16:00] be much further ahead in the game.

Varroa mites

Josh Wilder: So what diseases and pest management should be the things that people look out for the most when they’re first starting?

Tara Dawn Chapman: Yeah, you can’t have this conversation without unfortunately talking about Varroa mites. Varroa mites is the biggest challenge to all beekeepers, right up there with pesticides.

But when you’re talking about the things that are happening in the colony and not external to the colony, Varroa mites is it, and so I think it’s important to understand the life cycle of the pest that you’re concerned about and understanding the risks that they each pose.

So what I see a lot is I see a lot of beekeepers that spend a lot of time thinking and worrying about wax moths and small high beetle. Now, if you are not in a warmer climate, small high beetles might not be a thing that you have to worry about at all. There are non native pests to the United States but beekeepers in the South, it’s a huge and warm climate it’s a, it’s, they’re definitely in every colony in [00:17:00] the South. But these are opportunistic pests. So what I often see is people spending way too much time dedicated to worrying and fretting about an opportunistic pest. And really an opportunistic pest is very easy to control because they’re opportunistic.

So as long as the conditions aren’t right for them they cannot thrive. I often say wax moth didn’t kill your hive. It didn’t. To say that would be akin to saying seeing a dead deer on the road and saying maggots killed that deer. Something happened to the deer and then the maggots move in later.

And so I think that spending too much time focused on these opportunistic pests when really they’re very easy to control, keeping your hive strong, not giving them more space than the colony. Can guard is really important and then protecting your cone once in your honey, once you remove it from the colony, when there’s no bees left to protect it, that’s when we tend to see these pests and then not spending enough time thinking and talking about the one that really is problematic, which is Varroa mites.

Josh Wilder: Beyond kind of [00:18:00] nutrition and diseases their whole, like the whole habitat that they live in, obviously isn’t just the hive. What do you do and what do you teach people about maybe gardeners that you might talk to, like, how do you have any suggestions for folks who have gardens on maybe hive placement, or, if they want to try to, obviously get some sort of wildflower type of honey. Like, how do you recommend that sort of habitat, set up?

Tara Dawn Chapman: Yeah things that you can do whether you’re a beekeeper. There’s kind of two sides to that coin. It’s what kind of things are we looking for in terms of, if you have hives and you want to sell them? Site them. What does that site set up look like? What’s your, the best place for your bees? And then there’s also the what can I do to support my bees in my yard, which can happen whether you were a beekeeper or whether you just want to help support bees, all bees, honey bees, native bees, butterflies, and other pollinators.

So in terms of just supporting your bees, all bees writ large, a water source is really important, particularly [00:19:00] if in a really warm climate, like we are here, dry climates. So making sure that your bees have a water source, particularly during the hottest months of the year, it’s really important.

Water is not only important for hydration, but it’s also really important for temperature control in the hive. So that’s certainly a big one. In terms of planting for your bees, know that your bees are going to go far beyond your yard for looking for food, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do a lot to support them.

Thinking about planting bushes and flowering trees are the most bang for your buck when you think about that, because you think of them are like acre of forage in the sky, so you’re get your most bang for your buck there and you really want to do natives. Natives are best suited to your, climate, we don’t want to be planting tropicals, trying to keep tropicals alive somewhere up north.

So those are things that can do to support your bees. Oh, and then your water source. I think it’s important to note that you, there’s some evidence that bees won’t use [00:20:00] a water source right next to their hives. It probably has to do with the fact that they defecate as they leave the hive and they don’t want to deal with messed water.

And having a little bit of a, 10, 10 ft or so from your the hives. If you would have bees is important and bees drown really easily. So making sure you’ve got something in there so that they won’t drown. So floats or sticks or rocks, stones, other things like that in terms of siding your hives, I think the biggest thing is thinking about how, especially if you have a small yard and you can absolutely keep bees in a smaller yard but thinking about how you use the space and you certainly wouldn’t want to be doing a lot, spending a lot of time working or having your kids play right in front of the entrance.

So just you’re going to use y in the best place for the believe it or not, we actually push hard for more versus less sun. We’re in Texas, it gets really hot here all of our bees are in full sun With ventilation, we talked a lot about ventilation [00:21:00] earlier full sun or half day sun at a minimum helps with ventilation, helps with control of pests and disease helps with control of small hive beetle, certainly in those climates where you’ve got them.

And so really pushing for, and then in the northern climates where it is a lot colder you want those, that longer days of sun, particularly in the winter months.

Native bees

Josh Wilder: So you talked a little, touched briefly on, on native bees so for folks that are thinking about, keeping bees but are, might even be afraid of bees but want, really want to have them do you, have you set up any bee hotels for native bees before? Is that something you’re familiar with?

Tara Dawn Chapman: Yeah, we love talking about native bees. We actually think it’s out of frame, but we’ve got a little poster on the wall right over here that’s got all the native bees native to North America. So for those of that aren’t aware, honeybees are not native to North America. They are brought here in the 1600s by European settlers, but there are thousands of bees that are native to the United [00:22:00] States.

And there you can build, by far and large, most native bees, something like 70 percent nest in the ground. They’re ground nesters, so the way to support ground nesters is just to not do lawns, have leave your yard a little messy, certainly not doing a lot of like cleanup over the winter.

That’s when a lot of them are in their development stages before they emerge the next season. But the remaining number do nest in flower stems. And so you can give habitats to mason bees, leaf cutter bees, and carpenter bees who actually nest in wood. So you can make or buy these really fun little native bee homes.

Or often you’ll see they’re made out of bamboo reeds. And the idea there is that the leaf cutters and the mason bees will nest in the bamboo reeds. And then of course blocks of wood can provide homes for carpenter bees. And we love that. We love to share that with folks. And encourage folks to learn more about native bees wherever they can.

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Josh Wilder: So do native bees and honeybees play nice together?

Tara Dawn Chapman: Yeah. So it’s become very popular or common rather in the last last 18 months to see a lot of articles about with this kind of clickbait, your honeybees are killing my native bees, that kind of thing. So like they aren’t fighting, that’s not what’s happening.

However, there’s a [00:24:00] finite amount of resources for sure. And so that’s just really what people are getting at here is the amount of resources and my argument to that is that one, our entire food system is reliant on honeybees. Even if you live in a city where they do a really good job of supporting local small farmers.

The fact of the matter is that it doesn’t work. Almost all the food that we consume in this country is grown via monoculture, which requires honeybees for pollination services to support that. And so they’re not going away, but rather I think it’s really important for us to think about who’s the real, “enemy” here.

I own a honey company. Honeybees is how we make our money, but I go out and I’m talking and speaking on native bees. I’m educating. We’re talking about it right now. Folks that are supporting bees are not the problem, right? Those that are supporting one or the other are typically doing things that support all bees.

What I’d really love to see is us focusing our energy on [00:25:00] sharing with the vast majority of folks that have no idea how why bees are important or what we can do to support them or why we should be, supporting local organic farmers and whatnot. I’d really love to see us focus our energy on educating the uninitiated rather than in fighting here because so much of what you do to support one also supports the other.

Josh Wilder: I appreciate that answer. Yeah, I certainly see your point. Obviously the vast majority of folks don’t have an opinion on honeybees versus or with native bees. So it really does come down to that education piece. And going back to what you had talked about with the monoculture and there’s a nice piece where you just talked about how that had affected the Omega Nutrition. Can you talk about that a little bit? I really like that kind of sidebar that you have in the book.

Bee nutrition

Tara Dawn Chapman: Oh, are you talking about Omega- 3s versus Omega- 6s? Is that what you’re referring to?

Josh Wilder: Yeah.

Tara Dawn Chapman: Yeah it turns [00:26:00] out that honeybees just like humans need a good variance in their diet, right? And Omega -3 are really good for brain health.

This is why you see, the fish oil supplements and whatnot. That’s all about getting Omega -3 because they’re really good for brain health. And we know that these do much better. with a very diet where they have high amounts of Omega -3. So this is really cool study that was done to demonstrate the importance of Omega -3 and the ability of bees to learn.

And so they set it up like a Pavlov’s dogs experiment where, they ring the bell and provide the food and then do that so often. And then they take away the food and ring the bell and they see if the dog Like starts drooling, right? Anticipating the food. So they did the same thing with bees, but instead of the bowl, and they used a scent.

So they would spray a scent and then provide a bit of sugar water or nectar [00:27:00] to the bee and they found it by the third try I can’t remember the exact set, but by the third try, an incredibly overwhelming amount had learned to associate the odor with the food. If they had this diet high in omega-3s and those without the diet high in omega-3s, it took them a lot longer to learn to associate.

So just a really cool factoid of learning more about why they’re so important for bees and for brain health and why this really varied diet is so important. And what you were just pointing out, Josh, is that this is what bees miss out on when we grow our food via monoculture is that those honeybees that are being driven in to support those monoculture practices don’t have the variance in their diet that they require to ensure that the colony is thriving and that the developing young have that very diet as they’re developing these critical, the development cycle for worker bee is 21 days and they only spend very little bit of that [00:28:00] time actually feeding. They don’t consume as eggs and they don’t consume in the pupa state. So you’re talking about a week’s time when they’re actually have access to food and it’s so important that week of what they’re getting to ensure that they’re healthy and thriving into adulthood.

Josh Wilder: You mentioned that the honeybee development that’s another one of my favorite illustrations from the book.

And I was going to ask if you could explain for beekeepers what they need to to manage the frames as they start to brood and kind of part of that process of kind of hive management.

Tara Dawn Chapman: What’s really important for beekeepers is first and foremost to know what you’re looking at. I find that so many don’t know how to read the frames. I’m going to talk about read the frames And to say, read the frames as a very Langstroth, specific preferential phrase.

I don’t mean to only speak to Langstroth hive owners, whether you do wares or top bars or long wings. I’m very inclusive of my teaching. It’s just a phrase that we use to [00:29:00] read the frames. So what that means is, when you’re in your colony and you’re first and foremost, know how to identify what are you looking at?

And then what story. are the frames telling you? And that’s really challenging to do if you’re new or you don’t have a beekeeper to work alongside. And that’s really why one of the best practices in the book that I talk about is getting into many colonies as you can and working with other beekeepers.

And even if their new beekeeper. Sometimes two people don’t know much. You add them together and the sum is greater than their parts. So working alongside another beekeeper, they can help you understand what the reading of the frames is telling you, because a lot of this is relative, right? When we talk about what’s a weak hive versus what’s a strong hive, what we’re talking about is the number of bees relative to the space.

Weak and strong are relative terms. So if you don’t know what a weak colony looks like no one with any authority or, can share [00:30:00] that with you then you’re, you don’t know any more than you would otherwise. And it’s really important to work alongside someone that you trust or have someone that you can call in to, to start to give this baseline of what these relative terms mean.

Josh Wilder: Yeah, I’ve not kept bees myself, but I’ve been around a lot of hives over the years at Mother Earth News. And obviously there’s a lot of different approaches and there’s a lot of different there’s a lot of different opinions. But I appreciate you talking about that inclusivity of different hive types and there are a lot of different mentor models when it comes to keeping bees. It’s definitely something that you need to learn hands on. I would say is pretty key to the process.

Tara Dawn Chapman: Yeah, the tricky thing with beekeeping is that assuming you’re going to buy your boxes and bees, which most people will again, you can absolutely, work to catch a swarm or bait swarms, but the most folks are going to be buying bees.

And [00:31:00] again, some people can build their boxes and build their hives, but most people don’t have those carpentry skills. So the tricky thing is that you have to, in order to be a beekeeper, by definition, you have to have bees. So you’re buying bees, you’re buying boxes, you’re buying the protective gear and it’s when you know the least amount, if you wanted to like, so many other hobbies if you wanted to get into painting, you can buy some like cheaper paints and get some canvas at, Goodwill and paint white over them and start, there’s cheaper ways to enter it, but it’s really tricky with beekeeping because all the money comes up front.

And so I definitely think that making sure that you actually enjoy the process of getting in a suit and getting into a beehive before you spend any money is really important, though. I will say generally speaking, I find the intellectually curious really thrive in the world It’s just perfect for, the intellectually curious really it’s just so interesting the nuances. So the community itself is still always [00:32:00] learning

Brood diseases

Josh Wilder: For sure. Yeah. So one specific thing that I know we have coming up in an article is about foulbrood and specifically American foulbrood versus European foulbrood.

Can you describe a little bit about what that is and what some symptoms of that might be?

Tara Dawn Chapman: These are brood diseases, so diseases of the developing honeybees. So if you have European and you have American, and I can just speak generally and succinctly about the differences between the two, know that American is the one that’s very very serious. If you find American foulbrood, and there are tests for both of these, if you find American foulbrood in your colonies, it’s very possible you live in a state where if you test positive, they will require that you burn your bees and your boxes and your tools and your equipment, because the spores can persist and live in equipment and in honey for decades to come, and it’s very contagious.

European, on the other hand, is quite common. Not near serious. I’ve [00:33:00] never seen a colony succumb to European foulbrood alone. It’s important to know, though, that, when, particularly when you have a high incidence of Varroa in your colony suffering from parasitic mite diseases, you might see a lot of these diseases in conjunction with one another.

So you might actually see a colony fail that has European, but really the result the reason was, trace back to Varroa so it’s important to know. But when you’re talking about truly just European, it’s typically a nutritional disease that we see early in the spring. When our bees are on their last leg of their resources from the last year and the nectar flow hasn’t started yet.

So this is one that pretty easily treatable. You can buy antibiotics for it. But I have found great success with just feeding colonies because again, it tends to be something caused by lack of nutrition in terms of identifying one over the other. We do have photos in the [00:34:00] book encourage you to seek out, the internet.

There’s a lot of great info, and there’s a lot of bad info on the internet, but seeking out photos, but American foulbrood is typically combined with a very foul smell. Like people talk about, it hitting you well before you even hit the beehive. They’ve actually trained dogs to be able to bomb sniffing dogs to, to identify for American foulbrood.

European is one where they die before they hit the pupa stage. Not the case with American. And then the other thing, there’s something called a matchstick test. And so when a colony is suffering from European foulbrood the young are very easy to remove. The dead larvae are very easy to remove.

Whereas in the American foulbrood they just like melty. They like they’ve melted and you could stick a matchstick in and you can pull out the mat stick and it a ropes out. But if you ever suspect that you had American foulbrood, like I strongly recommend you, you get a test and you call your apiary inspection service because they are going to want to send someone out to [00:35:00] confirm one way or another.

But a funny side story. So we here in a lot of parts of the United States, not just here in our part of the world, but we have goldenrod is a big nectar flow source in the fall for lots of colonies in the late spring, early fall. And when bees are on a nectar flow with goldenrod, the pollen smells really yeasty, like dirty feet.

And every year I have at least one beekeeper that’s convinced they have American foulbrood in it. It’s always just been the golden rod pollen flow. So keep that in mind too. There could be other reasons why you might have a little stink. Especially so if the golden rods in bloom and you’re finding that all of a sudden that you’ve got this kind of stinky smell, but the brood looks healthy and fine.

It’s probably the golden rod.

Honey production

Josh Wilder: That actually segues really well to what I was going to go into which is honey production. And I was curious about speaking on that golden rod odor, how, does that have a specific effect on the honey flavor? [00:36:00] And If so, or if not, is it, does it combine with any other like native plants that you have near your hives that kind of make a specific flavor formula?

Tara Dawn Chapman: The, our main nectar flow is the goldenrod in the fall and it produces this like beautiful, really dark honey. And It doesn’t taste like the pollen smells. It’s really delightful. It’s something that for a lot of people don’t realize this because the grocery store tells us that honey is a commodity, right? That it all tastes and looks and smells the same, which is nothing could be further from the truth. Different flowers produce different nectars and these nectars each have your own attributes, different viscosities, different colors, different flavors. And then of course these can be combined in a myriad of ways during the harvesting process to create all sorts of honeys.

And so the goldenrod honey, there, there’s this saying that you see in a lot of the Southern part of the United States where, old guys that have been in the, in this for a long time will say that fall [00:37:00] honey, that late, spring, summer, fall honey’s trash you’d leave that for the bees. It doesn’t taste good. Nobody wants that. And I think it’s just because it’s different than what, ” honey” tastes like, what we think of honey. And in fact it’s our best seller. We don’t get a huge fall harvest, but what we do sells out very quickly because it’s dark, rich honey. It goes very well with whiskey and a hot toddy, which fits the season, if that’s your forte. But yeah, I think it’s really delightful.

Josh Wilder: That’s great. Yeah. I remember some wildflower hunting specifically that I got at a apiary in California a few years back and some other that I’d had from that on North Carolina, just, there’s such amazing richness of flavors that you get from different regions and different, styles it’s pretty unbelievable to people that, might not have that experience.

Tara Dawn Chapman: Absolutely.

Josh Wilder: Just speaking of honey harvesting and honey products what kind of techniques do you recommend for someone without obviously, [00:38:00] the least amount of harm to the hive.

Tara Dawn Chapman: And we talk about this in the book because again I don’t think it’s makes sense for everyone to buy an extractor, the whole system, your first or second or even third, fourth, or maybe even never. And if you do top bars or some of the other foundationless hives or do foundationless beekeeping in general an extractor is not going to be in your future. And in terms of being sustainable and responsible, you of course always want to make sure that you’re only pulling what’s truly excess. And depending on where you are, your colonies will require different amounts of honey.

So you’re going to require far more up in the northern part of the United States than we do here, where we have mild winters and we have earlier nectar flows. It’s just the name of the game, right? The irony is that I would say most northern beekeepers are actually better honey producers. Their hogs are better honey producers than we have down in this part of the world.

We don’t have these super strong nectar flows. We have really mild winter, so we don’t require as much. [00:39:00] Honey to overwinter. So the nice thing about honey is that you can see how much does my colony have and it’s just a math game, right? If I know I need this much to overwinter or get through my dearth and I can choose to take what’s left if I like and then going back to the extract to not extract again, you might not even have that option either because of financial constraints or because you’re using a hive type where you can’t use, you can’t use an extractor. And comb honey you’re, if you’re not going to extract, you’re going to be destroying the comb to access the honey.

So then it’s just a matter of preference, right? So we’re big comb honey fans here. We’ve done a lot to bring back this sort of like in so many ways forgotten, beautiful artisanal products. So we’re big company fans. We actually run foundation lists in our supers and half of our supers just so that we can get this beautiful company.

Or you can also build a crush and strain bucket very easily. Josh, that would be a great thing for us to talk [00:40:00] about in a workshop. Maybe it’s how to build your own crush and strain bucket. I have a 30 frame extractor and we use our crush and strain bucket every single day that we’re harvesting.

It’s just like a really effective tool to have on hand. All of my honey for the first two or three years I crushed and strained and I was actually selling and making my money off honey at that point. So I definitely could have moved to the extractor method a little bit quicker than I did. But the point is you can get by with a crush and strain method for a really long time if you’re small.

Josh Wilder: Obviously a lot of our audience, if they are beekeeping, they’re looking at potentially taking that next step to, going to the farmer’s market or maybe being part of a CSA, something to that effect. Whatever kind of the easiest kind of DIY way to, to, to make a product, and get something to market it’s really ideal. So your steps towards doing that obviously, a big part of what you do is education. Were you always teaching? Was it something that you knew was going to be a part of the process all along? [00:41:00] Or did you focus on the products first and then the education came later?

Tara Dawn Chapman: When I worked in intelligence for 10 years and then I happened to take a beekeeping class and then I quit my job very irresponsibly and jumped in really early. It worked out okay, worked out quite well. It wasn’t very responsible. And so I didn’t really know much of anything. I went and worked for a bee breeder in East Texas, but yes, my goal, my vision my passion was I wanted to start a honey company. I wanted to have these neighborhood honeys in every neighborhood in Austin to have its own honey. I want it to be labeled as such. And then of course I quickly, very quickly realized, but not quickly enough because I don’t quit my job I wasn’t going to have any real meaningful honey for at least a year and it was going to take me years to build up into a way that it was going to actually be able to make me any real money. And so that’s when we started focusing on the agritourism and the agritourism is a term that I use to describe both like educating non beekeepers, but [00:42:00] also teaching beekeeping and doing classes.

So my actual first real product, if you will, wasn’t a tangible product, it was hive tours. I started running hive tours, charging people money that I would suit them up and I would teach them about honeybees. And we would go out for an hour and do a beehive. And I just got to explore a beehive. We’re this kind of unique experience. And that was the first thing we started doing. And agritourism has really done very well. We’ve done very well with that. The beekeeping is a really tricky ag endeavor because in most forms of ag, you’re reliant on the weather or live animals and not really heavily reliant on both and we are absolutely, totally reliant on both to produce. Our product that we get, lots of berries. You only get one harvest a year here in Texas. We may get two if we’re lucky. And so a single weather event can totally ruin your crop. And so we have found, I found the agritourism piece allows us to bring in money and keep the doors open and the lights on even when the honey doesn’t [00:43:00] set.

Josh Wilder: That, that makes a lot of sense. I think that’s, it’s really across topics and areas. It’s pretty common to obviously to be resilient in this market, you have to diversify the ways that you bring people to the product or the, to your endeavor, whether that’s beekeeping or, pumpkins or, livestock operation.

So we have a few more minutes here. There’s a question and a comment that has come up. There’s a comment from Stew Structure they mentioned that, or the talk about native and honeybees, that they were mentioning that honeybees have been a native bee for as long as most bees, they say.

There are different strains, but in general they are not an introduced critter. It sounds like I understand where they’re coming from. You mentioned the 1600s, obviously they’ve been here. Yeah,

Tara Dawn Chapman: It’s a lot of, this is like semantics, right? But man, the there’s some real strong opinions.

And then you get into semantics would introduce and invasive, right? It’s all semantics, but I do think that [00:44:00] me and the commenter probably agree that we’re all on the same team here. There is a species of definitely invasive plants that’s along the coast of East Texas, and it’s actually illegal to continue to plant them, but they are, it’s called Chinese tallow and it is everywhere and they’re huge nectar produces. In fact, I would say a lot of the honey produced in East Texas is from these Chinese tallow plants. And so you’ve also got this whole other layer of nuance to the argument of now I’m wanting to fight for this definitely an invasive species of plant to support this non native bee.

Anyway, there’s a lot of nuance there, but I think that we probably both agree that we’re all on the same page and we should, the same team, and we should work to help educate those that perhaps don’t think that bees matter at all or don’t understand how their actions affect bees. Yeah.

Josh Wilder: Yeah. Or like you mentioned, just how much of the, food [00:45:00] industry relies on the pollinators.

Tara Dawn Chapman: Can’t do it without them. Can’t do it without honeybees. .

Josh Wilder: So [an audience member] Gladys was asking about the native bee homes how often should they clean and maintain those?

Tara Dawn Chapman: That’s a great question. I have to tell you. I know more than most people know about native bees, but I’m not an expert. So I feel the need to share that out with you. Real talk, my native bee homes, I don’t, you, you can get real involved and you can buy these reeds that you break apart after each season, after they’ve emerged, and you can clean them out to help prevent mites and whatnot.

So that’s a best practice that is supported and shared by those that sell those native bee homes. There’s a company up in the Pacific Northwest that really advocates for that. I will share with you that I’ve never done that. Real talk versus what actually happens, but I put out the homes and they nest and I get very excited. I don’t do a lot of the, like a yearly maintenance or [00:46:00] cleaning, but I would check out some of those companies that are selling those homes and they can share more on the best practices, but they do recommend that you, but they also recommend that you bring the cocoons in and keep them in little incubators in your fridge to protect them. I also don’t do that. I let them just stay outside.

Sustainable beekeeping

Josh Wilder: I appreciate your honesty. Finally and this is a nice general one to go out on. They were asking what are some beekeeping practices that aren’t necessarily environmentally friendly or sustainable techniques?

So I guess some things that might be in the ether to avoid, but you might not be as obvious,

Tara Dawn Chapman: yeah. Yeah. That’s a really good question. I really appreciate where that listener is coming from, because we really work to support or practice the most sustainable and certainly the most ethical practices we can, like any form of agriculture, you’ve got practices that are better for the health of the animal and the soil and the water and those that [00:47:00] aren’t right.

And there’s, it’s all same with beekeeping as well. There’s lots of practices that we don’t believe in. So I’ll just mention a few of them. Treating for specifically for treatments in general, but treating for varroa mites, right? Again, I have a very inclusive philosophy. We are treatment free operation here.

You can’t just decide to be treatment free and be successful. That doesn’t mean we get to ignore the problem. But that’s the practice that we employ here. But I also understand that what’s right for me and my bees may not be right for somebody else’s. However, I do implore people to please not treat based on the calendar this notion that we apply treatments to every colony across the board because it’s August and then we do it again in September and then we do it again, I don’t support that because there are lots of treatments that are no longer viable because they have been overused because we’re using them as a preventative and not as a treatment. So I do encourage those that do decide to go that route to please learn about using them appropriately. [00:48:00] And responsibly, another one that big commercial beekeepers are going to do that you’re not going to see on a small scale, or at least I hope you don’t see on a small scale across the board is feeding up high fructose corn syrup, feeding up high fructose corn syrup in of itself is not problematic for bees, but if it’s been heated it produces a very long word that we call for short HMF and it’s very bad for the gut of the honeybee. And the fact of the matter is that the way that half fructose corn syrup is transported and moved across the country, it absolutely reaches those temperatures to produce that HMF that is not good for bees. And so that’s something that again, those big commercial beekeepers do.

And then again, a lot of these are attached to big commercial beekeeping. But migratory beekeeping in general, it’s not great, but again, it’s how most of our food is produced. It’s a necessary evil. I do get excited when I see more partnerships where, for example, you’re seeing the almonds in California. Now you’re seeing certain almond farms that are [00:49:00] working to keep bees on site year round and produce crops outside of almond season. So they have a more varied diet. So they’re not having to move around. So there’s a lot of practices involved with commercial beekeeping and pollination services that honestly isn’t really sustainable and certainly not great for the health of the honeybee.

Josh Wilder: So to end on a high note, I just wanted to ask, you talked about how beekeeping is a great practice for kind of the intellectually curious. So on that, in that vein, I think, can you think of a specific memory in your beekeeping journey? That’s an example of one of the great joys that people can expect from beekeeping?

Tara Dawn Chapman: Way back in the beginning, I actually did a book signing event last night and I was telling the story of how, I was working for the federal government, I was going to Afghanistan. I had this arguably depends on your definition of excitement, but this very like exciting, adventurous life. And I had taken this beekeeping class and [00:50:00] I was so incredibly. fascinated by all of these activities that was going on with these tiny little insects that have a brain the size of a mustard seed. I was just blown away by the nuance and the sophistication of a honeybee colony and that I just couldn’t stop talking about it to everyone, every cocktail party, every dinner party. And so at this event last night, we got into a little bit of the honeybee biology and what is so incredibly fascinating, like Queen Bee mating, like the mating process, which is actually, if you look up on my mural here we’ve got a little mural of the mating process there, but it’s just so so, so fascinating. And as I was sharing all these facts with this, uninitiated audience last night and to watch their eyes get big and their jaws drop and just to be blown away by all of this stuff that’s happening with these tiny insects every time I teach an intro class and have people that don’t know anything about bees, they come fresh to the table. It always excites me because it takes me back to that very first beekeeping class where I [00:51:00] walked out of there and I just couldn’t stop talking about bees everywhere I went.

Josh Wilder: That’s great. That’s awesome. I remember the first kind of my introductions and having a bee kind of walk on my finger for the first time and just that experience is just it’s unbelievable.

Thanks so much for joining us today and appreciate everyone’s questions and thanks again and check out the book for the bees available in the Mother Earth news store.

Tara Dawn Chapman: Thank you so much, Josh.

Thanks to our sponsor, Mann Lake.

Josh Wilder: Tired of struggling with your beekeeping equipment? Looking for reliable, high quality supplies that won’t break the bank? Mann Lake has you covered. From hive tools and frames, to protective gear and feeders, Mann Lake offers everything the modern beekeeper needs. Mann Lake has been the go to name in beekeeping for years.

Their products are top notch and their customer service is always helpful. Visit mannlakeltd.com and discover why Mann Lake is the trusted name in beekeeping supplies. That’s [00:52:00] mannlakeltd.com.

CREDITS

Josh Wilder: Thanks for joining us for this episode of Mother Earth News and Friends. To listen to more podcasts and get connected on our social media, visit www.motherearthenews.com/podcast. You can also email us at podcast@ogdenpubs.com with any questions or suggestions. Our podcast production team includes Kenny Coogan, Alyssa Warner, and myself, Josh Wilder.

Music for this episode is the song Hustle by Kevin MacLeod. The Mother Earth News and Friends podcast is a production of Ogden Publications.

Jessica Anderson: Until next time, don’t forget to love your Mother.

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