The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - BeeKeeping Q & A # 293 why are so many bees dying off? Is it the same as CCD?

Episode Date: February 14, 2025

This is the audio track from today's YouTube:  https://youtu.be/HRvS-mIvmmo

So hello and welcome, happy Friday. Today is Friday, February the 14th. If you don't know that that's Valentine's Day, you might already be in trouble. So anyway, this is back here to bekeeping questions and answers episode number 293. I'm Frederick Dunn. This is the way to be. So anyway, what's going on outside? As you saw it in the opening sequences, it's really cold, it's snowy, and there is no end in sight. Isn't that frustrating? 16 degrees Fahrenheit, which is, minus 9 Celsius. 1.8 mile per hour winds that's not terrible that's 3 kilometers per hour 95% relative humidity it's been snowing off and on and all next week we're going right back down to even colder temperatures so the snow is not melting off not much of a break at all so if you want to know what we're going to talk about today please look down in the video description and you'll see all

the topics in order we have one topic today I'm gonna spoiler alert there If you want to know how to submit your own question, please go to the main website, the way to be.org, click on the page titled The Way to Be, and there's a form there for you to fill out. Also, if you've got something that's on your mind right now and you just have to talk about it, Google the Way to Be Fellowship. And you can go there, join the group, and have all your questions answered. Talk among peers. Stay night 24-7. So everything is great.

What else we have going on? I think that's just about it. Let's get right into today with the very first question. This question comes from Chuck in Akron, Ohio. This is hi Fred, I was watching The Bee Supply with Blake Shook. He was mentioning that a lot of beekeepers are losing high losses of bees. He mentions more on the commercial beekeepers who are pollinating almonds in California. I personally had six highs and have lost three, so 50 percent.

do we need to worry so here's what to do you think i reached out to for today's discussion answer this question and a lot of other questions that packer beekeepers might have i reached out to blake shook so he is my guest today we're going to talk about bees at the very end we're going to mention a little bit about avian influenza because that's also on people's minds so let's put it in perspective and without further delay here's blake blake shook i'm really glad that you hear Thank you for agreeing to talk to me. This was kind of last minute. We've crossed paths a couple of times without actually talking,

so I'm glad to finally trap you and get you on a Zoom. And I'm sure everyone watching me, even though my primary group are backyard beekeepers. I think the news has reached everyone that bees are dying. And so I thought I would reach out to somebody who really is in the middle of it when it comes to commercial beekeeping. So if you would, please, in the odd chance somebody doesn't know who you are just who you are where you are in the world and

what do you do yeah well thanks for having me and it's been great to pass you in the hall seen a couple of representations and was thoroughly entertained and and learned several things too so thanks for your work thanks for having me on it's very very appreciated absolutely um yeah so i was a hobby beekeeper for quite some time actually so i i started keeping bees when i was a kid, I was about 12, and got into beekeeping through a youth scholarship program that my local bee club and was, you know, kept a couple of high as my parents' backyard for a number of years. And so my first introduction to beekeeping as a first generation beekeeper was hobby beekeeping. And one of my first ways I made money in beekeeping was teaching beginning beekeeping

classes, which is something that one of my company still does a lot of today. And education is near and dear to my heart. You know, our YouTube channel is focused primarily to small-scale beekeepers and how to manage two hives in your backyard, not 2,000. So I'm very tied in with the small-scale community. You know, that's how I started.

I speak all the time to small-scale beekeepers. So, yeah, I certainly have a foot in both worlds. I am a commercial beekeeper. I grew, got so passionate about beekeeping that two hives just wasn't enough. I got addicted. And before I knew it, that grew to 200 and then 2000 and then, you know, 30,000. And so now I have a number of different businesses in the beekeeping world from a migratory commercial beekeeping operation to, you know, I own the bee supply, which is a small scale beekeeping retail store, chain of stores. Commercial bee supply where we sell supplies to commercial beekeepers, desert Greek honey, where we pack and sell honey nationwide.

we have a pollination business in California. We have a business where we raise and sell honeybees to other resellers. So, yeah, kind of invested in all segments of the industry, if you will. Let's back up a second. You said, did you say 30,000 colonies? Is that where you're at right now? Well, not right now. Last summer, I was.

And I hope to be there again this coming summer. So is that the highest number you've ever achieved as far as commercial beekeeping goes? Yes, yes, that's the highest number. We've managed more than that. So certain times a year we've been managing far more than that. But that's as high as I've ever gotten personally. We're going to get into that too because a lot of people don't understand how complicated this world is. But the other thing is when I was down in Austin, Texas, you know, here, if somebody's got 40, 50 hives, that's a pretty decent collection of bees in one of our apiaries in the state of Pennsylvania. Yet down in Austin, I met five-year, you know, beekeepers that have been doing it for five. years with 2,000 to 6,000 hives because of something called the ag exemption. So you've got the scale of beekeeping in the state of Texas is enormous. Is that where most of your bees are located? So yes and no.

So yeah, in Texas we have ridiculously high property taxes. And so you can get an ag exemption on those property taxes if you have beehives. So that kind of got a lot of people into beekeeping really fast. My bees are in Texas, the Midwest, and California, depending on the time of year. So they do move. Some of our bees do stay in Texas. So, you know, we do raise and sell a lot of bees, and some of those stay in the state of Texas. But we do move around too, which contrary to popular belief, or maybe contrary to what some people may understand,

it's actually can be really good to move bees. I mean, when it's 110 degrees in Texas and every flower's dead after the 4th of July, the best thing you can do is pick up your bees and move them to North Dakota, where it's 75 spring is just starting, and they've got fresh forage. You know, bees don't do great in extremes.

And so getting them out of extremes can actually be a pretty beneficial thing for. Have you been to Laferia, Texas? I have not. Sounds like fun, but I had a hundred and thirteen degrees in the shave when I was down there looking for the golden car of tarantula which beekeepers love tarantulas all about being in Texas you see some sideline animal species that may catch you a little off guard give me one story where you

ran into something that you didn't want to see and what were the circumstances oh my goodness there there would probably be there would probably be many I mean I bought a tarantula story So, you know, I put on my bee suit the middle of the night, middle of the night one night, we're out moving bees. And I had my bee suit. I took it off to eat a midnight lunch, threw it on the ground, and finishing my lunch, got my bee suit back on. And I feel something crawling around on my leg. I'm like, oh, man, there's a bee in my suit. So I try to jiggle my pant leg. And I feel like it's a whole lot bigger than a bee. And so I do. the bee dance really fast, unzip my suit, and there was this massive tarantula that had crawling into my bee suit. So it was unwelcome. I think I would have preferred the honeybee for sure. I think we just lost 1% of our audience on that one story right there. I'm sure you did. Statistically, one percent of the people are supposed to run out. If you've seen my presentations, I sneak spiders into them. But that's a great. I didn't hurt the tarantula. That's actually a great.

I like what you mentioned too, because you're working with your bees at night. because of the temperatures. But that's also when the tarantulas are out and about because they're in their holes during the day. So that was just a prime. So something besides a tarantula, what else have you encountered? Snakes.

Got any snake stories? Lots of snakes. I think one of the more fun ones, though, will be skunks. And so we, skunks love to live underneath the pallets. So commercially, we keep four beehives on a pallet, and there's a gap under the palate. And so on more than one, occasion, we have lifted up a pallet of honeybees and there will be a family of skunks underneath.

And of course, they spray as soon as you lift up the palate. And so the most memorable time, there was this 75-year-old beekeeper I was working with and he was in a bobcat. And you know, bobcats are really enclosed. You can't just jump out of a bobcat. You know, he's kind of in, it's not glassed in, but you're kind of caged in when you're driving a bobcat. And so he picks up this palette and, you know, guys 70, probably actually closer to 80 at this point. And these skunks start spraying. It's a whole family skunks.

And he just, he knows he can't get out quickly and run. So he just floors that forklift. And he's got a stack of beehives on the forks. And he is going probably 20, 25 miles an hour across this field. And beehives are just flying off this pallet all over the, all over the field. And he's just bumping. Bees are falling.

And he smelled like a skunk for about a month after that. You know, it's curious you mentioned the baby skunk, super cute, by the way. But they have a tendency unprovoked to just let you have it. So I don't actually like them very much. And for those that are probably wondering,

and I know they are, what's the effective range of an adult skunk, 10 feet? So if you're at 10 feet and 3 inches, don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. He was about five feet, so they got him pretty good. All right.

So I also want people to understand you serve on some boards, right, that regulate beekeeping or you've got your finger on the pulse of the national image when it comes to any beats. Would you like to explain maybe what your involvement level is? And if you hold positions, they are. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Thank you. Yeah. I mean, look, I'm not a naturally outgreens. going person and I learned really early in my life that the best way for me to get to know people and give back was to serve. And so I started serving in my local beekeeping club and then became the president of our Texas Association and have always served in my career in beekeeping. And so that's proven to be a great way to get to know a lot of people, but also to help win things like what we're facing now arise. And so I am on the executive board of the American Beekeeping Federation,

which is kind of the largest industry federation group in beekeeping. And then I'm also on the board of the American Honey Producers Association, which is another one of the largest beekeeping industry organizations. And I just finished my term, but for many years I've been on the National Honeyboard, which is, helps market and promote honey in the United States. So it's a appointment from the Secretary of Agriculture to help oversee and promote honey in the U.S. So those are those are the most exciting titles, I guess. I don't know if there are any bigger organizations than the ones you just named. So that's the ABF.

Is the middle one, AHA? AHPA. HPA. I want to get these right. And then the NHB. Yes, correct. I don't know how you have a microsecond to yourself. I honestly have really, really good people that work with me.

My standard of hiring is to hire people smarter than me. And it's a pretty low bar. But it helps. It helps. Yeah. Okay. So this seems to be, you know, social media is on fire with bees and speculation on why they're dying. And backyard beekeepers want.

know if they're going to be affected, if it's just commercial beekeepers, cause and effect. But one of the things I want to know about is this didn't just suddenly happen. I seem to remember it was one of these big boards where somebody was given a presentation, and they were concerned about meeting the number of colonies that were going to need for pollination. And as a pollination in California right now for almonds is ongoing. Is that right? Right, right. Just started.

So they kind of knew ahead of time there was. was going to be a shortfall and then something else happened that it was even bigger than they thought because they were kind of reaching out to sidelineers to fortify their numbers. Now, you are also a, is it a broker? Right. Okay, would you please explain kind of this dynamic how it happens and how these people, these beekeepers get their bees to California and if they're working through a broker, what is kind of the job scope of a honeybee pollination services broker?

Yeah, of course. So who would have thought we'd have brokers and bekeeping, right? So about 85% of the world's almonds are produced in the Central Valley of California. And so that's a lot of almonds. Or is the locals call them, they don't call them almonds. They don't call them almonds. And that's because you shake the L right out of them when you're shaking the nuts off the tree. So, yeah. So it takes essentially. eventually every commercially managed beehive in the country to supply enough bees to pollinate the almond crops. So basically every commercial hive has to go to pollinate the almonds. Most commercial beekeepers, or about 50%, don't want to physically go to California. You know, there may be in Florida or Georgia or the East Coast, and they don't have the employees ready at that time of year. And so they want to just send their bees to someone they trust in California to put their

bees into the almond orchards, make sure that everything goes okay, then ship the bees back to the beekeeper. And so that's where I step in and lots of other companies step in, where it's, okay, you send me your bees. So you load them up in Florida. You send them to me in California. I will unload them, put them in the almond orchard, make sure the almond grower pays, make sure the bees are taken care of, and then I will send those bees back to you once they're done pollinating and I'll charge a small fee for doing kind of all the logistics work. So that's what a broker does more or less. Now, when they send those bees to you, I think you noticed this year that when they arrived

on the trucks, you do this kind of receiving inspection of the colonies to see kind of what their condition is. And you seem to be kind of surprised that a lot of them weren't viable or were even dead. Wouldn't they have known that before they shipped them out to you? Or did something happened in transit. Yeah, so luckily nothing happened in transit. A lot of these bees are coming out of overwintering storage sheds indoors. So, you know, this became really popular eight, nine years ago where a lot of commercial beekeepers are overwintering their bees indoors and perfectly climate controlled

facilities that are fantastic for bee hibernation. And so they wouldn't have looked at their bees since they went into those sheds in October. And so I'm kind of the first person to look at them. Other beekeepers, you know, might be in, you know, colder climates where they couldn't really look at them. Other beekeepers still overwinter their bees in California. And you don't really start inspecting grading those bees until early January. So the Florida guys, for example, yes, they looked at their bees and they alerted us pretty early on, hey, there's going to be a problem.

But usually January is the month where the entire industry is looking at their bees, grading their bees, checking on them, coming out of winter, preparing to go into almonds. So you kind of have over a really, I would say, a two-week period, the entire industry is looking at their bees at the same time. And that's really where you start to see problems if there's going to be problems in that couple weeks span of time. Okay. Can you give me a sense of the numbers of colonies?

we're talking about. Prior to the losses, what number of colonies would be under your management or as a broker that you're dealing with? Yeah. I mean, for us, it depends on years like this. It's a lot less because there's not enough, there's not as many bees out there. So many have died. But anywhere from, you know, 40 to 80,000 beehives, you know, is what we would put our hands on, depending on the year. And so to put that in perspective, overall, how many hives are going to California for the... About 1.5 million range. 1.5 to 1.8 depending on the year.

And since you know all these stats right off the top of your head, in the past, have we been able to meet the demand for pollination services in the almond groves in California? So the interesting thing is, yes. I mean, there have been times if we go back So the planting rate of almonds has been skyrocketing. And we did hit a point about 15 years ago when colony collapses, about almost 20 years ago, when colony collapse disorder hit and plantings were skyrocketing, there were not enough bees.

And that's why we saw the price paid for pollination skyrocket. Over the past five years, beekeepers have done a phenomenal job despite, you know, terrible losses. ensuring that plenty of bees are available for almond pollination. So I'd say over the past five years, we've had plenty of bees for almonds. The estimates last year is that we were actually anywhere from one to 300,000 hives long. We actually had a lot of extra bees in 2024. Okay. And so, yes, we've been doing a great job of making sure that we do have the bees we need.

And that's why the change this year has been so surprising and stark, because we went from one to 300,000 extra hives to estimates currently of being three to 500,000 hives short. And so that's a pretty massive loss, you know, in a one-year period. And correct me if I'm wrong, but the growers are expanding their operations to the rate of 30, thousand acres a year out there? Does that sound right? Historically, yes. Historically, yes, or more.

I mean, there's some years that's been as high as 60,000 or more of an 100,000 acres of growth. That is largely leveled off the past few years because of water shortages. So the growth rate is largely stopped. I mean, California is producing as many almonds as it can with the water availability that it has. So I don't see that growing much. It's plateaued.

at a very high level. So even the environment can't sustain what they're putting on it. So when you mention the water, where is this water coming from? Yes, I mean, California gets water from three sources. They get it from underground aquifers they pump out of. They get it from reservoirs, which are largely fed by snowpack in the mountains, and then they get it from rain. And so that's what they've got to work with.

Oh, the Colorado River is not part of feeding water. to, is that L.A.? Where does the Colorado River water go? Isn't that part of it? Yeah, it does. It helps as well. That's a piece of it, but yeah, relatively small one. Okay.

So good. No stress, no variables. That's what I wanted to hear. Exactly. Now, as a broker, do you work with specific almond companies? Like some of the big ones, is Blue Diamond, one of the bigger companies up there? Yeah, so Blue Diamond is a grower co-op.

So, you know, a couple hundred or 300 to 400 different growers sell their almond or contracted to sell their almonds to Blue Diamond. The Blue Diamond processes the almonds, you know, has their Blue Diamond label, label goes into the grocery store with it. So Blue Diamond isn't necessarily a grower, but they are cooperative of growers. So, yeah, I mean, we work with Blue Diamond growers, certainly. We work with a lot of different growers out there. Do you have a preferred grower that you like to work with?

Do you want to name one right here? I better not say that. You can alienate all the others? Exactly. I do have for a grower, but I don't dare say it out loud. Okay, we'll talk later. All right, so, all right, so the logistics of this. Now, there's a lot of restrictions in California when it comes to treatment of bees and things like that.

So some of the beekeepers do some pre-staging or something. Is that right? Is this outside of the state and then they do something? Or they get them inside the state of California's pre-seging so they can. and do other things. Can you explain what sounds? Sure. So one of the things you're probably referring to is that California is very careful with what they allow into the state as far as pests, parasites, foreign seeds, et cetera. So there is a checkpoint at the border where you have to stop all inbound trucks, and they have inspectors that will inspect your load to make sure it's clean.

So beekeepers sending bees into California have to make sure the beehives, the palettes they're on are perfectly clean. If there's a piece of dirt, then they will stop you. If they find a fire ant, for example, then they can reject your load. And so beekeepers have to work incredibly hard to stage their bees beforehand, clean them off perfectly well, make sure there's no grass seeds, grass, fire ants, anything at all that's going to catch that at Spector's eye. and make sure it's a very clean low going into California because you don't want your load rejected. And then so that's a lot of what we have to deal with.

One fire ant can ruin it. Depending on, yeah, I mean, it's, they can. You know, they're supposed to, it's supposed to be if they find more than five, if they find, I think if it's, I still know this up by heart, but I think if they find one live, one or two live fire ants,

they can reject your load or up to five dead ones. Now this is just a cynical. side of me. Have there been any competitors there that actually plant fire ants on other people's stuff so? So they fail inspection. Probably so. Probably so. I wouldn't doubt it. Go ahead. The crazy thing is, I mean, there are already fire ants in California. So we're all a little baffled as to the strict, how strict they're being. But go figure. Now, things like foulbrew, have you seen any cases where, you know, a whole truckload comes in and they find find foul brood there and then how do they handle that so they don't inspect yeah they don't inspect

or regulate for bee pests so okay yeah so they they aren't watching for that oh they're concerned about the environment in california not what the bees are passing on to each other right oh interesting okay yeah yeah yeah just their just their environment and i and i will say that a surprisingly small amount of things get passed around in california i mean we i think if you haven't been there it's easy to have a vision of, well, there's, you know, 1.5 or 1.8 million beehives in this one valley, they're probably all passing things around. It's a really big valley. It is. It's Horizon to horizon valley. It's, it's horizon to horizon. It's hundreds and hundreds of miles long. And then when bees go into an orchard, you're putting, you know, 12 to 24 beehives in one spot. And then

you're going a long distance and putting 12 to 24 more. So they're actually incredibly spread out. And I can say I've been doing this for 20 years. I've never gotten something out of California that I didn't already have. That's that's interesting. Yeah. Yeah, it really isn't as as much of a cesspool as people might imagine when it comes to peace. Now, this is interesting too. The almond board last year reported a 30% loss of bees departing these almond groves. Do you know what your personal losses have been are those under your management on average or do you lose any coming out of almond pollination? We don't lose any coming out of almond pollination. I mean, our bees grow in almonds and I'd say that's a normal experience. Almond pollen is considered one of the,

if not the most nutritious pollens for bees. It's incredible for growing bees. And so what you send in is what you get out if you send really bad bees to California then you're going to get bad bees back if you're saying good bees in you're going to get great bees out because it's warm it's sunny there's incredible forage so our losses all occur before California and this current loss that we're seeing it had nothing to do with California it has nothing to do with California, everything that occurred happened last fall and summer, wherever the bees came from. Now, right now, while we're talking, California is being hit by a huge weather system.

Is that impacting almond pollination? Not really. No, I mean, they need the rain. So it only matters if it rains nonstop every day for, you know, weeks, then that certainly impacts. And we've had years like that. In 2023, three, there were some areas that had five days of bee flight in the entire balloon period. And that certainly impacts the almond production. The bees actually did surprisingly well. We thought, oh, here, this is going to be terrible. The bees brought in so much pollen and nectar in those five days that they did really well.

But yeah, a couple, two, three days of rain and cold is fine, as long as it stops. Now, how do they choose when to start pollination and when to finish? So the grower wants the bees there right as the first blooms begin. And so when there's any blooms on the trees, the grower wants the bees there working, which is fair because they're paying for the use of them. And then as far as when you pull the bees out, that's a very controversial topic. Beekeepers, we know that just because there's blooms left on the trees, doesn't mean that they're viable blooms.

You know, if I've gone into orchards that there are still trees that look white and there's not a bee on them because they've already passed the viable period. But many growers, if they see any white on their trees, they want bees there just in case. So those last couple weeks are always a bit of a debate between the beekeepers and the growers on, hey, I need to get my bees out. It's time to go on to the next event and growler while staying on to them. following a calendar? I mean, everyone has to plan for this, especially when we're trekking across country. Is there a set calendar time frame? How does that? How many weeks are we

talking about total in the almond growth? Is that right? Yeah. So I would say really, it very, it doesn't very much. I mean, pretty consistently by February 15th, the almonds are in full bloom, this is tomorrow. And then pretty consistent. consistently by about March 15th, they're done. So it's about about a four-week period. And it would be shorter, but there's different varieties of almonds that bloom at different times. So pretty consistently, it's February 15th to March 15th. Unusual years, you may start a week early or go a week late.

But it is pretty consistently within that time frame. Okay, so now the growers are also trying to kind of beep-proof themselves by coming up with these strains of omens. that are self-pollinating. And even those benefit from the pollinator's presence, how do you see that going? Is it really working very well? Are they still have a lot of genetic work ahead of them? What's that looking at you?

Yeah, great question. I mean, so the self-pollinators to date still need one beehive per acre. The non-self-pollinators need two hives per acre. So it's better, but they still need honeybees. and then the nuts from the self-pollinating varieties are not as high quality as the pollinator variety. So it's an inferior nut. It's harder to harvest. It doesn't pay as much because it's, yeah, and it still needs bees. There are some new varieties that are coming out that are theoretically much better that are self-pollinating. But, you know, the lifespan of an almond tree

is 20 to 25 years. So even if they started planting 100% of almonds today self-pollinating. You know, you still got 20, 25 years of these pollinator varieties, and no grower is going to plant the self-pollinator once that aggressively. You know, they'll plant 10% of their acres and see how it goes. So, yes, if we look at the next 50 years, the self-pollinators are slowly going to continue marching forward, but it's going to be a very slow march. And did the electronic solution to their pollination problems fail, specifically the drop copters that were out there? Yeah. They could fly day and night and they just dump pollen into the air and swirl it around the trees.

How's that going? Yeah. So far, none of those technological advancements have been cost effective or as effective as honeybees. And so maybe someday, maybe someday. But right now, bees are still best. is still our best and most economical option. Okay, that's all great news. So now, here we go.

The trucks show up for pollination. You find out a bunch of these bees are dead. So this has nothing to do with the almond groves. This has to do as something, as far as you can tell, when did this impact on the bees begin calendar-wise? When do we start to see some unexplained die-offs? Yeah. So there were rumblings that we had an issue last fall.

But there are always rumblings that we have issues every fall because that's when, you know, that's when bees start dying after hunting production is over. You're going into winter. That's when a lot of us see losses. So it's always really hard to know for certain what's normal rumblings versus, you know, something truly different. And so there were some hints last fall that we might have an issue. But it really became evident in early January, early to mid-January,

when we started, yeah, looking at bees after they were coming out of winter. And I would say pretty definitively that most of us agree that that started last fall or last summer. So something went wrong last summer and fall that triggered the loss that we're seeing today. And so a lot of people are kind of pairing this up with. with Colony Collapse Disorder. State of Pennsylvania, Hackenberg, he was like the first guy to call it Colony Collapse. He lost all his, it was a staging area.

He lost so many of his bees. I think there are distinctive differences in what we're seeing. I mean, the die-off is a big deal. Do you think it's the same causation as Colony Collapse back in 2006? Are we looking at something different? It's the multimillion dollar question. And I think the challenge is that we never fully identified what colony collapse disorder was the first time.

You know, I mean, it was largely agreed that, you know, there wasn't one specific issue that led to the bees collapsing last time. It was a conglomerative factors. It was, you know, pests and viruses and pesticides and herbicides and weather events and kind of all that combined, lack of clean forage, all that combined to put too much pressure on the bees and they collapsed. And so beekeepers worked triple overtime to take even better. better care of their bees, more nutritional research, better forage, better treatments,

you know, better genetics. You know, there was a lot of good that came out of colony collapse disorder. I mean, I remember 20 years ago before it hit, you would get laughed out of the room in a commercial setting if you talked about breeding more genetically resistant bees. Well, now we all do it. You know, now we're all into genetics and better bees and breeding and long-term solutions. So in one sense, I would say that exactly what those conglomerate of issues are, that could have changed. But I would put my money on the fact that we're probably seeing something similar in that there are multiple crises hitting the bees and stressors hitting the bees all at once that has led to them collapsing again, despite our best efforts as being.

keepers. So exactly what all those factors are, I'm not sure. So in one sense, it is similar to last time, but the ingredients could be a little different this time. Because one of the things they also call it was disappearing bee disorder. And so now, but the bees that are dying now are still in the hive or are they also disappearing? Not necessarily. Yeah. I mean, we are seeing disappearing too. I mean, of the tens of thousands of dead beehives I've looked at in the past month, the vast majority don't have bees. They are gone. And whether they died out, you know, over the winter or we don't really know, but we are seeing a lot of dwindling.

And usually when bees disappear, it's not like a healthy hive just abscondes. You know, that never virtually never happens. It's a dwindle. And so it starts out as a really strong hive. And over the course of six weeks, you know, too much of the problem. population is dying. The hive just dwindles, dwindles, dwindles until it's one frame of bees and a queen, and then they die completely, or you're left with one or two frames of bees and a queen. So we are seeing a lot of that dwindling that is reminiscent of last time. The why is the tough question.

So when we have a dwindling colony or multiple dwindling colonies, don't those become targets for testing? In other words, wouldn't that we've got the lion bees, we've got the comb, we've got the brood area. are those being isolated anyway or is the Belsfield lab getting a bunch of them? What's going on? Yeah. So that, you know, if we're looking for good news, I mean, I think that that's a really big difference in what happened last time and this time. You know, first time CCD hit, it took, I would say, a couple of years to really even realize, you know, or certainly months, to really realize this is a big problem to get the USDA involved, to get samples. and, you know, it's almost too late at some point to really get accurate samples.

Big difference. I mean, I would say there were probably 10 of us beekeepers that kind of raised the alarm in probably the second week of January. And within three days, the USDA was there. Independent researchers were there taking comb samples, pollen samples, living in dead bee samples, varolome white samples. So that happened within a couple of days. So good samples have been taken, and now it's the nail-biden wait for results. And that takes one to three months depending on the test that's being performed.

Now, we've lost some really good organizations like the B-informed partnership that used to compile all of this data. And do we have another organization that's stepped up that is now kind of central for reporting losses? And then, of course, cataloging cause and effect through a full spectrum. of things that the bees are exposed to. Do we have that? It's a great question. Yeah, there's certainly a huge loss with the Beinformed partnership. I think this time around the USDA being pretty proactive, I'll give them that.

Project Apis-M is taking a very aggressive role in helping with this, as is ABF and AHPA. So I'd say right now it's Project Apis-E-F-HPA, and the U.S. SDA researchers that are working in unison to tackle this issue. I know I'm sure there's going to be some task force, task forces that come out of this very shortly that tackle this issue. So the backyard beekeepers are alive and well on all social media blogs and vlogs and everything else making speculations about how it impacts. impacts them. So how would we know or how can we find out kind of nationally the backyard or sidelineers? Are you getting any information that they're impacted, that they're losing their colonies in an unusual rate? Or what do you know?

Good question. So, I mean, you know, I think that small scale beekeepers and I was one for a very long time. I'm still heavily involved in the small scale industry. I personally really appreciate the fresh approach and the ideas and the willingness to help. And I think that there is so much that we can work together on as a community. We all love bees. We're all here to help save bees. And I really appreciate the feedback from the small-scale industry. It's a vital industry. And I'm happy to work together on this issue.

There is not a – it's harder to survey. beekeepers, you know, commercial beekeepers, it's a much smaller number and they're businesses. And so it's a little easier to get, you know, a pretty fast, which we've done, those survey results are coming out in the next couple of days. Pretty easy to get a very fast, comprehensive loss survey done with commercial beekeepers. Small scale is way more difficult. They're harder to find. And then so many small scale beekeepers get into beekeeping and they're in it for one or two

years and then they lose their bees and then they get out of it. And it's hard to track those people because they're not still on social media on all the beekeeping pages. We didn't have their contact information to start with. So we don't have a good way to tabulate those loss rates. All we have right now is a lot of people on social media saying, oh, I lost all my bees or oh, my bees are doing great. And that's very anecdotal. Yeah. And then pride gets in the way and you have all the beekeepers 100%. Never lost a piece since 19-0-11. And those are the guys I want to learn from.

Well, yeah, we want to know what are the parameters because environment plays such a heavy role. The other thing is they were asking for losses, I think on the 10th of January or something. Most of us, in my neck of the woods, we don't know what we have until end of April or May. Right. These reports come in far too early.

for us to know what's going on. Do we have any geography that we can identify or environmental potentials where the commercial scale, beekeepers had great losses in the southeast or desert southwest or, you know, did the breadbasket of the nation do pretty well? What do we know about that?

Right now, there were some unique weather events in the southeast that certainly were not helpful. You know, we had snow and snow. Florida. And then the hurricanes preceding that. And so the hurricanes are bad at wiping out forage. And that happened in the fall and wiped out a lot of forage that bees needed going into winter. Then you had the snows in the cold couple of weeks in the southeast. So the southeast has been hit particularly hard with weather. So I do think there is a weather element to the losses in the southeast. Beyond that, though, you know, when we look at the central U.S., the Midwest, the

the west, the Pacific Northwest, pretty bad loss rates commercially across the board. We're not seeing it right now limited to a specific geography, which is kind of unfortunate, right? I mean, we're not seeing correlation for, oh, this beekeeper used this treatment and this beekeeper didn't. Everybody used this treatment, they have terrible losses, or this Paul and Patty had terrible losses, or this region. seems to be very widespread. And that's why I'm kind of putting my money on. It's a conglomerate of factors. And bees have once again been pushed over the edge.

Because I think if it were one specific thing, we'd see more commonality and losses than we're seeing. And there are also, we need to identify, you know, synergistic effects on bees as well. Because I notice that people are using different cocktails. of treatments. And we have treatment and we have treatment free and we have feed and don't feed and we have insulated hives and uninsulated hives and we have all of these conflicting.

But see, the thing is people aren't able to isolate specific things because they're doing so many things at once to a colony. Yeah. That we can't just say, well, that Langstroth hives seems to be working out the best. Right. Right. So true. And what discouraged me a little bit?

And there's plenty of room for hope, which hopefully we can chat about for a second before we end. So it's not all doom and gloom. But I've got a couple commercial friends that they run treatment-free commercial operations that do not raise bees in heavy monocultry areas. So which is very unusual in the commercial world. But I've got a couple of friends that do it. You know, a couple thousand hives, treatment-free. And they pull it off. I mean, they're incredible.

Terrible losses this year. way out beyond the realm of normal for them. Did you have a percentage? You know, about 60 to 70 percent. Okay, but that's actually not terrible. I mean, 60 to 70 percent, they've got, you know, 35 to 40 percent of their bees left to work with. There are people reporting 90, 95 percent losses.

Right, right. Well, their normal losses were more like, you know, 20 to 30 percent. So it was a double of what their normal loss. are. So the good and bad news of that is now we don't have now again we can't say well it's treatments that caused it. So the scary part is we've got something beyond a treatment, whether it's an organic treatment or a synthetic treatment. And if it's no treatment and they died, we have to get our hands on those B bodies. Right. And they have. We have to find out if there's, pardon, they have them. They have. Yes. Yes. Yes.

good that's good news because now see we've just eliminated the fog of war here over treatment and treatment free so everybody can now be on board that we need to find out what the problem is you can't just throw rocks at each other and say well you use you're still using kuma fos you're you're not like yeah it's not like that so the other thing is and the next question that people will ask about when we have a treatment free operation and then they have these losses kind of out of the blue, double the losses that they would expect. We would want to know what's the overflow potential for other apiaries that are being managed in a different way. Do you know their proximity to any other maybe variances

and how the bees are being raised? Treatment free right next to each other. We could have this mixing of bees going on, but it wouldn't impact the entire operation. Yeah, so I know one of the operations is in a very rural area. Doesn't have a tremendous number of commercial beekeepers as neighbors. The other, I'm not sure. That's a good question.

All the things we need to dive deeply into in the coming months to try to understand the calls of this. Well, Blake, we need those answers right now. In fact, we need them during this application. I agree. Okay. I will email the USDA. So we will sit here until you get those answers. Okay.

Good thing. I realize that it's, it is actually a huge deal because there are commercial keepers that, you know, a backyard beekeeper, if I lost all of my hives, I would just start over. When it's a commercial operation, then employees a bunch of people, there's a huge investment. Some of them are running on a credit line and everything else. They could lose their business. You have any sense of commercial keepers? that maybe just aren't going to make it through this loss.

Yeah. Well, I, you know, I hate to be, I don't want to be an alarmist. I think that this isn't going to be easy. I think that beekeepers and bees are unbelievably resilient for everything that's being thrown at them today. From a business perspective, it's a very low margin business, and it's getting lower constantly because of how much it takes to keep our bees healthy. healthy. I don't know any, I mean, so many beekeepers, if they had $5 left, they would spend it on their bees before they'd spend it on their own lunch. Like, these are people that love their bees to death. But I've talked to a lot of beekeepers in the past weeks that have said, if we don't have some sort of relief, it's over. You know, I was talking to one friend that, you know, 15,000 hive operation, he's down to about 1,500 beehives. And you just can't recover from that, you know, and, um, So there are a number of companies that have said,

look, unless we get some sort of relief really fast, which I kind of doubt we will, yeah, we're just going to have to go work somewhere else, do something else. So again, that's not the whole industry. The industry will survive. We will find a way forward.

We're resilient. We will make sure that we pollinate crops that are needed. But I've never talked to so many people as I have in the past three weeks that have said, yeah, I think this is that for me. It's very, very unusual, yeah. And so then who fills that gap? This year it's going to be a stretch, you know,

because there's just not a ton of bees out there to build back with. I mean, there's a lot of bees out there, but not enough to build that, build back to our previous levels. It's a good question. I mean, it's going to be the next generation that steps up and says, okay, we're our turn. We're going to have fresh new perspectives and fresh new ways of doing this and we're ready to try again. And I think that next generation will step up.

And then it's going to be some companies that just get bigger, you know, some that, you know, get bigger. And we're seeing consolidation happen in the industry already, which, you know, isn't always a good thing. I do think there will be an industry. I think there is a new wave of fresh ideas, which is, I think, what we need because what we're doing isn't working. And, but it's going to be, to shake things up for a minute. So how does the next generation of beekeepers look? I mean, we, like dairy farmers, just for example, the road I live on, we had eight family dairy farms. We're down to one, and everybody likes to blame corporate farms.

But the truth was, all the kids that grew up on these dairy farms didn't want to stay on the farm. They left. They went to other places. and did other jobs. They saw what that life is and they didn't want any part of it anymore. So how does the next gen of beekeepers, what are the numbers looking like? Is there interest? You know, there's more than there used to be. So when I started keeping bees, I've told the story a few times, but I think I was 16 when I went to my first, maybe 15, when I went to my first national beekeeping group. And at the opening ceremony, there were about 800 beekeepers in the room. And I don't remember what the speaker is speaking about, but he was trying to make a point.

And he said, okay, if you are, if you're over 40, if you're under 40 years old, stand up. And it was me and like three other people that stood up. And he said, okay, if you're under 30, stay standing. And I was the only person in 800 people that was still standing at under 30. That's different now. I mean, when you go to beekeeping clubs and state and national meetings, there's a lot of people under 30 and 40 now. And so I do think that tide is shifting. There's something about working with bees that is incredible and beautiful and unique.

And it gets in your blood, maybe more than dairy farming does. I don't know. And there is a passionate group of, I think, the next generation that are ready to tackle this and try. again. And so I'm encouraged by that. I see far more of that than I used to. Now for the backyard beekeepers, we seem really loaded with all these different options and tools and kits and nutritional supplements and everything else. Do we need to be simplifying our beekeeping practices and focus more on genetics? Or what do you think about all these new tools and tips and drinks that are showing up at every convention we go to?

Well, as someone that has a bee supply company and sells a lot of that stuff, I will tell you that 95% of it, you do not need to be a successful beekeeper. I think that if you pay attention to genetics, nutrition at a very basic level, and pest management, you'll be a successful beekeeper. And everything else kind of fades into the background. This is where I think small-scale beekeepers would do well to pay attention to the products and the quantities of products that are used by commercial beekeepers. Because commercial beekeepers, A, care more about their bees than anybody on the planet. I mean, I have seen more. You're going to go up. I know.

There's people in 10 degree weather hugging their eyes right now listening to their bees. Yes, that's fair point. Fair point. There are people that love their bees. in the yard. Yes. I've seen more, you know,

grown men crying this past three weeks over their dead bees than I've ever seen in my life, you know, and they spend their entire life,

you know, dedicated to taking care of their. They're like bees more than they like people in many cases. So, yes, that exists on all levels

of beekeeping. I apologize. But the commercial guys are, number one, they care tremendously about their bees, but they're also running a business. And so they're looking at the return on investment. And they do a really good job of kind of weeding through what is hopeful and what is snake oil. And there's a lot of snake oil out there.

And so I'll say in my business, we use, we don't use a lot of different products. I mean, it's three or four different products. that we use and everything else we try everything but there's most of it isn't very helpful so let me pause you there because i think you're being polite maybe you don't want to appear to be marketing anything what are these useful products that uh you use that you find really have value for the health and well-being of the bees yeah well i'm going to get in trouble when i start lifting off listing off products but i will anyway it's just us it's just us right so are these at the B Supply.com?

Well, they are because I believe in them. Okay, good. Let's do it. Yeah, there you go. So, you know, what we use in our operation, we use global pollen patties. Okay. I'm a big bets, and I spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on them. So I, you know, it's not like I'm blowing smoke. I actually use them and spend a lot of money on them.

What time of year? Yeah. the most important time is when bees are raising the winter generation of bees of the next of the next generation of bees. So for us, it's going to be starting about eight weeks before the broodless period. Oh, so you're talking in October or September? Yes. Earlier the better. I mean, there's some, if you're waiting until it starts getting cold, it's way too late.

So we are starting eight weeks before the broodless period begins. We want the final generation of bees raised to have all the nutrition that they need. Because one of the big reasons for losses, I believe, in general, is that the bees being raised in the fall didn't have the proper nutrition to survive the entire winter. And so you see that high dwindle. So anyway, so eight weeks before is when we start feeding. And we should also qualify that by saying that from the commercial aspect, you also have to make grade with your colonies early in the year where the backyard person would not. Yes, I would agree with that.

I'd also say, though, these days, it's about just keeping them alive, you know. And I view, I view Paul, and I'll be. be the first to say, I view pollen substitute as insurance. Some years, some areas, totally unnecessary. If you've got a great fall pollen flow, it's very, you know, multiple kinds of pollen and a great quantity, you don't need pollen substitute. But it's relatively cheap. And if you have a dear or you have a hurricane come through, or it was especially hot and dry, pollen substitute is a great insurance, relatively cheap insurance to make sure they've got the nutrition they need to raise the winter bees. So I'll be the first to say, you know, so every, every time I talk about

Paul and subs, someone comes to me and goes, I've never used it. My bees are amazing. It's great. You know, I'm not going to say that, you know, you don't have, you don't have to use it. So global Palm Substitute, I love. We use a strategic. strategically, we use a product called complete. Complete. I never even heard of this. Complete. Yep.

And they've got a few different products. And we use it depending on the situation. We'll either mix it with syrup that we're feeding. It's got like 160 different ingredients. And if our bees are nutritionally stressed, we find that it helps make up some of the nutritional deficits. It's very similar to APIS biologics or rocket fuel, which I also think is a pretty good product. You're saying this is as a powder that gets mixed or?

It's a liquid. It's a liquid. Yeah. And then you mix it with what? Somebody's going to ask, is it one to one sugar syrup? Is it two to one sugar syrup? Yeah. You mix it.

If it's, if it's fed in the fall, it's two to one sugar syrup. If it's fed any time else, it's one to one. and we find if we're trying to get our bees through a stressful period, which I would call like a long summer dearth stressful, or if there is poor nutrition maybe from a hurricane, we find it helpful to add complete or apis biologics and to give the bees an extra nutritional boost. So that's helpful.

We have also switched. in the spring, early spring, we will feed probiotics, strong microbials probiotics, instead of any sort of antibiotic. For years, beekeepers used antibiotics to control European foulbrood. And, you know, I don't like using antibiotics. And so we switch to, and if it's a wet, year, which is, you know, cold, wet springs are notorious for chalk brood and European foul brood. And we found that when we have cold, wet springs, we use probiotics, a strong

microbial probiotics, and we're able to keep European foul brood under control without using any antibiotics. And that does come as a powder, right? That is a powder. Yes. I've got that it's in some kind of aluminum foil packet. Yes. Yeah. And if it's a warm dry, oh, go ahead. And see, we could feed that as mix with dry powdered sugar or something, right? It doesn't have to be a liquid.

Yeah, it doesn't have to be a liquid. No. Yeah, yeah. You can actually apply it just as a powder. And just to reaffirm this for the listeners, it's actually great to have some of the stuff available because some of what you described, we might have an unusual dearth ahead. we might not have rain in the forecast for three weeks at a critical time.

And you need kind of tools on the shelf to sustain your bees through that period. There's another kind of live and let die philosophy where people are suggesting that, well, then you're going to weaken your genetics and you should just let your bees die that aren't able to manage an extended dearth like that. What's your personal philosophy for backyard beekeepers who want to be as holistic? as they can. You think cheating a little bit to keep them alive just makes good sense, or shall we be letting them die out and go with that last two colonies that just happen to survive the

dearth? Yeah. It's a really good question. And I think it's a question that deserves, I mean, deserves real thought. And I think that better genetics is the long-term future of sustainable beekeeping. So I don't, before, as I'm about to answer the question, I don't mean to disparage better breeding genetics, tougher bees. I do believe that's the future.

I think where most people fail is in understanding how better genetics actually result. So I have two lines of thinking. One is just proper animal husbandry. We don't buy a bunch of cows, put them in a field with no grass or water. and say, well, I hope they survive. Whoever's alive in three weeks will take out. Right. Yeah. Exactly.

So there is an element here of just proper animal husbandry where we pay attention to the weather, unusual weather. You know, we wouldn't not bring our dogs inside if it's negative 20 degrees. You know, I mean, so on a high level, we do watch for abnormalities. And we should respond appropriately to our animals that we're carrying. for. Secondarily, just letting bees die, if you're not breeding from the survivors in a closed environment, you're not really helping yourself that much. Now, if you really understand bee breeding and you've got 20 hives and X number are dying and you're breeding queens from the survivors,

and you're also making sure those queens are mating with survivor drones as well. Like if you're really launching a full breeding program, sure. You know, absolutely. That's, that's in essence how it works. But if you've got two hives in your backyard and you're just letting them die every year, you're not really, you don't have a breeding program. And you're not really propagating the survivor genetics. So unless you're going to those lengths, yeah, you're just letting bees die.

And I also think it's important. that we share both sides of this philosophy. If you want to feed your bees, this is what's going to work that's going to sustain them. If you decide to be a live and let die beekeeper, we've given you the option. That's what I like to do. I'm not going to tell them, you know, I want to give them all the information, and then they decide what they'll do based on what they feel is right for what they're hoping to get to their bees. Is that, so those are all the things that you mentioned that you recommend?

Yeah, those are the primary products. And like some, like if it's a warm, dry spring, we won't use the product probiotics. You know, so we're watching the weather. So I'd say the only one that we are consistently using is pollen patties year and year out. The other, as I mentioned, are kind of weather-based. And then, of course, feeding sugar syrup. I mean, that's a given, depending on the weather. And even as a commercial beekeeper, we do leave a blocks of honey on our bees to overwinter.

So we leave honey for our bees. But again, if it's a terrible drought year and our bees are going to starve, yes, I'll feed my bees before I let them starve. Now, I'm looking behind you, all these boxes are mediums, it looks like. Yes, they are. In your operations, are you exclusively all medium boxes? No, we're primarily deeps, actually. So two deep boxes are our standard brood nest. and then we have a bunch of mediums for honey supers.

And so is that what goes to the pollen for the almonds? Is it two deeps? You got it. That's the most common configuration. And then what's on top of that, a migratory cover or? Yeah, it's just as a palette, two deep boxes, and then a migratory cover. Yeah, a pretty simple setup. And then how do you feed a hive that's configured like that if you need it to?

So we have division board feeders, the internal division board. feeders, one in each deep box, and they stay in year-round. So if they need an emergency feed, we don't want to have to worry about getting a bunch of feeders in there. So the feeders stay in their year-round. So we actually have eight frames in each deep box and a feeder. And so if they need emergency feed, it's ready. So you keep those feeders in the top box?

Both boxes, actually. Oh, you each have one. Each box has a feeder. Okay. Yeah. That way, if they need a lot of food, quickly. We can give it to them. Who makes these division board feeders?

We actually do. The ones we use through commercial B-supply or the B-supply, we have a manufacturer that we make our own. And by the way, if those listening and watching, the links to all these websites are going to be down in the video description

so you don't need to write stuff down. I'm going to do that for you. Thebysupply.com. Thank you. Okay. What else do we talking about now that we've satisfied that we've got these losses we're going to learn more later is there so if there is a reporting website for all banker beekeepers and everything else or a reporting system if you have that if you can send me the link I could post that for people for spring there will be updates to if stuff comes around and we can find out what would you like

to just freelance share with us about beekeeping and where we're headed on things we should be doing. Yeah, it's great question. I think in light of the current crisis that we're seeing, I think that there is a lot of hope. I think that beekeeping will still be here and we'll find a way through this. I think good things will come of this. I think the best thing that we can all do is just work together as an industry, small-scale, sideline commercial and support our industry. And that looks like, that looks like buying local honey that directly supports beekeepers. It looks like educating friends, family, neighbors on what not to spray in their yards. And it looks like reaching out to your legislators if you have contacts and letting them know,

hey, we have a problem with the bees. And we needed all the research and support that we can get. So those are some actionable items that would be incredibly helpful right now. and I do think that working together that we will find solutions and bekeeping is not going anywhere. But it does need some help right now in the meantime. So now supporting research, we talk in colleges and universities that have research departments that need support. How does somebody, you know, that's sitting here listening, how do I help? What can I do?

How can I support research efforts? It's a good question. So I think that I can send you some information you can link to actually on that, some industry letters that your listeners could send directly to their local legislators who make funding decisions. And it's a call to, hey, please support our beekeeping researchers so that we can do better by our bees. So I could send that to you to link to.

and yeah, just sending that to your local representatives is helpful. Okay, that sounds good. So what's next for you? What's you have the almonds that you're, what is, how much are you actively participating? Once all the bees are there, what's your role? So it's really monitoring. So, I mean, the next are, as of pretty much last night, the last of the bees went into the almond orchards. The almonds are blooming now.

And so we take a deep breath. And, you know, we check beehives, see if they need any help in any area. Grading happens. So the growers are sending inspectors out to check the bees to make sure that they are strong enough to meet the contract. And then it's going to be getting the bees home. And really, three weeks from now, we're going to be pulling bees out of the almonds. And they're going to go back to wherever home is to be split and try to recoup the losses. And then do they go on to other pollen?

contracts? For my company, no, the only pollination we do is almonds. So we focus on honey production. So it is much harder to keep bees alive when you're pollinating year-round because they're exposed to a lot more pesticides and herbicides, fungicides. So I don't pollinate anything but almonds. So I'll be focused on producing honey. But lots of other beekeepers are going to other pollination events. Now, how much cooperation is there with the growers, when they go through and they're driving these trucks and they're spraying their flowers, they're spraying their almond trees. Yeah.

When the bees are on them, what's what can we do to get them to do that at night or something? Yeah. I will say it's all about relationships and educating your growers. But we are, it's so much better than it used to be. You know, used to a lot of growers would spray day or night, didn't pay attention to the bees. I will say it's rare now that even an almonds that any spraying occurs when bees are actively foraging. I mean, you know, they're very careful about applying it before bees get there and waiting until the bees leave to do any sort of fast application. So I'm very encouraged by that that growers across the country are way more careful than they used to be.

We still have work to do, but they are more cognizant of how precious bees are. And what is it that they spray the trees with? Totally depends on the year. You know, if it's a really wet year, then they're spraying, you know, for fungus, you know, to inhibit funguses, you know, in the fall they're spraying pests. So it just really depends on the weather and the year. But most of it occurs, if not all of it, when bees aren't present. Okay, so now I'm going to ask a question that you may not know the answer to,

but I'm trying to track down an entomologist to talk to me about. H5N1, iPath avian influenza. Yeah. What, uh, no correlation with the die-off. So I've, I've talked to a few researchers about that, actually, who are way smarter than I am. Yeah. And they see no possible connection. Uh, they, they, they say that they're, you know, as they work in their brilliant minds on could,

even transfer to honey bees. They see absolutely no possibility of transfer. But like I said, they've got a tremendous amount of dead bee samples and they are running a lot of virus testing. And I'm sure they'll look at that. Okay. So just the two of us, let's talk because I'm also a poultry technician, which does not mean that I'm a genius and all diseases in poultry. But here's what I think people are thinking and why they're kind of freaking out about it. Because right now, avian influenza, which is what we're talking about, H5N1, there's high path and low path. There are these variants, right? Bees can't contract it, however, they can move it around.

So when the bees are drinking at wet locations that some of our migratory fowl are using, and the targets that are moving it around right now are swans, geese, and mallard ducks. So, and then so then the bees would be, this is, and I should clarify this too, we're concerned about biosecurity with poultry operations. In other words, we try to keep it out of the different growout houses for the friars, right? And then we also have these battery chickens. And bees really can't get in there. So because that's the other thing that will come up. Well, I've seen, you know, bees in chicken feed and in the dust and in the corn.

the bees will go all over the place. But what we're worried about the vectors for H5N1 in the poultry industry are the flies. And they even named the top three. The blowflies, the mosquitoes, and rodents. And this is because

they carry it with their body. Bees at best are going to carry it fresh on their feet, but the minute it dries out, it's done. It's no longer viable. I don't know if people have seen chickens in these garage houses and the ventilation systems that move the air constantly through there, sometimes flies get in there and chickens will eat flies. So this is why that works.

So I'm trying to push the rest. And I've reached out to Penn State and they're working on it because I wanted to get, you know, a real solid scientist to explain in very final terms that the honeybee is not dying because of this exposure. The risk is that it potentially can help spread it around. but then they're not even on the list of the animals that we know of that can vector that H5N1. What do you think about that? That makes that perfectly logical. And it sounds like you are a pretty good expert to speak to that.

Well, no, because I just draw chicken blood and stuff like that. And we send it out for testing the National Pulture Improvement Plan and things like that. So I mean, state by state, they're going to control that. But I would just say this isn't the year to invest in your top birds. because you start them early enough. So you've got talk girls and pullets and you've got that class. And you've got the full-sized roosters and then the full-sized hens in different breed categories. Wow.

Wow. One of the challenges, because I know a USDA scientist I work a lot with, who would be perfect to speak to this, one of the challenges we're running into right now is because of the new political administration that has come in. They have frozen all communications. So the government agencies are allowed to speak publicly about current issues right now. Like even these kinds of issues? Even these kinds of issues.

So like the USDA isn't allowed to make statements or to, you know, get on and chat with you, you know, right now. So they're just kind of communication freeze. Yeah, and like poultry technicians because we're in this thread that is, you know, it's latent. We get all this information about where even if we are aware of bird markets and things like that because we're doing blood testing. We have to submit for that. We're also not allowed to post on social media. Hey, did you know 400,000 birds over here are being composted because they influence that. Right.

And people do flip out about the numbers of birds, millions of chickens, but they don't understand we're in the billions of chickens. Wow. Wow. It's chickens have beat out every other meat produced in the world. Wow. That's it. There are more chickens on earth than there are people. Wow.

I just want to put it in perspective. Right. Right. Amazing. Amazing. And another thing that I think about, too, like be genetics. If you were concerned that we were going to lose genetics, it can come down to some people that are doing this work.

in kind of a small way, maybe being the sole source of some valuable genetic strain. It's happened before with poultry that, you know, sometimes back yarders or smaller poultry operations have been the one that sustained a certain breed for the American livestock breeds a discrepancy because we have at-risk poultry. So go ahead. You're such a unique perspective. we don't usually have crossover between industries like this. And there's so much I think we can learn in the beekeeping industry talking to people like yourself that are so heavily involved in another industry.

Well, I think bees and chickens are standard companion. If you're a doomsday prepper, that's what you have. That's right. For sure. Which I am not a doomsday prepper. I don't want to come after my stuff when it all gets the fan. So any, I really appreciate the time that you've given us. This is a lot of really good information that I hope will help people gain perspective and not panic over what's going on, wait and see what pans out.

And do you have any final words? No, I think you've asked great questions. And, yeah, I appreciate the industry's concern and support. And I think spreading awareness is important as we all, yeah, seek to do a better job of taking care of bees and figuring out how to. conquer the many pressures that are facing them today. So yeah, I just appreciate people listening, appreciate you guys being concerned, and keep the ideas coming. I mean, I think it's healthy, and I'm eager to work through this together as an industry. Okay, thank you so much. And for those listening and watching, this is the podcast, The Way to Be, and it is, of course, YouTube at Frederick

Dunn. So check the video description. All the links are there. I'm just going to do a quick rundown. case you don't know. These are Blake's companies. Desertcreekhoney.com, desertcreekbulk bees. Dot com. Desert Creekpollination.com, commercial bee supply.com and the beesupply.com. Did I leave anything out? Thank you. You got it. That's more than sufficient. Thank you. There you go. Thanks a lot. My pleasure. Yep.