Commercial Queen Bee Producer - Tips & Secrets to Success

0:00 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 bee's 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 Lake. The Big Island of Hawaii is home to some of the best queen bee breeders

1:32 in the world. Today we're going to have a conversation with one of the best of the best, Rebecca Cronus from Hawaiian Queen Company. I recently visited their facility then had a chance to sit down and discuss what goes into the queen producing business, how it's done, why genetics matter, and why the Big Island may be the best place on the planet to raise queens. First, a big shout out to 9 -year -old Nicholas Bart of Santa Rosa, California. If you haven't heard his story yet, let me just give you a brief summary. The city of Santa Rosa stirred up a hornet's nest of outrage after ordering a 9 -year -old boy to remove a 4 -H beekeeping project from his home. But after the beekeeping community and other residents accused officials of overreacting, it appears the city is reconsidering its position. Here's a little more detail. When Nicholas Bard first began raising bees in his backyard as a 4 -H project, he had no idea what a learning experience it would be. An incredible one, he said. It's probably the biggest and best decision I've ever made. His parents, Zachary and Sarah, they help him, especially when the heavy boxes need to be lifted. In fact, the entire family fell in love with the bees. But at some point, a general fear of bees led Santa Rosa to ban beekeeping.

2:52 And in March, after a neighbor complained, the bards received a letter calling Nicholas's 4 -H project an illegal home occupation. The letter demanded the removal of the bee colony and threatened that a warrant would be issued. In the city's ordinance it classifies honey bees in the category of property nuisances. The bards appealed the decision but the city stood firm. I think maybe they just thought they would enforce it on us and the problem would go away said Zachary Bard. So we had them look back 30 years and you know what they have never enforced the code until now. That's when the beekeeping community got involved including Etta Marie Peterson who mentors young beekeepers throughout the county and is affectionately known as Sonoma's queen bee. Peterson estimated there are more than 100 hives currently in Santa Rosa and she said it seemed like the city officials she spoke to were surprised to even discover that beekeeping was illegal in their city. I said, this boy is nine years old.

4:00 This is not an occupation. It's a learning experience through 4 -H. Peterson said the next guy up the line disagreed and said that Nicholas had to get rid of the bees. And I said, oh my goodness, we have got to do something about this. But now it looks like there's been a change of heart, which could lead to a change in the law. We received over 100 emails from people in support of beekeeping in the city said Santa Rosa Public Information Officer Misty Wood. We decided that instead of going through that process we were going to find a better path forward and that path forward was a staff initiated zoning code amendment. Wood said staff is now consulting with a local beekeeping group to draft a new ordinance that would allow limited beekeeping within the city limits. She said it will probably be submitted to the City Council for approval sometime next year. In the meantime, Nicholas gets to keep his beehive.

4:59 And in wrapping up, I love this little Nicholas, when he was asked which ran smoother, his beehive or City Hall, he said a beehive definitely. I mean they don't have waste, they're not bullying anybody, and they don't even fight at all. So maybe this is just a good lesson for all of us. If you're having problems with your local government over some outdated ordinances, get involved. Get your whole beekeeping community involved and see what you can accomplish. All right, now sit back, relax as we spend more time on the Big Island with another great and interesting beekeeper. Hey, I'd like to welcome to the show today Rebecca Cron. How are you Rebecca? I'm doing well. Thank you so much for having me Eric and I appreciate you taking the time for us to talk for a while today because A couple of days ago I got to spend a little time with you and your husband Luis at your beautiful place in Captain Cook on the Big Island of Hawaii at Hawaiian Queen Co. That's you guys and you are a big Queen producer and and really well known. as one of the best out there and that's what we're going to be talking about today is everything A to Z about how to produce queens, what makes a good queen, so that there's going to be good helpful information both for people listening who may need to buy some queens either for a commercial

6:30 operation or even as a hobby beekeeper if they need a few queens or if you want to produce some of your own queens. I'll bet Rebecca is going to share some good tips. So that said, Rebecca, give us a little background because your company's been around for a while, your second generation. Give us a little history. Yeah, great. So Hawaiian Queen was founded in 1997 by my father, Michael Cronus. He started it basically from ground zero. He had been a beekeeper previously and saw a perfect opportunity for producing queens in Hawaii.

7:12 Hawaii is a very unique place for producing queen bees because of our weather. So we can produce queens early in the year. We start shipping in January when most of North America is still very cold. able to produce queens in time for the spring pollination, most specifically for the almonds in Northern California. But Hawaiian Queen was started by my father. He since has passed away. My husband and I took over several years ago and have kept the business running. We have many, many years of experience in producing queen bees that we've learned from my father and from other really great employees that we have, longtime employees that work with us in this process. And I need to just interject a quick apology. I believe I pronounced your last name, Crone, and it's Cronus? Correct, yes, no problem. It is a problem. I need to get this stuff right, so I'm sorry about that. No worries.

8:19 Doesn't sound like a Hawaiian name, by the way. How many queens do you produce every year? You know, it depends on the year, like anything in agriculture, but it's roughly around 60 ,000. I know there are other queen producers on this island that people have heard of, and I'm sure they're all good, but... I'm trying to think of a nice way to say this. I'm just going to say it flat out. Why are yours the best? Or as we say here, noca oi. So we focus specifically on quality queens. So we're not a huge producer of queens that makes us able to produce very quality queen bees. We focus on the genetics.

9:01 That is fundamental in our operation. For the last over 20 years, we've worked with Dr. Joe Latchaw. He's out of Ohio. and he brings genetic material, semen, over to Hawaii Island and artificially inseminates all of our breeder queens. So that's really specific to Hawaiian queen. We're able to carry the genetics that Joe very carefully selects in our line of queens. So we produce Italians and Carniolans, and they all come from Latchaw stock. Our queens are bred for gentleness, productivity, and being able to hold up under commercial conditions. I know many of your listeners are hobby or sideline beekeepers. Many of our customers are in that category, but a lot of them are commercial. And our queens go to places where they have to work really hard for pollinating contracts. Our queens are good for that type of commercial environment. And I would imagine if they're strong enough to hold up in a commercial environment, they're strong enough for a hobbyist where it's a lot easier on them. Maybe I should put it that way. Yeah, your hobby beekeepers will love our genetics because they're so gentle.

10:21 I mean, most of our employees, they don't even go out in a bee suit a lot of the time. They're very, very gentle. All right, let's get into the process. Tell us... maybe what a calendar year is like for you. When are you doing what? And you mentioned the winter months you're producing the most bees, especially to be sent to the almonds. Give us an idea of what's going on all year. Because when I was there and this was October, it was not all that busy. You sounded like you were just ready to ramp up for your busy time. That's right. Yeah. So Our season really runs from producing big time as January through the middle of June. That's when we are opening yards.

11:09 We started January with opening many of our mating yards. We have eight to nine mating yards. And we start steadily opening them in January so that we are at our peak production by March, which is the busiest time of year for shipping queen bees. That's when the biggest demand is on the U .S. mainland and into April for Canada. So we ship all over the mainland U .S. and, as I mentioned, into Canada via UPS or FedEx. You know, after June, we're still we're still shipping, but we're starting to close down our mating new yards, some of them. So right now in October, we're planning. It's amazing how much planning is involved in producing queen bees. You really have to have a year calendar to coordinate everything that has to go into producing your queens. So right now we're planning our calendar on how to open all the yards with our employees, with our manager, and we are getting everything ready.

12:09 to produce the Queen. So there's a lot of cleaning up and just shop work that goes into it. So that's October. That's when also we get all of our H2A employees back. We have a lot of local US workers, but we augment our workforce with international workers. So our visa begins now in October for them. So there's a lot of coordination where that's concerned. They come in, we start getting the groundwork in place for grafting. making sure that our cell builders and our breeders are in good condition, making sure everybody's getting fed if they need to be fed. January, we hit the ground running. It's just an endless cycle of grafting and catching queens, grafting and catching queens through, like I said, the middle of June. And then things start to die down a little bit. In the process, we're obviously treating for mites, keeping out an eye for small hive beetle. Those are two. big pests that we always have to keep an eye on here. It's harvesting honey, pulling honey. We've got the three main flows during the year. Our bees have access to natural pollen and nectar almost year -round.

13:24 So starting in January, really starts in February, but that's when our macadamia blossom honey starts to come in. And that's so great for our queens, for the production of our queens, because when there's natural pollen and nectar out there, there's so much there's so much more willing to get started in producing queens. The bees get really happy. They get outside and start pulling in that pollen and the nectar from the macnuts. That flow goes into our Lihua honey, which starts in June. My personal favorite, by the way. Yeah, it's lovely. Lihua honey is a flower on an endemic tree called the Ohia tree.

14:06 It's a Native Hawaiian species and it produces beautiful white creamy honey And that's a short flow and then we move into Christmas berry, which is where we are now So we just actually finished extracting our probably our last round of Christmas berry for this year So as you can see, we've got we've got you know Honey and pollen and nectar coming in almost all year long, which is great for producing queens So yeah, just a lot of coordination. I don't know if that answered your question Yeah, that's a lot. Yeah, that's definitely a full -time, full -time, full -time business. When you're very busiest and you have all the workers in, about how many employees do you have at that time? About 14. I know that Queens is the main part of your business, but I saw your honey house.

15:00 It was beautiful. You can obviously extract a lot. Do you extract three different times in the year based on those flows, or do you just mix it all together? No, we do. I mean, we do extractions as needed, but there's three distinct flows. And yes, we keep them separate. Yeah. I mean, they get into the drum labeled as a separate varietal, if that makes sense. Give us an idea of the flavor profile. Start with the macadamia nut. Yeah, mac nut is an amber honey. It's very kind of rich and mellow. It's very smooth. It crystallizes relatively quickly. The lehua is very light and sort of floral. It's totally unique.

15:49 It's unlike any other honey I've ever had. And it crystallizes very, very smoothly. So it's almost like a creamed, a naturally creamed honey. And then our Christmas Berry, which is my personal favorite, has got a little bit of a, almost like a little bit of a bitter taste to it. It's an amber honey as well. Some people say it has like almost like a little bit of a spicy quality to it. Christmas Berry is, it's not a member of the Pepper family, but it's kind of in that vein. So I don't know if that has anything to do with it, but I really like it. I'm gonna have to try more of that one. Give it a chance. I get hooked on the Lehua and don't branch out far enough like I need to. So Christmas Berry, that's the next one I'm going to get. Do you find, you know, some people are really kind of soars and they take different honeys with different cheeses.

16:42 Do you do any of that? Do you find like the Christmas Berry is really great with sharp cheese or anything like that? Yeah, Christmas Berry lends itself really well to savory applications. So it's great in salad dressings or in marinades. I don't know, I just, I think it has has a little bit of that, um, almost brown sugar taste to it. So that's very nice. I'll bet it's good on pizza. Maybe. You haven't had honey on pizza? I have not had honey on pizza, no. OK, it's time for you to try honey on pizza. Well, I mean, I guess if you're mixing, you know, honey and cheese, that's not super of a far far idea. And you don't like spread on a big thick layer. You just sort of drizzle it over it and it can be fabulous. It can really add to the flavor. We we have definitely tried it with like a manchego cheese is very nice. or macadamia nut with goat cheese is really good, or with a brie. I think those are all really nice cheeses. So you are the connoisseur. I like that. One of the things that we were talking about when I was down at your place was it's important that you introduce queens in the right way. Now talk about that a little bit, both for the commercial beekeeper and for the hobbyist that hasn't done much of it. Yeah, longest conversation with my customers all the time and It's so important introducing a queen bee into a host hive is a

18:14 little bit of Almost maybe more of an art than a science a lot of the time You have to really read so many different cues into how the host type will be accepting that new Queen Are you a beekeeper who loves sharing tips, asking questions, and showing off your latest honey haul? Then join The Hive, introducing the Man Lake beekeeping community on Facebook, your new go -to for everything honey bees. Whether you're struggling with mites, trying a new winterization method, or just need to know what that weird thing on your frame is, our group is a supportive, spam -free zone for beginners and pros alike. Stop scrolling through endless forums and connect directly with beekeepers and the professionals at Man Lake in one buzzing place. We'll put a link to it down in the show notes. Just click over and join up. So in general, beehives prefer a queen that is produced by their own colony. So introducing a new queen, what you're doing is bringing in new pheromones from a queen that they don't know. And so that in and of itself can be complex. They know that she is not one of theirs. So what we try to do is make that process as smooth as possible. The first thing you got to know is when you're making, most of our customers are making splits or divides and introducing that new queen into them. You want to make sure that that divide is not next to the hive that you split it off from. So that's

19:45 the first thing. You know, a lot of people move it to a different yard, for example. You want that split to be about two thirds power, meaning it's not like a huge, strong split. We found that when the bees are less strong, they're more receptive to a new queen. You know, a lot of beekeepers, old timers will tell you that when you make that divide, if you're making multiple divides, you can take frames from different colonies and mix them up. So it's almost like the bees in that new split, none of them own the queen. They're all kind of a mix from different colonies. You can also... spray the split with some Bee Healthy or some customers I've heard will mix some water with like peppermint oil or a little bit of vanilla extract and spray it over the divide so that you're kind of masking that pheromone that the queen is bringing with her. Once you introduce the queen, when you put her in, typically she'll come in a mini cage. So it has a candy plug. Ours come with a candy plug. When you introduce the queen in with that candy plug, A strong hive can let her out in about 48 hours. They'll eat through that candy plug pretty quickly and she'll be released into the hive. And we like it to take about four to five days. So especially if your divide is really strong, you want to put some, we always recommend trying to slow the process down of letting that queen out by putting some masking tape or some painter's tape over

21:16 that candy plug and poking a little hole in it with maybe like a hive tool. So the bees have to actually chew through the masking tape to get to the candy plug to let her out So that buys you another 48 hours that time What you're doing is allowing the host hive to get used to the pheromones of the queen bee So they are more willing to accept her when she is released and you can really see that when you put the queen bee in and if if they're You know balling it balling the cage and really acting aggressively towards her. You don't want to let her out But typically if you're following these steps, she'll be released in four to five days and she will be accepted by the colony. You obviously, most people already know this, you want to make sure you don't have any natural queen cells in the colony before she is released. So you want to get rid of those. And the other big pieces. What time of year are you putting these queens in?

22:09 So if there's lots of natural forage available for your bees, they're going to be way more willing to accept that new queen than if there's nothing else out there for them. They're much happier when they're foraging. It's almost like they'll accept her and they're happy going out and coming back. And so again, there's a lot of factors involved in it. And a lot of them have to do with the environment and the beehive that you're introducing them into. A well -mated queen will be accepted by a colony that doesn't have a queen. They'll know that she's healthy and well -mated, and they'll let her get started. You keep talking about acceptance, and for anybody who's new to beekeeping, if you don't understand how important that is, the consequence isn't like, oh, we'll just sort of nicely kick her out of the hive or something. The consequence is... She'll get killed. Yeah. Yes. And that's a big investment.

23:06 Yeah, I mean, a lot of our customers are commercial beekeepers. They buy hundreds, 100, 200, 300 queens at a time. And so that's a lot of money for them. So you want to make sure that they're successful when they're introduced. And commercial beekeepers are moving a mile a minute. And so sometimes implementing a lot of these steps is challenging, but it is protecting your investment. Yeah. Well, and even if you're a hobbyist, you may be paying retail in a 50 bucks or whatever for a new queen. That's an investment. Absolutely. Absolutely. So if you have time. To go in and really look at what's happening. How do you know?

23:46 What do you see to know that they are accepting this queen and it would be okay to let them know either you could manually let her out or Okay, go ahead and chew through the rest of that candy And if you see her lame that way, you know, she's there. You know, she's been accepted and she's doing well Yeah, so you definitely want to see eggs Okay Let's say you have somebody that lives in a cold environment. Logic would say, I don't want to get a queen from Hawaii because that queen is not going to be able to survive or raise the right kind of stock for my winters. Is that correct? No, that's not correct. So we ship our queens up to Canada, which pretty much doesn't get colder anywhere else on the planet than Canada.

24:35 And we sell a lot of Italians and carniolans of truck dating customers. What I have found, and they'll take both stock, but a lot of beekeepers in Northern climates prefer the carniolans. And that's because genetically they are more receptive to cold weather in terms of not continuing to lay. They're more conservative so they will stop laying and kind of hunker down. The Italians will just keep, they'll just keep laying no matter what. Carniolans do very well in cold environments like Canada or the Pacific Northwest or Minnesota. RV keepers really love them and they're very gentle. Carniolans have a little bit of a reputation of being maybe a little spicier than Italians.

25:19 But ours are very gentle, despite the fact that genetically they can do very well in a snowy environment, cold environment. So you produce both Italians and Carniolans then? That's correct. All right. Any advice for someone that's trying to produce their own queens? I would recommend you do a lot of reading and educate yourself on the process because again, there's a lot to the art of producing a queen bee. It takes some time to master. The grafting is probably one of the more challenging parts, making sure that your larva is the right age and making sure that when you are transferring that larva, you're not damaging it. So it really takes a lot of practice to do that. You know, you don't know how well your graft is going to take until several days later. So it's a question of practicing it and mastering that technique. But I would recommend reading a lot about the process, and if possible, going and seeing how the process is done before you get started. I guess there's probably a lot online that you could learn, you know, watching master crafters do their work.

26:32 It's a skill that is developed over a lot of time, but it's certainly something that anybody can learn to do. And a good mentor like anything always helps. Absolutely. I didn't want to forget. wild and crazy beekeeping story. And we're usually talking to regular beekeepers. So in your business, maybe you have some things that are different. Yeah, they, you know, I was thinking about this question and it's, it's so interesting to me how, you know, our, our Achilles heel as a queen breeder is the shipping of the queens because we produce really good quality, well -mated queens, but then we put them in the hands of a shipping company to get them to our customers. And sometimes the shipping companies unfortunately do not do their job as well as we would like them to do.

27:19 A crazy bee story is a customer of mine sending me a picture of a box of bees. It's probably about 150 queen bees that he had received. And there was a plastic bag over them and they were in his living room. And so I don't know if anyone has ever, I mean, your customers, I'm sure they've probably seen these special boxes that are made for shipping queens. They have screens on the outside of them for ventilation and they're double screened. The bees can knock it out. We ship, you know, as I said, thousands of queens like this every year and they don't get out. But the shipping company, whoever was the driver was scared stiff of these bees. And so they thought it would be a good idea. to put them inside a plastic bag so they wouldn't get out. Did it kill them? Yeah. They suffocated. Oh my gosh.

28:13 Yeah. So, you know, it's interesting. There's not a lot of common sense sometimes. And we have these conversations with our drivers and with the personnel at the shipping companies. And I try to educate them. You know, I say, you guys are a really important part of the food production in our country. So if you get these queens to our customers, they're going to be able to pollinate the food that you eat. And they learn and they see it and they say, oh, you know, then I get the flip side. I get, you know, UPS drivers that call me on their personal cell phones to make sure that they're doing the right thing for the queens. And so, you know, there's people who really care out there, too. So it's amazing.

28:57 I mean, every year. it's a roller coaster of these shipments and who along the line is going to be handling them and how well do they do that. And you know, we're really lucky 90 % 95 % of the time they do great. But sometimes it's, it turns out to be a wild and crazy story. And do you guarantee live delivery? Absolutely. Yes. So all of our queens are shipped with a live delivery guarantee. So once you pick them up, if there's something that doesn't look right to you, we would replace them at no cost. Sounds perfect. I don't want to turn this into an infomercial, but you guys do a great job. It was really fun seeing your place. Yeah. Eric, thank you very much for taking the time to learn about what we do. And you know, we're, we're just a small family farm trying to, you know, keep it going.

29:46 So I'm highlighting it. We're humbled. We appreciate it. If somebody does want to get ahold of you or some of your Queens, how do they reach out? Yeah, they can go to hawaiianqueen .com and our phone number is there and I'm the person who answers the phone. I'm the only one. So they can talk to me. And if you're a hobbyist that just needs a few queens, should they go to Man Lake or what should they do? Man Lake does carry our queen bees. They have some now. And yeah, that would be a great place if you just want to buy one or two. Our minimum order during the offseason, which is April through December, is five queen bees. During the busy season, which is January through April, our minimum is 25 queens.

30:29 So if you're part of a bee club or something like that, a lot of people will get a few beekeepers together to be able to purchase that volume at once. But if you just want one or two, manlike will help you out. And you can look at the different kinds of queens that they have on there. And I believe if it says Hawaiian Queen, and it'll say carniola in her Italian. I believe if it says Hawaiian, it's from you, right? That's wrong. Yeah. Okay. All right. You get the last word. I want you to leave us with one piece of great beekeeping advice. Don't assume that last year is going to be like this year or that I should say that the other way around. Don't assume that this year is going to be like last year. You always have to read. what's happening. Everything is changing all the time and you have to stay on your toes. That is more true than people will ever know. We all wish it was going to be the same as last year, but it usually isn't. Well, and it's good to take notes from last year, right?

31:29 All the way along so that we learn from last year. But yeah, this next year is going to be different. I promise it always is. All right. Thank you so much, Rebecca. It was great talking to you. Appreciate your time. Thanks for joining us on Be Love Beekeeping presented by Man Lake. If you like this content I hope you'll share it with a friend, follow and subscribe to this podcast and even sign up for our newsletter at BeLoveBeekeeping .com Also, just a shout out to Vita B Health for their support, we appreciate them. Vita's Varroa Control range of products includes Apistan, Apigard, and now Veroxan Extended Release Oxalic Acid Strips. Thanks guys. 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.