Shaun Newman Podcast - #1099 - Tim Bartel

Episode Date: July 27, 2026

Tim Bartel is a multi-generational beekeeper and part-owner of Bartel Honey Farms in Kleefeld, Manitoba, a commercial operation running roughly 1,500 hives focused on honey production and the import of package bees and queens.Cornerstone Forum 26’https://shaunnewmanpodcast.substack.com/Silver Gold Bull Links:Website: https://silvergoldbull.ca/Email: [e-mail] Grahame: [phone]Bow Valley Credit UnionBitcoin: www.bowvalleycu.com/en/personal/investing-wealth/bitcoin-gatewayEmail: [e-mail] Get your voice heard: Text Shaun 587-217-8500

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This is James Lindsay. This is Vance Crow and you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast, folks. Happy Monday. How's everybody doing today? As I record this, I'm absolutely sweating my bag off. It is, it's hot. And we are at Winnipeg Beach now.

So just north of Winnipeg. at a beautiful campground, provincial campground. And it has been good. Manitoba's been good. And I just want to say, you know, when it comes to silver gold bull, yes, although they're Alberta-based, all my Manitoba listeners out there, you're looking for little precious metals. Why not?

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Both those companies are teaming up again to help bring the cornerstone forum back to Calgary, Alberta, May 15th, 2027. And man, what is going on to the left of me right now? There is a Bronco, okay, like the new version of the Bronco with a tent right on the top of it. Never seen that before. This life on the road is right now, folks. And I want to give a shout-out to Peter Moran and his family. We went to church with him Sunday morning, got to be there when his daughter was getting baptized. So, you know, it's a pretty cool community that we have. Zane Southgate was out in Winnipeg. He drove 12 hours one way to come do some work on the vehicle. Then he stopped back at Jim Sinclair's. And the last time I talked to him, him and Jim were having

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Both of them have been guests to the show, Robert Roswell, the boatmaker from down in, well, now in Florida. They ran into each other at the Red Deer Air Show. So it seems like the entire community is running into each other right now, and I love it. Keep sending the pictures, keep sending the stories. And if you're looking for precious metals, obviously silver gold bull if you're looking for a bank an independent bank you know doing some cool

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Now, I'm going to talk about Lloyd Minster's Windsor Plywood, but I've been running into tons of people. Tews gave me a story about using Windsor Plywood Wood. Jamie Sinclair now in Regina Beach is the latest one. I'm sure there's a whole bunch of other Windsor Plywood stories. And the reason that is is because when it comes to not only character wood, but character people, it seems Windsor Plywood has them in stock. So whether you're talking about mantles, decks, windows, doors, sheds,

you know, Jamie's got his concert. coming up you're talking about stage and lighting and putting stuff up the wood for it is sitting in windsor plywood so if you're in lloydminster 3605 51st ave and say hi to carly and team there okay now substack if you haven't been paying attention lots of things going on there we got the week in review we've got tanner nadee's uh master class talking about the life of paul episode two now out so if you want to get a you know go listen to tanner talk about my favorite guy from the bible I mean, minus Jesus himself, is Paul. And it's for paid members.

So all you've got to do is, you know, head there. And you can check that out. You can also just become a free member, sorry, and make sure you don't miss out on any of the notes or any of the updates from the trip. That's where I've been posting them. You may have seen on Instagram and Facebook, I'm sorry, guys. I just started this past week.

I got them all uploaded. All the days are there, and we'll be uploading every night to Instagram, which will go over to Facebook. and so everybody can see where we're at. Today, Winnipeg Beach, and tomorrow morning on Tuesday, we head to the other side to Grand Beach. So we're up in Winnipeg area right now, Manitoba. It's been a ton of fun. It is humid, all right, humid.

And if you're listening or watching on, and that would be my son, yes, I'm recording this in the vehicle. If you're listening or watching on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, Rumble, X, Facebook, substack. Make sure to subscribe. Make sure to leave a review. Make sure to share with a friend. you're enjoying the show, okay? Now, let's get on to that tale of the tape. Today's guest is a third generation bee farmer. I'm talking about Tim Bartel. So buckle up. Here we go. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Today I'm chipping with Tim Bartel. So,

sir, thanks for doing this. Anytime. Now, Tim, I, Peter knows this. He's sitting off to our left. are Tim's right? I've been searching for a beekeeper for a very long time. So to come through the land of milk and honey, it just seems fitting to, you know, finally be on your beautiful property and get to talk to you. First off, thanks for doing this. Like I said, any time, although that's probably not true.

I'm not much of an interviewer. Well, we'll see you about that. I guess first for the listener or the audience, just tell us a little bit about yourself. You know, I don't know, as far back as you want to go. But who is Tim? Tell us a little bit about yourself. I'm a busy to the apartment. I grew up in a Christian home and a Christian and a beekeeping home. So I'm a third generation beekeeper, actually.

My grandfather was a pastor. My dad was a principal. And I'm busy. That's it for me. I got into beekeeping so I could actually fight fires. You got into beekeeping so you could fight fires? Is that what you just said? Yeah.

What do you mean? Well, before I was, when I was working, I was always gone, either on the road or roofing or whatever. And I wanted to help and assist people. And I had an opportunity to become part of the fire department here in Cleveland. So I got into beekeeping or again. got back into the business so I could have more time and be home so I could actually be with the fire department. No kidding.

Yep. Okay. So bees have been in your life since you were born, correct? Right. My dad quit for a little while, but he got right back into it. He tricked my mom to getting back into it. Before we get into bees, this area, Manitoba, we're just, are we south? Southeastern Manitoba, they call it.

Yeah, just south of Cleefeld. I'll say, I'll pronounce it right for the podcast. I've been pronouncing it wrong for probably two years now. But just south of Clefeld, what is it about this area? You know, like, it's a pretty cool little area, I might add. You know, the roads are Manitoba roads. Yes, yeah. But other than that, like, it seems like every house I come upon is well-kept, well-built.

Maybe I'm wrong on that. It just doesn't seem, you know, you get into some small town Saskatchewan where I'm originally from. And there's a lot of poorly built, poorly kept places. And I just haven't seen that in this area. Everywhere I go, it seems like it's a brand-new house. The yards kept well. You know, like I was chuckling with Peter when we walked in. You got a full-on slide running right now, a little pool and everything else.

It just seems like, what is it about this area and people taking care of their stuff, I guess? Or is it just my eyes deceiving me? I have no idea what it would be. Some of the other is our men night background typically is just work, work, you know. And whatever we do is just work and accountability for your own actions and get to work. Typically, I think, I don't know if that's necessarily all of it, but we just like to work. Could you tell me a little bit about Mennonite? I guess I just don't know a whole lot about it.

So, Klieppel was actually the first Mennonite settlement in Manitoba. So at that point in time, it was called Klippel, which is the name, that is you of another area that we came from in Russia at the time. So in 1874, the Mennonites came out here. We're granted land, and we picked the best swamp land we could find. Because the, well, the Garmai gave us a swamp land because they knew the Mennonites liked to work, and they would drain the land to make it prosperous. And they did.

So we moved out here, and some of us just haven't left. When you talk about the Mennonites moving from Russia, is there anything in the history of that moving to Manitoba, why they left Russia. Is that anything that your family knows anything about? Or you talk to your, you know, whether it was your grandfather or anything like that? My grandfather didn't talk about much, but obviously they came. My grandfather was one of the earliest, came from the earliest Mennonites,

but my grandmother came from, the Mennonites came after in, what was the, I think they, in the 30s. At 39, whatever it was just, they were here because they were here because they're Russian. The unrest in Russia and I think the initial batch of menace came because they weren't offered everything that had been promised by the government. And they were promised stuff here, so they moved to Canada. That's a really short and probably wrong version. We have a lot of men in history, but I don't know at all. In the history of going back to Russia then, when do bees enter the equation? Is it after you draw, like you talk about draining the swamp, the men andites are hard workers, they come here, they drain the swamp.

Did they bring the bees with them, or is that something they stumbled into at some point? I would guess it would be stumbled into. I mean, there were beekeepers in Russia, too. There still are, lots of them. In fact, a lot of them are coming over here now, Russian Germans. They come out here, and a lot of them are beekeepers. But, no, it was basically something. One of the people that settled here,

they weren't beekeepers right from the start. Everybody had an old little farm, right? Everybody had one cow or a pig or sheep or whatever, and that's how we existed. But then someone brought up the idea of beekeeping, and it kind of transferred. Okay, so tell me then the first lesson you learned as a kid with bees, because I grew up on a mixed farm,

so cattle, chickens, a few other animals for sure, but lots of grain as well. Never bees. Like, we never had anything to do with bees. So growing up on a bee farm, what's the first lesson you learn as a kid? Bees hurt. But you get over it? And so, like, was there any, you know, like, I guess I just come from a place where we go by the honey. But, you know, like, I always chuckle at the, I don't know, maybe the city folk that goes in and buys a,

steak but has no idea where that comes from or how anything that's done i'm the moron when it comes to honey i love it but i just don't understand i get the general gist i guess but you know like is it um one season is it multiple seasons of harvest is there you know can you just walk me through um a typical year in bee farming yeah well we winter our bees so all of our bees are wintered and we winter them inside. We've some winter outside. We've done some wintering outside as well, which also works. But inside seems to be more consistently controlled weather-wise and temperature-wise and humidity

and that kind of thing. And so for wintering of bees, when does that start? They'll start. Well, usually we move them in by Halloween. It's typically when we move them in. So, but they're being fed up right through as soon as the honey comes off. in early September, the rest of the honey. We usually take about three rounds of, two to three, three or four rounds of honey off.

That means we put the bees up. Let's see if start in the middle, well, it's hard to start anywhere. So once the honey is off and completed and extracted, then we feed the bees up with a sugar syrup. Because a lot of the honey is actually that they will store in hive. It's not good for the bees themselves. They won't do well. In fact, they'll die on that through winter.

But if it's wildflower, it's good, but if it's a canola honey, they won't survive with that through the winter. So we feed them up a sugar syrup and then tucked them in bed and put them inside, and they, they don't go dormant. They keep moving around in the hive. And then about mid to end of January, they start brooding up again, whereas they start raising young. And at that point in time, even though the honey house, we keep the honey house, at that point in time, the wintering room, at about 4 to 5 degrees Celsius. And it doesn't matter, even if it's minus 30 or 40 outside, they will keep the temperature up there, up at 4 degrees,

even though we change the air every 30 minutes. So they will continue to raise the temperature up in that, keep the temperature about 4 degrees. And come January, they will actually increase the heat in the center of the hive to 30 degrees Celsius so that they can raise the young. 30 degrees That's a lot Bees do this

You're saying they move around Just enough to keep it at four degrees Yep And then when they're ready to roll Yeah About 30 degrees is a little high actually But they will increase the temperature To where they can start raising brood

But So the core temperature of the high will be On the actual building itself then Is it just a structure To keep them out of the elements Or do you actually You know You're changing out the air

Are you heating the building then too? No We don't heat it. Don't heat it. No. The bees create their own heat by movement. Right. The bees are incredible furnace, actually.

How many bees are we talking? How many bees do you have on this farm? Well, we typically run about between 1,500 hives. And a hive would be one hive body would be one brood chamber, which is the bottom blocks, as you'll see. And early on in the season, there'll be about 10,000 bees in there. A typical A

relative medium-sized hive would be about 10 to 15,000 bees and they will increase that number in summertime

to anywhere between 50 to 100,000 bees. So at the height you have a am I doing my math correct?

Do you have close to a million bees here? Way more than a million. Way more than a million. Well, a million bees, let's say 100,000, 50 to 100,000

bees in a hive and then times 1500. I don't know what the math is there either. I know the basic math. I don't know how many zeros it is. How many ends that, Peter? Peter's, he's got his calculator out. 150 million? If there's 100,000 and a hive, then he gets 1,500 million. Yeah. 150. Oh, okay. Then the next dumb question becomes, once you put those hives out, how much land is it needed to allow fees to do their thing at that high a number? It totally depends on the floral source.

Like a clover source, you can put down many yards. A yard typically for us is 32 hives in one location. And in a canola field, you know, 100, 150, 160 acres, we'll put down 32 hives. But in a clover field, that size, we could put, you know, two to three yards in there. Two yards are sure. So it's just the product. And it's just the, the, the, the, the, material they're interacting with.

I actually don't know how to say that correctly. But like, so when it's clover, it just has a more... There's more prolific nectar within the plant. Within the plant, which allows more bees to be on it. Whereas if a canola field, it's less. Yep. Right. So when they pollinate for pollination in Alberta,

they do a lot of pollination in Alberta. There they want one hive per acre. But then the bees go backwards as far as honey production goes. They won't produce a lot of honey. but can you explain that say that again Alberta only wants one hive well in when they're doing pollination seed there are beekeepers who will actually have contracts for pollinating the canola the seed canola right so a farmer will pay you to put bees on his in Alberta that's what they do yeah the contract out yeah and it's 150 to 200 dollars a hive probably now

that they contract you, put that hive into their field. And then what is it due to the crop? Well, it pollinates the actual, pollinates the canola. And by pollinating the canola, what happens? Well, that's the only way to get seed production is if it's pollinated, right?

So, it's biology basically 101, you know. I didn't take biology either, but I learned it in the bees. I guess, I just growing up, it's funny, we had canola fields. Yeah. I just don't recall ever paying a bee farmer to bring his bees out and pollinate the field. No.

I don't recall that. No, and that's because most of the time out here we certainly wouldn't. What we do here is we will, the farmers now are actually wanting our bees in their crop because of pollination. They're basically when to pollinated, the canola is, but the pollination is improved if there are bees in there. So we will, it's a good, you know, working relationship. We bring the bees, put them in their yards, in their fields, and then at the end of the season, we will bring them a case of honey for it. That's cool.

I guess that's interesting because I just didn't grow up. I'm sure there are farmers that are doing it. Yeah. I just growing up, we didn't do that. No, no, no. And like I say, 99% of it is not done that way. The honey producing areas, like in Alberta, there's a lot of just honey production as well. will they do what we do?

But when they run into seed, seed farmers, they will contract beekeepers to put the bees in there. You think if you're a grain farmer, you'd be inclined or should be talking to your local bee rep and be like, hey, you should be putting some bees around here because it'll help my crops. And obviously you get the added benefit of having the land to use.

Right. And yeah, and that's what's happening now. Like it used to be there was a little more antagonistic towards bees because we would mowed out, you know, not mowed on the crop. To put the bees in, we would hack out a spot to put the bees in, right? And then there was a bit of almost an irritant toward the farmers. But the younger farmers, you know, have come up.

A lot of them going through university and stuff like that, through agronomics and they learn what bees actually do. So now they actually call them want our bees in their crop. When you say the old farmers, get annoyed because you hack down their crops. So in a field of canola, we're going to stick with canola. Do they have to have a certain area around their hive that has nothing, I don't know, is it just like grass or you just have to have no crop there so they can find the hive?

Or when you say hack down, what do you mean? No, we, and tend up, I mean, anytime we, because we're running it with forklis, but even when we weren't running with porkless, we would actually mow out the section where it would little section. Sounds bad. because any apartment it was a section is a big piece of land. So just a small

portion of the, you know, where we put the bees down, we'll mow it down so we don't trip on the crop and yes, it's so that the bees could actually get in the door. Otherwise, in the heat that we have here,

it will just, it causes him to want to swarm too often, which is basically just getting up and leaving. Fair, okay. So do I, so you got like,

1,500 hives that you winter here. Right. October, they're being put in a building to keep them out of the, you know, essentially the wind and the snow and everything like that. Right. Through the winter, you change the air through the circulation there. Yep. Why do you have to change the air circulate?

Why can't they? Not that you want them to have no air to circulation, but why is air circulation matter? Just because it has, otherwise, they would overheat in there. so they need to be able to keep cool. They would suffocate eventually. And there's CO2 carbon monoxide, whatever it is. There's many gases that they end up building up through the road.

So you have to circulate it for the bees. Yeah, we have to circulate the air for the bees. And so through the wintertime then, they're in a building, all these hives, start of January. They start to take it from four degrees to where that building is pretty darn warm then. Yeah, it starts warming up pretty quick, yeah. And then overhead fans going pretty steady. and then we just bring the speed up.

Do you ever just bring people out that have no idea about bees and they walk in that room and they're like, this is nuts? No. Nobody wants to be in that room. Why? Because there's bees in there. When you walk in, they'd be all over you?

Is what you mean? No, no, no, no. They're not all over you, but some people would think they would be, right? So when you have that many hives in one location there, it's like a scary movie. Oh. I would think stepping through that door in the dark days of COVID of January when it's just cold and dark and it's freezing outside

and there's snow everywhere you walk in and you're like what is going on here? How much heat you pumping in here? Oh, nah, it's the bees. What do you mean it's the bees? They're just admitting that much heat and they're ramping up because they're going to have their young and everything else and they need it warm.

Yep. Like that is, I don't know, that's cool. That's really cool. It is. That's right. To me, it's still the coolest farming in the world, but it's a learning process. The more I know about bees, the more I realize how little I know about them. So every year you're picking up something new.

Yep. What was the latest thing you learned about a bee then, that you're like, huh? I can't believe I didn't see this before. I think one of the coolest things I learned, because I haven't been into the bees myself for a while because of my vision. I have one of the coolest things I did recognize is they have traffic patterns in the bee yard that you'll have bees going out one direction and then when they come back they're coming around and into it from a totally different direction. So they know not to cross paths.

Yeah, right. They basically air traffic could someone's air traffic controlling and they did so they don't collide with each other. That's what seemed to me at least. I mean, because I would walk out into, I knew the field they were supposed to be flying to. It was a sunflower field, so it was later in the year, so you can see a little, or you can recognize at least at that point in time that there will be a certain direction. And I walked out and I said, well, there are bees going out, but there's nothing coming back. And the amount of bees going out, there should have been something coming back.

And then my wife had walked to the other side of the yard, she said, well, they're all coming over here. so they had gone out in a straight direction and when they came back they had circled around and coming from the backside yard kind of thing so that i thought that was pretty amazing pretty amazing is correct uh you think like a small little insect like that to have but i mean you you find this all throughout uh nature where it's it's just very clever right like they've figured it out and you know you wouldn't give much time to be is that the reason you know everybody chuckles at me um when i tell this story but the reason i'm so curious about honey is i was having issue sleeping this is probably i don't know four years ago now maybe maybe a little less and one night

i'd been trying to put different things and and you know it started with probably water and then it went to tea and so one night i thought ah i'll just put a little honey in my tea and at the time i thought that was a terrible idea. I'm like, you're going to put sugar in your tea. This is a terrible idea. But that night, I slept and I drooled all over myself. I was just out cold. And the next day I woke up and I, you know, I wiped the drool off and I was like, oh, I must have been real tired. And so the next night, I thought, well, one night and I didn't stay up all night. Miles would try it a second time. It hadn't, nothing had clicked in. And so I put it, you know, a teaspoon of honey in my tea again. And that night, I drooled all over myself again. And I woke up. Honey makes you drool. So that's what you're

saying hey honey makes you drool well i was just yeah i was impressed uh you know then i started talking to old timers in my area who uh you know grew up in a time well before cell phones internet power even and they started talking about how they used honey all over the farm for lots of different applications and i just i guess i didn't realize or didn't slow down to pay attention and so i was on this search then to find a bee farmer who could talk to me just a little bit about the honey itself because I don't know. I've read a little bit about why honey would impact your sleep, but I mean, you're a guy who deals with it on a daily basis.

Do you think I'm nuts for implying that honey helps you sleep? No. Or are there lots of different things that honey does to the human body? Many different things, right? I mean, people use it for burns, like topically. We'll put it on burns. Apparently it helps for burns and that kinds of things. But I've also heard that a table.

spoon of honey before bed will help you lose weight. There's another interesting. I can't prove that. All the OZempic people who probably don't listen to the show are going, wait a second. Do you eat food of honey? I better get on that. Yeah.

So, I mean, like there are so many different health benefits from honey that it's pretty amazing. It's pretty amazing stuff. It could be insect, but I don't use it for insect bite. What do you use it for? I mean, you're around it all the time. What do you use honey for? peanut butter and honey sandwiches after a workout i always have a teaspoon of peanut butter and honey

all right because i need you need the honey for the you know to replenish your um your quick stores right because honey's a rapid rapid replenishing of what you know what this is why i don't like to i don't know how to talk i think you're doing great i personally think you're doing great i uh with the bees okay let's go back to the bees for a second so you've got A crazy amount of bees. That hurts my brain a little bit. Every year do you lose bees? I assume yes.

Yes. How much of your, I don't know, what do you call, I was about to call them a herd of bees, but that's not what you call them. A hive. So in your hives of bees, how many do you lose year over, like every year, I assume,

is it like 10% or is it 2% or is it more than that? Through winter, a relatively good or stable would be anywhere from 5 to 15%. percent loss, hives, and they're the winter, but, I mean, 20 to 30 is a high, high normal for us to lose 20 to 30 percent. But those, we could rebuild those back pretty quick. And by rebuilding, is that what happens in January, like the young that come in, or do you have to bring bees in?

Well, we bring, my brother actually imports, he's the largest importer of honeybees in Canada right now. And so he imports bees from New Zealand and Chile and Italy. so he imports them. We used to do it here, but we split the farm, so now he imports him, and I'm just a beekeeper. But otherwise, we will split hives ourselves. Like, we'll take a hive, build them up in strength,

to the point where they're strong enough, and then we will take a nucleus, we call it, are the bees, like, let's say two, three frames of brood, and then out, and then put that into another box, and put a new queen in there, and then we have another hive. How do you know you can split it?

If it's big enough. So like you look in there and you see like, okay, it's at about 20,000, we know we can take 5,000 out type thing? That kind of thing. Yeah, what we do is not the, what we typically do is, yeah, it's more on how much brood is, it's a combination of brood and an amount of bees, right? So we have, if there's lots of bees,

and a fair amount of brood, which is a patch of young bees that the queen has laid into the hive. So if it has five to six trains of a brood, then we'll take three out. We'll basically split it in half, put it into another box, and then give the other hive a new queen. And where she goes, so I know I'm talking too fast and saying all sorts of words that are hard. No, it's foreign to me is what it is, right? So I'm like, okay, you look in, you split them off, but you also import. So like the importing is like a whole new conversation. Because I mean, I guess it makes sense.

I just, so like bees come over on a ship, obviously. We fly them. You fly them. Yep. So you fly them in. Yep. And it's always on a passenger jet. So if you want to make a movie, there's bees on a plane instead of snakes on a plane.

I've had it with these bees on this bee plane. Yes. A couple of explosives in there, too. Yeah, oh, yeah. Yeah. Samuel Jackson, snakes on a plane part two. B's on a plane.

Yeah. So it always comes in on a passenger plane. How many are you moving, like when you import a bee or bees? Yep. How many hives do you bring across at a time? Well, my, we usually ship about 704 packages, and a package will contain 10,000 bees and a queen. 70 million bees on a plane.

Yeah. Good thing the battery. The investors don't know about that. Oh, yeah, exactly. You talked about, like, in the wintertime, you have a building. Yep. You just got to keep the airflow going because the heat up and, you know, whether it's carbon. Carbon monoeuvre, it's carbon dioxide.

Right. Yeah, just the air quality could kill them. Right. On a plane, do they have to allow flow in the storage hold then in order to make sure the bees don't? Absolutely. overheat? Yes. That's the biggest thing.

Some, you know, people don't understand it, so they think, oh, it's a bug, so they like it warm. But you put the heater on there, it'll kill them all. So we have to keep them air conditioned and cooled the whole time. So they put them in a cooler before they put them on a plane. And then once they put them on a plane, they're always bented. It's the last one's on the plane, and the first one's off, and always where they can get benting at some kind. And you mentioned New Zealand. Italy and Chile

Chile. Yeah, most of them are coming from New Zealand and Chile. And is that just because of their climate? Because they have year long and they can just, I assume if you had nothing but heat here, or maybe not heat but no winter, you could just keep growing your hive larger and larger and eventually you could essentially do it when you split a hive here.

They're doing essentially the same thing in those countries. Well, yeah, plus it's the southern hemisphere, so they're opposite rate are summers and winter. So they're taking off the bees that are come through summer in New Zealand especially and Chile and then just packaging up the excess bees and shipping over to us almost too simple well did I simplify too much no no it's you're taking my I mean I'm the intricacies of bee farming are just interesting to me it's hard to describe it in a podcast quickly but but anytime you get a beekeeper yeah you have to be

you have to learn and understand to say my son has started to learn his bees and not the one who's sitting here with Peter that's Sam and that he's been in bees for a while too but he just said

brick laying was more fun anyways but by my youngest So Peter corrupted him yeah he got corrupted from two sides yeah and then he just got tired of working with dad

which is not true Well, he would say it was not true. But, no, my younger son, he's just learning into bees, and he says, my bees are getting better every year because he always manages to collect a hive or two. And he puts him in the back here, and he gets to play with him, and he said, my bees are getting better every year.

I'm going, well, yeah, it's because they're learning something. You know, in the news cycle, I feel like the two stories I would see on bees, if I'm thinking about this. And maybe I've missed some along the way, but one would be probably along the lines of how, amazing a bee is, right? Some of the properties and what it does to nature and pollinating and all those things. The other one is always the fear story that we're losing every bee on the planet.

Right. Like, on the fear side of it, have you ever had a time where you lost like 70% of your bees? Yes. And you're like, what's going on? What's the worst year you had in bee farming that? Well, we would have lost probably about 80 to 90%. When was that? When was that, Sam?

that would have been in uh 2011 what 10 2010 what's that no not 19 too and what happened forgive me that year you lose 90% of all your bees what is it and it's a it's a bunch of things in that case it was mites mainly mites there was a problem

which is a little pest that the bees get and it just it kills the brood it kills the yeah basically kills the broods injects him with diseases and stuff like that. So many diseases in bees, right? And so it will kill them. But typically, when you hear a lot of those stats on the bee losses, it comes a lot from, like, a lot of places like Hawaii,

they have a lot of feral beehives, right? Because the bees will swarm and go sit in a tree or somebody's building. And unfortunately, those bees are not able, they're not being taken care of by beekeepers. So a lot of them will lie exactly from that, from mites or other diseases. So a lot of the stats come from like peril of bee losses. And so they'll, and then they, of course,

they pad those stats sometimes. And they like to fear monger for some reason. So when you see the fear mongering, do you just chuck at yourself like, these people, like they have no idea what the bee population is actually doing? Like, do you think the bee population on the world is actually healthy then? For the most part, it's healthy. I mean, we run into different things everywhere, right?

I mean, Italy is going through a new bug right down, excuse me. That is, you know, and the states has typically had trouble keeping bees alive at a certain point. It ebbs and flows. So there's times where there's bee population is good. Canadian, in our Canadian situation, we've always had a really good number. We always had a relative bee. the increase in bees, right? So in Canada, it's never been too much of a problem.

Even though our winter is pretty hard, but we managed to manage our bees and work with them and keep building. So in Canada, we're doing really well. Going back to the cycle then, so in October, you bed them down. Right. January, they start to heat up and they start to brood.

Yep. When do you finally put them out, And you mentioned three to four harvests in a year. Right. So when do you put them out? Like in springtime? In springtime, in between March 15th and April 15th they'll go out. And put them into our winter into our spring yards, which is an area that is protected from the wind.

It's sheltered. But somewhere where we can feed them and then put the treatments on that we need to and then let them build up and big enough so that we could split them like I talked about before. and then come end of June we start end of June beginning of July we start moving them out to their summer yards

which would be the canola as soon as the canola starts to bloom we move them out to the summer yards so right now they're in their summer yards and the honey is starting to come into the honey house how much honey comes from 150 million bees again that

will vary it certain years last year with all the smoke it seemed to like basically shut down the nectar flow, so then everything was coming in well, and then it's like someone turned off the tap once that smoke rolled in. But some years, I mean, we will typically produce

between 150,000 to 200,000 pounds of honey a year. How many bee containers is that? Oh, we put them in barrels, so we shipped them to our bee made in Winnipeg, which is our honey co-op. Okay. Which I'm wrapping them a half, turns out. Yeah. And so you ship all your bee there, sorry your bee, all your honey there

to a bee co-op and then what do they do? They package and sell it? Right. Yeah. So they will sell it all across wherever Europe, the States and Costco sells our honey. Any bee made is our honey. Being in Clefell and the land of milk and honey, how many other bee farmers are here then? I assume you're not an anomaly coming from the land of milk and honey. How many bee farmers are in the area? Commercial beekeepers, it would be, which is large, anywhere from over 500 hives, B.C., anywhere from 1,000 to 2,000 hives would be, there would be at least 5 to 6 commercial beekeepers right in the area.

And is this then the largest area of bees in Canada? Or would you go, oh, no, there's a spot over in B.C. And they got like 50 commercial honey guys. No, BC doesn't run a lot of commercial honey guys. That's much smaller operations because they just don't have the canola that we do, right? So they have much higher concentration of bees in Alberta. Alberta would be the highest amount of beekeepers.

And any given area there would probably have even more. You look up north of Edmonton, they would have a lot more bees there. But in one town, in Manitoba, this has always been considered the bekeeping hub. I've been asking every guest a couple of questions. I'm originally from Saskatchewan, but hang my hat in Alberta now. Oh. And Alberta has their referendum coming up October 19th.

I'm curious what Manitobans think of Alberta having a referendum on whether to leave the country. I want to move there before they go. Can I ask where you stand on it? No, you're not going to give it that way, are you? Yeah, sure. I'm on the Pence No no no no It's funny

In the middle of COVID I switched It's going to be a long answer You said it's a podcast I can't get out the long answer I'm going to give you the podcaster's answer Which is longer In the middle of COVID I changed the podcast direction

Because I didn't I was just like what the heck is going on in the world And then I went searching for answers and talked to a lot of people and ended up in Ottawa with a freedom convoy interviewing people there. Oh, nice. And what I've struggled with is I've been trying to read more of history because I'm like, it seems like every turn you take trying to understand politics because I didn't grow up, you know, in politics.

I grew up in hockey so I can see the ins and outs of, say, the NHL quite well or it used to be able to when I stared at lots. Yeah. So, you know, like the first thing. was getting the first thing that came up in Alberta, you know, once the convoy had finished, because obviously the first thing was getting rid of all the mandates. Like, we got to get out of this. So once we're out of that, then it turned to we need a new premier. And that'll fix everything. And so there was a huge push. And Jason Kenney went out and Daniel Smith came in. And I think for a lot

of people, they thought, this will fix it, better days ahead, life will move on. But as time rolled on, things just kept getting stranger. And then Mark Carney gets elected and you're like, what are we doing? And so the same push that I saw maybe during the time of COVID, although it's different, was the same push in Alberta that got Daniel Smith elected. Right.

And it's the same push now that I see for Alberta independence. And I am definitely for having a question. I am definitely for... Letting people decide. Yeah, letting people decide. And if you're asking me, how I'll vote, I'm going to vote to leave. But the thing about the question is, is it, you know, that actually isn't the question

this time. It's whether to have a question to have a question. Yeah, oh, yeah, which is a question, right? And so I go like, well, in my mind, for any Albertan, you're playing with House money right now. You want to send a message to Ottawa, vote to leave, or vote to have a question. And then we can decide in another, what is it going to be, years' time, or longer, on whether we should actually leave.

but at this first one, oh, I'm absolutely voting. To have a question. What's going on in Canada right now needs to be stopped. That does. And there's, as far as I can tell, and I think this is why so many Albertans are pushing for it, is it doesn't seem like there's anything in our Canadian system to allow us to pull a lever to try and, like, get back to, you know,

some common sense. I know. Well, I know. But Alberta has always been dumped on right from the beginning. The West has basically been, you know, as far as I'm concerned, has been overlooked and dumped on, and they've been the cash cow right since the beginning of time, you know, which bothers me. The whole West has been.

And if you ask you, I'd like, you know, Southern Manitoba at least to go with you guys. When you... Well, go ahead. No, no, sorry, go. Southern Manitoba, yeah, Saskatchewan, and then Alberta, let's leap. And Northern BC. No, Northern BC. You know, it's funny because you're seeing these.

spots where people are like, we just need to go. Yeah. It's time. I was just talking to Jamie Sinclair. He spent over 30 years in the Canadian military. Well, yeah. Saskatchewan, boy. Okay, yep.

And he's like, it's time to go. You know, and that's a man who's fought for the country. And had many men and friends die for the country. Oh, absolutely. You know? And so I guess speaking on politics here in Manitoba, you guys have Wob Canoe. Yeah.

And the NDP, you know, in the last election, And just, once again, I sit from a farm, we watched it, but I don't live in the province. I don't try to act like I understand every province's provincial leanings, you know, one way or another. Right. What did you think of Wob Canoe getting elected? Oh, I'm not an NDP guy ever. I mean, I like Wob Canoe.

I think he's a great politician. I don't like any of his policies or most of them. So, but I think, I think as a politician, he's a good one. Oh, I still don't like what he stands for. so but that's about as far as that goes i watch more of federal politics by the part that i do any provincial you think there's any chance of pierre defeating carney at any point um i'm hoping i really am hoping but right now i think i tend to think that people are kind of um mesmerized by carney's bs that he's fused you know he's very good at

talking. And he's very, you know, he's your, people, for some reason get hooked on people who seem to be smart. And Carney is exceeding smart. There's no doubt. But we are getting a lesson on how good he can, you know, treat Brookfield. What did he? Brookfield? Yeah, Brookfield. That one. Yeah, though. He is very, he's a very good businessman. He is not a great, he is not good for a country because he's not looking out for any of us. That's my idea. The other question I've been asking is we're on a year long road trip with the podcast, interviewing people such as yourself.

And I've been curious on people's favorite road trips or whether it was when you were a kid or as a father, if you did any camping or took any trips, and what stood out to you about that? I love road trips. in general and every one of them was good it's hard to pick out one I like to drive my wife likes to drive

and we've done a lot of driving together when we every time we because we'd pick up the bees in Vancouver at the airport and then bring the back all the way through to Manitoba so we do that you know 10 to 15 times a year

so we like to drive but pick out any particular road trip is hard to say. Anyone with the family, either when I was growing up or whatever, when I was a dad. So I've done a lot of driving. Plus, I was over-the-road driver for all the time, too. When you go to pick up B's at the Vancouver Airport, do you walk into baggage claim? Into baggage claim?

Yeah. Unfortunately, we have to, no, no. When we pick them up and draw away, no. I have to walk through baggage claim to get to customs. That's it. Why is the question? Because I was just chuckling you go back to bees on a plane. I'm like, I can just imagine sitting there picking up luggage and down comes a hive of bees.

Grab it. That's mine. Sorry, guys. Yeah, around the turntable. Yeah. Yeah. A little heavy for that. Yeah, no, they typically are in the bottom of the plane.

So in the cargo section of any passenger jet. So they get uploaded. brought into a cooler immediately and that kind of thing. So people won't see them offloaded. They'll all be gone by the time the bees get offloaded. Yeah, it's just cool. There's such a system belt in for something as such as bees, right? Yeah.

How long have you been married? Oh, I always stumped the men on this one. No, 39 years. 39 years? 39 years. You got any wisdom to share with younger men or, I guess, younger men, earlier marriages on on 39 years of oh my son and daughter law are sitting here now so now I have to act really smart um heard something today that I thought was really cool someone who'd be married

60 years so but uh yeah he asked what's a secret to be married to the same woman for so long he said uh you're not married to the same woman for 60 years you know the woman I'm in her 20s was not, is not the same woman, you know, that went through motherhood, the pain of mothering and, right? And the changes she went through is, right, is, and she didn't marry the same guy, right? Same thing, different trials and pains is you grow, you grow together. So every season, it's a different person. And the idea is to love the soul of that.

I'm probably butchering what he's sad. No, that's pretty wise, I would say. And then I guess my, I keep saying the last couple of questions, but you mentioned right off the hop, it was almost like in your first minute, you're a Christian or grew up in a Christian house. Does faith play a part in your life? Absolutely does.

Every day. This is where I sit and read my Bible every morning. Morning. I don't get up in the morning as always, not anymore. But yes, it certainly does. absolutely well then from one Christian to another when you stare at Canada

and some of the values that it says we don't have do you recognize the country anymore when it's doing strange things and you know there's just strange policy after strange policy you know like faith gives me a lot of comfort every day

absolutely it's biblical it's all I could see I've read the end of the book and I know how it ends and it's going in that direction Any final thoughts before I let you off here? No, I've got nothing. I mean, you can be talking longer.

I don't like to talk much, but apparently I'd talk. To your son who's standing beside him, if you were to ask your dad one question, what would you ask? I hate putting people on the spot, folks, but it's funny when I was interviewing Big Mustache Al, Quick Dick McDick's dad. I asked him as he was taking the kids off, and he'd asked him about the best advice he ever gave his son. And so I got to ask that, and I should have been, well, I don't know if you're, you weren't standing here yet. So I can't even blame myself. Is there a story out of your dad's life that you think would be, or a lesson or anything

that you think would be an interesting story for him to share? I never told you any stories. Did I? One of my fondest memories and just realizing how much my dad cares for me and the role model is in my life is when I actually got in trouble. and it wasn't that big video. But then he came the next day and, like, we both apologized and we both talked about it.

This was when I was very young. So just the vulnerability to apologize if he went too far, and the ability for us to just talk about it and grow together just made me look up to him so much more. What do you think of that, sir? Me and Sam are the emotional ones in the family. I've always tried to be honest with the kids.

And if I screwed up, which I did plenty, I'd like to admit it, you know. I appreciate you doing this and give me some time. I know you're uncomfortable with me handing you a mic, but this has been everything I've been waiting for from a beekeeper. So I appreciate you have me in your, you know, onto your spot and in your tiki bar. Nobody can see what we're actually sitting out. They can probably get a feel of it.

But you got a really cool spot here. And I hope I did my best with not knowing a whole bunch about bees, and I didn't ask too many stupid questions. But I appreciate you doing this. Yeah, with bees, or no stupid questions. Well, some stupid questions. Well, thank you, sir. You're very welcome.

It was a pleasure.