EP-3 Interview with Flower Street Farm Bees | KODIAK FARM BEES - Kodiak Farm Bees

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:08):
Welcome to the Kodiak Farm Bees Podcast. Good morning, everybody. How y'all
doing. I got two special guestshere today and they quite away from home.
I'm gonna bring along in. Wegot Brian and Jen of Flower Street

(00:29):
Farm. Hi, everybody, how'sit going. We're excited to be here.
Yeah, how'd y'all enjoy y'all thelittle ride over here from New Orleans?
It was nice. My ride herewas or from here to New Orleans
was in the dark, so Isaw nothing right, so it was nice
to get to see. Well,we were unloading your truck Sunday night in
the dark and in the rain.Yeah, yeah, yeah, so it

(00:50):
was nice to get to see thewhat it's like. You know, we're
gonna take the highway back and it'sgonna be super fast, but it's nice
to kind of take the back roadsand see what it's really like to see
a little bit, well, say, country side, just see some different
scenery that I mean, you maynot be used to in your immediate area.
And that's what we got to seethis morning. So that's really nice.

(01:11):
Yeah. Yeah, lots of birds, lots of egrets. Is beautiful.
Yeah, y'all came in through acrossit in through like Gonzalis's Sorrento where
Yeah, that's correct. Okay,so we saw Lake poncha train. Finally
on our right, there is thatright and we saw the big bridge going
across it. It's twenty four milelong bridge. Once you get in the
middle of the bridge, you won'tsee land at all on either side.

(01:33):
Wow. Because of the curve ofthe earth, it disappears. Yep.
Yeah. So this has been ourfirst time in Louisiana and we've had a
great time. I'm definitely ready togo home. I've had a long trip.
Well you've been home away from homefor what about two weeks now?
Yeah. I left the second thesecond of January. I left went to
Louisville for the b Expo up there, drove to New Orleans, stopped at

(01:59):
Mark Miller's, had a great visitwith Mark, stop down here, had
a great visit with you, andthen made it to New Orleans for the
ABF conference. And then Jen flewin that Thursday for the ABF conference.
Well, no to visit New Orleansreally, so we got a nice chance
to just see the city, walkaround, do the tourist thing, and

(02:20):
then hit the road. Now tohead on back home. So how did
the two different conferences compare as faras the amount of people, the attendants
of each one in just a generalatmosphere. Yeah, very different conferences.
Obviously, the b Expo had whatthirty five hundred people, It was huge.
The vendor hall was probably the biggestever, one of the biggest evers.

(02:46):
It was amazing. The community atthe b Expo was amazing. Knowing
a lot of people in the communityand getting to see them there. The
family atmosphere was amazing. Honestly,I didn't get to see many of the
talks at the Bxpo. I thinkI went to three of them in total,
but that's okay. That's part ofwhat I think makes the Bexpo so

(03:09):
so vibrant is you have all thesedifferent choices of how you can interact with
that weekend. And I'll get achance to see all of those talks when
I go back home and we getthose videos, so I don't feel like
I'm going to really miss that content. Spent most of my time in the
vendor hall and hanging out with peoplethat I know but don't get to see

(03:30):
directly. Now, ABF was verydifferent, much much fewer people, much
more specialized, and I wouldn't saybetter or worse, I would just say
different. I went into each conferencewith a mindset of I'm trying to get
something out of this, and Ifelt like for each conference, I'm walking

(03:52):
away with exactly what I was whatI was hoping to get out of it.
So I have a lot of followup emails and conversations to have next
week with people I've either met ortouched base with. Both have been really
valuable for me personally, for mygrowth and where the direction we're heading for
this next year. Well that wasme, Like whenever I go to nobby

(04:14):
and everything, I enjoy walking aroundthe vendor hall talking to all the different
people. I mean, I findthat I can watch the videos later,
I can't meet all the people lateronce they're gone, So I want to
spend my time walking around shaking handswith all the introducing myself, finding out

(04:35):
where they're from. And you seeso many different names on YouTube that you
see their screen name, but sometimesyou don't know their real name until you
meet them, or when you meetthem and you see the real name on
their shirt, it's like, well, what's your YouTube channel? And then
once they say that you remember everything. Yeah, building those connections, That's

(04:55):
what he kept coming back to.That is really important to spend those time
with the people and build community andconnections. Yep, exactly, because I
mean we get to do this aboutonce a year right now. I mean
some people will have their local Iguess their bee meetings and everything every year
for each state, yep. Butyou don't get to see that individual person

(05:17):
that we all talk to, butlike once a year. So I want
to enjoy that time with them.While we had the chance, I got
to spend some time with Tom frommac maccabee's. It was great to just
kind of walk around the vendor hall, talk with him, hanging out with
Russell Coopman, talking about creamed honey, just just touching base with people that

(05:39):
you touch. You know, youtalk to in the comments section of the
streams and you know a lot ofpeople don't come on the streams but participate,
and those are the people I reallyenjoyed getting to meet, you know,
some of the people that come onall the time. First of all,
it was great to get to seepeople like Charlie and all the folks
that come on too, but reallygetting to know those people that you know

(06:02):
by name and and just start tosee some of their comments and get a
sense of who they are in thatsection. That that was really cool.
Like last year was my first yeargoing to one of Cayman's events, and
I wanted to shake hands with allthe big names, you know, people
like Bob Benny came in this year. I wanted to shake hands with all
the people and this part of thatcommunity that I've been getting to know throughout

(06:25):
the year, who we've been networkingwith and getting great ideas from and hopefully
giving some great ideas too. Yeah, Philip, Philip. I like to
call Philip my stocker. So Igot to meet Philip. We had some
great, great meals. Hanging outwith Philip was great too. So do
I have anything left to take home? I don't know. We'll see,

(06:46):
we'll see. Yeah, I don'tknow. I might have lost those keys
because she is I might have tobring stuff to you later. Yeah,
and the reckoning comes when Jen getsto realize everything that I bought. So
when we load up the truck,that'll be that'll be an interesting experience.
Keep seeing the receipts come through andI'm like, what's going on? Yeah,
she hasn't seen them all. Yougotta load everything up, you can't

(07:08):
have nothing, then she's gonna seeit all. Yeah. Yeah, I
hope everybody can hear us a littlebit better this morning than the last in
studio live I did. I've changeda few things around, some different equipment,
so I'm hoping the audio is alot better for y'all this time.
I will say I was glad Istalked up at the b Expo. That
was definitely the place to go shoppingif you wanted to stock up. I

(07:31):
like to go and talk to allthe people that had innovative products. Not
that I was buying them, butI just love to support that entrepreneurship and
innovation. So there's like four differentpeople selling some sort of product that supported
making comb honey, and I thoughtthat was pretty interesting. From a guy

(07:53):
who I forget his name, SkipperLatrelle, who was selling the old basswood
section, the old traditional type combhoney, to Simple Comb who was selling
that that modern plastic version. Ilove that innovation. The folks who have
the honeystraw thing. I'm not thekind of person who would probably ever go

(08:13):
out and buy a honeystraw filling machine. But sitting down and talking with them
and hearing about their product for meis really valuable. What do you think
was the best product you came awaywith? But were you really stoked to
go with? Oh? A presentfor you? Yeah? There there there

(08:35):
was an elderly couple from Kansas whorented a booth to sell out there,
basically their collection of bee stuff.So the gentleman his name was Cecil I
wish I knew his last name.Great folks. He had tables with like
books and magazines, old books.There was a signed forty Years in the

(08:58):
Bees by C. C. Miller, like signed by C. C.
Miller. I couldn't pull the triggeron that one, but I did get
a copy of Dancing with Bees byCarl von Frisch. I pulled Jason Crook
over from Bohemia Bees because I knowhe was interested in that history piece.
He bought a stack of old gleaningsin bee culture, and then the wife

(09:20):
had things like honey jars and jewelryand pins and that kind of stuff.
So that was a really cool boothto go to because it was different,
it was unique from any other one. And they had even posted a couple
previews of what they were bringing inthe Nabby Facebook page, so I was

(09:41):
definitely wanting to see what they hadas I was going there. But the
vendor hall was so big. Iwent through it so many times and there
were still a couple of booths.I wanted to see the easy Pas booth
and talk to that guy. Inever even saw them, and I don't
know why. I just kind ofmissed right over them. But looking to
Phoebe Snyder was really cool as well. I have a lot of plans for

(10:03):
like vsh and queen breeding this year, so getting a chance to talk directly
to her as I bought the Uboproduct was really valuable for me. Just
getting to network with all those people. I was starting to listen to I
thinking it was Duck River Honey's podcasthad He Done had them up there,

(10:24):
and they was talking about the uband all. I mean, it sounds
pretty interesting to me. It's somany different ways that individuals say, I'm
going to try to check this out, try to check that out. But
once you get into it and youhave I guess a set standard, everybody
can do the same thing and kindof get the results that I guess you

(10:46):
would need versus, Hey, I'mjust gonna test this way. This is
what I found out, and somebodyelse tests a different way. They may
him up with a different result,but they tested differently. But with Ubo
and say each different ways of checkingthings. What is ad Harbo essay?
If you if three people were runningthat same exact test and come up with

(11:09):
the same result, then you knowsomething's good for you. Are if you
get different results, you know thatyour testing standards were the same and you
can figure out what needs to bedone better. I can't believe you didn't
buy anything, Lee. That wascrazy? How could you? That's like
a candy store by s Oh mygosh, there's so much stuff to buy.

(11:30):
Most of the stuff I bought waslike necessities. I bought one or
two things I really didn't need,but most of what I bought was like
consumables that we would use throughout theyear, like Jester nukes or or the
Global patties or that kind of stuff. I stocked up on apist biologics,

(11:50):
so I did get mostly stuff Iwas going to buy anyway throughout the season.
We bought two hundred pounds of beeswaxfrom Bob Benny, so it's stuff
that we would be purchasing anyway throughoutthe year, but stocking up, you
know, in the long run,I don't know if I'm gonna save money.
Driving across country is a pretty bigexpense. But it's not just about

(12:11):
trying to save money, right,the connections we've met, the relationships we've
been able to build and solidify,that's just as valuable. So if I
were to sit down at the endof the day and do the numbers,
did I save money? Honestly,I don't know. But again, it's
not all about that bottom line ofnumbers. But now as far as like

(12:33):
Brian's saying, the just's easy nukesand everything like that, all the nukes
that I've bought for the last coupleof years, every time that I buy
a nuke, I saved the boxfrom my local producer, so I have
all those in storage. If Ineed to make a split, put it
in a nuke, move to anotheryard. I still have about twenty five

(12:54):
of them out there between the onesI got from all the nukes that I've
already bought. And then I didbuy a couple myself a few years ago,
just a a empty, new emptyjust nuke. So I have enough
for what I need to do nowboxes. I'm still trying to stay somewhere
around twenty five to thirty hives rightnow. I thought about increasing more and

(13:16):
more every year, but with theway my work goes, I can't get
to everything that I need to atthis moment, and I can't make the
same money, I guess with mybedes versus my regular job. So I'm
trying to do everything that I wantto do there before I leave, and
then I'll start trying to increase morecolonies. Once I increase more colonies,

(13:37):
yeah, I'll be having boxes andeverything then, and different equipment that I
need to buy. So I gota question for you, Lee, Was
that just hypothetical? Imagine like moneywasn't an issue if you could buy one
thing at that conference to come homewith, probably something that I don't need
at the moment but I would alwayslike to have. Is just an automatic
uncapper versus Yeah, I got thelittle slide steam oncap right now, so

(14:03):
I'm uncapping one side at a time. It's manual, it does work.
I don't have a problem using it. But hey, if I had a
toy just to want to play with, I'd say like either a license automatic
uncapp or with the extruder underneath,or go with a silver queen. Gotcha,
gotcha. I was drooling over thelicense bottle. Or at the ABF

(14:26):
trade show, I was talking todoctor Peck and the Better Be people.
I love the licensed stainless steel productsand that was one there. It's kind
of kicking the tires on for afuture year investment, you know, definitely
not this year, but possibly inthe future. At this point in our
business, we're looking for ways wecan invest money to save time. It's

(14:50):
just me and Jen. We're FlowerStreet Farm and there's no one else,
so you know, we're doing everything. Where the accountants, where the advertisers,
we do, marketing, we do, we do every thing. And
that's been a huge learning curve forus because we've never been in business before.
We've been in education, both ofus our entire career, so pivoting
from that to a business mindset hasbeen a growth process for us. But

(15:18):
I think we're getting there. We'vedefinitely leaned on this community to help us
grow as a small business and it'sbeen tremendously helpful. From from Cayman Reynolds.
You know, what is it agreat queen's dead mites and good nutrition.
That simple philosophy got me on theroad. He's been kind of a

(15:41):
hub to connecting to other people thathave helped me grow, like Bob Benny
and Gus Mitchell. A lot ofthe content that they've put out has really
pushed my learning as a bee keeper, and it's exposed me to content that
I wouldn't have been exposed to inthe local Colorado area. So I'm tremendously
appreciative of so many people in thiscommunity that have shared their knowledge and helped

(16:08):
us grow. So, getting backto the Bottler, though, we're at
that point where when it's just thetwo of us, if we can spend
money, that's going to help ussave a significant amount of time, that's
going to free us up to doother things. That's going to allow our
business to thrive in other ways.So we actually had a little bit of
a business meeting on the drive over, talking about goals for the year,

(16:32):
talking about products that we wanted toadd to our inventory or dial in a
little bit. It's been really important, you know, it's been really really
vital that we have a good relationshipso we can continue to support each other.
We have different skill sets and Ithink we compliment each other really well.
Yeah, Flower Street Farm wouldn't beanything with if it wasn't the two

(16:55):
of us together. So it's beenreally fun and it's been a lot a
valuable growth for both of us.Got a question for you here. I'd
actually received a text message this morningfrom Mark Andrews at Sara would uh branch
be farm? Brian? I sawa picture of you my friend? Is
that Tucker? Yeah? What doyou think? What did you glean from

(17:19):
her talk? Yeah? Well,it was a great talk. What I
really appreciated about that was, youknow, she had learned a lot of
what she did from Mike Palmer,and I've consumed all the Mike Palmer content
on YouTube. What I really appreciatedabout her talk was how she talked about
what Mike Palmer did and then thethings that she did that was a little

(17:44):
bit different. So that that's thepart that I really got out of.
And I'd have to really go backto my notes to see if there's there's
a couple of little gems in therethat I pulled out, but honestly,
and they're not coming up to mybrain right now. But I did appreciate
how she was like, this ishow Mike does it, and this is
how I do it a little bitdifferently. One thing that struck me was
one picture she had of when shegot started. She had six of those

(18:11):
four way mating nukes on the roofof I guess the house she lived on.
And seeing the footprint that was sosmall and her raising twenty four queens
from that small footprint was really inspiring. So that's something I'm trying to figure
out as I'm going to be raisinga lot of queens this year, is
trying to dial in that system.How do I roll it through and be

(18:33):
consistent throughout the year. Yeah,that was a really good one. The
other two talks at ABF that werereally good were the keynote ones. Frank
Rinkovich was the first one who talkedabout amateurze resistance, and then doctor Ramsey
talked about the trope a lapse mightand the potential and all the work that

(18:56):
he's going into doing and even someof the studies on Veroa where they were
looking at what he called kleptocytosis.So the verroa might creates an egg,
the female foundress verro might lays anegg that's about one third the size of

(19:17):
the mother's body, and they didn'treally understand how an organism can create an
egg that big. So they wentthrough understanding that process. And I won't
try to explain it here because I'msure I'll glean over and miss some really
important parts. But understanding that processthey're hoping can lead to how they can

(19:38):
disrupt the process. So if theycan disrupt how the found just lays eggs,
they can disrupt that reproduction process.And Verro might and what does that
mean for for the trope O laylapsemight as well? Was pretty interesting.
A lot of people own our streams. I mean, they already know who
y'all are and where y'all from andeverything, but they may have some people

(20:00):
in here that don't know exactly wherey'all are coming from. Where are y'all
located? Yeah, So we livein Lakewood, Colorado, west side of
Denver West. Yeah, so it'sa Denver metro area. We run about
fifty colonies right now, and wetry to do diversified income. So we
sell honey, we sell products fromthe hive, I sell education, I

(20:22):
manage people's hives. I do consultation. I have a couple of like annual
management gigs where I support people likethey pay me to raise their bees.
We do a lot of organic gardening. Yeah, we're also under plan Yeah.
Not many people know that part ofour business. We're small lavender farmers
as well, and that was partof the inspiration for our business. We

(20:45):
went out to a town on thewest side of Colorado called Palisade, and
Palisade has a small lavender industry.They're known for their wine, they're known
for their peaches. But one year, I think it was twenty fourteen,
twenty fifteen, Jens us up forlike the lavender tour. So we went
out there and you know, youhop on the bus and you go from
farm to farm, and you seethe lavender fields and you see how they've

(21:08):
got the big stills and they're distillingthe lavender and they get essential oils.
And this was just when I wasgetting into beekeeping and and I looked around
and I went, this is perfectfor beekeeping. So we went home,
we started planting lavender. I boughta still, and you know, as

(21:30):
a teacher, this is actually howI got into bees. You know,
we bought our house, which isin suburban Lakewood. It's like any other
suburban area. We've got almost ahalf an acre. And I started taking
out our lawns. I didn't wantto mow lawns every summer. I did
that in college when I was akid. So I started taking out our
lawn and putting in pollinator plants,drought tolerant pollinator plants. And that's how

(21:55):
I started. Those days are over, Morgan be moonshine. You's all about
a steel and somebody say that ina second too, but like, like,
that's how I got an appreciation forpollinators. So, you know,
putting in pollinator quality plants, creatinga nice zero escape landscape on our property
instead of a lawn. And Ikept buying plants. I had come home

(22:19):
with them and he was so graciousto plant them for me. And butterfly
bushes every I mean rose and roseand rows of lavender. Just love it.
I'd love to sit outside in thelavender's bloomin and have a cup of
coffee and watch the bees, chickens, ducks. I'd love to have a
few sheep. I need a biggerproperty now, Yes, she's like animal

(22:47):
order. We had a question fromd c up here. How did you
to start with the honey bees?Yeah, So the story continues with as
a teacher. I was an elementaryteacher for twenty years. I would call
it kind of an alternative philosophy school. So we had kindergarten all the way
up through twelfth grade. So Iwatched some of my students in elementary go

(23:11):
through graduation. In fact, I'vehad children in my class of some of
my students from my earlier years.So one year there was an email from
a graduate who was going to seeBoulder for entomology, who said, is
there anyone that would like me tocome in and talk about bees? So
I said sure. I sat inthe back of the class. She came

(23:33):
in, and she talked all aboutsolitary bees, and I learned more about
bees in that half an hour thanI had known. And in my brain
I always had that, oh,I should be a beekeeper. I should
be a beekeeper. I should bea beekeeper. But that's what pushed me
over the edge. So that wasin the fall, and I spent the
entire spring kind of researching and gettinginto bees, and I failed pretty miserably.

(23:56):
The first couple of years I wentthe treatment free route, and I
learned really quickly that that was goingto be an unsuccessful route. My second
year, I had big plans.I was going to buy two nukes and
I was going to split them intoincrease. And I bought those two nukes,
and they had bees emerging with deformedwing virus right from the capped frames

(24:18):
of that nuke. So I spentthat summer trying to nurse those bees back
into health. And that was ahuge learning process for me too. That
was part of the I'm not goingto waste my money buying bees from someone
else. I'm going to That's right. I was hooked. You got a
DC. I'm still hooked if youhaven't known, if you haven't noticed.

(24:40):
But that was that, Okay,I'm going to learn how to raise my
own bees. I'm not going togive someone else money to buy buy a
poor product. I'm gonna I'm goingto learn how to become a sustainable beekeeper.
And that's where I started really digginginto, Okay, how can I
how can I get sustainables? SoI went from three hives to nine,
to e eighteen to thirty one,and now we run about fifty colonies and

(25:03):
our products have been a long processtoo. We started just by you know,
making little small batches, buying ourolive oil at cost code because that
was the cheapest place to get oliveoil at that quantity at the time.
And that's just selling to friends andfamily and giving to gifts and that that
was really helpful because that helped usdial in our recipes, dial in our
process, you know, and justkind of get that experience of trying things

(25:27):
out and learning through it. Soit's been a long process to get our
products where we want them to be. We're still not exactly there. I
still want to improve on them everytime. We've got lots of ideas of
how we can get better at whatwe can do. And we definitely you
know, education is huge for us. We spend a lot of time on
Brian go out and work with thefour age kids, you know, just

(25:49):
checking in on their hives, doinginspections with them. We just love to
get out in the community, bringobservation hives with us where we go and
really just let kids get close tobees and ask questions. And I mean
Brian, you know, he justloves that. And when kids come up
and they're like, I just wantto try comb honey. We always have
like the kid discount because discount Yeahyeah, I mean so we're always encouraging

(26:12):
people to ask questions, especially especiallykids, get them interested. That's when
they want to get close to thebugs, the bees. They want to
learn more, and we're just yeah. So I am no longer an elementary
teacher. I am full time asa bee keeper, but I do still
consider myself an educator and always well, I think that's pretty much the heart

(26:34):
of who I am. So I'veparticipated in local bee clubs. I'm now
an advisor for the Colorado State BeekeepingAssociation. I still consider myself a teacher.
I just feel like my students area little bit different now. But
but like Jen said, I loveI like to call them future beekeepers.
You know, the kids that comeup and you can see they're just lit

(26:55):
up with excitement when they see seethe observation hives. You go or do
you guys have bees? Or youbee keeper? And they go no,
And then you go, Okay,you're a future beekeeper and they get that
idea like, oh, I couldbe I really could be a future beekeeper
and that's really exciting for us.Now, Jen, do you get in
the bees too, or do youprefer doing the market side and the products.

(27:19):
So I do do a lot withthe market side and the sales and
the promotions and that kind of stuff, and the picture taking for the website,
and you're just kind of that wholemarketing side of things. I do
a lot with that. I dohave a passion for chickens ducks, so
I mean, I do like thecritters. I do. I'm pushing for

(27:40):
a larger farm, but no,I do. I've always been interested in
bees. I think one thing thatreally just jazz me is when Brian came
home he went and rescued a giant'sform of bubble bees, and that he
got sung. It was merciless,but I just wanted, you know,

(28:02):
to have that little nest come backand live in our and live in our
property. So now I do lovebees. I've always loved pollinators. I've
been planning for pollinators pretty much mywhole life. My family's the same way.
But butterflies, bees, my gosh, I love those fuzzy bumble bees.
So yeah, Brian will tell youabout that that. I think it

(28:22):
was one of our that's a goodstory. So that was an experience.
Colorado State Beekeeping Association has a swarmhotline, so if anybody sees a swarm,
they can call the main dispatcher.That main dispatcher sends it out to
an area dispatcher, and that areadispatcher will send it out to someone like
me and my area dispatcher I knowpretty well. We're friends. In fact,
I saw him at ABF this pastweek. He knows me, he

(28:45):
knows my skill set, so sometimeshe sends me some special products or projects.
So one year he got a coupleof call about bumblebee nests and you
want to you want to rehome abumblebee nest, and me going, I'm
always game to learn something new.I said sure, and I said please.
Yeah, And that first one wasa learning experience. Let me tell

(29:08):
you. First of all, theywere in Both of them were in piles
of grass like lawn clippings that peoplehad just piled up, so the process
of extracting them wasn't that hard.But I went into the first one with
a with a honeybee mindset, whichwas the wrong mindset to have. I
had jeans on, I had myjacket on, I had gloves on,

(29:33):
and I went to start exposing thisnest to put it. I was going
to just put it in a Jesternuke and move it to another location.
Bumblebees react differently to honeybees when youintrude on their house, on their their
cavities. So they went after meand they started pinging me, just like

(29:55):
a honeybee does. Right, theypinged you, and then once they figured
out that that didn't work. Honeybees just keep doing that, right,
bumble bees don't. They were lookingfor anywhere they could sting me, and
they found my ankles. So Igot stung on the ankles like three or
four different times. On that firstone. I had to retreat, go

(30:17):
back to my truck, put ona full beet suit, which I have
a bunch of, yeah, butI never wear. So I had to
tape my ankles and then go backlike I'm going to war. But you
know, on reflection, I lookedat it and I was like, you
know what, that's a really annatural reaction when you're invading on an animal's

(30:37):
where they live. Yeah, honeybees are like the exception. You go
into a honeybee colony and they're like, eh, that's okay, whatever,
do whatever you want. And bumblebees were not like that at all.
So that first one was a learningexperience. So the second one was much
easier because I knew what to expect. So I went in ready for war,
tape myself up, and he didthe second one. And this is
how I know my husband loves meye to come to our house and be

(31:06):
safe. I've heard some people equatebumble bees to like the Africanized honey bees.
They're a little more aggressive than yourstandard honey bees in that place there,
But my interactions with them are onthe flower. You go and you
try to picture of take a pictureof them, and they're really shy.
They just want to fly away.So that's what I was expecting. But

(31:26):
that defensive behavior, I get it. It makes sense, so that was
definitely a learning You get near theirnest, they're going to let you know,
yes, yes, sir, Yeah, Sarah's bumble bees are bigger and
sting more. Mm hmm. Theycan sting repeatedly and and they're happy to
Now you were saying that you're ona list for doing like swarms and stuff

(31:48):
like that. Do you do cutoutsas well? I did one cutout lee
and that cured me of the desireto do any more cutouts. In fact,
it was a downed log in someone'sfront yard. They had a tree
that had fallen down and it hadbees in it. It was just way
too much work for me. I'mnot a construction guy. I don't know

(32:09):
what's behind a wall, so Idon't want to go and cut something out
and make a mess and hit something. It's just not my skill set.
At least. Something he did dothat was really cool is he did go
up to a construction site and tellthem about that. Yeah. So in
Denver there was you know, they'rebuilding condos and there was a swarm that

(32:30):
actually started building comb on the eavesof the condo that was like three stories
up. So they took me upin a scissor jack. I had to
like all these tough construction guys,I'm like, who can go up there
with me? Because I couldn't operatethe jack, but but I could get
the bees. So finally I gotone guy and I had a jacket for

(32:51):
him and he was fine. Butall these tough construction guys are like I
going up there. So it wasfun. You know, it was in
open colony, easy to do andlet me tell you, watching watching videos
from like mister Ed or Randy,it really helped me know exactly what to
do in that situation, just pullingoff one comb one by one, examining

(33:13):
each one, knowing that every timeI would pull off a comb, the
queen would most likely retreat to theback. You know. That's all stuff
that I learned from those videos,not from experience. So it was a
small colony, but I found thequeen because of because of that knowledge base
I had gathered through those videos.And yeah, that was that was fun
one for sure. As far asthe bumblebee, oh, Tom Mike ap

(33:37):
or B's asking, did that colonysurvive? Yeah, so a little bit
about a bumblebee colony. They arekind of like annual colonies, just like
yellow jackets. So they don't overwinter, so they they did survive throughout the
summer. But what they do inthe fall is they'll start making queens.
Those queens will go out and mate, and those mated queens actually hibernate solitarily.

(34:04):
They'll find some sort of cavity ina tree and that nest will die.
So I like to compare bumblebees tokind of like an annual flower,
like a sunflower is going to livefor a year and it's going to die,
but it's going to make all theseseeds that are going to propagate for
the next year. Honeybee colonies arekind of like perennials where it's that same

(34:25):
plant that's growing and kind of goinginto dormancy for the winter and then waking
up again in the spring. Soyellowjacket colonies, bumblebee colonies are kind of
like annual colonies, but they createthat seed in that mated queen in the
fall that will propagate new colonies thatfollowing year. So when you see bumblebees,

(34:47):
or when we see bumblebees in ourarea in the spring, the first
bumblebees you see are those mated queensthat are emerging that are looking to make
a nest to build for the year. And we're fortunate we do have a
lot of bumblebees in our yard aswell. We just have a you know,
our yard is almost completely flowering,you know, to attract all the

(35:13):
pollinators that we can. And ifyou're interested in learning more about bumblebees.
Fantastic book by Dave Gulson called ASting in the Tail t a l E
great book all about bumblebees. Youlearn about his experience, talks about the
commercial bumblebee industry. Fascinating book anda great read, so if you're interested

(35:35):
in that topic, that's a greatone to check out. Now, you
was talking about earlier, As faras how many colonies you were running,
you say, and you got y'allhave right around fifty right now? Correct?
Fifty? Yeah? Yeah? Howmuch I guess expansion are you playing
in because I know you announced lastyear that y'all have a contract with a
solar farm now yeah, and orreplacing hives on them. As far as

(36:00):
production colonies, I'm not sure we'rereally doing much expansion. My big expansion
this year is going to be aroundrunning mating nuke, so creating a system
for selling queens and selling genetics.That's going to be my big expansion this
year. So I'm not necessarily productionhives now. At this point, I
only have ten colonies on that solarfarm contract. I've got ten more in

(36:25):
my backyard that I still need tomove there, but because of the delay
and them getting their site ready,I've had to hold them back and keep
them at my spot. So Imight gain a little bit in production colonies
but I'm also thinking in that yardas one of my mating nukeyards. They
don't care what kind of colonies Iput there. They just want to have
twenty colonies there so they can getthe tax right off. It's fairly isolated

(36:47):
in comparison to my other yards.I'm in a Denver metro area, so
I'm not going to really get isolationfor mating purposes. But as relatively speaking,
that yard does have some isolation incomparison to other ones. So I
can put ten in one spot inthe yard and ten in another, and

(37:12):
they're about a quarter of a mileapart. So that's probably going to be
one of my spots where I geta lot of my queen's mated. Yeah,
that's part of my issue. Asfar as the expansion, which I'm
not looking for a whole lot rightnow, I thought that I was going
to, so I did end uphaving four different bee yards, But with
the way that I work, bythe time I get off of work and

(37:35):
it being dark or almost dark,I don't have time to visit four different
locations trying to take care of allthe bees. Didn't get home take care
of anything that I need just aroundthe house. Itself. So I'm hoping
this month, another week or twowhen our cold weather really hits down here.
I say cold weather in Louisiana.I mean we are going to be
like eighteen degrees I believe Tuesday night, but generally right now, let's see

(38:00):
what do we have. We're atfifty six degrees here right now, so
I mean negative seven. Yeah,our winters here are almost non existent compared
to anybody north of us. Butour cold weather usually hits like the last
week or so of January, firstweek of February. So during that period,

(38:22):
when I know it's nice and coldall my other yards, I am
going to try to move back tomy home yard here. That way,
when I do get off of work, I have time to run all the
way down the line do what Ineed to do. It's right here in
this yard. I'm not having todrive to other locations and spend all that
extra time after working ten or twelvehours a day. Now, you was

(38:44):
talking about production hives, and youwouldn't placing too many here there. What
is i'd say, your average honeyproduction per year? How much honey you
think y'all bring in? That's atough one to answer. Actually, Lee,
We've been growing every year, andevery year we have more. I

(39:05):
would say this year we got aboutfifteen hundred pounds of honey, but I'm
not exactly sure. I'm in aplace where we're trying to bring honey to
the market, and I haven't gottento that point where like we're almost sold
out again. We've got like abucket and a half left from our twenty
twenty three harvests, so I'm tryingto pull honey as quickly as possible in

(39:30):
June so I can put it onthe table to sell out the market.
So I've been like pulling frames asthey get capped off. So when I
go to a colony, I runeight frame boxes. I'll go to a
colony, I'll pull two frames thatare ready to be extracted. I'll replace
them like from every colony until Iget thirty. Because my extractor holds thirty.

(39:52):
I'll run home. I'll spin thosethirty out and then I'll take those
spun frames and repeat that with othercolonies. So I'll pull cap ones and
I'll replace them with those. SoI feel like I'm maximizing my honey by
continually putting in ready to ready toload. Frames like that that are all
wet and ready to go. Buthonestly, I don't spin it out all

(40:14):
one time to be able to belike, look, I've got this many
buckets, I've got this many honey. But there our whole front room was
filter buckets at one point, Yeah, abslowly my house was filling up.
We have a fireplace in our frontroom and it's got like a lower mantle,
and that's where I just put allof our stuff, so all of
our buckets, all of our casesof honey, Like throughout September and October,

(40:37):
it just gets full and full andfull and full, and then it
starts to go down. And Ilove watching it go down in the holiday
season because that means we're selling itall out. But yeah, our small
business consumes our life. So ourgarage, our living room, our kitchen,
everything has has evidence of our smallbusiness throughout our house. I've come

(41:00):
to notice that over most beekeepers,if you look at their home, I
don't think a beekeeper's home is dirty. It might be messy, it might
be stacked up with stuff, butI mean we got so much be equipment,
you got to have room to puteverything. But we keep we seem
to keep it pretty organized and prettyneatly stacked and ready to go for anything

(41:21):
that we're needing. Now, togo back to your question, generally,
Colorado the Denver metro area is notnecessarily a great place to make honey.
We get one flow, it's ait's an okay flow. It's not a
great flow. Comparatively. We've hadgood years, we've had bad years.

(41:42):
I'm happy if I can get toeight frame boxes filled out with honey.
The other thing that's a hard oneto answer that for too, is we're
still building comb you know, soas as I'm putting boxes on colonies ready
to make honey, I'll put acouple of frames that are just foundation in
there. So yeah, you too, Tom saying his barn, bedroom and

(42:06):
basement. I mean even our freezerin our garage, Like we originally got
the freezer and I thought, okay, great, now I'll be able to
buy like you know, like youknow, cuts of meat, different things,
half a cow. Nope, thatwould not be true. You was
talking earlier as far as like yourhistory, what y'all do and where y'all
at that you do be coach,and also, I mean, what what

(42:29):
all does be coaching entail. Itcan be a variety of things based on
what people are interested in. Sometimesit's just a like a one time consultation.
Sometimes it's a regular thing, sopeople call me up and say I
need help with this, and thenI'll go out and I'll give them a
one on one experience. It varies. It seems like a lot of times

(42:52):
people are having to come out tosupport with treatments. They're they're nervous to
treat their bees or oxolic They're uncertain, how do you right? So one
time I got a call from agal who wanted me to help her do
oxalic on all of her colonies.She had the battery, she had the
wand she had the oxalic. Soas I show up, I'm like,
what do you need me for?You have everything you need, and she

(43:13):
just wasn't confident. She'd never doneit before, she wasn't sure about the
battery. So I was like,Okay, here's our goal. We're going
to have an experience and by thetime we're done, you're not going to
need me to do an oxalic treatmentever again, you're going to be able
to do it independently. So sometimesit's that sometimes sometimes people never want to
do that exolic treatment and they wantBrian to come out time and time again,

(43:36):
and that's okay too. Yeah,I have a couple of annual gigs
where I manage their colonies for theentire year. So they just want to
have bees in their backyard and theywant to say that they're supporting bees and
they don't want to have put theenergy into or they can't they don't have
the time to do that, orthey want someone who has the expertise and
can do that for them. Andit's a really lovely exchange or experience.

(44:00):
You know, you get to goout, you get to take care of
bees and you know, really ownthat process and manage it for them.
Other calls are calls of crisis,like my colonies having problems, What do
I do? I've got a coupleof I got one call from a top
bar beekeeper who had all the crosscomb and like, how can I fix

(44:23):
this kind of thing? And it'shelpful for me to have experience with other
types of hives because I've I've comein contact with other types of hives through
that consultation. So I worked witha guy who oh he had a Leans
hive and he had those conversion frameswhere you take a like a Langstroth frame

(44:43):
and turn it sideways and fit itinto a Leans and he wanted to get
those out of his colony to putthe regular Leans frames in there. So
he just wanted help with that.He wanted to see if it was okay
to pull those frames based on whatwas in there. Other times, their
their colonies that are collapsing and lookingsick, and you know, those are

(45:05):
hard conversations to have with people,but they're also big learning moments as well,
because I've had those experiences too.That I had that experience where I
was a treatment free beekeeper in thebeginning of my career, and I had
read about all the evidence you seeif a colony dies from from barroamite infestation,

(45:25):
and I saw that in my beesin a dead out. I saw
the frasts on the side of acell. I saw the bees that were
dying as they were emerging from theirtheir their caped cells. And for me,
that's what it took to get thatunderstanding that I had to manage my
bees a different way. So Itry to try to give them the hard

(45:49):
news gently. I try to givethem my suggestions of what I would do
if this were my colony, thatkind of thing. It varies tremendously based
on what they need. One timeI help the folks just put their package
of bees into a box and thatwas super fun too. On that,
I mean, sometimes it's hard toexplain to especially a newer bee keeper,

(46:12):
if you do sell beds and everythingand you're trying to help somebody out and
you telling them a your colony,they're sick, they're dwindling down, they're
infected, something's gonna happen. Doyou want to buy more beads from me?
And they're like, oh, well, if this person's just trying to
sell me something to make a buck. But I mean, if you can
get in the hive with them andexplain to them and show them whether they

(46:36):
have hive beetles or they have mitesor wax molls, getting in there,
you can show them what the actualactual problems are and they can see for
their self what's going on. ThenI mean they're not going to look at
you saying, oh, they're justtrying to make a quick buck. They're
actually showing me everything that's going onin this colony and lee in those conversations.

(46:57):
I don't bring that fact up inour conversations. If they ask me
about it, I'll tell them,Yeah, I sell bees, and if
your bees die and you need beesnext year, you can buy them from
me. But I try to makethat distinction exactly for that purpose. I'm
there to help these bees. I'mnot here to help I'm not here to
sell you new bees. But Ialso try to be like, look,
if they die, it's not theend of the world. You still have

(47:19):
resources here. This comb this honeyyou have is an asset that's going to
help your your future bees progress somuch quick, much more quickly than starting
off right from fresh. So itis important to make sure that you're showing
that you're there to help them andnot just to sell yourself. That and
then I mean kind of hit ona controversial topic there. A second ago

(47:44):
you was talking about people doing treatmentsand everything. Yeah, some do treatment,
some don't. The way I lookat it, I mean to each
to your own. If you wantto do your bees this way or that
way, that's your decision. Youcan do anything you want with your bees.
I can do anything I want withmy bees. Basically some of them
say that don't treat. Yeah,they may die, but hey, you

(48:06):
can catch more bees later. Someareas are more prone to having swarms in
that area or feral colonies that youare able to catch or trap and so
called trap. But some areas,I mean, you say, suburban areas,
you're not gonna have well suburban versussay a big neighborhood in a city.
Yeah, you're not going to haveas many feral has because you don't

(48:28):
have as many trees in that areafor them to be in. They're going
to be out in the woods inthe country area. Well, I want
to respond to that, we havea lot of bees in the Denver metro
area. We have a lot ofbee trees in the Denver metro area because
there's a lot of large, oldertrees. I'm not sure I would call
those bees feral though, right,because there's so many bees coming into the

(48:52):
state from from beekeepers buying them packagesand nukes, I get a sense that
a lot of those genetics come fromfrom those colonies. Now I've built my
apiary on swarms. That was howI got from three to forty, right,
doing the swarm hotline and being availablefor that every single day has really
helped me grow. But for me, those are unknown genetics. I can

(49:14):
see in an area much more ruralthat you could infer that they might be
feral, But for me, I'mnot sure what that means in a Denver
metro area. And I want toagree with you as well on you know
that treatment versus treatment free, it'sit's context specific. Like we always say,
right, it depends and there's there'sa time and a place for different

(49:37):
management practices. For example, asI'm diving into the VSH world and looking
for my resistance, I can't reallyfind my resistance completely if I'm going to
be treating my bees. So atsome point I'm going to be moving my
best genetics to a yard that's goingto be treatment free and seeing how they

(50:00):
do with that pressure. That ismy ultimate goal. But knowing what's there,
what I have as far as mygenetics, what is around me currently,
it's not a situation where I canbe treatment free because of so many
other bees and unknown management practices aroundme. As far as my area.

(50:23):
Year before last, I had severalswarm traps out and I pretty much caught
one in every one. Now Ihad one trap about three miles down the
road at the cafe wherever they works. I caught three swarms in three weeks
in the exact same trap. I'dcatch a swarm, I'd bring them home,
put them in a ten frame box, put that trap right back there.

(50:45):
Three weeks in a row, Icaught them. This past year,
I did not catch not one actualswarm like that. Yeah. Now,
I did get a call they hadsome in a blueberry bush, and I
got there and brought them here.But other than that, that's the only
thing I called last year. Youknow, my favorite part about interacting with
with things like swarms is the educationpiece. In a metro area you get,

(51:08):
you'll get a crowd sometimes, likewe had one. They knew they
had a bee tree in their frontyard and their bees were swarming, and
they called the swarm hotline and they'relike, Africanized bees are attacking our bees,
Come and help us. And itwas so nice to be able to
go like, no, this isyour bees are doing great, this is

(51:29):
what they're doing. And they calledme back the next week because there was
an after swarm. And they calledme back the next week because there was
an after swarm. So I wonderlywith your swarm trap. Do you do
you think you got a primary andthen a couple secondary swarms from the same
mother colony. It was possible.But all three of them that I called,

(51:52):
I mean, they were decent sizedswarms, which my swarm traps.
I only use a five frame nuke, so I have five deep frame,
and what I generally do, Iput two frames on one side and one
on the other side, and Ileave a space in the middle so that
they can all swarm in and notbe bunched up. Now, the one
frame that is somewhat in the middle, that'll be a com frame of drome

(52:15):
Comb and I'll have my swarm lurein there, whether it be Lemon,
Grasshole or any other swarm spray thatyou can buy. And all three of
them that come into that box,they were about equal size. Generally,
if one colony swarms, you're goingto get that one big swarm to start
with, and then any swarm afterthat is usually smaller. Yes. Absolutely,

(52:37):
Now, like I said that,being in a five frame box,
I'm not going to say there wereno huge swarm, but it did fill
the box up all three times.Yeah, another thing I've learned about catching
swarm again, it's just b biology, you know. As you were talking
through that primary secondary, it mademe think of one swarm call that I
had that was a particularly difficult one. The swarm went on like a chain

(53:01):
link fence, so it wasn't veryhigh covered with like an ivy. I
found a queen, a caged her, but the bees weren't weren't going to
the box like they normally did.And long story short, that swarm had
three different virgin queens in it,and it took that experience for me to

(53:22):
understand that sometimes that happens, andif a swarm's going to behave kind of
erratically, as you catch one ofthose queens, it might mean that they're
choosing a different queen. So thatwas an interesting process for me too.
I got something for you, soI want to appreciate everything you do for
the beekeeping community, and thank youfor helping out with my equipment. If

(53:46):
people don't know, I bought quitea bit of stuff at the bee Expo,
and on the way down to NewOrleans, I stopped at Lee's place
emptied out my truck here so Icould be in Nor Orleans and not have
to worry about anything happening to anyof my stuff in my truck. So
I wanted to get something appreciation foryou. So at ABF I got two

(54:10):
different hats from Hives for Heroes.Oh cool, Which one do you want?
Uh? I don't know, that'sa hard decision. They both look
nice, right, how about thatcamo you got? The camo you got,
And what I would like to dois donate this other one to our
watchers. Hey, that'd be anice little gift. So we're going to

(54:31):
spin a wheel. What kind ofword you want in there for two hashtag
Hives for Heroes. You know,last year I spent a lot of money
appreciating people that had helped me inthe business. So I bought something from
Gus Mitchell. I bought a bunchof shwag from Cayman, that kind of
thing. I bought the Bob Bennyhat, all that kind of stuff.

(54:53):
I ain't really do that much thisyear, but I did want to appreciate
everything that Hives for Heroes does,just by donating some money and just spreading
that love out there. So we'regonna spin the wheel drop that in here.
If y'all put hashtag h four eightthere you go. It's for heroes.

(55:14):
Make it a little bit shorter fory'all to type in there. There
you go, perfect, and thenI'll make sure I send it out.
You'll get that your information to LeeLeo, get it to me, and
we'll make sure we send that outto you. When we get home.
We're going to see how many overthe I'll say that what next minute or
so, We'll give them a chance. Everybody get that in there. Yep,
ye, well we're doing that.Do you want to talk about farmers

(55:36):
markets a little bit? What doyou think I think we can jump on
some farmers' markets or can we askyou some questions? Which one I'll say
farmers market? Right? Oh,yeah, So we do the farmer's market

(55:58):
scene. This past year was thefirst year where we committed to a market
from beginning to end. In thepast, we've done like every other week.
We've done a lot of pop upstuff and that's been a huge learning
process as well. We've had We'vehad hits, we've had misses, and
every year we try to dial itin a little bit better. We have

(56:19):
a couple of rock Star two dayevents that we've put into our calendar every
year. We really like to doDenver Botanic Gardens, so our Botanic Gardens
does events and we really like tocoordinate and partner with them. That was
a big landmark for us. Wewent to that lavender festival Palisade and it
was kind of like a catalyst forthe launching of our business. And the

(56:44):
Denver Botanical Gardens kind of modeled oneof their sites on the lavender industry,
so they created a lavender festival rightthere in the Chatfield part of the Denver
Botanical Gardens. In this past year, no for two years now, we
have been vendors at that fest.So it was so cool to you know,

(57:06):
start off going to a place likethat, walking around and seeing all
the people selling their lavender stuff,and then getting to that place where we
were those people. We got toactualize that dream. Yeah, that was
That was a really big moment forus. We've got Cighter Days in our
town, which is a pretty bigweekend event. It's it's held like a
mile from our house, so wesell the local honey story. It's really

(57:30):
easy to say, yeah, welive a mile from there. Local honey.
If you're looking for local honey,can't get much more local. This
is it that's right. So we'vebeen able to build around some of those
events. Sometimes we pay a lotof money for the registration of these events,
but we've kind of we've sat downand decided what do we want to

(57:50):
get out of those events. Overheadfor an actual store cost a lot of
money, and we understand that,and we also understand that these event organizers
provide a service for us by makingsure there's a lot of people that come
to that market as potential customers.So we feel like doing it right,

(58:10):
we found the right markets that willgive us the best return on that investment
of registration. Now, some peoplewill say, hey, the market's cost
too much in this area or thatarea. Like you say, you got
to weigh what you're paying for yourfees to get into that market versus what
you can actually make. And someof them they might have a higher fee

(58:34):
to get in, but you gotto look at the area and what that
cost is that they're going to bepaying you in return. That's right.
So I've looked at it from apercentage perspective, Right, if that registration
is a certain percentage of the saleswe do that day, if it's fifty
percent of the sales we do thatday. Like if we're paying one hundred
dollars and we only make two hundreddollars, that's not good at all.

(58:58):
But we've created that percentage of thisis what we're going for. So our
fees that we pay may very tremendously. But again, it's not just about
the fee. Is it fifty dollarsa day or two hundred and fifty dollars
a day. It's what percentage ofour sales is that registration piece versus our
sales. And I think one ofthe things that people don't or some people

(59:20):
may not know, is that Denverhas just an amazing history. And actually,
you know, our property, eventhough it's only half an acre,
is zoned to agriculture, and alot of people in our neighborhood still have
horses. I mean, we havethe stock show there, a lot of
people have animals, livestock ladies downthe street. I mean they would raise
like angus calves to sell at stockshow. I mean, so it's an

(59:43):
interesting mix of people. It's notjust a typical suburban like you just like
you live outside of New Orleans,but you're not really New Orleans like people
like you wouldn't say like, oh, we're here out in New Orleans and
people picture, you know, kindof downtown or we're not downtown Denver either.
I mean, but the coolest thingabout Denver is they do run the
stock show. They run the calves, and they run the cows through downtown

(01:00:06):
Denver to get the stock show inour opening week. So there is a
really nice agricultural connection I think withthe Denver metro area that people don't or
may not know about that whole Westernexperience. No, that's nice. Now
I'm how long did it take youout to get here from New Orleans?
Say an Iowa. Yeah, yeah, I'm about an hour from New Orleans,

(01:00:27):
but I'm about ten miles southeast ofbaton Rouge, and where I live
I considered out in the country.I mean, your first time coming here
is almost like you driving in themiddle of nowhere. But then I can
be in bat Rouge in ten minutesNew Orleans and an hour. I got
the smaller little towns. I'm notgoing to say no big cities, but

(01:00:49):
smaller towns around me. I canbe at three different walmarts in fifteen minutes
or less, So I mean I'vegot plenty around here that I can get
to, but yet it's quiet outhere where I live. Yeah, and
that's been a benefit for us toliving in that big Denver metro area.
We have a choice of like thirtydifferent events every weekend that we could choose
to register for. So we dida lot of pound in the pavement kind

(01:01:12):
of learning the scene, go intomarkets when we weren't doing them, think
market, finding the ones that reallymatched our message and our business and the
know your farmer like real and trueauthentic farmers' markets. I wanted to go
back to that Philip Phillips question aswell, but I don't. I don't
know. Do we want to spinthe wheel or do we want to answer

(01:01:34):
that question. We'll bring this questionup. We'll give that wheel just another
second. Fillip RTX honeybees, whatare your plans for selling products early in
spring before your honey crop comes in? Well, so, first of all,
I'm not going to do many eventsearly in the spring. That is
a time that is be keeping heavyin the b yard. So if I

(01:01:55):
can spend more time there, thebetter. Our market season will start mid
May, yeah, towards mid May, So there might be a couple of
weeks where we don't have honey,and we do have a bigger Colorado Beekeeper
where we have a bucket or twofrom in the past just to get started.
But that's my ultimate goal to nothave to do that anymore, to

(01:02:17):
produce enough honey where I can berolling through from year to year to not
have to do that. So wedo from time where we have this one
year from time to time, butI think I bought like four buckets to
start off the season. But that'smy ultimate goal to not have to do
that anymore. Part of our philosophytoo, has not been to has been

(01:02:37):
to not rely just upon honey sales. So we're trying to balance try to
do like fifty percent honey sales withfifty percent other products. So if we
don't have honey, or if wehave very little honey, we still have
some other really cool products for ourcustomers. I've kind of heard both sides

(01:02:57):
that some people I guess considered controversyill buying honey from another producer and then
reselling it. They've got a lotof packaged producers out there, and even
on a small scale, if youhave so many customers that basically want to
get honey from you because of personalrelationships, connections, your area. A

(01:03:21):
lot of people will say, youdon't want to tell nobody that you're out
of honey. It, I guessto a point, looks bad. Oh
I ran out. Well, Imean, the bees only produce so much.
But I would rather tell a customer, hey, I can get some
more honey. I'll have it foryou tomorrow or already have it on hand,
versus telling somebody I'm out. Youtell somebody you out. A lot

(01:03:43):
of times that customers start going tosomebody else that is getting that extra honey
on the outside and say, oh, well they've got it all the time.
I'm going to stick with this person, and then you lose those customers.
Yeah, And for me, it'sreally about honesty and integrity, you
know, just not saying that thisis your honey, but saying no,
this isn't my honey. We ranout, but we got it from a

(01:04:03):
beekeeper that I really value and respectright here in Colorado. We'll have our
honey really soon though. In themeantime, try this. It's really good
too. So I think if you'rehonest with your customer, that's okay.
And sometimes people want to wait theywant to wait, wait for yours and
then you can really talk to themabout when what date we're expecting that.

(01:04:25):
I mean, we don't we don'tdo a lot of markets. I mean
this is our off season. Imean, brand's gearing up to sell some
nukes and then that's kind of whatour focus is on, is making sure
our b's are healthy, getting outthe few quality nukes that we have.
We put out a certain amount thatwe're going to sell. I think we've
got one customer who's a friend ofBrian's around here right now. Oh hey,

(01:04:51):
who's going to get almost all ofthem this year. And that's great
because we want to have just smallquality, very very high quality nukes that
we do sell from that stock thatwe have. Kind of you has overwintered
with us again and again we knowthose they're healthy. So it's just a
time we don't really do very muchnow, Jen, you was talking about

(01:05:13):
when you came in. Brian hadkind of mentioned something about how many chickens
I used to have, and yousay you have chickens too, Yes,
how many do you have? SoI've got eight chickens now, and I've
got five ducks duck eggs are quitepopular in the Denver metro area, and
people can't get them readily, soactually the demand for duck eggs is quite

(01:05:34):
greater than it is for free rangechicken eggs because a lot of people have
chickens out, you know, inthe Denver area. But ducks are special.
They require water, and water isa huge commodity in the Denver area.
I just love them. I'd havemore if I could. I already
talked to Brian about kind of waiting. Maybe get a couple more birds.

(01:05:55):
I'd love to have a Jersey giant. I know there's a few breeds I'd
like to add to the flock,but maybe maybe around like the end of
April. It's really hard, Imean with the chicks trying to raise them,
and when it's so cold. Imean in Denver we have such extreme
weather. It's really hard on them. On the little birds. I can't
get them out there until about Junebecause they get so cold at night.

(01:06:17):
Thinking about maybe mid May, gettinga couple more, I'd love to.
Hey, the more you have,the more they can keep each other warm
too. Like Jack's saying here,he got sixteen up there and they freeze
in today. I believe they're inthe negative temperatures up there where they at.
And yeah, so I asked oneof our kids yesterday, I'm like,
so, how are the chickens andthe ducks and the text I got

(01:06:41):
back as they are miserable cold shivers. I mean, and I've got,
you know, heated water and heatedwaters out there for them. And I
mean they live, they lived thepampered lifestyle. But they're still came back.
Yeah, it's cold. It's coldthese days right now. It's hard
on those. Now. We weretalking about markets two a second ago as
far as selling a bunch, andI guess depending where you are, some

(01:07:05):
people will say, hey, thisis preferred over this. Do y'all do
glass or plastic? Yeah, thosewere questions that we addressed before we even
started selling honey. And as weknew we wanted to sell honey, we
wanted to be sustainable and recycled.Yeah, yeah, and we wanted to
make a really nice looking product.We wanted to make a product that people

(01:07:29):
could buy to use as gifts.So we spent time in stores looking at
honey jars, just in this honeysection, just sitting there looking at the
jars. The labels everything, andfor us, glass was definitely a decision
we wanted to make one of themarkets that we're going to do this year.
You actually have to part of whatthe questions they asked you to even

(01:07:54):
get into the market is all isall of your packaging recyclable? Is everything
compostable? You know? So Imean to actually get into that market,
you have to prove to them,you know that you can. Everything you're
doing has minimal impact to them.And I think there are pros and cons
for each, like plastic versus glass. You know, obviously plastic is easier

(01:08:17):
to ship, it's not going tobreak, it's lighter, But that's shipping
honey is not necessarily a big partof our business model. We're selling the
local honey story. So a lotof times in a market, someone will
be visiting from Wherever, Illinois visitingsomeone in Denver, and they'll be like,
oh, do you ship this back? And I say yes, but

(01:08:38):
but find a local beekeeper. I'msure there's local beekeepers doing that kind of
stuff in your area. To goto the local market, support your local
beekeeper. So we will ship honey, we will ship glass, but it's
a pain. We've taken our lumps. We've definitely sent stuff that has arrived
broken, but we've tried to getbetter at it, and I think we've
dialed it in pretty well. We'vealso thought about sizes too. We used

(01:09:01):
to do two different sizes regularly,and as we got into more and more
different varieties of honey, that becameharder and harder to do to have a
small and a large of every singletype. So we still do the eight
ounce for some special things like holidaygift sets that kind of stuff, but

(01:09:23):
most of the time we're putting allof our honey in a twelve ounce X
jar. It's easier for us,it's more efficient, and I think it's
just the right size for folks.It does really well. Yeah, whenever
I first started the market here inmy area, I was offering three different
sizes. I had eight ounce,twelve ounce, and sixteen ounce, and

(01:09:44):
everything was a class. Yeah,and the majority, I'd say ninety percent
of my sales were sixteen ounce here, so I would sell a little bit
more of the twelve ounce versus eight. So I kind of done away with
my eight ounce jars and just hadtwelve and sixteen. And then it seemed
like more and more people started buyingjust a sixteen ounce then, and not

(01:10:05):
the twelve anymore. So I'd doneaway with them, so I went to
straight sixteen ounce everything. Well,I had all glass, and some people
was asking me, well, doyou have plastic? We would like a
squeeze bottle. Yeah, And Ifound a lot of it was the older
people wanted that squeeze bottle. Thatway, they wouldn't trying to prior lyet
off of it, scoop everything out, make a mess, so they wanted

(01:10:27):
the squeeze bottle. So I endedup doing like half plastic, half class.
And then I've kind of found afterI got the plastic, everybody wanted
to squeeze versus class. Myself,I prefer glass, but with what the
customers were wanting, I wouldn't sellin much glass anymore. So I went
to all squeeze now. And that'swhat's great about markets. Every event is

(01:10:48):
a little bit of like product research. You get a sense of what the
people really want and you can dialit in and adjust. You get that
immediate feedback. And it's not juston packaging types, it's on your as
well. But I also want tosay, you've got to give your products
a chance. There are times wherewe'll put, well, we have five
different savs that we make, andand there's one that for a while I

(01:11:12):
was considering stopping making because it justyou put it on the table and it
didn't sell, and then you'd hita month where you just sell a ton
of them. So your products kindof go in waves seasons. Yeah,
we've learned that as well. Someproducts do better during certain seasons. Breeze
wax candles don't sell so great inJuly just because it's so darn hot and

(01:11:33):
people aren't thinking of burning candles inthere in their house. But once September
hits and things start to cool down, then our candle sales really take off.
We had a hard time keeping upon making our candles for every single
market, So I know the marketscene is a lot of work. There's

(01:11:53):
Blainey. I know Blaine does themarket scene as well. I had a
very close total sales between my largestsize and my smallest size is one point
five down eight ounces. Yeah,so again he's reading that that feedback he
gets from his customers. That's whatI was doing. Because my credit card
reader I had, I could programin all my inventory, all my different
sizes, and I even had itdown to where I used to keep my

(01:12:15):
spring honey and my fallow honey separate. That way, I'd have some really
light, clear honey on the tableand then really like our really dark honey,
and everybody's like, well, Ithought it was just honey. I
didn't know they had different colors.I said, it depends on the year.
And I would have like a squeezebottle there a sample of each one
and let let them have a sample. And some of them like the sweeter,

(01:12:36):
some of them like that more boldflavor. They used to say,
strong going, and it would lethim know, well, you've got different
flora that's coming in at different timesof the year, and everything's going to
be different. And one thing that'sinteresting about Colorado Leam wanted to share this
with you, and why we doa lot of glass is because our honey

(01:12:58):
crystallizes very quickly, very very quickly, So we do a lot of creamed
honeys to kind of manage that process, and we light the glass because then
people can go ahead. We puta little sticker on our honey which lets
them know how to go ahead andput it in a double boiler and re
liquefy because it could be like aweek and that honey could be pretty chunky.
Some of ours will do that.Between the tallow and the privet,

(01:13:23):
those two I find crystallizes faster thanour golden rod. And like you say,
I do prefer it in the glassbecause when it does crystallize, I
can put that into a warm potof water or a double bowl or anything
like that and liquified faster versus glassor plastic. Now, I've heard some
people taking the plastic bottles in actuallyputting it in the dishwasher and just that

(01:13:46):
warm water running over it constantly helpsreliquify it better as far as as far
as using it with plastic. Interesting, I mean, we have gone ahead
and we turn your oven off andput the glass jards inside the oven and
just kind of let it come toroom temperature. And that's another way that
sometimes we'll reliquify. Little tips andtricks. Now, Paul Hale and Baton

(01:14:06):
Rouge Hale hives he said that he'sput his in the oven before on a
tree and just turned the light oninside of it. I didn't realize that
the light by itself would I guessproduce that amount of heat to help liquefy
your honey. But I mean itwould be worth a try. I just
haven't done it yet. And Iwant to add two going back to the

(01:14:27):
market scene, it is a tonof work, and it's the weekends and
you're spending all day in a parkinglot or a street that's been closed down.
And some people look at that andthey say, I don't want to
do that, And I totally understandthat the time that we put into it,
and I'm also in that place whereI can maybe see moving on from

(01:14:49):
that kind of selling to other situations. But doing the market has been essential
for us and learning about our customersand what they want and being exposed to
opportunity. We've gotten so many greatopportunities by interacting with the public at the
market that we never would have had. That solar farm gig that we got

(01:15:14):
was from a market interaction. Alady bought our hot honey, and then
two months later, this lady whoworks for a solar company needed a beekeeper
and pulled out my honey from ourcabinet, looked at my phone number and
called me up. And that ledto our contract where we're putting colonies on

(01:15:35):
that solar farm. So little thingslike that have really really helped us push
our business forward. And Lee,how much time do we have before we're
going to run our little contest here? Oh, that's what I'm looking at
just second ago. I think we'vegot thirty six in there for the hat.

(01:15:55):
I think we can go ahead anddo the draw, and now let's
see who wins and Jack Jack,that'd be Jack and to Nay Yeah.
Yeah. So they live in Wyoming, not too far from us. They
purchased twenty nukes from us this spring, So thank first of all, thank

(01:16:17):
you very much. That made mynuke selling for the spring a whole lot
easier. All right, Lee,it's your turn, my turn, huh.
All right? So we all knowLee. We all know he's most
comfortable behind the scenes, and Iappreciate that. I think, well,
not everybody wants to look at thisall the time though, so that's why

(01:16:38):
I like staying behind. But Iwanted to push Lee out of his comfort
zone a little bit and interview him. So I have a couple of questions
Fly just to learn a bit alittle bit. Now, I know you're
what I call a covid beekeeper.Right during the pandemic. You got the
bug. You went to thirty hivesreally quickly. Yeah, you started doing

(01:16:59):
the market scene really quickly. Ihad well a guy that I was working
with, and like most any otherbeekeeper, he's none stop talking about bees,
and he kept on talking and talkingat working. I finally said,
you know what, I'm going toget one to hive and try it out.
So I'd bought a swarm from aguy he'd called a swarm and had

(01:17:19):
him for I don't know a weekor two. Anyway, somebody gave me
his number. I contacted him andI brought got him here to the house,
and it was just like an instantaddiction. Which I wouldn't working.
I was working at the time,but I wouldn't work in the schedule that
I have been the past year ortwo. So I had more time to
go out there and do stuff,and I just wanted more. I think

(01:17:40):
he probably needed to go to thatmarket scene to support that habit right pretty
much the market, I mean,I make a little money down there at
it, which I hadn't been tothe market. This coming to february'll be
a year since I've been to themarket myself. But I still have two
of the local market or well,I have one local market and then a
market about forty five minutes north ofme that still buy my honey from me

(01:18:00):
and then they resell it and thento local stores. So it does still
bring in a little bit of cash. Help do this do that? But
I have to say, if itwouldn't for being a crane operator, yeah,
I probably wouldn't have what I havejust off of my honey sales.
Now we live in Colorado and itis so dry there. We do not

(01:18:21):
have high beetle issues, but asas I come in contact with so many
other beekeepers across the country, hivebeetles are a huge, huge pest issue
for management. You don't seem totalk about hive beetle issues, but I
look around this area and it seemsto be a place where hive beetles would

(01:18:43):
thrive. Do you have hive beetleissues? And how do you manage that?
If you do? We do havehave beetle here in South Louisiana and
pretty bad too. Now, oursoul is a lot softer. It's easier
for him to burrow into a pewpay and come back out. And I'd
say kind of a swampy area.Now we do have the might issue here

(01:19:08):
too, vera mite. I don'thave as much issue with verroa as I
do hive beetle. But what Ido if I'm gonna have a couple of
rainy days in a row, orduring the wintertime, when it's cold and
rainy, and I know the beadsain't out flying whether it's cold and rainy
or just rainy, I buy atrias a side. It's a granule powder

(01:19:28):
from I get it from home depot. Basically it's supposed to kill like one
hundred and something different insects in theground. It's just a granule you spread
out. So my hive stands Iuse twelve foot four by fours, So
basically my stands are twelve foot wide. I cover the width of the stands
and then twelve foot out the frontback well twelve foot total, so it

(01:19:49):
sticks out the back six out thefront end. I'll lay them on granules
on the ground so that any highbeetle once they lay eggs, larva comes
out and they try to drop intothe ground. Is basic instant death for
them. What about management practices insidethe hive, I've used what's the little
beetle jails or whatever, the longones that fit down between you frames,

(01:20:12):
and what's your opinion of them.I hadn't had much luck with those myself.
I find that the beads just theywant approprialized the little holes in it,
and I've called two or three beetlesin them, but that's about it.
But just treating the ground I findhas helped my issue. What about
those bottom boards with the oil trays. Have you had any experience with those?

(01:20:33):
I haven't tried any of the oldtrees or screen bottom boards. All
my bottoms are solid. Okay,all right, Next question. I have
back issues too. You've talked abouthow you have scoliosis. You know,
my back and neck issues have beena defining part in the latter part of
my life, and its kind ofguided how I manage bees. How have

(01:20:57):
your back issues guided how you mayFor the most part my back, I
can pick up certain things, butwhen I get into the heavier weights are
even medium weights that are repeated,I do start hurting. So instead of
going with deep supers, all mysupers are mediums. That way, I
have basically half or maybe even alittle bit less than half the weight of

(01:21:19):
a full deep. Now I dohave to do more lifting with the mediums
versus I might have to lift twoor three mediums to equal one deep.
So I'm going to do more multiplelifting, but it's a lighter weight at
a time. You do ten frame, Yeah, everything I have is ten
frame except for my swarm traps andmy love five frame news. Do you

(01:21:42):
have any long leges? I havea long lane from Ricky rourc of horizontal
bees. I have one of them, and I can split that hive anywhere
from thirty or thirty two frames whiledown to three ten frame deeps. I
can drop the board in and makesix five frame nukes, or break it
all the way down to twelve twoframe mating nukes. And I've yet to

(01:22:08):
break it down to the full twelveframe or twelve two frame nukes, but
I do the six frames, andthat's generally what I'll make a split into,
drop some eggs, and just basicallywalk away split. Gotcha, all
right? Next question hypothetical. Ifyou could keep bees anywhere but here where
would you like to keep bees justin the past while doing the different things

(01:22:30):
I'd like to try to do.I've been thinking about either Arkansas or Tennessee.
If I had extra time off ofwork and wouldn't busy with bees.
They got plenty of rock climbing inthem areas, so I could go play
in my rocks. I can comeback and play with my bees. Yeah.
Sometimes if you think about like NorthCarolina something like that, I could

(01:22:53):
access the ocean, still live inthe mountains, kind of have it all
a little bit of property, acouple of sheep. We've gotten to the
point in our lives where we've thoughtabout where will we move to next.
Jen's parents are getting a little older. We know at some point they're going
to need our help. They've beentremendously helpful for us as we raised our

(01:23:15):
family, so we know that atsome point we'll probably end up sometime back
east. So every time I goand visit a place, I always have
that lens of what would it belike to be a beekeeper here? How
would our business model fit into thissituation, and and how how would a
different business model kind of fit thatsituation better. So that's something we always

(01:23:40):
like to kind of think about asa little thought exercise. All right,
last one, totally personal, nothingabout bees. I love tattoos, and
I love the artwork of tattoos.And we had a great little tattoo conversation
the other day. Do you careto share a favorite tattoo of yours?
Oh? It pa sounds a littlebit morbid, but I have a grim

(01:24:02):
reaper on my arm. And everybodyasked me why a grim reaper? I
say that death is coming for allof us, no matter what we do.
The moment you're born, you startto die. So you can't be
afraid of it. Now. Itdon't matter how how healthy you eat,
how much you exercise. It's gonnahappen to all of us sooner or later,

(01:24:27):
so embrace it and enjoyed life.Why we have it? That's perfectly
said. And that matches my favoritetattoo as well, And if you don't
mind it, actually like to shareit. Yeah, but very similar in
theme. This is our wedding photo, so we have it in phil agree

(01:24:47):
because I love the philligree just likeour logo. So the day of the
dead kind of theme, because untildeath do we part? And I told
them that you afterward did I'm stillgonna haunt that man? So so yeah,
there we go, little tattoo allright, well, thanks so much

(01:25:09):
for showing that personal piece of you. I know that's not your comfort zone.
We love what you do for thebeekeeping community. You have helped bring
so many of us together, andit doesn't take someone putting their personality out
there to create communities. So again, we appreciate so much everything that you've
done. So proud and honored tobe in the famous Cody act Be Studio.

(01:25:32):
I don't know if I'll ever geta chance to come down here again,
so I wanted to make sure Itook this opportunity to really get a
chance to visit you right here whereyou live. Much appreciate everything you do.
I greatly appreciate y'all coming by.I appreciate everybody coming into the chats
here. And I want to makea mention of a couple names here that

(01:25:54):
helped support the channel as members tomake stuff like this possible, and that's
Philip K of thirty three Mile Bees, James Nole and Flip with Honeystone Farm.
I want to thank y'all and hopefullywe can do some more stuff like
this again. I got a coupleof other names kind of in my mind
that I'd like to contact and seeif I can get them in here,

(01:26:16):
if they're willing to drive out hereand do this with us, it's a
beautiful studio. I mean, you'regood people. Thank you for having us,
Thank you, Thank you everyone forcoming to listen to us, Thanks
for listening to our story. Hopeyou get something out of it. And
I hope everybody out there has agood day, safe travels. I know
Brian and Jim they got about anineteen hour drive back home from my house

(01:26:40):
here and Brian's like, why'd youremind me? But I hope they have
a safe travel getting back home,and hopefully we'll catch y'all on next one.
Y'all have a good day. Thankyou,

All Episodes

EP-3 Interview with Flower Street Farm Bees | KODIAK FARM BEES

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

Cardiac Cowboys

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}EP-3 Interview with Flower Street Farm Bees | KODIAK FARM BEES