Winter Bee Prep - Are Your Bees Ready?

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 mole, 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. Today's interview covers

1:32 winter bee prep from A to Z. but we realize that beekeepers in the southern hemisphere are in spring headed into summer and even some parts of the states it stays warm all year long and we don't want you to feel left out so we've put together a quick top 10 list of common mistakes that beekeepers often make during hot weather all right here we go number 10 neglecting weak colonies You've seen them sometimes a wheat colony can be an easy prey for pests and especially for robbing Don't be afraid to reduce the entrance the number of boxes or combine them with a stronger hive number nine extracting uncured honey when in doubt use a refractometer and make sure that you're not above that 18 % moisture content threshold before pulling frames number eight Long clumsy inspections or inspecting too often, yet this can happen anytime and sometimes we think, oh, it's hot, it's safe, but hey, you're still bugging the bugs. So let's just back off that a little bit. Number seven, poor ventilation. Remember, colonies need airflow and if possible, hey, some afternoon shade, they'll love you for it. Number six, using Varroa treatments, above their recommended temperatures. Here's what I mean by that. Read

3:02 the labels, please. If it says to only use on days below 85 degrees Fahrenheit, take that seriously. Number five, ignoring Varroa. Okay, I could spend hours on this one. Let's just say, do your testing, take care of Varroa. Number four, neglecting water. Make sure your bees have a dependable water source, always. Number three, ignoring the signs of swarming. Again, we could spend a lot of time on that, but keep an eye out for swarming, especially during that time of year. Number two, adding supers too late. A crowded brood nest and a honey -bound hive will up your chances of swarming. So add space before the flow starts. Don't wait until the boxes are too full. And of course, there are plenty more. I'm sure we could think of lots. But for now, the number one mistake that beekeepers often make during hot weather, not taking care of yourself.

4:07 The beekeeper, you need hydration. You need breaks to cool down. Be smart out there and take care of yourself. It's kind of like the oxygen masks on the plane. If you put yours on first, then you can help those around you, including in this case, the beautiful honeybees. Hey, welcome. Welcome back to the show, Deb Klugers. How are you this morning, Deb? I'm good. How are you? Good. Sorry to get you up so early. It's OK. It's not that late. It's not that late. Yeah. See, neither of us can even talk yet. I know. It's a bit early, but I can't speak. But you're on the East Coast, so it's later for you than for me. But for those that don't remember you or don't know you, we had a fantastic discussion earlier this year, and so I wanted to get you back on the show, because you just had a million different points of advice that were good for beekeepers of all shapes, sizes, and brand new or experienced. But as a little bit of background, you're on the east end of Long Island. Or should I pronounce it correctly, Long Island? Long Island.

5:21 Mm -hmm. Drinking my coffee. Your coffee, yeah. The main thing that I want to talk about today is winter bee prep and hive prep. And you know, before we do, give us just a little bit of background because you're a full -time beekeeper. Tell us some of the things that you do and how you make a living doing this. Well, the main focus of my business is that I place bees on residential estates and or organic farms. So the hives, the equipment, the bees, the honey all belongs to the client. I'm their beekeeper. Just like the babysitter or the chicken keeper, whatever, I'm their beekeeper. And all of the honey is each client's. I batch extract each property's honey and the client gets all their honey. So that's the basis of my business. Then I have about maybe 40 colonies of my own that I manage for honey production. And, you know, hive products and things like that. But I do cutouts, you know, capture swarms. I'm actually giving a talk at the North American Honey Bee Expo, entitled Cut It Out, the Art and Science of Bee Removals, so. I'll be there. Good. I was wondering if you were going to present again this year, so. Yeah, it's, you know, the cutouts, I don't like to do them because it takes away from, you know, I manage over 100 colonies. So, and I'm solo.

6:45 I do get help during the harvest and I get help with the cutouts. I hire a guy to come and, you know, usually a licensed carpenter. It takes the whole day. You know, it might take four hours on site, but it's the whole day of unloading my regular bee chuck, reloading to the cutout. And then once you're done, you have to come and house the, uh, house the colony. So, but it is very rewarding when they make it through the winter. Cutouts are fine and dandy, but. actually setting them up to overwinter is a challenge, and I really love it when they do make it and then start producing honey the next year, so. Oh, well, what a great segue into winter prep. My apologies to our listeners in Hawaii and Arizona and Southern California and stuff. A lot of us are up in cold climates, and I know they, in the warm climates, can have dearths of... of various kinds too. But they don't have the cold, which makes some kind of a difference when bees can't fly. And so we're dealing with some other things. On that note, Eric, though, they do have challenges such as they're not getting brood breaks in order to fight the mites. They have year -round mite treatment and mite growth. So at least we get that break in the wintertime.

8:01 So they might have a more challenging. You know, they don't have to deal with winter, but they have to deal with year -round night management, so. Yeah, and one of our friends who was recently on the show in the Malibu area, they've had all kinds of wildfires there. So we all have our challenges. Yes. Let's talk about colder climates, though. And you're not in the Arctic, but you're in a cold enough place that's wet and snowy and blowy and all kinds of stuff. So what I was going to get at is I've talked to many people on the show about winter bee prep over the last couple of years that we've been doing this and there are so many different philosophies. Some people think that there needs to be airflow and others are just all about buttoning the whole thing down and making it as airtight and insulated as possible. and others are like I just wrapped tar paper and the rest takes care of itself.

8:57 There is no one right or wrong reason because as always beekeeping is localized. The best thing we can do for our bees is make sure that the mite situation is in good condition before going into winter. I'm probably stealing some of your thunder I'm sorry. Tell me about your philosophy, because you raised your hand when I said insulate. Yeah, so I run condensing hives, which would be the opposite of ventilated hives. And I take my thought process from the bees. I mean, every cutout I've ever done, there's no extra entrances. They have one small entrance. There's no screens. They wouldn't choose a hive that has screens and holes and gaps. They find a nice, tight, dark, dry space. So if that's what the bees are choosing on their own, I want to try to recreate that for them. And they are, you know, Langstroth hive. So yeah, I do the condensing hive system year round. My hives are buttoned up tight, no upper entrances, no screen bottoms. The winter time, they're wrapped heavily insulated on top, insulated on three sides. I actually bought last year, because I got tired of the wrapping, cutting the tar paper and, you know, going around the insulation, it became... pretty a lot of work.

10:13 So I bought these outdoor air conditioner unit covers, not the wall units, but the, you know, I was thinking to myself, what is made on the market that will cover a beehive? What is the same shape? Generators and barbecues. And then I came upon air conditioner, the outdoor air conditioner units. So I bought over a hundred of those and they're nice because they do have a little bit of ventilation front and back. Last year, we had the coldest winter we've had probably in a decade. We had probably three, four feet of snow multiple times through the winter. I mean, it was incredible here. And my bees did better last year, last winter than in many, many years. And I did change my condensing hive system to like super condensing. I put like three inches on top. I did three sides. I did this fully sealed cover. And they did great, but I can't attribute it to just that because I did a few things differently.

11:10 I used the oxalic acid strips. I used the Hybalive Fondant, which I'd never used before. So I did three things a little bit different. And they overwintered so well that I unfortunately had too many bees. I know that's a weird thing for beekeeper to say, but I had ordered a bunch of bees contemplating my losses. What are my losses going to be? And I... I underestimated, so I had too many bees, so I just kept them and put them on my farm, and that's why I have so many bees this year. Well, and a lot of people would say, great, I can sell some nukes. People want overwintered queens and bees as nukes, so... I didn't go that route, you know, not to be rude or anything, but I got a little bit jaded dealing with new beekeepers when they call me up in six months and say, oh, the bees you sold me died.

11:57 And I'm like, well, did you treat them? Well, we'll treat them for what? Did you feed them? I didn't know I had to. It's like the time that you spend with people, I just kept all the bees. Yeah, well, we're all different. Kate, let me make sure I understand this because we don't have a picture of this. So you're taking some kind of foam insulation panels that you're wrapping the hives in? Yes. Okay. And you said three inches on top and two inches on the sides? I think it's an inch on the sides three sides and then the top uh it's probably yeah it's probably good three inches and then in between the inner and outer cover is another two inch of pink fold board so you put all that on how did you strap that together before you put your air conditioner cover on top so i i ratchet strap all my hives 365 they're always ratchet straps so the The panel that I cut, I just serrated the edge so it's actually folded. So it's three sides. One piece that's three sides, so it's got a little bit of body to it, and then it just slides underneath the ratchet strap. And then the cover goes over it, and it has its own little tie down on the bottom. Right, and the cover doesn't have insulation.

13:13 That's just a waterproof, windproof kind of layer, right? Exactly. Exactly. It's water resistant, windproof, and then it's got two little vents. They were $10 to $20. I bought some for my nukes. I bought, you know, different size ones for the different configurations of hives. And it's also tidy. It looks... I mean, the black tar paper looks nice, but I couldn't pile... My clients are, you know... multi -million dollar states in the Hamptons, they can't have three -inch insulation on top of their hives looking, you know, like that. My hives will look like that. So for them, having this full cover really makes it nice and tight and looks, you know, there's nothing to see but a black, a black thing in the area. And by the way, there are things that you can buy that are insulation that wrap around hives, go over hives, et cetera, et cetera. if you don't want to do the do -it -yourself route.

14:11 Exactly. And I can see why if you're managing colonies for other people, they need to look nice. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I mean, they're gorgeous. I'm so lucky. I'm blessed. I get to work on some of the most beautiful stakes in the country, so it's nice. I have one question, and that is at some point during the winter, you're going to have a warm day. We have what we call a January thaw around here, which could be January or February, where it gets up to maybe 55, 60 degrees. The bees want to get out, stretch their legs, if you know what I mean. Are they able to do that? Oh, absolutely. The body has a mouse bar. You know, they can come and go.

14:51 There's about a three inch, you know, with the mouse bar with a couple of little holes there. They can come and go and say, please. And they do. And that also helps clarify, this isn't completely airtight, this whole thing. No, no. That's not something that we would want to do. And also keep in mind the science and chemistry behind it. So when the bees are in this, you know, they want to cluster in there, metabolism is slower and such, and having this condensing hive, they're creating a higher level of carbon dioxide and a higher level of moisture. The bees need moisture. year round. I mean, the brood requires around 90 % relative humidity. So if you've got all of this ventilation and stuff, and we're always wondering, oh, what's wrong with the queen? Why isn't she laying? Or what's with the brood? Why don't we think about the conditions in which we're giving the queen to rear her young in.

15:38 If we're giving completely ventilated, they're fighting to keep it moist for the bees, you know, for the brood. So all these things combined, but also the higher CO2 and the higher humidity is detrimental to mites. So if you look into the research, both are not good for mites to survive under. So that could help the mites that could still be in the hives in the wintertime to not do well. You know, higher CO2 and higher humidity is not good for mites, but it's very good for bees, so. I always learn best when I understand the why of doing something. Exactly. And I think I understand the why of some of what you're saying, but I want to have you explain it to everybody. You mentioned how much more insulation you have on the top than on the sides.

16:23 There actually is a very good reason for that. Would you explain that? Sure. So, you know, you hear this common phrase is, wet bees are dead bees. And the thought is that the moisture from the bees who are respiring, they're breathing and they're creating moisture. They turn hunting into latent heat and moisture within the hive. So this moisture has to go somewhere. And if you just had an outer cover on and the moisture rises and it hits the cold, outer cover, it's going to condense and the water will drop down on the bees. And that's where the wet bees are dead bees. And it's just science. But now if you layer on lots of insulation on top, the top, when the moisture hits the top, it's not condensing on the top because it's still warm and moist up there. But what it does is it comes down the sides. And so the water doesn't come down to the bees, it comes down into the sides. And I see little pools of water in the bottom front, usually, because we have a tiny little angle that the beehives sit out. You could see these little puddles of water down there. Now, in the wintertime, the bees, we give them food, we treat them for mites, but the one thing that they require is water. And a lot of times, you know, the bees will go out on a winter thaw and they're searching for water. And there isn't much, you know, unless, you know, things are thawing and stuff like that.

17:43 So the bees actually have a usable water source within the hive in the wintertime, and they need water to dilute their honey. They need water to dilute the fondant, the sugar slurry, whatever it is that we're feeding them. So, you know, again, I'm trying to give the bees everything that they need and thinking, how would the bees have their hive? And they would have it in this tight little moist closed -up space, so. That is more insulated on top than it is on the sides. Well, think of a tray. Yeah, that's on purpose. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I've done hundreds of cutouts and they're always in a tight little closed up one, you know, maybe they're getting in between shingles, not even a hole. You know, it's amazing some of the spots that these bees find. So they're like a bee, listen to the bees.

18:31 You know, what do they do? And when they seal up the holes that we put in for the upper entrances or whatever, they seal it up, we poke it open. They seal it up, we poke it open. They'll listen to bees. They're sealing it up for a reason. Okay, I gotta tell you something weird. When I first started beekeeping, and on the advice of my instructor, I got two hives. One of them, and I've never had one like this since, only used their top entrance. Interesting. And I'm like, this is why he told me to get two hives, because half the bees will use a bottom entrance, and half will use the top. They were the only ones that just loved a top entrance for some reason. I have... Yeah. I have no idea why. I know the bottom wasn't blocked or anything like that, but anyway. I've had bees, you know, find a hole. I keep looking over here because that's really old. I've had bees, you know, they find a hole, a crack in a box, and they start using it. I seal that up. I can't have them coming out all different sizes, so I close that up.

19:32 I use Duct Tape a lot. Let's dig a little deeper into mites and making sure that we don't have an overload for winter. What to you is an acceptable level going into winter? Well, zero would be preferable, but I mean, I do a lot of mite management. So, I mean, I'm hoping to go in as low as possible. I would say, yeah, zero is an acceptable level because there's never one mite. You know, one foundrous mite goes in and out comes three pregnant females. And then they all go, you know, I mean, it just they can explode very quickly. On this podcast, you often hear a lot of talk about winter preparation, and there are many different philosophies, mostly involving hive insulation. But what you haven't heard until now is a solution where insulation is built right into a traditional wooden hive body. That's what Man Lake just did. created an insulated wooden hive and really guys, this is a big deal. I hope you'll take a look at it.

20:35 Beekeepers have been trusting Man Lake for over 40 years. So if your winter prep involves feeding, mite treatments, new insulated hives, or even hive hugger insulation for your current hives, you can find it all in one place. And right now Man Lake is offering podcast listeners $10 off your next order. Just enter code MLBlove10 at checkout. That's manlakeltd .com. Discount code MLBlove10. So my mite management is typically I will use the, well, let's just start in January. We'll do the OAV either in December or January, followed by the oxalic acid strips. And then I wait until right after the harvest, I'll do the formic pro. Sometimes I might do it before though. Depends on what I'm seeing. I do a lot of drone brood. checking where, you know, most of the mites are 80, 90 % are under the brood cappings, but more of them would be in the drone brood. So I'll open up the drone brood. I see mites, they're getting treated. There's no waiting.

21:41 So Formic Pro is safe for use with honey supers on. And I've never had an issue with Formic Pro. Some people are like, oh, what killed my bees? You know, I've never had an issue with it. So... The takeaway is follow the directions. They're not suggestions. They're literally what you need to do. Everything that those directions tell you to do, you really have to do it, follow it to a T. After the formic pro, I might hit another round of formic pro because, you know, I grow tremendous colonies, tremendous. And I can get back into that because it goes back to the overwintering. But when you grow tremendous colonies, you're also growing tremendous mite loads. So I have to just keep treating, which is fine. So then I'll do the former pro once or twice on my cutouts, maybe nukes. And maybe if I have any weak colonies, they'll get some apiguard because they're fine with higher temperatures, the apiguard. And the bees tolerate it well. You just have to do maybe three treatments of that. And then follow up, I might be doing oxalic acid vapor. within the next month or so. So that's the November, December treatment. And that's it. I mean, I treat and I treat, that's what I do. You know, I help the bees, you know, I feel that they're more robust when you, after the form of pro treatment, I'm like, wow, these bees are really kicking it.

22:59 I like to give a dog a flea bath and the dog's all happy afterwards, because you got rid of all those nasty parasites. So. Okay, one last thing about going into winter. You just mentioned the term tremendous. Bees are tremendous population, something like that. I grow tremendous colonies. If you look at my Instagram, people have been accusing me of being AI. It's not real. Show us the insights. I've been doing this for over a decade. I've been growing them like this. You can look at my mom. I'm not staging anything for all these years. And the way that I do that also goes back to the, when do you start winterizing? I start winterizing in April. And how it goes is, you know, I'll install the bees and as the bees, gather there, you know, we have our flow is very, very short. So our flow is mid May to mid July. So as the bees start gathering their nectar to make honey, I'm using my dark root comb first. And I'm putting that on, on top of the the brood area. But all that honey is going to be for the bees for the winter and I put it in the dark home so that in the spring when they come up and they eat all their honey, they can start rearing their brood in the dark home. So I'm not Messing with all of my beautiful white drawn comb for honey So I'm starting in the spring to get their honey stores for winter But I'm always removing any of the food resources from inside the brood chamber area And I'm putting that on top so I don't use queen excluders I use honey as the queen excluder and she typically

24:32 doesn't cross that barrier But I don't care if she does because then I'll just take her and her brood put it back down in the brood area. But by doing this, I'm constantly opening the brood area. So I have no swarming. I can't remember, maybe two or three years ago, I might have had a colony swarm because I wasn't on top of it, but I have over 100. So sometimes I might get behind, but by opening the brood area, constantly taking the food resources out, putting it on top. I'm giving them plenty of room to lay. They're not going to swarm and cause a problem. For a homeowner that has to then call me and do a bee removal, it's not fair. So I'm a very staunch anti swarm person. And by doing this, I have these tremendous colonies. And, you know, people like they'll ask me on the internet, why don't you split it? That's ridiculous. Like it's so you need a ladder. I get a lot of honey per hive.

25:27 And if you think about it, one large colony can produce more honey than... If you split that colony in two, and here's the thought behind it, let's just use easy numbers. If one large colony has 100 ,000 bees, and let's say you need 20 ,000 bees to do all of the housekeeping duties, the nurse bees, and just everything that needs to be done, let's say 20 ,000. So you have 80 ,000 bees to gather honey, and let's just say they gather 80 pounds. Now, if you were to cut that colony of 100 ,000 into two, 50 and 50, you have 20 ,000. house bees in each hive now to take care of all the housekeeping duties now you only have 30 ,000 bees in each and let's say 30 pounds 30 pounds so you can get 60 pounds out of a hive that you split or 80 pounds out of one that you've grown tremendously and that's also why you don't want them to swarm because if you have that 80 ,000 population they'll take 70 % of the bees with them and now you're down to even smaller than if you had split it so I know I do things differently, but it's just, you know, it's just how I do it. It makes sense to me. So you're going into winter with two deep boxes? Uh, no, I typically run or ran all mediums, but in the last two or three years, I started purchasing some nukes and they came in deep boxes.

26:45 So I had to go back to a bunch of deep. So I typically have one deep and maybe two or three mediums. I over went to them with a box or two of honey. Yeah. But the deeps are hard. They're hard for me to handle, but one is fine. You know, two is, I'm not doing two deeps. And I like all the mediums, and especially as ladies that we can, well, anyone, you can very easily, when I'm telling you I'm taking the resources out of the brood area and putting it on top, if you've got deeps, you can't do that. So I'll have one deep down on the bottom. It's going to always be the brood. If it starts getting congested with honey or back filled, I'll just take out, either shake those frames out. or replace it with brand new deep comb. And I'll use those resources in someone else's hat. I thought I was the only weird one. I do the same thing.

27:33 Each of my hives has one deep, and then I use all the rest mediums. Yeah. And what I've learned, too, is, you know, I used to put the deep and then the honey on top, you know, for them in the spring, and they would always move up. Whoa, go figure. The brood stays warmer up higher, so that's why the bees are moving up, and they don't care that they're in where you want the honey to be. So I would put the honey in the spring, a medium box of honey, and then the deep. Then eventually I'll put that medium box up top. Again, I have so many highs, I have to really be systematic about how I do it so I can... get through everyone fast. It seems to work good, but the bees are going to move up. And so I always want that brood up top and I put the honey underneath them and they do just spawn in the spring. How often are you getting into the hives? I get my eyes on them around every week to 10 days, but I go in when I have to for a reason. I find the less we go into them, the better they do. Because every time we open it up, their whole homeostasis within the hive will be air that they've created.

28:39 The moisture, everything is gone. There's no show and tell. We don't do show and tell. We go in for a reason. Through the years, when you've doing this for so long, you can tell. I mean, you don't have to go in there. You could tell, you know, that these are good. Checking for disease and pests. I'll check in the brood, I don't know, every couple of weeks, I guess. But I'm not digging through. There's no reason for me to go do a deep dive unless, you know, specific reasons. You go in for a reason. carry out the task and get the heck out of there. Absolutely. You mentioned getting a lot of honey, but having a short honey flow or nectar flow. About how much honey are you getting per hive with that many bees in there?

29:23 Yeah, so the average surplus yield here on the island is low. It's about 35 to 40 pounds. per hide, again, with just that short neck to flow. But I'm probably getting 50, 60 pounds. I do leave a lot on for them. That's surplus what I take off. And I'm leaving, you know, plenty of resources for them. So maybe would we get maybe 100 pounds, but I don't take it all. And I still feed. Eric, I bought so much. I bought the Pro Suite. I bought 1800 pounds of that. So I bought 31 fat gallon buckets. of the ProSweet, and I bought 1 ,200 pounds of sugar, and I bought, I don't know, what's 100 times 500 pounds of Hivali fondant. You know, so I'm like the Italian grandmother. What if they need it or not? And it's on my Instagram, and so I say, need it or not. I mean, they could have two full boxes of honey. I don't care, they're all getting this.

30:21 And the worst case scenario, I take it off in the spring. Sugar doesn't go bad. The Italian grandmother beekeeping. I love it. That's going to be... Needed or not, everyone, and I have 17 left. I have... Let's see, I have... No, I have 12 nucs. That's it. I have 12 nucs left to feed. And then they've all got their winter slurry hive alive. They were fed the two to one, you know, a month or so ago. So personally, do you get to do anything fun during the winter, take some time off? Absolutely. I'm going to the B expo. Besides that. Yeah, I'm going to Atlantic City in a couple of weeks. I love to play poker. I'm a ranked New York state in my league poker player. And if anyone asks me at the table, what do I do for a living? I say I'm a professional gambler, which we all are as beekeepers because any day we could wake up and it's all gone or it's wonderful. So. Okay. You've got a lot of titles now. The gambler, the Italian grandmother, okay. All right, before I let you go, and this has been fascinating. Thank you so very much for joining me. Before I let you go, you get to tell another wild and crazy beekeeping story. And you said you had one just very recently.

31:38 What happened? Yeah, it's not pleasant and it's really a thorn in my side and the side of many honest beekeepers in that. We have a lot of people in my area and all over the world, honestly, that buy honey and put it in jars. And you would say, okay, well, that's a honey repacker. Yes, the honey repackers are honest, wonderful, great people, except we've got this whole different class of them who label the honey as dead bees from my backyard. and they're 100 % lying. They're buying the honey from who I call the big boys, you know, or wherever they're, they could buy it on Amazon or Costco. They could buy it wherever they want. And they literally tell the story that it's their bees from their hive. And they tell the honey, they undercut us. And this is happening in Tennessee, Kentucky, Ukraine. It happens everywhere. And it's really disgusting because, you know, Maybe sometimes the honey is good honey, but the problem is that they're committing food fraud. When you take a product and put it into a jar and mislabel it for financial gain, that's the purest definition of food fraud.

32:43 The worst part is that people are like, oh, competition. It's not competition. It's unfair because they never run out. They're lying to the consumer. And so long story short, I got into a fight with this guy. at a fair, my first fair of the season. And I don't do many of these markets because A, I'm always working. So I don't do farmer's markets. I rarely do these holiday fairs, but they contacted me and said, would you like to do this fair? I'm like, oh, sure. Will there be any other honey sellers there? She said, no. So I got into a bit of an argument with her because yes, indeed there were three of us. One was another nice local beekeeper that we got from me. You know, we talked and we both knew this guy. was a complete fraud. And I got into it with him.

33:28 And yeah. And I told him, you know, you're a liar. And he is. And so that is a problem. So what I've done, and I don't know how to use this data, is I buy their honey. And I sent my friend over to buy his honey. And I've bought his honey before, DNA analysis. I send it out, cost me money. And it is not local Long Island honey. Like, here's an example. One of the honeys that I bought from a honey maunderer, which is what I call them. They said it was buckwheat honey from Long Island from their bees on the east end of Long Island. A, there's not buckwheat farms out here. B, I know where they buy their honey from. And C, the honey came back as oak and I think it was, I don't have it, but it was oak and something else. Now oak honey is not delightful, but it's very, very dark and very, very robust tasting. So this is what their buckwheat honey from Long Island was. Another one of their honeys. was pine from North Carolina. So I mean, it's like, that's my big story is that I really got into it with this guy. And if I was a man, I think it would have been much more physical.

34:32 And if I didn't have to get back to my booth, I would have stood there and kept fighting with this guy because, you know, he's like, you're calling me a liar. I said, you are a liar. I said, why don't you just own it and say that you're a reputable honey repacker. Stop making things up. He's like, I'm the largest beekeeper on Long Island. I'm like, you don't have one bee. What are you talking about? So that's an issue. And so I've done five years of study and I've bought their honey and I've sent it out for DNA analysis and I've got the data and I've got the proof because I've also done my bees from Montauk to Eastport of analysis to show a nice profile of this is what Long Island honey looks like. And my honey one sample might have 67 different pollen grains identify and theirs might have um, three. You know, because it's a monofloral from, say, North Dakota, some kind of clover. It's just so, it's greed. And it's just gross. Um, and I don't know how to solve your laughing. Well, I love New Yorkers. I'd love that you would just get in this guy's face, call him a liar. Please have somebody filming next time and send it to me. I would love to see you doing the rounds with this guy and calling him a liar and everybody at the fair standing around like, I didn't even know there was such a thing. Yeah, no, people don't know, but people did come to my booth and I'm an award -winning honey producer. My honey has won awards at all

36:03 the major honey shows. I put my heart into this. And to have some dude show up with this purely commercial -looking... product of he's got orange blossom and buckwheat and but even he's got it all and you know my first question to him was where where are you bees and he goes here they are you know because the bees were i i just was triggered and uh off we went i told him you know he's like put my honey down i said don't worry i've already sent it all for analysis so i'm like i know who you are and it you know it's just so sad it's food fraud and it's illegal but but I had mentioned Ukraine. I have a Ukrainian beekeeper friend and he laughs at me. He goes, Dad, put your energy to something else. He goes, this is happening in Ukraine. This is happening in Florida. This is happening. And it's just, you know, it's sad because the problem is, just say I made my living on honey and I needed to sell honey in order to live. And now we have this guy, because they also undercut, they sell it for about half the price of real beekeepers.

37:01 Can I just say I have to leave Long Island and I take my bees with me? Now, he still has the honey. People are still buying this honey, and it might be good honey. It might not. I don't know. But now we don't have my bees in the area doing the pollination. Pollination for the food, pollination for the wildlife, pollination to make oxygen, to stop erosion. I mean, the bees aren't just about making food. They are really ecosystem managers for all of us and for wildlife, the food and habitat that they provide. So now you take me and my bees out of here, and now we've got a bee -less landscape. That's the bigger issue. That if the beekeepers go and we've got these honey launderers just, you know, stocking the shells with honey, it's a problem. Yeah, I would love to have a wrestling match or something.

37:47 All right, Deb. We'll see you at Nobby. Can't wait to hear your presentation. And hopefully, next time, I might get you to come out of your shell and open up just a little bit more. Yeah, yeah. You know, I need to learn a little bit more talking points. All right. Take care, my friend. I'll see you in January. Thanks again for joining us on the number one Bee Love Beekeeping podcast presented by Man Lake. Another big thank you goes out to Vita Bee Health for their support. Vita's Varroa Control range of products includes Epistan, Epigard, and now Varroxan Extended Release Oxalic Acids Trips. If you haven't yet, hey please subscribe to and follow the show, tell your friends about it, and click on over to BeLoveBeKeeping .com to sign up for our free newsletter. If you have a guest suggestion or a topic you'd like discussed on the show, shoot me an email eric at BeLoveBeKeeping .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.