Demaree Beekeeping Method, Honey Bees In The News, Crazy Beekeeping Stories

0:00 May I have your attention, please? The following is not the real Jeff Fox release. If your teenage son wants nothing more than to live the life of a drone bee, you might be a beekeeper. If you do more splits than a gymnast, You might be a beekeeper. If you refer to your divorce as swarming behavior, you might be a beekeeper.

0:43 I'll give you a minute to think about that one. Welcome, welcome to Be Love Beekeeping presented by Man Lake. Hey, another thank you to all those who contributed ideas for the new Not Jeff Foxworthy intro. They were excellent. We've used quite a few of them, and if you're still thinking of others, keep them coming. We love them. Our guest today is in fact two guests from the Keepers' Hive. We'll be discussing the Dimari method of beekeeping, including single brood chamber management. It's a truly interesting concept and different than how most of us were taught in traditional beekeeping. Before we check in with them, let's check in on bees in the news, starting with commercial beekeeping economics. Headline. United States honey production down 4 % in 2024. While the average number of colonies producing honey was actually up 3 % from 2023, the yield per colony averaged 51 .7 pounds, which was down 6%. But the good news, honey prices were up 5 % in 2024, to an average of $269 per pound. These of course are wholesale numbers. Average price paid per queen was $18 in 2024. Pollination income for

2:14 2024 was $226 million, down 11 % from 2023. And from India, and I'm trying so hard not to laugh. This is serious. The police confirmed that a bee swarm injured 50 people attending a funeral on Monday. According to a station house officer, the bees attacked the congregation after being disturbed by the heat from the cremation fire. Police stated that those affected received first aid at a nearby facility before some were hospitalized. The officer added that medical personnel treated all casualties and most victims were later sent home. Also in India, a swarm of bees attacked a group of tourists at the Alora Caves on Monday afternoon, leaving at least 70 people injured, one needing hospitalization. And speaking of stings, this comes from Surprise Arizona. A man is recovering in the hospital after he and a group of kids were attacked by a swarm of bees.

3:21 Here's the quote, the adult male was checking his mailbox when he unknowingly came across a beehive. The bees became aggressive and he was stung multiple times. Firefighters were called and arrived on the scene after the adult was stung and as they arrived they saw a group of youth riding their bikes in the area and also being stung. Firefighters put the kids inside the fire engine to keep them away and in the process four firefighters were stung. And the article concludes with this quote, a beekeeper arrived at the scene to control the swarm. Now, by the way, if you're that beekeeper, please reach out to me because I don't know how to control a swarm in attack mode. Alrighty, let's get to today's interview. I'd like to welcome to the show today, George Datto. Oh, please tell me I pronounced that right. 100 % correct. George Datto and Nate Wolf coming to us from beautiful Pennsylvania or Delaware. How are you guys? We're doing great. Eric, how are you today? Good. Thanks for having me. I know one of you lives in Pennsylvania and one Delaware. Whose house are you at today?

4:38 We're at Georgia's house in Pennsylvania. Hey, we're going to be talking about something fun. As listeners know, I love new products. I love gadgets, but I also like really great new concepts and beekeeping, too, because I just don't think we have it all figured out. And today we're going to be talking about the keepers hive and the whole philosophy behind it, because it's a little bit different than beekeeping in a regular Langstroth hive or a top bar hive or something else. We're going to be talking all about that. But first, let's meet who we have on here today. Hey, George. Hey, Eric. Tell us a little bit about you and what your beekeeping journey has been like. So yeah, my name is George and I've been keeping bees in southeast Pennsylvania for about 15 years now. I guess I would consider myself a sideliner beekeeper. I manage about 70 hives, largely for honey production. I love innovation and I love that aspect of it too. I've also raised over 100 queens a year, made nukes, so all aspects of beekeeping I find tremendously fun and and just love the hobby of beekeeping. And Nat, you haven't been beekeeping as long, but you brought to this project your woodworking skills. Tell us a little bit about that. Well, I'd say it's been about eight, nine years ago. I saw this fellow that I had never met before working bees, and I thought to myself, this guy's got to be

6:09 crazy in all those bees. Isn't he getting stung or something? But he kept coming back and he got me interested. And one day I said, Can I come watch what you're doing?" And he said, sure, come on. And from that day on, I was hooked. I do not consider myself a big beekeeper. I'm just a hobbyist. And there isn't very much time that goes by that I don't come back to George and say, okay, George, I have another problem. What do I do? We've been together now for about nine years. Yeah, I've spent my living as a woodworker, as a carpenter. So that's where I come into this. We had We had some ideas and I tried to put it together and George has helped me over the years to get it polished to a point where it is now.

6:52 So George, give us an idea for those that haven't seen the hive keeper hive. My understanding is that it uses a single brood chamber and that brings with it a whole other kind of beekeeping and a little bit different philosophy for those of us. that are used to using very traditional couple of Langstroth deeps. Tell us what led you up to coming up with this idea and a little bit about how it works. So the keepers hive has two products. It has a one queen keeper and a two queen keeper. So the history of this hive goes back to when I started my beekeeping, I apprenticed under sideliner slash commercial beekeeper who ran single brood chamber hives.

7:40 and use the Demere swarm control as management for managing the single brood chamber. And I saw how effective that management strategy was for not only swarm prevention, but honey production. I was like, wow. So I really learned how to do the Demere really well, but I also learned how much work that that entailed. And I think through the years, many people don't consider that as a management strategy. One, because it can be somewhat confusing on how to do it. And secondly, it does involve lifting a lot of boxes off to do it because you ultimately need to get down to your single brew chamber and therefore you need to remove all the boxes above it. Yeah, that's the history of my beekeeping and how we're here today, at least the foundation of it. So your idea then was use this Demery philosophy, but fix the problem of having to lift five or however many boxes off so that you could get to the brood chamber. Is that right? Well, that was Nats. I didn't know any better. Right. So someone taught me this and it seemed to work.

8:51 So I said, OK, I can do this. You know, every so often I take all the boxes off, you know, go down to the brood chamber, move brood up. Put all the boxes back together and the hive won't swarm and you'll make a lot of honey. This is awesome, right? I told you years ago when I was watching George and I said, can I go with you and just show me? And he said, come on. Well, I went with him several different times and it was in the middle of the summer and it was hot. And he kept saying, OK, lift these boxes, take this apart. And every time we did, the bees were going all over the place. And it was hot and Neither one of us have a really good back. And I said to him one day, I said, George, this is crazy. Why do you do this every single time we come up to these bees? I mean, isn't there a better way? And he says, well, no, not really.

9:40 You have to get down to the bottom in order to take care of your bees. And I thought, this is crazy. There's got to be a better way. And George says, well, if you can come up with it. Go for it. And I told that people have tried. People have tried to put bees in drawers. People have tried to do all kinds of different innovations to keep the vertically oriented hive. Yet remove the need to move boxes to get to the bottom, right? So I've always thought that and not that I have a lot of experience with horizontal hive configuration, whether or not it be a top bar, a lands hive or or whatever, but I have always.

10:21 thought the bees prefer to go up and down then side to side from just a honey storage standpoint and orient their brood to the honey. So that was the challenge. I was like, Nat, let's try to keep it vertical and not go horizontal with it. I think the challenge that we had to overcome was to somehow gain the ability to move frames in a hive And the only way to do that is to prevent them from being propylized in place. We had to stop and think about, OK, well, how do you stop a bee from propylizing? And the fact is, it can't be done. Anything a bee walks on, she will propylize.

11:05 So that got me thinking, what if somehow I prevent them from walking on the areas that I need to keep clean? So that's basically how we came up with this whole system of being able to access your frames without lifting off your honey supers. And we have actually made it possible to slide frames out from underneath the honey supers. And we've been able to prevent them from being propolized in place. Now for people listening to this podcast, Which does not have video right now. I recommend that you go to thekeepershive .com You'll be able to see what George and Nat are talking about But guys go ahead and just describe for us in case we had our eyes closed Or we're out exercising or driving right now.

11:57 We can't look at the website Describe what it is that you've come up with So essentially what we have is a single brood chamber hive. So the brood is in one box and on both the one queen and the two queen keepers, it's an eight frame deep brood chamber. So basically we have a brood chamber and then we have a queen excluder. And then above that we have our supers. And what you're able to do is you're able to basically on the side of the brood chamber, we have a hinge roof. You basically open a hinge roof. Four frames are underneath the roof, four frames are underneath the queen excluder, and you can sort of open the hinge roof, look at your bees through our observation window, remove the observation window and the frame guards, and get to all eight of the frames that are in the brood box without removing the supers above. Let me just take a minute here to thank our presenting sponsor, Man Lake. Whether you're a seasoned beekeeper or just getting started, Man Lake has the equipment and the expertise that you need to set your bees up for success. Including my new favorite woodenware, Man Lake's wax dipped hive kits. They are absolutely beautiful with a natural finish and they're made to last in fact for up to 25 years. No painting necessary. And don't forget your discount code MLBlove10. It's in the show notes. For $10 off your first $100 purchase. Now back to the guest.

13:34 So all of a sudden now to do your brood inspections, to see if you need to demerade, to see if to do a mic count, whatever you want to do with your bees. You don't have to disturb all the boxes above and all the foragers. You basically sit down, open up the roof, and do what you need to do. So that's on a one queen, on a two queen keeper. It's basically the same thing, but it's two hives, two of these back to back with using 10 frame supers, while the one frame hive uses five frame supers. So it's basically a double instead of a single. But the brew chamber and the way you work the hive is essentially the same on both hives. Okay, let's talk about the single first. I think if people understand the single queen setup. then picturing the double queen is fairly easy. So you mentioned that the honey supers that are above the brood box, there is room to open a like a roof on half of the brood chamber and get to all of the frames. So based on that, what size are the supers above?

14:46 Are they like nuke size or are they some special thing that we need to get from you? The one queen keeper is nuke sized supers. The two queen keeper uses 10 frame supers. In both situations, the honey supers cantilever over half of the brood box. The other half is exposed when you open the hinged roof. What was important to us when we were designing both hives is that we wanted beekeepers to be able to use all their existing equipment, right? So we didn't want to have special bottom boards or special frames or special supers or special outer covers. So whatever you are currently using that is a traditional Langstroth equipment will absolutely 100 % work on the keepers hive. It is using all standard equipment except for the brood box. Which is what we get from you. Okay. Yeah. And it looks pretty cool. Now, I don't have a bunch of Nuke boxes. I need some, but so for me, it might make more sense to do the double queen and then I can put regular 10 frame boxes on top. And I think the idea of a double queen is really cool anyway. It may be a little bit above my IQ level to figure out how to do that, but we'll see how we can do.

16:07 Let's talk about the Demery method that keeps coming up and what it's like keeping bees in a single brood chamber, because this could apply whether people are using your system or a Flow Hive or just a regular Demery system. Give us, George, just a little primer 101 on what beekeeping is like that way. So when we say single brood chamber hive, What we mean is that the queen and the brood is limited to one box and you use a queen excluder in that configuration So when you're doing a single brood chamber hive, you are using a queen excluder You have your queen in your brood generally in the bottom box You have a queen excluder on top of that and then your supers above the the challenge of a single brood chamber hive is first swarm management, right because when bees are maximally building up in spring or wherever that is, wherever you're beekeeping, the colony is likely to swarm if you just leave them without any management in the single brood chamber, right? So your options are some people in order to prevent swarming will just make lots of splits. So in the single brood chamber, they'll pull out. 60 to 70 percent of the brood and potentially the queen and make two or three splits and That'll be their swarm management for single brood chamber and that works really well You just have to be want and need all these highs, right? So you can split

17:38 away But your number of hives is going to increase tremendously quickly with that method, right? The other thing that that does is it decreases your forager force in your hive, right? So all of a sudden, you don't have as many bees in that hive. It won't swarm, but it may not produce as much honey. Some people say, you know, you can make a decision what you want your hive to do. You can make your colony either make honey or make splits, and it's hard to do both. So when you do the split method for swarm control, you make lots of bees, but you don't make as much honey. So the demeria is an option where you basically are making a vertical split within the hive. to decrease swarming, but maintaining the bee population in that hive and not making increases. So that is another way to do swarm control when you're doing single brood chamber hive is the demuree. Let me see if I can just sort of summarize my understanding of how that's going to work. And please correct me along the way. OK, but to put it in its most simplest terms with the demuree. to keep from swarming i'm going to take i'm going to do a split okay so i'm going to take a nuke box and i'm going to take out the frames that have queen cells i'm going to put them in this nuke box and then i'm going to take that nuke box and put it up as if it were a honey super there's not going to be a queen in there there may be some queen cells

19:10 and remember we have separated the brood chamber with a queen excluder. So up in this box that is acting like a honey super now, eventually those bees are going to be gone. All of the brood is going to be gone. And then the bees are going to backfill it with honey. Did I get that even close? Pretty close, Eric. So what you're doing is. Early in the spring and the bees are building up and there's a lot of brood down in your single brood chamber. You're going to go in there, you're basically going to leave the queen and one frame of emerging brood in the bottom and you're going to take all the other brood and move it up in the hive in a one queen keeper of five frame deep because there are deep frames in the brood box. So you're going to have a deep at the top of your stack and that's going to basically take all the nurse bees and all the bees to the top of the hive. and it's going to decongest the brood chamber, and the colony is going to decide it doesn't want to swarm anymore. The queen's going to continue to lay. And as you said, those bees, all that brood at the top is eventually going to hatch out and rejoin the colony at the bottom. And then they'll backfill that five -frame nuke box with honey. So pretty much what you said is what happens. You're basically doing a vertical split within the hive, leaving the queen down below in the single brood chamber.

20:32 and moving all the other brood and nurse bees up to the top. Now, what makes the keepers hive, what makes it so easy to do that is you don't have to lift and remove and take apart boxes to do that. It basically takes that, the ability to do that and makes it so simple and so easy for any beekeeper to do. And one thing you don't want to do, Eric, while you're doing this is you mentioned queen cells. While you're doing the demuree in this hive, one thing we don't want to do is have queen cells at the top of this hive. So if you should go in and find a queen cell while you're doing the demuree, we recommend that either you take and make a walk -away split or just scrape that queen cell off.

21:19 You don't want to set another queen in the top of your hive. Thank you for clarifying that. So ultimately, it's best to do this even before you have any of those queen cells then. Correct. Yeah. Okay. The art of the Demery is when to do it. How to do it is one part of the Demery, right? Which is easier to learn once you think about it a little bit. The art is when to do it, right? And that really depends on the weather. It depends on what your colony is doing. are the factors that are going to make you decide, but ideally it's done preemptively right before they start to make queen cells. Okay, I'll ask the bees what date that is this year where I live because I know I'm going to tell everybody George to email you and ask them what date they should do that. I think people get really fascinated by the Demery and really get into the weeds on what to move and how to do it. But the really question is, is when to do it? And people have asked me that, Eric. And unfortunately, I say, I can't tell you, because it's all, there's so many factors that go into that, that is the art of beekeeping, right? And every colony is different, and every, you know, your weather is different.

22:35 And yeah, so you get, the more you do it, the more you learn beekeeping in your area. And you sort of get a you sort of get an intuition of when to do that Demere to start. And I realize that you can't do that, which is why I said everybody should email you asking. So at the keepers side, we really want to try to do good customer service, you know. So Dave says, OK, answer everybody's question. Don't blow anybody off. Smile as you're answering that question. So I try really hard. to help people. Okay, you're asking for it, George. Eric, I think one important thing here is, and I don't mean to push just our product, but I think one thing about beekeeping and management and figuring out just when to do your demerit is being able to keep a check on your bees. You can't just walk away and come back three weeks later and think you're going to be able to solve all the problems or whatever issues come up.

23:35 You have to be able to be into your bees on a regular basis. And that is one of the features that we tell people that we're making management better simply because we're giving you the ability to easily check on your bees. You can go and check one of these hives. in 10 minutes from start to finish and walk away. And if you have that ability, you're going to be much more prone to keep a regular check on these bees. And you will know when it's time to demerit because you're going to be able to pace that queen and that what she's doing. And if you're not lifting a bunch of 50 pound boxes, you're more likely to do it too. Exactly. I mean, there's been many days, you know, that I thought I just don't feel like lifting those boxes. I'm not going to go up there and do it today. And you know what?

24:28 I suffered the consequences because there was a problem and I didn't tend to it in time. You're getting me tucked into this. There was a summer where I started out in overwinter with nine hives out right out in my backyard. And come March, I was down to two because I just did not pay the attention that needed it. And that was before we came up with this solution. Don't forget that you could sit on a stool and do the whole thing, too. That's right. And I tell people and they know I want to stand. I was like, OK, you can stand and work the keepers hive if you want. I'd highly recommend sitting on a stool and doing the whole thing. But hey, I want to sit. Sign me up for the sit. Does the Keepers Hive come with a bench or a stool? Not yet, but you can use a five gallon bucket or a 10 frame deep box on its side. You probably have a company, Eric, that would function as a stool. All right. But it's mind blowing. It's like, yeah, you really can do your whole hive inspection while sitting in one place on a stool. And that's working a Langstroth hive on a stool. How about that? All right. I love it. Now I have to ask a hard question.

25:42 I have a feeling some people are going to tell me, hey, you're in a cold climate. You can't overwinter with just one brood box. How does that work? So we have options. You can overwinter with a single eight frame deep brood box if you'd like. You could also overwinter with five deep frames above your brood box. And you can stack on more five frame boxes on top of that too. So The keepers hive design does not limit you to only overwintering in a single. You can overwinter in a single plus a new box or multiple new boxes above it. One thing I've learned through this is that bees really do like being in a single brood box most of the time, honestly. The only time bees do not like being in a single brood box, well, they may like it, but they'll swarm, right? Outside of swarm season, your colony is going to do so, so much better. when you keep your brood in a single brood box, and you keep your bees wall -to -wall in that box. And that goes for the summer, during the dearth, dealing with small high beetles, and even overwintering.

26:49 I really think that you're going to notice some pretty cool stuff when you get your bees down to a single box to overwinter. Just so they have enough honey above them. Right. Now one option here is when we... take the one queen keeper and we set it up to winterize. Once we've harvested our honey and we're just going to winterize our bees, we will come all the way down to only having one super above the brew chamber, and then we remove the queen excluder. Now there are two ways. The super above the brew chamber can now be loaded with five frames of honey. Without the queen excluder, as they empty the brood chamber during the course of the winter, and the cluster moves up to that next box, the queen will be able to move with the cluster. The second option is that instead of putting five frames of honey above the brood chamber, you can leave that box empty, leave the queen excluder on, and put supplemental feed in that box. Some people say while I produce honey, I want it all and they want to do supplemental feed and that works. Other people are not as worried about their honey production and would rather leave the five frames of honey for them.

28:16 So that's a two option. Yeah, I'd rather have my bees eating their own honey during winter. That's just me. Right. Everybody works it a little different. But that's how we do the single -brewed chamber. We do remove the queen excluder for the winner and allow her to come up with the cluster. Yeah, I mean, in general, I agree with you, Eric. Again, above the queen excluder on the keepers high, the exchange boxes are deep. where you do the Demarais and the other boxes are mediums. So all the mediums I harvest for myself and that deep exchange box, which still backfill with honey, as you said, I just drop that down on the brew chamber for winter. So I'm basically overwintering with eight frames in the brew chamber and five deep frames from the exchange box. So for me, I want to harvest my honey out of my mediums and the deeps I want to leave for the bees. It's how I organize. Everybody organizes it differently, but I say mediums are for me and the deeps are for the bees. Now I feel like there's something that I really should have said up front, and that is for our brand new beekeepers or those that are just thinking about getting into beekeeping, my apologies.

29:28 This probably made no sense to you, but for those that have been beekeeping for a while, I think they can picture most of this. Your website will be in the show notes. It's been fun talking to you guys. I have one last thing to ask. George or Nat, either one of you or both, can you give us a wild and crazy beekeeping experience that you've had? Well, I'm also president of the Chester County Beekeepers Club in southeast Pennsylvania. And in 2021, we had a great flood come through our apiary, right? So we had a flood come through. We had 30 hives in our apiary and basically washed them all down the river. Believe it or not, 20 of them, we were able to go down the river, find them. and ended up putting them back in single five -frame boxes, and they all overwintered in single five -frame boxes. So it got me to really think hard about how much space and how much food do the bees really need to survive the winter. So that was just one of my cool experiences of being devastated from the flood and thinking, oh my goodness, and then learning a whole lot afterwards. How did they not drown? We had them all strapped. So somehow the strap kept them and then they floated down the river. Some drowned, but I think the ones that floated on the top and they all ended up in a certain spot. So they went down the river about 500 feet and then basically a bunch of trees stopped them. So we had all these nukes that were all piled up on each other and two thirds of them actually survived the flood and then survived the winter in a single five frame deep box. So cool. Awesome. By the

30:59 way, that just reminds me, I saw an article recently of these beekeepers over in England that are in a floodplain and they kept losing hives and they finally for their hive stands, they basically built pontoons so that when a flood came. the hives could float and be OK. And then when the waters came down, they were OK and they could rescue them and put them back or whatever. But a couple of our club members said we should raise the hive stands up to be six feet in that apiary and have like a steps that you go up and manage. I was like, dude, this is a this is once in a hundred year flood. I don't know if we want to go there. But I tell you, it's like those moments is when you learn, right? Absolutely. Yeah, it's from the crazy things that happen and sometimes the disasters that happen that we learn the most.

31:50 100%. We just want people to do the management that we know is going to help them keep their bees healthy and alive and just making a hive where you can do it easier and potentially more effective by using a single brood chamber, honestly. That's what it's about at the end of the day. That's the message. There's a lot of no lift messaging out there and a lot of no lift options, but I think our hive goes beyond a no lift option. I really think it's about optimizing a single brew chamber in Demere that really can make your beekeeping more fun and probably more effective at the end of the day. With this method, I would think that people need to They need to be checking their hives often. How often would you recommend?

32:39 Once you get outside a swarm season once a month is enough, honestly. Okay. Bees are quite happy in a single brood chamber once the swarm impulse is done, right? So it's during the swarm season that you need to check probably once every 10 to 2 weeks, but you have to know the duration of your swarm season and you have to know when your swarm season is done, but then it's done. And then it's mite management. Well, think about how easy it is to check mite levels in this hive, right? You just go, you open up the roof, you pull out root frame three, you shake your bees and you're done. No tearing apart the hive to do a mite level. No lifting boxes. And some people will say... I don't know if I agree with this. Some people say, well, if you super a hive enough, if you take a single brood chamber hive and super it enough right before the honey flow, you can decrease swarm impulse too just by not having them backfill the brood chamber. You just give them ton of space to store all the nectar, and then they're unlikely to swarm. That's another.

33:40 aspect of single brood chamber. I don't see why not to do single brood chamber management. And I think it's catching on a little bit. Beekeepers start with double deep brood boxes or multiple medium brood boxes, and that's how we learn. And people say, well, your hive is really not for beginners. It's too complicated. I was like, you got to learn something at some point. So why don't you learn the most easiest and effective way right off the bat, honestly. Double deep brood chambers are... I think part of the reason why new beekeepers lose so many hives to some extent. I think that's harder to manage in some ways than what I'm asking people to manage, honestly. I think there's many people to get into beekeeping that don't realize the weight of these boxes and do not realize until it happens that, oh, my goodness, this box is so heavy. I can't lift this. Or when they get into inspect and they tear it apart, all of a sudden you got a lot of bees. flying all over the place, you know?

34:36 I mean, that's another beauty of the design is like, when you sit down and do your hive inspection, you're not disturbing the colony to do your inspection. Dave always says, George, you really should put on a veil. You really should be showing people the right way to protect yourself. I was like, dude, the bees are fine with me doing a hive inspection, honestly. I'm not disturbing them. I'm just gently going through the brew chamber and doing what I need to do. We think the best way to get started with beekeeping is apprentice, right? Go like that hung out with me or go hang out with Eric or go find somebody to hang out with them, you know, and see whether or not you love it or not. Because if you don't love it, don't do it. All right, George Datto and Nate Wolf, thank you a ton for being on the show with me today. Hey, Eric, thanks a lot for having us. We really appreciate your time. Happy beekeeping, Eric. Thanks again for joining us here on Be Love Beekeeping presented by Man Lake. Another great place for more information on everything related to this podcast is in our email newsletter.

35:38 You can sign up for it for free at BeLoveBeekeeping .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.