Beekeeping Podcast Hyve Time™: Bee expert interviews and beekeeping news, tips, & discussions. – Détails, épisodes et analyse

On today's episode, I sit down with Brian Spiesman, a community and landscape ecologist at the University of Kansas, who is broadly interested in how environmental change affects the diversity and function of ecological communities. He has a focus on understanding how land cover change affects communities of plants and their pollinators. The goal of his research is to wrangle knowledge of complex systems for the effective conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services.

Brian also helped create the Bee Machine™, an application for identifying bumble bee species using machine learning. We discuss the Bee Machine and what it does, how it was developed, how it works, and the future of the application. We also discuss the relationship between habitat and the web of species that rely on each other for survival.

Links to Brian's work and SM accounts-

Brians Twitter- https://twitter.com/BrianSpiesman

Brian's Website- https://spiesmanecology.com/

Bee Machine Twitter- https://twitter.com/BeeMachineAI

Bee Machine Website- https://beemachine.ai/

Sponsor- Kinnickinnic Bees

If you are looking for package bees or nucs, Kinnickinnic Bees has you covered check it out at -https://www.kinnibees.com/order-honey-bees

I sit down with Emily Pedzinski, a YouTube™ beekeeper blazing her path in her beekeeping business. Emily joins to discuss her YouTube™ channel and how she is using Discord to help reach her audience and grow her beekeeping business as it evolves into different beekeeping strategies as well as how she hopes to grow her business.  

Emily's Links- 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjwvWim46dlNGsgwqmu1HMA 

https://discord.gg/6SCzY7JZ 

Follow Mike- 

https://twitter.com/solarwoof13

Today we interview Cory Stevens, owner of Stevens Bee Co., out of Bloomfield, MO. Cory started beekeeping the traditional way and quickly discovered the benefits and needs of breeding VSH queen honey bees. His side hustle has him rearing 2,000 VSH queens that he ships out all over the country. We discuss how genetics will replace the need for most chemical treatments and the future of bee genetics role in commercial and backyard beekeeping.  

 Notes or Treatment efficacy: 

Oxalic label dosage- https://www3.epa.gov/pesticides/chem_search/ppls/091266-00001-20151013.pdf 

Oxalic Effective dosage- https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00218839.2021.1877447 

Links and Notes: 

Annual colony loss reports- www.beeinformed.org 

John Harbo VSH level rating for measurement- https://www.harbobeeco.com/measure-vsh/ 

Stevens Bee Co: 

Youtube- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfeQNytNL-X94MlaaM-03ug

Website- www.stevensbeeco.com

In this episode, we discuss the tasks of inspecting a beehive and how having a list is a great way to keep track of your hive's performance as well as tasks done and needed in the future. We offer this as a FREE Download (link below) including a quick and easy way to grade each of your beehives.

What we cover this week:

• Scoring your beehive performance 
• The colonies temperament
• Queens laying pattern
• How to find the Queen
• Tracking levels of varroa mites in the hive
• Locating the queen and tracking her
• Are their queen cells- What type? 
• A strong hive population
• What is the hive's condition?
• Type of hive equipment you are using
• Pest and disease management
• Identifying the problem
• Are you using integrated management devices?
• What type of treatments- when were they applied and when were they removed
• Hive tasks and preparation for Spring, Summer (Honey Flow), and Winter
• How is your hive configured?

We also recorded this and have it posted on our youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsplMNFEZJCXBUmEAK6YQRg where we show a couple of examples of inspections and what to look for as well as a follow along, on the form we are offering for free. Check it out and don't forget to Like, Subscribe, and follow us on all the platforms you listen to and watch us on. Thanks!

Youtube Channel- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsplMNFEZJCXBUmEAK6YQRg

FREE Inspection Form- https://www.hyperhyve.com/freedownload

This week I am joined by Michael Bush, a beekeeper, speaker, and author of "The Practical Beekeeper, Beekeeping Naturally". This is a 2 part podcast episode where we discuss bees, comb design, natural beekeeping, studies, the experience Michael has in beekeeping, and the knowledge around how we as beekeepers can and should get off the chemical treatment "train".

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From BushFarms.com

So beekeepers, with the advice and assistance of the USDA and the universities, have built this precarious system of beekeeping that relies on chemicals, antibiotics, and pesticides to keep it going. And beekeepers keep breeding the resistant pests that can survive the treatments, contaminating the entire wax supply with poisons (and we make our foundation out of that contaminated wax so it is a closed system) and breeding queens that can't survive without all of this treatment.

The only way to have a sustainable system of beekeeping is to stop treating. Treating is a death spiral that is now collapsing. To leverage this, you need to raise your queens from local surviving bees. Only then can you get bees who genetically can survive and parasites that are in tune with their host. As long as we treat we get weaker bees who can only survive if we treat, and stronger parasites who can only survive if they breed fast enough to keep up with our treatments. No stable relationship can develop until we stop treating.

The other problem, of course, is that if we just stop now with the system of beekeeping we have, the genetically and environmentally weakened bees will usually die. Even if they are genetically capable of surviving in a clean (uncontaminated) environment, we have to get to an environment they can survive in or they will still die. So what is that environment?

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Show Notes:

Hyperthermia Treatment Study1

Hyperthermia Treatment Study2

Hive Type Study1

Hive Type Study2

Bush Farms

Michael Bush's Books

This week I am joined by Michael Bush, a beekeeper, speaker, and author of "The Practical Beekeeper, Beekeeping Naturally". This is a 2 part podcast episode where we discuss bees, comb design, natural beekeeping, studies, the experience Michael has in beekeeping, and the knowledge around how we as beekeepers can and should get off the chemical treatment "train". 

So why are we having problems? We have a lot of recent pests and diseases that have made it to North America (and most other places in the world) in the last 30 years or so. As someone once said, "You can't keep bees like grandpa did cause grandpa's bees are dead." Most of us beekeepers have lost all of our bees one time or another in the last few decades and this seems to be getting worse. So part of the problem for beekeepers is the pests, but there are other issues.

We have a narrow gene pool to start with here and between pesticides, pests, and overzealous programs to control Africanized Honey Bees, many of the pockets of feral bees have been depleted leaving only the queens that people buy. When you consider that there are only a handful of queen breeders providing 99% of the queens, that's a pretty small gene pool. This deficiency used to be made up by feral bees and people rearing their own queens. But the recent trend is to encourage everyone to not rear their own queens and only buy them. Especially in AHB (Africanized Honey Bee) areas.

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Show Notes:

Observation Beehive Link

Bush Farms Observation Hive Link

Michael Bush's Books

Episode 003: Springtime apiary setup and cleanup

I am a week behind on getting this episode out, but for good reason. In this episode, we talk through the steps and best practices for your spring apiary setup or maintenance of it. 

What we discuss:

1. Assess your hives
2. Inspecting your hives
3. Clean out your hives that did not survive
4. Feed your surviving hives
5. Setup your new hives
6. Remove winter gear
7. Installing your new bees
8. Put a plan together for managing future swarming

Resources- 

Instagram photo of the hives with legs- Instagram (follow while you're there)

Youtube Channel- Hyper Hyve

Our very first interview podcast episode with Dr. Erica Shelley at Best for Bees™. Dr. Shelley is the inventor of ProtectaBee™, which is a hive entrance for honey bees on a standard 10 frame langstroth hive. We discuss her experience in beekeeping and the research projects that led her to inventing the ProtectaBee™ which is now available on Indiegogo™.  

Resources- 

• Dr. Erica Shelley- Linkedin 
• Best for Bees™- Website 
• ProtectaBee™- Indiegogo campaign 
• Mike James- Twitter 
• Hyper Hyve- Website 
• Podcast Forum 
• Secret Indiegogo Perk for our fans only- https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/protectabee-all-in-one-adjustable-hive-entrance?secret_perk_token=b5c10c3f#/

This is the launch episode of Hyve Time, I discuss the podcast's strategy as well as what influenced me to start a beekeeping/ business podcast in the first place. Especially after having no interviewing skills, but after being an entrepreneur since 2006 (Almost 26 years now), if you never try something new, you'll continue to be your old self.

The launch is in tandem with my new business Hyper Hyve, hence the funny spelling of the show, and we will be doing a bit of a build in the public throughout these shows, and talking to other business people within and outside of the beekeeping business. So take a listen (this one's only 5 min long) and hit that subscribe button for weekly show's.

You can follow me @

• Twitter- SolarWoof13
• Hyper Hyve Website
• Kinnickinnic Bees Website
• Patreon- Donate