The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - From CIA service to Beekeeping, to Authoring a new Beekeeping Book. Interview with Tara Chapman

Episode Date: November 27, 2024

This is the audio track from the series, Interviews With Experts: https://youtu.be/-FEXCk_MZ9Y    

So hello and welcome to another episode of interviews with experts. I'm Frederick Dunn, and this is the way to be. I recently took a trip down to Austin, Texas for the Texas State Beekeepers Association 2004 conference, where I met Tara Don Chapman. Tara is a longtime beekeeper in the Austin area who has just published her handbook for happy beekeeping, titled For the Bees. I purchased a copy, and I quickly learned that Tara, aside from being a trusted source of beekeeping knowledge and practices, also has a very interesting life story. In this interview, we learn about Tara's beginnings and experience working for the CIA and what's now known as the National Clandestine Service and how she ultimately landed right back in Austin, Texas,

where she and a friend started Two Hives Honey as a business. Here's Tara. Hi, I'm Tara Chapman, and I own Two Hives Honey, which is a honey and beekeeping company in Austin, Texas. And we do a lot of things. We've grown and kind of evolved over the years, but we are, beekeepers, all of the honey with our label is from our highs within 20 miles of downtown Austin, but really where we've grown and where I've grown to love the most about the beekeeping world is the education, and that means not only beekeeping classes, but also agritourism. So we do a lot of agritourism at our honey ranch just east of Austin. We like to bring out folks and put them in a hive or let them do a honey harvest or a honey tasting, all sorts of things. And I have a book out

because I really am passionate about teaching new beekeepers. That is fantastic. So I want to thank you for accepting my invitation to talk here on The Way to Be. And for those people who are watching and listening, you should know that I don't want you to wreck your car this holiday weekend. So listen, it's on Podbean. You can also Google and you'll find out it's on IHeart Radio and everything else that you listen to.

So don't watch the YouTube unless you're in a safe spot. So thanks, Tara, for being here. And we're going to talk about a lot of cool stuff because I'm really excited that I got to meet you at the state conference there for the Texas Beekeepers Association. And you gave a class there. I sat in and listened to the things you had to say. I have to say I like your style. And I didn't even know right away that you had written this book, which is in the thumbnail. And I like that book a lot.

In fact, it's going to be quickly put on my recommended reading list for beginner beekeepers. Is that your target group? or is it for every level? Who did you write the book for? It's definitely for beginners, but I, it, you know, it feels a little, to say it's for everyone. I know that people say it can't be for everyone, but it is certainly for beginners. But I think that the approach, when we get into some of the more advanced topics, like splits, for example, like, you know, you came to my class on splits.

I do think that I teach that and the season. aspect of beekeeping in a way that's different than most folks do. And I kind of take the approach of like, I'm going to approach it from, you know, it's the difference between teaching a man of fish and giving a manofish. And so in that sense, I do think that even beekeepers that are several years into their journey will find a lot of value and how I present the topics. Yeah, I think so. I think you do accomplish that. And I have to admit that I did watch your video on the Texas Beekeepers Association. YouTube channel a while ago.

And I remember you mentioned baby beehives are like cubs, and then a fully grown beehive is like the lion, and you have to be ready for the lion. And I didn't even know that then that I was going to run into you at the conference. Also, I didn't know even back then that I was going to be invited to come and speak at that conference. So this is, this discussion was pre-planned. So I just want people to know that. I love that. I didn't even know that video was up there. So that's great.

Yeah, you're out there. You're searchable. So anyway, let's talk about your background. And I mean, I want to go way back. Did you grow up in Texas? I did. I'm from a teeny little town in rural West Texas called Smyre. It's a population of 400. It's very small. Okay, so define small because I have learned that Texas idea of small is not what we call. small. So what's the population of that town? 400. All right. That's the same as us. We're at 4.10. And then we got you beat. Oh, yeah. I mean, I think that, I think that, you know, it hovers between four and 420 on any given day. I joke that when I left, you know, there's like a little time ticker and it like takes down as you leave the town. I love that when a town is so small that the welcome sign and come again soon are all on the same post. So yeah, it's like a matter of like

Like if you blink, you miss it. The two kind of surrounding, it's near Lubbock when I was in college. So I ended up at Duke University and I was very naive about the world. I'd never really been out of Texas. And people would say, where are you from? And I would say, Smyra, Texas, not knowing like, why wouldn't you know where that is? And they would say, where's that? And I would say, outside of Lubbock.

And then they would say, where's that? And then I'm like run out of reference points because that's five, six hours from Dallas. But yeah, very small. Are we talking dirt roads and cactus or what's the terrain like? Yeah, very flat. It's not so far west that you start to get into the mountains, but super flat. Like my granddad would say, you know, in West Texas, the very bottom of the panhandle, you know, you can see for 100 miles.

And if you stand on the tuna can, you can see for 100 more. Very flat, no trees, a lot of cotton. Cotton and cattle is the money out there. Cotton and cattle. Okay, that's a great point. Do bees work cotton there? They do. What do they get out of it? They do make honey off of cotton. Have you had cotton honey? It's... We have no cotton here, so it would have to be somebody sharing it. But I do hear people say, oh, the cottons, you know, blooming and the bees are all over it and that crop goes on.

I'm confused by, I know beekeepers move bees on to cotton. It's very dark. dirty. Cotton's very dirty in terms of like the pesticides used, you know? So yikes. Kind of perplexes me. Cotton honey is not my favorite. But yeah, it does exist. Okay. So Tara said that it's dirty, meaning that they're industrial or agricultural chemicals being used, probably pesticides. So a listener might wonder, how would we find out if a different geographic area has a heavy or a light pesticide load? And I just want to share with listeners that is B-scape.org. And you can go there, put in the zip code of wherever you want to know, and you can see what

the pesticide load is because they have to register those with the Department of Ag. So I'm glad you said that, but that was interesting, calling it dirty. So does that mean the honey that would be taken, the nectar that would be taken and turned into honey would maybe be something that we would worry about? I mean, I'm speaking just from, you know, the hip here. But yes, and more concerning to me would be the health of my bees on that crop. I mean, for me, as a beekeeper, that's my biggest concern is the health and longevity of my colonies. And so I would be concerned about that as a beekeeper.

Because it would be basically a mono crop, right? Monoculture. Yeah, monoculture. Yeah, and there's the four. I've never been a beekeeper in West Texas. This came to me years after I left that part of the world. But it is a very sparse, sparse with people and sparse with plants. I mean, I remember when we got to North Carolina,

this notion that you just have green everywhere was so new to me and my mom. So I'm also a little bit, I would love to meet up with some West Texas panhandle beekeepers and want to know more about how well fed are your bees. and because a lot of the forge they're going to get is cotton. And again, it's heavily sprayed with pesticides. That was the jobs that I had growing up. You know, you sit on the back tractor and move along and you've got your little sprayer and you spray directly on the.

Oh, you're kidding. You would think crop dusters would be the choice down there. Yeah, there's that too. Yeah. So, wow. So what about water availability in that part of Texas? It sounds like they would have problems with. wire. Yeah, it's real dry. I was just talking about this was someone yesterday because I was saying

that I won this fellowship during COVID and I went out to, you know, the Sacramento Valley in California and got to meet with all these farmers and beekeepers and got a kind of firsthand look at the water wars, you know, in California. So we were talking about that compared to Texas. I was saying that I cannot remember a time my entire life. The idea of restriction, restrictive water was just what we did. You know, we knew how much water there was in the tower and that dictated on how often or if you got to water your lawn, what days you got to water your lawn, what hours you watered your lawn. And that's just been a factor of my entire life. It's just this notion of that there's not enough water. So we have to work around it. Has that changed from your childhood to now that you're an adult? Are they still as water?

or still yeah still and you know being in austin where you know a fair bit west of there in central texas it's the same thing um been under drought conditions for for years and it's still those conditions restrictions are still in place in terms of when you can use water and when you're allowed to water your lawn etc so talk to me about interest in insects and things like that as a child where you at all? Like, were you a free-range child that was out checking things out? What were you interested in? Reading. That's what I did. Give an example of a book that marks your childhood. So my parents were divorced and my father was not around, hardly ever. But when he came into town, I had to go with him. And he would take me to his mother.

house and he would leave me and then go do whatever and I was boring there was nothing to do there and I love to read and there were all these Lois Lamar Western books. I know those books. Yeah. I read a lot of Lois Lamar Western books growing up. It was very young just because there was nothing else to read and I was bored and um okay this is a book of choice but it was my book of access. Okay, I can bounce this off of you. My grandfather in Vermont had all of those books. He was a real academic, but what he did is he picked up one of those books and he showed it to me and do you know, every river, every town, every hill named in these books is real. Is that true? The places that are described, the characters might be fictitious, but the places are real? Is that true or false?

Are my grandfather true or false right now? I'm going to say your grandfather's true, but I honestly have no idea when I wasn't forced to go sit at someone's house that I didn't know and I had other options. I wasn't, I've not been perusing those, those novels anytime recently. Okay. So, but that's what I did. I wanted to read and I don't, you know, I went outside like any other kid. You know, we didn't have computers and the screens and the access to stuff we did now. I remember when we got cable in fifth grade and that was kind of a big deal. But so we were outside all the time, but there wasn't this keen interest in plants or trees or the outdoors. You know, my granddad had a garden and my nana would can from the garden. But once I left

West Texas, it wasn't like there was this interest there that I would nurture. I went away to school and then I ended up, you know, working for the government for the next decade. So then brothers and sisters by yourself? I have, I have half sisters. Were you very close with them or how old is your age? You know, I'm seven years younger than my older half-sister and five years older than my youngest. So we weren't super close in age. So that's about myself, mostly, honestly. All right. So did you, what were your extracurricular activities in high school?

Did you play in the band? Were you, did you play sports? What did you do? I did. Yeah. So I went to a really small school. They were 21 in my graduating class. And so it was this kind of thing where if you did something, you did everything.

So I was a cheerleader. I played basketball. I ran track, mostly just a stage shape for basketball. Basketball is what I really cared about. Big basketball fan. Same thing with cross-country. And that was all mostly activities that were available to my tiny little town. You know, you had girls had basketball, boys had football, and that was it.

Okay. And then you decided you needed to go to college and you went to Duke. Oh, I'm getting to the big story, by the way. So you go to Duke, what did you major in there, or what was your path? So I kind of ended up at Duke in a wayward sort of way. You know, my first generation college graduate, and you don't find a lot of folks leaving rural West Texas to go to a school like Duke. But they had done this, they do this program for seventh graders called the talent identification program.

And basically, if seventh graders score so high on their aptitude test, like your state aptitude test, they invite you to take the SAT or the ACT with juniors and seniors. So in seventh grade, I did. I scored high. And so I took the ACT. I didn't really understand why. I remember being confused. Like, why would you pay money to take a test?

That seems like such a weird decision. And at Texas Tech, I had my little number two pencils and everyone there, all the the juniors and seniors were like, you know, I was, what, 12 in seventh grade? And they're like, what are you doing here? And I said, I don't know. And my little very thick accent, I don't know, Duke asked me to come take this test. And I just remember feeling they were like, oh, you must be so smart. And I thought, I must be so smart. And it was this first time of this, like, awareness that maybe I had this, like, gift or abilities that maybe put me apart from the rest. So when it came time to apply to college, again, I had no research.

sources. There was no Kaplan. There was no, you know, counsel. I mean, the school counselor didn't know much more than me and my own new, frankly. So we typed my application out on a typewriter and sent it off and I applied to one school and I applied early because I thought, well, I'll just go to Duke because they made me feel so smart. That's probably a really good place to go. I didn't visit it. And thank goodness I got in because I didn't realize this notion that, you know, maybe I wouldn't get in. I thought, well, I'll just apply and that's where I'll go. So I got there and then immediately was totally overwhelmed by my naivete and just a fish out of water. Like culturally, it was a huge shock for me. The amount of money, you know, I was just, it was very different than all my peers and that

extended to summers because they all, most all of them were very well off financially. So this was the time before we paid our intern, so they would do internships and things. And I didn't have that option. I had to work. I waited tables. And so my options already always felt very limited because I thought, I can't compete against all of these people that already saw out of my league anyway. And so I didn't really know what I wanted to do. And I just found that my political science classes were the most interesting to me. So I studied political science. And that's how I chose my major. I found it interesting. And I thought, again, you'll get a sense that I just sort of like move through the world through gut feeling and kind of whim, right? Like I ended up at Duke that way. And then I was like,

well, I was to study political science. That seems like a, I really enjoy that. I'll do that. There's not, there's not a lot of thought put into the major. Again, it just exposes my, how naive I was. So then was there a faculty member or an upper classman or someone that might have, you know, made friends with you and taking you? you aside and kind of said, hey, have you thought about, you know, this path and that path? Who was the most instrumental in your career path once you were at Duke? Honestly, I didn't really have that. And it's interesting now, because I've been back to Duke, I've been back to speak at conferences

and things. And now the programs that they have for first generation college students is incredible. You get matched with an older, um, uh, upper classmen, you get matched with a faculty advisor. You know, it's so much more than just it's financial, it's social. There's so many disadvantages that you're at when you come into that world. And they didn't have that back then. And again, I didn't know what I didn't know. And so I probably could have sought out someone. But I was just, I was just trying to like, you know, keep my head above water with my studies and to not feel like stupid, frankly, when all my classmates were around and they

knew, they seemed to know so much about the world and I seemed to know so little. So you spent a lot of your time alone studying? Did you go to study carols or go to the library or what were you doing? Yeah. I mean, I quickly figured out after first one year when it was, I'd gone from this student that, you know, I'd never seen a bee in my life in high school. granted my school was not challenging at all for me and Duke was very challenging for me. And then I realized that half the battle is just picking the class that like suits you. You know, I would take these classes that were supposed to be like the breezy, easy classes and they were just massive memorization, right?

You don't have to go to class. You just study for the test and memorize everything. And I don't have a great memory. But I learned that I was actually a quite gifted writer. So I stopped taking those classes that were the easy, quote, unquote easy ones and started taking classes that spoke to my strong suit, which was writing. Now, you mentioned that typewriter. So was that an electric or a manual typewriter? It was a manual.

Was it? It wasn't like real old. My mom had from high school. Was it like an Underwood? I don't know. I don't know. Oh, that's too bad. That would have been. My mom had it in a closet, like it was her typewriter from when she was in high school. So did you take typing? Could you type fast? I could. Yes, I could.

I was a beneficiary of, you know, at Apple, Mac did a bunch of, you know, that company did a bunch of work to get computers into schools all across the U.S. in the 90s. And I was a product of that effort in that we had access to computers because of all that they were sharing. I would have to say that one of the greatest practical skills, you can pick up is touch typing. If you can type fast and you don't have to look at your hands, you are going to breathe through so much. When I see somebody do this, oh my goodness, or the thumbs, typing is cool. Okay, so I want to zip fast forward because this really surprised me. When I picked up your book and of course I started looking at it right away, I did not know that you were in the CIA and it's right in your book right in the beginning.

And I'm just thinking, what? Can she write that down? I mean, because there are, of course, people that have this career path and they write a whole book about it. Right. So, I mean, everything. But, and it's really cool. I think you also refer to it as the clandestine service. Is that right?

Yeah. Yeah. So, yes. So ended up at the, and then being in Austin, where the culinary institute of a, I have to always clarify. Right. Right, because I have a friend that graduated from the CIA. So that sounds pretty cool.

I did not go to culinary school. Right. Yes, so that was my very first job out of college. And my area of work that I, you know, this was in 2003. So we're talking about a post-9-11 world where there was huge, you know, huge, huge, huge hiring and huge amounts of money were being funneled to the, you know, so-called war on terror at the time. And so I was part of that wave that was brought in. And Pakistan was my area. And I was in out of Pakistan a fair bit. And the part of the agency that I worked in was then called the DO, the Directorate of Operations. It's now, it sends change names. It's now called the National Clendestine Service, which is a lot less obtuse than directorate of operations. I like that. I like that title, though. But I want to stop you there.

how you must not have known about that career path so how did you find out do they have recruiters so they have people that are watching students and like hey that's a candidate we need to talk to her and then they start kicking off some kind of background screening but without you even knowing it before they even talk to you how do they make contact and find out that you're someone they're interested in and then how do they convince you that that's something you'd like to do yeah so there's a couple of paths, but my path was I had dated a guy that had interned there one summer. So I was like aware of this as a potential career. He had worked in the D.I. That's where all the folks go that like so the DO or the NCS are the people that are actually out seeking the intelligence, like recruiting people to

spy on behalf of the United States. And then there's analysts that bring in the information and like pose the questions to the folks. the operators in the field to make sure we're getting the right questions answered. So they're the kind of he worked in the area that's kind of the communicators with Congress. Like what questions do we have? And so I knew it was possible. And then my senior year, again, so I was in a position where I didn't have all the experience that my classmates did.

I thought no one is going to hire me because I've waited tables. That's my experience. And they come, they actually, that they go to all the Ivy Leagues and the Tier 1 schools and they recruit. And so they had a table at the career fair. And the line was very long, as you can imagine. And I'm very impatient, but I'm also very opportunistic. And so I just kind of watched and they would chat with people as they would come up to the table and they'd like put their resumes on the table. And there were a couple of different piles.

And I mean, based off the conversations I was hearing, and I kind of deduced, like, this is the pile I want to be in. And so I just slipped around the table and I, like, slid my resume into the pile. And I always say, what. Oh, you did? Like, the pile, they were putting stuff in, so we even snuck one over on them. That's impressive. So one or two things happened. They, perhaps I was successful.

Then they saw my resume. But honestly, again, I come back to, I don't know what on my resume would have been interesting to them. One theory is that the resiliency, right? You don't go from Little Smyre, Texas to Duke and get out without some level of resiliency, which really helpful when you do this kind of work. Or they saw it maybe and they're like, that skill set. That's what we need. And they found it and flagged it.

But either way, I got kind of a weird, vaguely spooky email from the, quote, government and did an interview in a little hotel. off the side of the highway in Durham, North Carolina, and got an initial offer. But to work at the agency, you don't just get a job offer and then you start. You have to, you know, you hold a top secret clearance there. And so there is not only a full background check, but there's also what's called a full scope lifestyle poly. And so you have to be polygraphed.

And it may have changed now, but back then you had a full scope polygraph. I actually failed my first polygraph. What? I was telling the truth, but I was quite a little anxious, you know, you can imagine, like how scary that must be. And there was a lot of like good cop, bad cop going on. There were two people and they would come and leave the room. And anyway, failed my first one, took another one, past that one.

They send out investigators to everywhere you've ever lived. I know. And they, did you warn people, did the FBI come to your house and actually talk to people? Not the FBI, but they do have investigators that come out. And they were door knocking in little sexes. And folks were like, oh, Tara must be in trouble. Yeah.

Yeah. Did you ever get to see your security file, your background investigation file? No. You mean like what information they gather? No. Yeah, because they collect like your school photos and put those in the file. No, I didn't see that. Oh, man, because sometimes it's stuff you would like to have.

It's like, can I, can I have that picture? Well, I was just, I was just, um, cleaning out some files last week. And I came across my original SF 86. And an SF 86 is a form that you felt that basically you list everything you've ever done in your life as the basis for them to go out and start the event. So every address, every, you know, a friend in every city. And I found that. And I don't know. It was a little bit unsettling to come.

across this document year later. But you wanted to be that thorough. This is really interesting. I know we're here to talk about bees, but this is your path to beekeeping. Because you actually did. Obviously, you cleared all the wickets. Your background clearances were good.

And then you end up working for this agency for 10 years. And then I noticed that you say you quit. Why did you quit? In other words, what happened? Did you feel like, man, there's more of the world? I need to get in on that or I don't like what I'm doing and seeing here, that kind of thing. How did that go? Yeah.

And I actually, so I worked with the government for 10 years. I left the agency, I think around year six. And I kind of moved around. I worked for a congressional commission for a while. I worked for a special inspector general. But it was all centered around Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan. So I sort of saw what was happening in those countries, you know, from oversight. from investigations and from like the Intel operation side.

But the reason that I originally left the Intel community and went over and worked for a congressional commission was so I was spending a lot of time in and out of Pakistan, which was great. I really enjoyed back then they let us live on the economy, meaning now the embassy is kind of pulled into like a pseudo like green zone at the embassy. All the housing rather is pulled in. But when I was there, I actually had a little guest house and I got to drive to work every day. Great story. I actually got into a car accident with the head of security for President Mushar for the time, which is a other like great story.

But was loving it and was kind of looking for my next. Okay, I was kind of like done in my role and I was kind of looking at where I wanted to go next and was looking around. And the thing is, is that I was going to continue to be deployed to Pakistan, Afghanistan, or Iraq for the next 10 years, which I didn't have a problem with. But I did want, and Little Tara in her early to mid-20s really, you know, still holding on to this like notion of my West Texas group up where you know that you like get married in your 20s and then you have kids. And I did want that. And that life is very challenging for women in the intel. In general, the divorce rate for people that work in operations is like over 50%, well, over 50%.

It's something like 80% at the time. So it's very high. And I was willing to make those sacrifices. But what I was not willing to make those sacrifices for was to go over and sit and station. And I will never understand why they were sending. women in general to those countries where we couldn't actually do our jobs. We had to sit in station and we wrote cables and the men got to go out and do all the intel, right? Because culturally, you couldn't do anything different.

Send us to Latin America where we can get some work done. And so I didn't want to stay, continue to not be able to perform the duties that I was trained to do and just sit in station. And I had seen so many women come, you know, before me, that were just frustrated with their inability to work. And they were going to keep sending me there for like the next six or seven years. And so I decided I wanted to do something different. Was it, did you see that movie about Bin Laden and when they found him? And there was a woman in the, I guess it was like an information center.

And she had a status board and she constantly, every day she would go and pointed that status board because she knew where he was located and everybody was blowing her off. is there are there info we used to call them combat information centers are they is it like that i mean did you occupy a space like that where there were all these status boards and all these meetings going on and and if you knew something you had to wait until you know they needed what you knew no not necessarily no it didn't really work didn't really work that way no hmm dang it hollywood lets me down okay and i intentionally don't want watch. I've never watched Alias. It's just, there's plenty of books that have been written,

like you say, by people that work there. They get their books cleared. You know, there's information. People always ask me about the farm. There's plenty of books out there. You can go read them. It's just easier if I've not seen the movie to be like, I don't know. I haven't seen it. Now, when you leave, is there some kind of big out brief where they say, you can't talk about and you can't talk about this? Yes. And any cover you've had for most people, your cover gets rolled back so you can actually like, you know, you have to get your resume approved. And it's, there's a line on my resume. I think there's not much on there.

But I haven't had to use a resume in a long time since I've started the business 10 years ago. But yes, you get that vetted when you leave of what you can include on your resume, what you can say. And for most people, they do roll back cover so that you just don't have this like glaring gap. There are some people that they don't, can't do that for, but that's, those are few and far in between. So that's a lot of fun, actually. I love that you have that background.

And then you end up right back in Texas, and you're single, because I read this thing in here about when you're a beekeeper and you got a call for a swarm and you're on a date. And this is, I'm just saying this because this is a word of the wise for anybody out there who's single, who's on a date with a beekeeper. Because you get a call to catch a swarm and you thought it was one of your own. So you leave your date, but your date decides not to go with you. So that's the end of him, right? That was it.

That is it. I just, I couldn't believe a world in which you would, a man to go on a date with a woman. And he clearly was interested in me and what I did. And he didn't offer to come with me. And I thought, what an unadventurous blob. These guys, he didn't realize that you were a keeper, but I'm thought. Yeah. And there's this video of like still circulated.

I'll help to send it to you. Oh, yeah. You mentioned that in the book. Yeah. You were out there because you were in your date night clothes. Yeah. I was in this like tiny little mini dress and heels and it was very stupid. I didn't have a veil on.

I mean, I do a lot of beewear without gear, but I always cover my face. And I've got these like long hair and these curls and I'm picking up this of wrought iron chair. And those things are heavy. And I'm like forcefully shaking these bees into this box while this, you know, people are filming. And it's like nighttime. You shouldn't catch a storm at night anyway. It was just so many bad decisions. But yeah, that was the end of that that budding relationship.

I just thought, that's not what I need. Well, I bet he's sorry now. So. I should have a copy of the book. But that's quite a leap we made. So you came back. Why Beads all of a sudden? What was your introduction to it?

Yeah. So when I, so I left the agency and I was still working for the government. And the latter job, that latter part of the decade, I was working for a special inspector general. So I was going, Afghanistan was my area. So I was going in and out of Afghanistan. And this was before remote work was a thing, especially for the government. And I really wanted to return to Texas for a lot of reasons. And so I convinced my agency to let me work.

part-time from Texas. So I was spending three weeks out of the month in Austin, a week in D.C., and then every two months or so, I would go to Afghanistan for two weeks to two months, depending on what the needs were and what the design of the trip was. And while I was back in Texas, you know, those are very three different wardrobes, D.C., Austin, Texas, and Kabul, Afghanistan. And so when I was in Austin, I just wanted to be super Austin and wanted to do luck off. the wall things. You know, Austin has this keep Austin weird reputation. And so I wanted to dive fully into Austin when I was there. And there was a beekeeping class on Groupon. People remember group on. And I know it's still around because they always call me one to put my classes on group on.

And it's a hard, hard pass. Don't water down your brand. Though it did work for me. I took the class. And so I remember seeing it and I thought, that is the weirdest thing I've ever heard. Like I didn't know this sounds so makes me sound so unintelligent now. But I didn't know that was a thing. I didn't, this thought that you could put beehives in your backyard, I guess, and like be a beekeeper. Like I, there was a long journey between me and my food, right? I hadn't yet like shortened the distance to learn more about my food. That wasn't the space.

That wasn't, that wasn't the era. And so, I thought that's so weird. And then I had, I posted it on Facebook and I was like, who wants to take this class with me? And a gal, her name was Gina, that I knew from the coffee shop, said, my grandpa was a beekeeper. I really want to come. So went, we took this beekeeping class and I left there. And I just could not believe I had lived my 32 years, 30, 30 years of my life and did not know all that was going on in these hives all around me, all the time. I just was, I thought it was so fascinating. And so I'm sure any beekeepers listening,

you can remember the first time you ever heard about the queen bee and the mating process and how it's all females that do the work and all of that. It's just so fascinating. And I was just blown away. So I started a couple of hives, which is how the company got its name, was those original two hives. And we should name the website. It's still two hives, honey? It is. My best advice, if you want to start a business, is do not include the name, a number in your business name. Forever until the day that you die, you will say, spell out the two. I'm just going to put it on my gravestone. Spell out the two, she said. Yeah, yeah. That's your eyes, honey. Okay. So, and then now, so what year was that that that you were starting? You've been in this for quite a while. Yeah, so that was like 2013, 2012, maybe when I took that first class.

Okay. And then did you join an organization straight away or did you just loan it or you took that course and what happened after that? I jumped in real ridiculously fast. It was, it's amazing that it worked out. So I took this class. I started these two beehives with this friend. I was so in early. I mean, I just, I just couldn't believe the enjoyment and the joy that this beehive brought me. And so literally like, 18 months after that first class, I was still within the same year, which I started my beehives. I wanted my dream that I had was I thought, I want to start a honey company because I was fascinated how different flowers make different honey. Again, didn't know that. Didn't know that was a thing. Really, honey in my mind was this commodity, right?

You see it at the grocery store, it's the same color, same flavor and whatnot. And so I really wanted to start a honey company. and I wanted every neighborhood to have bees so I could have these little neighborhood honeies. So that was the original idea that I wanted to do. And then I thought, well, I think I need to be all in. And I emailed Laura Weaver, you know, one half of Bee Weaver. And I thought, well, I should probably learn a little bit more about bees. I mean, I was still, I was like six months into my first beehive.

I thought, oh, I should maybe learn a little bit more before I quit my job. So I secured a job with her for the spring season, and then I quit my job in January. See, I did not even know that because the Weavers, Daniel Weaver, who is also at the conference, and I've been writing her since before the date that you're even talking about now. So because I wanted to be treatment-free and I wanted to have their survivor stock and everything else, So that was the family that I reached out to from here in Pennsylvania. Yeah. So that is really interesting.

And then you worked with them. So tell me a little bit about that learning curve. I did. Well, so, yeah. So I emailed Laura. I was like, are you hiring for the spring season? She said, yes, send me your resume. And I were like gathering my documents.

And I thought, oh, what do you put on a resume? I'd taken one class and I had this one hive, right, that I'd had. I built my top bar. So on my resume, I wrote like, I built my top bar. And then I sent her a cover letter with like my deadlifting numbers because I thought they probably want someone to be strong. It's just like, but it worked. And so her and Danny called me and I'll never forget.

They called me up to their house because B. Weaver's in East Texas and Navasota, but they actually lived in the time in Austin. And they said, we'd like to hire you. but you have to know this is really hard work. And the year before, they had hired, so I was in my early 30s at this point, they had hired two young men, like early 20s. And the two young men didn't make it out of the first month. They quit.

And that, you know, they hire seasonally for B season because from basically March until, you know, May is when they're making packages and they're breeding, you know, thousands of queens and making new. And so they have to bring in extra support. And I remember Laura saying, you cannot, that really hurt us. You cannot quit. This is really important. If you were in, you are in.

And then, of course, it became these two boys, two men, a decade, my junior, like, couldn't cut it. I'm going to cut it. I'm going to make it. So I would drive every week. I would drive out to Navasota and I would stay there during the weekend. And then I would come home for one or two days on the weekend at most. usually I'd come home for Sunday, not I'd go back. And it was the hardest thing I've ever done.

You know, I'd never been stung by a bee when I showed up. And all of a sudden, I'm being thrown in a yard where, you know, you've got trucks of bees being brought in and they are angry and were shaking packages and bees do not like to be shook into packages. It turns out. And I'll never forget that one of the first, early first week when I got stung like 15, 16 times in one day. And I was almost hysterical in my B-suit. And I was like, they would get in my veil and I would like grab at the veil. And that's the

thing you don't want to do because then more bees get in. I mean, it was really trial by fire. It was really intense. I was away from, you know, I was staying in this little, little farmhouse that they have since been, they don't use it to house people anymore. or it really should be condemned. I mean, I would find like raccoons in the house. There's lizards in my seat. It was really, really tough. And I remember being terrified that the other workers were going to find out.

It was almost like a reverse imposter syndrome because, yes, I am very blue collar. I grew up with very, very little. But I did go to Duke University, right? Graduated, had this kind of like big time job, at least from the perspective of most folks, and left it to come do this work. And I did not want them to find out because I thought they're going to lose all. Because for them, it's not a choice necessarily. Those folks are there because the best pay job they can get in that part of the world.

You know? So it was very, very intense. But honestly, that trial by fire is really what, that's what I needed. And I learned an incredible amount in that four months. enough that when I came back to Austin, they hired me to work there. They had hives back in Central Texas, and they hired me as a consultant to go out and do all that work for them. And just because some people are also listening, they can't see you, I want people to know you're not a little person. I think you're like, are you 510?

I'm 5.9. 5.9 and a quarter, technically. Dang, and I was so close. So 5.9, anyway, because you look like someone who would be able to pick. things up and put things down. Yes. You are, were you also a college athlete or did you not? No, I wasn't.

But I was, I've always been, you know, fit and very into Olympic weightlifting at the time. And so it's definitely like the physicality of it in that aspect wasn't too challenging for me. So I'll say, even, you know, it gets real hot in East Texas on a day mid, middle the day, May. and you're in full gear. And that could get really intense.

Definitely lost a lot of weight that spring. So you think these other guys, you think they quit because of the stinging or the physically demanding environment, the heat, what do you think got them to quit? I don't know, but it is, it was the hardest job that I've ever had.

I mean, both the like the every day of the work, just like the activities, was really challenging. and the heat. And then also, like, it wasn't the easiest, you know, it was my first time kind of working, you know, again, in college and in high school, I waited tables. I worked as a receptionist. But when you're working in that line of work, there is a boss and there are your underlings. And I was totally taken aback by how quickly another underling would throw you under the bus

if it meant they didn't get in trouble. Like, I had this, like, very naive vision of, like, after work we're all going to like go get a beer and hang out and kick back and no it was okay i have to know give me one example of when you were thrown under the bus by an underling you know like if you left a bucket of feet out if someone left the um you know Danny had this huge tank of uh sugar syrup for half a dose corn syrup right that you can just like open the spout and it would pour out and, you know, if someone left that open, I mean, there was just finger pointing immediately. And I just expected this camaraderie. And it wasn't, it wasn't.

It was a really hard environment to come into. Yeah. So how long did you end up working with the Weaver family? So I worked in Navasota from like February until like early June through like a season when we're shaking packages and making nukes. And I came back to Austin and I worked there for them. And then I would go back and forth. You know, I would go back and help with some package pickups.

But pretty quickly, my own work took off. And so it was less than a year that I kind of had to step back and focus on two hives because we started, you know, started growing and getting business pretty quickly. So when you started to grow your own business, did you continue to use the Weaver family stock? Or what did you get? What did you? Yeah, I did. You know, with beekeepers, you know, the old phrase, you could make more bees or you can make more honey and you tend to do one or the other.

I mean, the weavers certainly sell honey because they have a lot of, but it's almost like a sort of byproduct for them. You know, they happen to get honey. They're not managing their bees in a way to get more honey. They're managing their hives in a way to get more bees. And so I knew after I left that season, I was like, I will never breed bees. I don't want to. I'm awful at grafting. I could never get it.

I remember, you know, you go and you've got the mating nukes, and you have to go and check and make sure they're laying. And, you know, you have to grab the queen with your bare hands and put her in a box. I wasn't so bad at that. But I really struggled with getting the workers in the box. And I, the number of times that I would squish a queen and I was terrified. I was terrified of Danny finding out. And I was like, throw her in the bushes.

So I was like, this is. And my queen counts were always so low, like the catching, like these women that have been doing this for decades, you know, would come back with like a hundred queens and I'd come back with like 20. So I was like, so I was like, so I was like, so I was like, so I was like, so I went back to Austin and I knew I wanted to do honey anyway. So I was like, okay, well, I'm never going to breed bees, shake packages or do any of that ever again. But then I was like, oh, I'm not going to have enough honey to make a business anytime soon. Maybe never. Maybe never is definitely the answer. Never is the answer.

And so I was reading this book at the time called The $100 startup. And I was just ingesting all this entrepreneur. Is that strictly like a business book? It is. It's a business book. Yeah. And so I was ingesting all this material. And there was a chapter called Get Paid Twice or something like that.

Get paid twice was a phrase that was used in the book. And I was very literally thinking like, okay, if I've got a jar of honey, how do I get paid twice for it? And I was like mulling this over. And then what I realized was I was introduced to this kind of notion of agritourism and that I thought, okay, I have to work these bees to produce this honey. And this honey's not going to come for another year. and I don't have enough bees to make enough, honey. This isn't going to work. And then it occurred to me that a product could be the tour piece, the agro tourism piece.

So all of my friends that came into Austin, they just wanted to get into bees. And I thought, I bet I can charge for that. So I started doing that. I started cold calling. I would find these groups on meetup that had like an outdoorsy theme or slant, you know, the hiking group and the endomology group or whatever. And I would email them and I would say, I've got an experience for your group. And I was charging them next to nothing. They would bring their folks over to my house. We'd sit on my back porch. I had my lawn

chairs out. And I would do like a 20 or 30 minute like intro to bee biology kind of like wow them with all the be facts. Then we'd suit up and we'd walk across the street because my I had my original beehives were across the street in my neighborhood. And my neighbor would let me run these tours and I would put them in bees for 30 or 40 minutes and then I would charge for that and that really took off and that was a way I could make money long before I had like a physical tangible product and that's really where that started. So then how often would you bring your group in like that? You wouldn't be getting into your hives frequently. So. Yeah. So I had six hives across the street and I would try to rotate them through that first year. So I mean, I don't know how

many tours I did that first year. I didn't have a booking system. It was literally like every tour was up. You know, now we've got a booking system. If you want to do a private tour, which we do that for a lot of businesses, you can book that. There's an additional cost to that, but back then everything was manual. And so someone would buy a tour on the website. You could like put the item in your car and they would buy it. And then I would email them and I would say, what day this week works for you? And then I would, you know, had like two or three people from this group that I would take out and I would do this little tour and I would just manually book everything. But that first year, I started bees at like four or five sites. So I was started taking them out to anyone that would let me bring folks to the site, like farms

and stuff. I would start bringing folks out and doing tours there. We did we did tours at our kind of first big tours we started doing where I actually had a booking system when you could book a date on the website was at this nonprofit farm called FarmShare. And there was no bathrooms. So my language had to be like, go to the bathroom before you show up. You can't go for 90 minutes. Yeah. And so if they wanted to, you're still doing this now.

Yeah. Okay. So people that want to look to book something, we go to Two Hiveshoney.com. Yeah. So you can come out and we kind of explain that our offerings, we have this what we call a beekeeper for a day experience. So it's a 90-minute, you know, a hive tour where you sued up. We do something I came up with called Honey Harvest Parties where you get to actually,

because I found that some people didn't want to get into bees. And so I thought, I've got to find activities to meet. I've got to have a wider target audience, right? So we have kind of three signature experiences and we do a lot of B2B. So with the Google, you know, Austin's a huge tech city. And so a lot of these tech companies will come out. And that's their kind of team building. outing. Now, do you partner up with people that have B&Bs and things like that where people can stay?

Or are there, you're mostly just for people that are already there in Austin? Yeah, we do get some people that are traveling through, but it's mostly people that are local to Austin that are coming out and doing, you know, doing a tour or whatever. Is it seasonal? So is there a time of year when you are not giving tours? Yeah. So they're only in the spring and then in the fall. We take a break in the summer. Texas has a really long bee season, you know, February all the way through November. But we take a break. We do March through May and then we do September and October, just because February, November,

can be a little bit tricky with the weather, can be a little bit too cold. And then the summer is just brutal. Nobody wants to be in a B-suit in August in Texas, including- Can you provide the B-suits and all of that for them? We do, yeah. Okay. So at some point, somebody said, Tara, you need to write this book, which I'm sure took you more than a week. And why? With all the B books that are out there. Yeah. Why did you think

this is something that you wanted to do? What message did you need to bring that you haven't found in any other B book? Yeah. So it was born out of necessity, really. So I have this apprenticeship class that when I was, so I started right around the time that we started doing tours, I also started teaching beekeeping. And I found that that is a gift. I think I'm very gifted. It's a skill set that I, breaking it down into a way that's easy to digest because super nuanced, right? I think that I'm good at that. And so I started teaching beekeeping. And I was frustrated with someone would come to an intro class and it's two and a half hours. And I've just felt so dissatisfied. with what I can teach in two and a half hours. I'm like, wait, I need you to stay here for six

more days. So I started this apprenticeship program where basically it is a paid program. And it's six, it initially started a six full Saturdays over six months. So you get the seasonality. So we can kind of start at the beginning and take you all the way through a harvest. And so you get kind of to see all of the aspects of beekeeping. And the text, I, wanted a text that my philosophy definitely, you know, I'm not super, I'm not the furthest to the left in terms of like, I'm definitely treatment free. I try to be as natural as possible. I want to mimic what bees do in the wild. But I'm not the furthest to the left. So definitely left of center. I wanted something that kind of spoke to that. And then also I was frustrated with the found the text

fell into one or two categories. You've got the super dense, almost like a reference book. Like all the info is there, but beginners can't. That's not approachable. And then you've got the beautiful book, right? The beautiful photos, but a lot of fluff. And I thought, can we not address the nuance, but also have fun with it? So I was always trying to find a text that and I need, and I want. wanted a text to be super biology forward. Like I think where most, where a lot of people go wrong that teach beekeeping is they teach someone how to be a beekeeper. You need to teach someone how to be biologist first, right? You need to understand bee biology. And then the beekeeping becomes so much easier. But to do the opposite, we failed. And so my assistant was like, don't kill me because you've got a

lot going on, but I think you should just write the book that you want. And so I started writing, I just thought, well, I'll just write the information that I would want my students to know that month, because I saw them once a month. So that's how I got started doing it. And I didn't have a publisher or anywhere. I didn't think the book would go anywhere. I thought, well, I'll just write the text that I want them to understand, and then we'll go from there. So, well, I have to say that I think you really did a great job with this book. And I think, you accomplished the things that you described that were missing from boats that you were not happy with. And for people that are listening, it's called For the Bees. It's a handbook for happy beekeeping.

And you do cover kind of both sides of even bee management, hive management, for those that want Langstroth, you do touch on because I think you said initially you were a top bar hive person to begin with. So you addressed horizontal beekeeping. But of course, you hit the nail on the head. understanding bees, understanding their biology, what their needs are, and regional issues that relate to your beekeeping are at the core before you even branch out into the hive configuration that you want to work with. You did such a great job explaining availability of equipment, what kind of choices they're going to have, and then you do, of course, get into the fact that you're going to be picking things up that are heavy, or you're going to be in a horizontal configuration where it's much more accessible

and I like the way that you covered that. And I hope that people that are listening today will take a deep look at your book. It's available on Amazon. And where else can they get it from your website also? They can. Yeah, they can get it on our website and then Amazon. And it's available in Canada and the UK on Amazon as well,

and local bookstores. And so do you have any book signing tours coming up anywhere, either in your area or to other states? We have a couple coming up in Austin. We have one at the bee supply on December 7th. You probably know Blake Shook. That's his company. And then we have some slaying.

We don't have a date, but we'll be in Baltimore and in Miami in the spring. So follow two hives. Spell out the two. On social media to learn more about those. And of course, we'll put links and information down in the description of this video for those who want to just go and click and follow it. And so are your book signing locations and stuff? Is there a page on your website that designates where that's going to be?

Yes, yeah. If you go to our website and you go to the events tab, you will see all the events that we have coming up, including book signings. Okay, so when you're doing your book, the most challenging chapter for you was and why? The pest and disease chapter. I struggle with it. I struggle with teaching it as well because it's not a fun topic.

You know, it's just it's just not. It's not fun, but it's a really necessary topic. I think it's tricky because, you know, when I'm talking about splits, I can tell you about all the different ways. I'm well versed in that. But with diseases, you know, I've never seen American foul brood. And so I can speak to what, you know, the research and what others can, I'm not seeing a lot of these. And there's so much.

There's so many more than we even cover in the chapter. So I think it's a really tricky one to talk about. Also, because this is where you really get into some philosophical differences between beekeepers and they want to, if you're with us, if you're not with us, you're against us. And I have a very open philosophy. I hope that comes through in the book that I have a way that I like to do things. but I think that there's space for a lot of different philosophies in ways. What might be right for my bees may not be right for your bees. And it depends on your goal.

And there's all sorts of things that play a role there. So that was really tricky. And so I did, I handled that chapter. I wanted to talk about integrated pest management. So I break that down, the principles of IPM. And we have an image of the triangle there, the integrated pest management triangle. But I do kind of handle that as like, I can't tell you everything that you need to know, but use this as almost like a reference guide so that there's photos.

And I kind of broke down, you know, prevention, identification, and treatment options. Treatment used loosely, of course, of what your options were to just hopefully give people direction. Because this whole book could be about pests and disease, right? This whole book could be about Roa. So that was tricky for me. And you even touched on thermal treatments. Have you ever actually seen that in practice? I haven't.

You can't even. This is the other tricky thing about writing a book is that information ages. I don't know. The company that did those is no longer around. They kind of went out during COVID because they couldn't get some chips or something. Well, they were frustrating because they also wouldn't answer any questions. They wouldn't discuss impact on brute, impact on the queen. They wouldn't.

they it was really a it sounded almost too good to be true so I reached out to a lot of entomologists that I respect and we wanted to talk about that and I was just told I mean I won't name him but he was like if this worked everybody would do it yeah I mean just because it's chemical free it's 100% thermal we stress them to the level that the bees can manage but the mites can't and so then they die but this treatment extends for a very long time the reason I'm mentioning it right now is because I still get so many questions from people who want to be completely holistic and who doesn't want to be. And then they hear about something like thermal and they think, why aren't we all doing that? Well, because of parameters are not well established. So wait,

don't buy one. It was very expensive. You could still have second hand. And it was also extremely time intensive. Sure. I believe that dwell time was like 80 minutes. Yeah, it's not. It's not. It's, it's not reasonable for even a sideline or much less someone like in the commercial world to do. This is something for a hobbyist that has a couple of hives to do. Yeah. Another thing that people frequently associate with Texas and they associate with the Weaver family, they want to know how they're avoiding Africanized genetics or extremely defensive bees and how frequently do you even encounter those genetics to the point where you have

unmanageable bees. Yeah. This is one that, you know, it's a little bit tricky to talk about because that aggression is such a relative term, right? For like a brand newbie might work a hive that I might work gloveless and that they feel, you know, it's very relative. And, you know, the other thing is that to call it Africanized or not, I mean, on some sense it's semantics, because you can't actually tell by looking at them if they're Africanized, but what really matters is, is it more than you can handle? And if it's more than you can handle, then you need to take steps to like,

remedy that. Yeah, there's some hot hives in Texas. I think that, you know, particularly in southern, south of me, you get guys with a lot more, more stories, but I certainly have seen my fair share of my tolerance for aggression is very high, and I've definitely seen my fair share of bees that just are not workable. You can't have anywhere near, you know, or any other person is going to be around. You can put them in a residential area or you can bring their tourism group in. Right. Oh, no.

They're dangerous. Let's be honest. They're dangerous. They're dangerous. They attack more quickly. They attack unprovoked and they attack for longer. Yeah, sustained attacks, yeah. For sure.

Yeah, there's stories, you know, people moving into bodies of water and having to stay there for hours while the bees circled. And then when they came up, they were still there. Yes. Yeah. And they'll come back the next day. Yeah. And so, yeah, they definitely, they definitely, a lot.

live and well in Texas. So I've seen a lot of that. The thing is, though, is that I tell my beekeepers, it's a manageable risk. If you're actively inspecting your colonies and you're the temperament of your colonies good and then you go queenless and you let them requeen themselves, you just need to watch it. So if you pay attention, you know what's going on in your hives, they requeen themselves, and then you find that the aggression is ticking up progressively over time every single time you get in. And you're letting your smoker. That's always my first question is, did you let your smoker? You're not going to have a time when your bees have been super well behaved and you come out and they're very aggressive.

They didn't become Africanized overnight, right? So I think in that sense, it's a little bit blown out of proportion and a lot of people will wave that word around when, maybe they didn't light their smoker or it was just like a one-time thing. If a raccoon is bothering a colony overnight, you come out the next day, they're going to be pretty pissed and you're going to feel that. And there's a difference between meeting 15 guard bees on your veil and then having your veil covered to the point where you can't see through it. Yes. Those are. And new beekeepers are not good at assessing what that means.

And like you said, you can't see the difference because, you know, entomologists spent. years measuring their feet, measuring their thorax, measuring their little heads, and trying to get these dimensional consistencies, that's just out the window. So it's down to the genome now. And there are people, so I'm told, in Texas that keep them intentionally because they think that those are, why, what are the benefits? You're a hermit. You live, you know, a half a mile from everybody. And you want to keep those hot bees, what are the benefits of keeping dangerous bees? I mean, it's anecdotal, right? But there are guys that do that, and they will say that they're hardier, that they're

bigger honey producers. But again, that's all anecdotal. I do have this theory. Again, it's all anecdotal. But a lot of times we find that the most aggressive high. in a yard for a student tends to be the biggest honey producer. But they also are the biggest, right? Bigger hives are more aggressive.

Also, my theory is that the bigger the hive, the more challenging it is to manage them. And maybe they're just bigger honey producers because you're not getting in there messing it up. You know what I mean? Like there's for like many things with beekeeping, there's so many factors we can't control. And like with all things, you know,

something gets said and then repeated and then it's suddenly gospel. So, but that's what the guys, and there are a couple of guys that intentionally keep mean bees and they'll say they're like partier against Varroa and bigger honey producers. And they don't worry about honeybee wrestlers. Yeah. So nobody's taking their lives. That's true. There is that.

That's a real thing. Now has, is climate shifting in Texas for the worse? or have you, even in the time that you've been keeping bees, are they better, worse, no difference? What's going on? It's rough. It's rough. I mean, I tell my husband often, like, the one thing about the line of work that I chose is that you can't seem to escape. It's depressing. You know, it's really depressing. I'm sure there's probably therapists in school now and there's a new, like, a line of therapy just specifically geared towards the depression that comes with the anxiety that comes

of climate change, but we can't escape it because our livelihood is dependent upon it. And so, you know, we used to in, you know, you'd be able to say exactly when a nectar flow would start an end. And now it's just, it seems we have more tough years than good years. Honestly, it's very hard for honey in Texas. The droughts have just gotten unbearable, unbearable. We had 86 triple digit days last year. 86 triple digit. days in Austin, Texas. We've had since July, I think we've had something like 0.06 inches of rain. So it's really tough. And that's why the agritourism and the education for us is so important because it pays the bills when the honey doesn't. And there's lots of years when the honey comes nowhere

close. This year was a horrible year for honey. We had this awesome spring, tons of rain, but too much you know, we're just like any farmer, we're never happy. We're always complaining. But yeah, the weather patterns have been super erratic and they're getting more erratic and the years are getting hotter. The summers are getting longer and they're certainly getting drier. So how does this impact the way you're looking at the configuration of your beehives? In other words, are you considering shading or they're, you know, awnings for the beehives? Are you looking hard at the colors that they're painted or are they? My biggest. This concern is forage availability, honestly.

And so we've adjusted, there are certain parts of central taxes that we just, not only will we not put our own production highs there. I won't, you know, we take care of a lot of bees for folks for the ag valuation. That's a thing in Texas. And it's why a lot of beekeepers there. And we will do that for folks. And I won't even take clients in a specific area because it is defeating for me and my beekeepers to just feed. it's not healthy for the bees to just feed bees you around. And so we have a really hard line on we will not take on clients in specific areas because the forage is just known to be very,

very poor. And I don't want to feed bees all year. Now what about wass and hornets and competing pests? You know, that doesn't concern me. Robbing is bad when the drought's so poor. So robbing from other colonies. We have to be so careful. And basically from like July till the end of the year, and we work bees well into November, we have to be so careful. And it's almost impossible to work a colony, you know, in August and not get robbing started. That's other bees we have to worry about. So the beekeeper just has to be so, so careful. In terms of like wasps and things like that, I have yet to see a situation in which it really was an issue. They tend to come in with all the other robbers, you know. I'm more concerned about my calling next door robbing out this weaker colony.

Okay, so tell me about some animal that you encountered while checking your beehives. That was a big surprise to you. I found a frog in a colony once. What? That's not even scary. I don't, I don't think I have, I mean, we don't have bears. I can't imagine. Don't you have, don't you have tarantulas? Don't you have anything? Yeah, I guess black widows. I get the first. Frog was mostly just surprising. Like I opened up the top and there was this little frog and I thought, what? What kind of frog was that? Like a tree peeper or one of those? Real small. A little froggy. But yeah, we do have black widows. So I don't wear a lot of gear. It's a comfort. Nobody gets five stars for like not wearing gear. It's a comfort thing. It's really hot. And those gloves just make me sweat like crazy.

So I don't wear a lot of gear if I can get away with it. And I usually can't. But the one time I always put on gloves is what I'm moving hives because we find lots of black widows underneath the colonies. So that's probably the biggest thing. You know, we have lots of banana spiders. People have different names for them. Zipper spiders or weavers. Lots of those. I like the, you mean the big black and yellow garden spiders?

Yeah. If you look at the abdomen, it looks like an alien that's got its hands on its tips. Yes. They freak people out. But we have lots of those. And I just think they're really interesting. Those are harmless. Those are your best pet ever.

What about jumping spiders? Yeah, we have the wolf spiders and they do a lot of jumping. No, that's, wolf spiders are not jumping spiders. Jumping spiders are the little cute ones with the big eyes. The bullfumping spiders. Yeah, that's okay. You're not. All right.

Wolf spiders will be. There's not one fun story in anything that you're sharing right now. We have armadillos. Is it true that armadillos carry leprosy? I don't know. I don't know. But you would only encounter an armadillo. They dig a lot.

They're very destructive. They're like pigs. They dig up. Now, I did hear a lot about the pigs in Texas, and that is an unsolvable problem. Yeah, they hunt them from the air. How is that economic? So are you a,

Are you a hog hunter yourself? No, no, no. Is this not somehow a potential food resource that can't they feed the poor with all these hogs or something? I mean. I don't know. Okay. I'm putting you on the spot with these kinds of questions. What?

I said shooting animals isn't my forte. I'm well, I'm well trained on guns. Glock 19 is the sidearm of choice for the. CIA trained on that. But no, I don't. I don't hunt. Okay. Well, I'm going to give you a chance to tell us what you want us to know as we wrap up this interview. What would you like to share? About us, to beekeepers or dealer's choice, whatever I want. Okay, well, I'll ask you one question first. Tell us one thing that other people do not know about you, a skill or a practice or an interest that you have that most people do not know.

A skill or, oh, I'm a knitter. What? Yeah. Didn't you just finish telling us it's too hot down there? What are you knitting? I've knit a lot of things for a lot of babies. I picked that up in my 20s as a way to, I find it really combats my anxiety.

So I didn't knit because when you, you know, you start a business, you are all in. I mean, you kind of have to be. And so I didn't have any hot. for really a long time. And then I had a little boy, and I thought, I've knit for every baby in my orbit, but I haven't knit for my own child. So I picked up knitting again last year.

And again, I remembered it's really great for my anxiety. It keeps your hand. You can't multitask. I can't be on my phone. You know, I can only be right here with this knitting. So really helps with that. So I knit him a giraffe. And I'm currently knitting him a hat in Texas colors,

It's burnt orange. So I've been working on that a while since June. It was supposed to be done by the time I got cold in Texas. It's still not cold in Texas, so I still have time. So are you careful about the fibers that you seem very holistic? So in other words, are you using woolen and cotton and what, I mean, do you care about synthetic fibers? What are your knitting choices as far as the yarn that you use? I like wool just because, you know, it is so warm and it doesn't get stinky. Is it as good as alpaca? I don't know. Okay. Alpaca can be really expensive. Well, not if you own the alpacas.

I can take on no more animals. We are capped. We got chickens six or so years. And my husband was like, no, no with the chickens. We are maxed on animals just with the bees and the two dogs alone. But you do have chickens. We had chickens. Oh, you don't have them anymore.

We don't have chickens anymore. No, in 2021, we had the worst drought that we've seen in since 2011 in a decade. And all of the things that were working before to keep predators out, they were just, it was really quite sad. I mean, the wildlife was just starving to death. And we just, we kept losing chickens. And I was pregnant. And I was like, things hit. differently when I was pregnant than they did before. And I thought I can't, I can't do this anymore. No more chickens. No chickens. So chickens knitting. Okay. Now you can do your closing statement. Okay. Well, I, I, you know, I, I, I'm really proud of this book. The one thing we didn't talk about was the joy that I hope to bring. And those are through the illustration. So I just want

to like mention a little bit about the illustrator. Her name was Caroline Brown. Um, she i found her i was looking for a muralist for our barn at the honey ranch and um she came out she did this mural and you know she was like what do you want me to paint and i said i would love to do scenes from a hive but like you know anthropomorphizes it let's do it's it's really fun and i put her through beekeeping classes oh yeah what did you find that was interesting and she came up with these little scenes and actually the mural is on the dedication page the first page of the book that's the first piece of art that she did for us. Also, we have this. Oh, yes, the Lord's Supper. And so I had these illustrations that were straight, right? I needed to convey information, and I wanted her to do it.

But all of the ones that are fun between the bee twerking as part of the waggle dance and the Lord's supper, that is what Caroline brought to the table. And I loved it because she was new to bekeeping, and she took my classes. And I said, what do you find? What is really striking you as really fun and silly and she ran with it. And I'm really proud of the joy that we're able to bring along with the nuance. And so I want people to read this and feel empowered to go out and be a beekeeper and learn more about your colonies. But I also want you to read this book and I want it to make you smile. So I hope that we succeed there. That's great. So I want to thank you for the time that you gave today and for the interview. And I hope that people are inspired on many different levels

because we definitely covered some ground here. It was not all about peas, which I think is very interesting to know who the people are behind the beekeeping. And I think that it's just really been fascinated to talk with you. So thanks a lot for the interview. Thank you.

This has been really fun. And that wraps up another episode of interviews with experts. Please don't forget to visit the video description for links and updated information related to Two Hives Honey. And of course, I highly recommend. that you obtain Tara's book, For the Bees, a handbook for Happy Beekeeping. If you're enjoying this series of interviews with experts, don't forget to subscribe to my channel and click the notification bell.

I'm Frederick Dunn, and this has been The Way to Be.