How to Make Money Beekeeping - Wisdom from a 50 Year Commercial Beekeeper!

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 over at Man Lake.

1:26 I think you're going to love the show today as we'll have a conversation with Chuck Cutick. He's a 50 -year commercial beekeeper in New York. We discuss everything from how to make money in beekeeping, to flowers that are poisonous for bees, to bears, addiction, and a wild and crazy story that involves lightning. You know what? Today I'm in the mood to cut the fluff. Let's just get right into it. Here's Chuck. This is gonna be so fun today. We have Chuck Cutick with us coming to us from New York. How are you Chuck? I'm great Eric and thanks for inviting me to do this that it sounds like it's gonna be fun Well, I hope so and the very first thing for those that are watching the video version of this Your glasses you told the truth. They are getting lighter and lighter all the time They started super dark when we first got on those photochromatic or whatever they call that.

2:29 Yeah, I was out in the bright sun. What were you doing this morning? Oh, this morning, we filled a tote, brought it up to where we pack honey for and they're doing some raw honey up there. So we're pumping it over into our tanks and going to do some raw honey up there today. So and that's about it for this morning. So you've been a beekeeper for nearly 50 years Congratulations. Yeah, it makes me old now means you're not allergic to bees yet and Anyway, but there's so many fun things about your business that I think we can all learn from There's lots of beekeepers out there that don't know how to make money at it Some of us that just do it for fun, but some that want to start making some money So part of what we're going to talk about is the business side of things. But I want to jump right in with Chuck, what do you love about bees? Because you mentioned a minute ago before we were recording just how much you love honeybees and beekeeping.

3:35 What is it about it? Oh, I don't think there's anything more fascinating than a beehive. One day the bees can be light on the verge of starvation and two days later they can have a super almost filled with honey. It's just Just amazing what they can do. I mean, to me, when I look in a beehive, and you know, I don't believe in evolution, I believe in creation, and I look in a beehive and I just see God's creation right there in front of me. Just amazing what goes on in there. Just I'm involved in God's creation every day, you know, out in the outside with the flowers and the trees and the bees and, you know, and the people that we work with, you know, I'm just blessed to be in this industry. You know, I think part of what to me fits in with that is the harmony between all of it Flowers need bees bees need flowers we need the fruit from the trees that flower which wouldn't happen without the bees and Hopefully we're also giving back and helping the bees out in some small way now that not that they couldn't probably do better without us but But you know, we do try to make their life as good as we can also so yeah that harmony is an interesting thing as far as all the things that you do in beekeeping and I'm just gonna rattle some of them off because With your business you sell honey. You sell nukes and queens. You do pollination. You have a retail store you do classes

5:07 You do all kinds of everything. Is there something that's your favorite part? This might sound silly, but I think one of the things I really enjoy is putting bees into blueberries in North Carolina. The farmers up there that I deal with are, they're like friends now over the years. And we just have a great relationship and it's just a good time of the year. And, you know, I can. I don't do a lot of heavy work anymore but I do enjoy getting on loaders and unloading the semi and spread them into the blueberries it's just. I guess that's one of my favorite things now that that I do in bees and you know to see the. The see what happens you know with the with the bloom and you know and then they have to irrigate the for frost protection and. It's just a cool business to be involved with the blueberry growers and then to see the end result before we come north, we usually stop there and pick some blueberries.

6:13 We're part of the business. Probably one of the most important parts of the blueberry business is the pollination side. Right now, that's one of my favorite things left to do, that I still do. Give me a little bit more detail on that. When do you go there? How long are the hives there? How many hives do you take? We usually bring around 3 ,000 up from South Carolina to North Carolina. We brought them in as early as first week in February, but when we first started going in there, normally they wouldn't go in until the first or second week of March. for quite a few years there, it got earlier and earlier, but now it's headed back to where it was originally.

7:00 We're not putting bees in now until the beginning of March, which is nice. Do you do any almond pollination too? We do send some bees to almonds. We usually send them beginning of February, anywhere from one to five loads, depending on how our bees are looking and what we're not going to need for blueberries. So blueberries sound like the priority. It's close by, it's only two hours away. Almonds are a lot better for the bees than blueberries, but I've got this... When I was a little kid, I wanted to grow blueberries, so I'm not growing blueberries, but I'm helping other guys make money at their blueberries, so it's kind of fulfilled a wish of mine in a way.

7:49 Now when you say that the almonds are better for the bees than the blueberries explain that a little bit. Oh The blueberries they use so much fun decides And and we're in you know We're on the East Coast of South Carolina and the blueberries in North Carolina are on the East Coast and there's a band roll You know along the coast where where yellow Jasmine is prevalent. That's like a poison plant to the bees So we deal with that every year It's not a fun thing, but... OK, I just learned something. What is yellow jasmine and how is it poisonous to the bees? I admit, I didn't know this. I always tell people I'm not too bright because we take bees to South Carolina and the state flower for South Carolina is yellow jasmine.

8:39 Yeah, the nectar and the pollen is poison to the bees. We've told our workers too that come in to do not eat the pollen when some of them will you know They like to stick their hive tool and eat a little pollen, but we told them there when the yellow jasmine is blooming don't Don't eat any of that pollen and a couple of them, you know They don't believe you and they they'd some of that pollen and they were they got sick. So it's It's not a very good plant. It's pretty to look at, but it's not good for the bees. Yeah. How do you find the transportation all the way out to California and back? Is that very hard on them? I guess any time you put bees on a truck there could be problems, but usually it's cold going out, so I don't think it affects the bees too much. Probably the worst thing is getting stuck in the bug stations. You know, if you're in there for any length of time it can, you know, you can lose some frames of bees. But normally, I think as long as they keep moving, you know, stop at night to sleep, you know, you don't want the guys stopping in the middle of the day. But we haven't had any real issues losing bees, trucking.

9:55 So the problem is heat? The heat, yeah, but we run four ways. We leave a six inch space between the rows down through the middle of the truck so they get plenty of air. Then they can hang out and not mingle with other hives. If the guys push them tight together, then the bees are mingling and fighting. But if you keep them spread apart, we seem to be okay. Yeah, and it keeps them cooler. I had a guest on the show a while back that helped clean up. I think it was in Washington State. The bee truck that rolled over there and they had a huge mess on their hands and you know You see at least one of these someplace in the country every year where a full semi will tip over going around a corner or something and and Glad you haven't had to deal with any of that I'm looking at your website here and and speaking of different kinds of Pollination and stuff. It's really cool to be reminded just how different honey can be based on what the bees are working. And so if you wouldn't mind, if you remember what's on your website, I want to ask you about some of these specific kinds of honey, because it starts with just clover honey, which everybody's used to. You know, it's similar to what you're going to get in the grocery store. Of course, yours is better. Ours is better. Yeah, that's what everybody says. Hey, ours, ours is the best.

11:27 Yours can be pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing. Isn't it that people taste your honey and they'll say, Oh, it's the best honey I've ever had. And then you wonder, what have you actually been eating? You know, and there's other beekeepers around that I'm sure they probably tasted their honey or some, but for some reason they all your honey is the best. So which, you know, that's a nice thing to hear. Uh, but Makes you wonder what they've been eating, you know? Exactly. I mean, they've been getting some kind of, no offense, but crap from the supermarket. Right. Yeah. Who knows how much of it is even honey? It may be adulterated with who knows what. So.

12:09 Well, we don't produce all the honey that we pack, but what we produce is the clover, the wildflower, the blueberry, not wheat. I think that's about. Yeah, that's about the ones that we produce, then we buy in the others that we pack. All right, I want to hear a little bit about the flavor profile of them, if you can. Tell me about the blueberry honey compared to a regular clover or wildflower honey. Oh, man, how do you describe blueberry? Well, it's in the bottom end of ELA in amber, in light amber. It's kind of right in there. Just a real nice peculiar flavor. It's kind of a little stronger, a little fruitier, just an interesting flavor.

12:59 It's hard to describe. All right. Well, I'm going to ask you to keep trying. How about sunflower honey? How does it compare? Oh, man. I don't know. I need to get the honey sommelier back on here. I don't really eat much sunflower. So I don't I couldn't really tell you. We just pack it because some people like it. I know granulates a little quicker than other honey. So it's it's if if you're going to cream honey and some guys say that's one of the better honeys to cream. All right. Do you have a favorite? And this is like picking a favorite child. Yeah, I do. I think, well, one of my favorites is Tupelo. I notice you don't have that on your website. So that means Chuck's eating it all himself. We probably ought to go to the bank and take a loan and buy a couple barrels, but we used to produce a little bit in South Carolina, Tupelo. There's a section where there's the Tupelo trees. 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.

14:25 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. We make a little each year, but it's mixed in with everything, and once in a while in the burr comb you can detect that there's Tupelo coming in. And one of my other favorites is, uh, Sourwood. Yeah, I really like Sourwood honey. And then my friend in Oregon makes, uh, a little bit of Fireweed honey. And that's, that's really good too. So there's, I guess... Tupelo would be my favorite, but there's a lot there that would be just as good as I wish I could say it was a New York honey. That was my favorite. But anyway, I'm going to be honest and say, you know, those other honeys are just so unique. And although we do make some locusts once in a while in New York, and that's right up there with those, if you can get pure locusts.

15:27 So, but we very seldom get much locusts. We had the biggest locust bloom. This past spring, I mean, it was just white every place, but it turned rainy and cold and that was it. So we didn't make any, but that's typical Locust weather for us. Let's talk a little bit about the business if you don't mind sharing. And if I ask you anything that you don't want to answer, you don't have to answer. Okay. Is there an area of the business that's a little bit better moneymaker for you than some other areas, whether it's pollination or retail or whatever? Yeah, I think our nukes and queens and our pollination business are pretty good. Yeah, the nukes have been really, really good for us. We do sell a lot of nukes. We have a pretty good reputation for our nukes and queens.

16:23 On another topic here, as you know, the mortality rate for a lot of commercial beekeepers was really horrific this last winter. How did you guys come through? We had some issues, not so much losing the hives, but the populations dropped. differentiate between our pollination bees and our new nukes and queens bees. Years ago we made the decision that the nukes were going to be just nukes. So our whole nuke operation other than our support hives are all in five frame nuke boxes year -round. So right now we're shipping stuff back to South Carolina and all the nukes are in a two -story nuke box. So it's a two five frame nuke boxes so it's a double five frame nuke box which equivalent of a single so and that's how we ship ship them back down so and we'll i think we're shipping around 8 000 down for the winter and then we'll winter those over in doubles but they're all on brand new cone so every year we we draw you know tens of thousands of frames of foundation So that when we sell nukes, the majority of the frames in the nukes that we sell is less than a year old. So it's primo. Comb that has an accumulated pesticides and things. Yeah. And in New York where we keep our nuke is not a lot of production

17:54 agriculture as other places. So it's fairly clean for pesticides. And there's not a lot, there's no other big commercial guys where we keep our nukes. It's just hobbyists, maybe a couple little sideliners. So, you know, when we do mate our queens, they're mating, the majority of the queens that we sell have mated with our drones. So we kind of keep our drone pool just for us, you know. And what would you say is the strength of your nukes versus others? You better get about when you transfer me better almost put the second deep on right away because a lot of times when they get their nukes there's four sheets of root and Three or more are sealed. So they're they're they're ready to go for sure. They're gonna build out really quickly. Yeah Okay, so of your pollinator hives, do you have an idea of your mortality rate on those this last winter? Like I said, it was, we probably lost 30 % of our bees last year. And that's summer losses. Yeah. But that's a lot better than a lot of people. Yeah. Yeah.

19:06 But, but we did have a lot and we didn't send many, we only sent one go to California. We were planning on sending, you know, you plan on things and a lot of times it's just a wish, but uh. We thought oh, we're gonna send five to seven loads because our bees look so good in the fall, but There again all of a sudden when we got back down, South Carolina in January our clusters had shrunk down to You know three four five six frames of bees where they were full boxes before so but our nuke our nuke bees didn't shrink But they're all on that brand new comb and they have brand new queen every year where our pollination bees were just, you know, we're just running average bees and a lot of queens are two years old and the combs are getting, you know, we probably need to start pulling frames out and replacing with some foundation. But, you know, that's easier said than done, I guess. Well, that's a job both for your employees and for the bees. Yeah. You know, a lot of guys, and then we did it too.

20:13 When we first started selling nukes, we'd go into our production colonies and you'd pull out, you know, three combs out of each hive to make up your nukes or more than you put foundation in. So you're constantly replacing your frames in your operation. When we went and decided to do nukes or nukes and pollination bees or pollination bees, and we don't sell any frames out of the pollination bees, you know, we're, I'm sure we need to start pulling And we've made plans this spring to start pulling at least two frames out of every hive. And replace it. And replace them, yeah. So we didn't see the big drop in bees in our nuc operation that we saw on the pollination side. And South Carolina was really cold. I mean, I've never seen such a cold winter as we had last winter down there. I think almost six inches of snow there at one point in South Carolina.

21:10 That was, you know, if we get anything, it's usually an ice storm or flurries, you know, but they'd melt before they hit the ground. Uh, but last year and the cold, the cold hung in there for a long time. Normally when we ship these California in the beginning of February, there's three, three to four sheets with, you know, good. Good amount of brood on him. And, uh, this year, Queens didn't even start to lay till February. So it was, uh, it was a crazy and, and maple didn't even start till into February. So it was a late year. So I was kind of nervous about shipping bees out there with no brood. So we just held back and finally we sent one load, but. Do you overwinter any bees in New York? We did last year. Last year we did. We forgot a yard of 40 hives from the Nukes in Queenside. 40 doubles.

22:09 You know, everybody asked, well, how do your bees winter? Well, I guess they did pretty good. We had 37 left alive this spring. So, and that wasn't, you know, we didn't prepare them for a New York winter. Normally we get them down there. We go to feed and, you know. But no, so I guess our bees do winter well in New York. And I did have a friend that he used to get 50 to 100 nukes from us every year. And he would put them in certain yards and then he'd watch them. And a lot of times he'd only lose one or two out of 30 in a yard of our nuc. We don't winter our bees, but in New York, not on purpose.

22:51 People have had good success with our bees, wintering our bees. And we did too, even though we didn't prepare them for winter. Yeah, how big of a problem is Varroa where you are or where your bees are? I guess it's just the same everywhere, isn't it? I mean, I don't know if there's any place that's better or worse for Varroa. Do you have any secret tips for hobbyists or sideliners out there? Oh, man. They don't have to be secret. I mean, we've been using the glycerin oxalic strips. We've been making those up for a few years and they seem to keep the mite loads down during the summer. I mean, we have a long period of time. We're not like in the Midwest when the honey flow doesn't start till the end of June and it's over in August. We can make honey in May, end of May up here in New York or even beginning of May. And we can, I mean, the bees are just bringing in nectar a couple days ago yet. Not lots of nectar, but some. So, you know, we, there's a long period of time where we can make honey.

24:00 So we need something to get us through that period. And that doxella glycerin strip seemed to work pretty well for us. So. Any other diseases or? pests that are a big problem, in the Carolinas especially. Well, there's one big pest, but the bears, bears are a pest. We fight those in North Carolina, Maine, and New York. Yeah, those are the big pests. They get into a queen mating yard and you can lose a lot of money quick. Now when you say you fight them, I want to get a little video on you fighting a bear. That brings us to the wild and crazy story portion. You said I should be thinking, I should be thinking about that. I don't. You thought of anything unusual?

24:53 Oh, just moving beasts, I guess, is when I was young and trying to get going and stuff, it'd be, you know, it was me and my wife, pretty much. She would be up in New York. I'd be down South Carolina then I had bees in Florida and I and that was before I had loaders So we'd load I'd load it work all day in Florida Then load bees on my truck at night and leave down there 11 at night I wanted to get across Florida to over to just on the East Coast so I could avoid all the traffic in the morning and so I had worked already 24 hours and then I So I'm gonna get a cup of coffee, but coffee never really kept me awake. But all of a sudden, I don't know what was in that coffee at that truck stop, but I got all the way up to South Carolina for I had to take a nap. So that was one long trip. It was like 36 hours, but I had been awake for over two days. But that kind of crazy stuff, you know, doing the same thing in South Carolina, loading bees and. Being on the road being up for two days. I fell asleep in the bobcat Going to pull bees off the truck, you know, it's just dumb stuff like that that Just cuz I was just trying to do too much by myself Yeah Now is that does that go along with some of the illegal things that you said you might be alluding to? Yeah,

26:25 yeah, yeah No more detail than that, huh? No Darn, I was hoping we could get a confession of some kind out of you here today. Oh, well. Well, oh, there was one. Yeah, one crazy time we were loading bees up in Maine out of blueberries and we were up on this hill and we got the truck loaded and I was up on top and it started pouring. They were sending the nets up and it was lightning thunder and lightning storm. It was crazy. And I'm up on top of this load on top of this. pretty good size, almost a mountain, but not really a mountain. The trucker grabbed a bee net, and the lightning struck, and he felt the electric in the net. He dropped it. I don't know what happened there, but he's afraid to grab the net again. They finally got the net up on there, and we got it netted as quickly as possible.

27:25 Just crazy things you do, and you think you're invincible. So just thank the good Lord that I didn't die on top of that load, I guess. I'm sure there's a lot of beekeepers have been doing the same thing, you know, and you look back and say, boy, that was stupid. But anyway, you're young and dumb and going to get it done. And yeah, I don't know if that's crazy, funny things, but just, yeah, I, I used to carry a transmission with me and one of my trucks, cause I was afraid that. I'd had problems with the one and so I'd say I better carry an extra transmission and then just dumped stuff like that when you're young and you're getting going and you don't have a lot of money and You know, you're fixing your own truck on the road and doing all that kind of stuff You have to know a lot You have to be a mechanic. You have to know be biology.

28:17 You have to know business all these things Yeah Well, let's just make a statement right now. Beekeepers are the smartest people in the world. How's that? Well, yeah, we could be. Or we have the least common sense, one or the other. Or gluttons for punishment, maybe. Yeah. Hey, a couple last things. If I were a brand new thinking, hey, maybe I want to get started in beekeeping and I walked into your shop and ran into you. What kind of advice would you have for me? Now you're talking about a house somebody that just wants a couple hives or somebody that wants to be a commercial No, no just a backyard Hey, you know, I I've got a half acre that my house is on and I think bees are cool and I want to give it a try Well, yeah, the first thing I ask is why do you want to be hive? And I said, do you want it just so you can get your own honey? And if they say, oh yeah, that's what I want. I say, well, go over to the shelf. Cause that honey is a lot cheaper than anything you're going to produce. And, and of course I always say, well, you know, it's going to take you a couple of years to figure it out and maybe to get your bees to winter, you know, but I like the answer that you, you said there was, you know, I think bees are cool. You know, I always tell people it's, it's beekeeping as a hobby, right? And

29:49 hobbies are expensive. You know, if you're, if you're a golfer, you know how expensive golf can be. If you're a trout fisherman, you know, flies and the, you know, everything is expensive. So you have to look at beekeeping as a hobby as, you know, it's not going to be cheap. But if you like, it's like looking at fish in a bowl, right? If you like to watch fish in a bowl and you like to watch bees flying out of a hive and just to see the amazing things and everything is different and all during the year you're doing different things. That's why you should get a beehive, just to enjoy what's God's creation in that box. And that's a good reason right there.

30:35 To pollinate your garden, right? Your neighbor's garden. But as far as saving money on honey, yeah, I'm with you It's kind of like when you get chickens you think all these eggs are gonna be free Yeah until you buy the chicks and and you buy the coop or build the coop and then you buy the Food which has gone way up in price the last few years. I mean we have chickens here and I tell people Yeah, if you're doing it just for the eggs only, just go to the store. It's cheaper and easier and everything else. But if you think chickens are fun and you want to know that the eggs are coming from, you know, you know what they're eating and all that kind of stuff and how they've been treated, then that's a cool thing. And it's the same with bees, right?

31:25 You know, you know that you're getting pure honey, and hopefully you're not getting the poisonous kind from South Carolina. Right. But, you know, it's that the Yellow Jasmine goes all the way around. It goes into the Gulf Coast states too, and those guys have problems with the Yellow Jasmine also. Well, I haven't lived in those areas, so I just feel totally naive to that whole thing. Yeah, then we decided to raise queen. We decided to be queen raiser, you know, breeders too. So that affects that part of it too. That time of year, we usually raise another 25 to 30 percent, 40 percent sometimes extra cells just to make sure we have enough to get through that point of the year. Well, you know, and you were talking about You know, what's your favorite thing and all that at one point. You'd be out in the bee yard all day long, you know, working hard and you come home at night and there's a few bee hives in your backyard. And I'd always have to go and pop a cover and look at one of those. I don't know why, but as all day and bees, but you get home and I got to take a look at that one hive. So it is addicting. It's an addiction, but I think it's a good one. It's definitely a good, healthy one. Hey, Chuck, I appreciate your time so much. I'm going to let you get back to work. I know you have a ton to do today, but thanks for being with us. If people want to find you, your website, cutics .com. Yeah, yeah. With

33:01 a K. Our four different companies will be listed in there. I'll stick it in the show notes in case people can't spell it, but yeah, Cutics with two Ks. Hey, that's it. So thank you so much Eric for inviting me to do this. I had a good time It was uh, you made it point you've made it painless. Oh good I want to get out there to New York and see you sometime. Yeah, come on out and visit and I will We'll take you around show you what we do and put you to work That'd be a lot of fun. All right, take care of my friend. Thank you so much. You have a good day 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 Varroxan, Extended Release Oxalic Acid Strips. Thanks guys.

34:07 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.