The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - Hive Alive has a new Honey Bee Nutrition Product, Interview with Dara Scott of Advance Science Ltd.

Episode Date: July 20, 2024

This is the audio track from today's YouTube video:  https://youtu.be/-P7hFS63yLk

So hello and welcome to another episode of interviews with experts. I'm Frederick Dunn and this is The Way to Be. In this interview, I catch up with Darrah Scott and his home in Ireland. Dara was my first interview in this series and it's time to catch up and find out what's new with Hive Alive. I made no secret of my experience with a scientifically proven hive alive liquid that I continue to use here twice a year. And then came the faundant patties that I now use as an emergency winter field. feeding resource in all of my Langstroth-style hives, which improved winter survival in my apiary. Now I'm trying out the performance pollen patties as a way to boost nutrition and

nucleus colonies that may need that extra boost while they build their brood. Here we are in July of 2024 and Dara Scott and his team are about to release another hive alive resource that's designed to help maintain colony health. Here's Dara. Hello, Dara Scott. I'm glad that you're here today and thanks for engaging in this interview and we're here to talk about a new product that's coming out from your company. I want to tell us just a little bit quickly about where you are, what you do and a little bit about the company that you represent. Sure. I am currently in Ireland. It's 9 o'clock in the evening. My company is Advanced Science, which the main products are. are high-of-life products. They're products for beekeepers. I presume the majority of people in the US

at this point will know about high-flight products. We do a range of products for beekeepers to use, mainly feeding products. Start off with liquid, which is still the key main product. It's been on the market now for over 10 years, and it's number one in the world. And it's the one that has science behind it, proven peer review published data and science bind it, which is what makes a real difference.

You have to say that fast. Peer reviewed, published data, people prefer. Not my first time saying it. I can't say enough, in fact. Yeah. And you know what's interesting, by the way, my entire series of interviews with experts, who do you think the first person was in the series that I interviewed? I have no idea, Fred.

Who could have been? It was you. It was me. Yep, February 3rd, 2022. You kicked off this entire series. Wow. Wow. That's how I'm flattered.

Isn't that great? Well, you've always, from the get-go, you've always been a strong supporter of us. We really appreciate that. You know, it's, I know you've gotten guff in the back where people thought you're being paid to support some of that, but that's not being the case. Right. No.

In fact, people should know that this entire series and the people I speak with, this is just to inform the bee and talk about the things that I'm interested in. Everyone knows that I'm also science-based. And so I really key in on products that have been proven, as you just described, to benefit the bees. So, no, this is not endorsed. It's not an advertisement. This is just information for the beekeeper.

And my audience is largely backyard beekeepers, but that's a growing demographic. And you also are marketing your products to commercial beekeepers. and the feedback has been all good, right? I've heard of you. You've heard the feedback's good. We're here too. Oh, yeah. If it didn't work out, I would definitely, people are happy to share what they don't like.

So, no, and I would have to say that, you know, in this conspicuous product placement, but the syrup, the syrup, just as described in the opening, has demonstrated that it's scientifically proven to work. And here, we did the Nazim accounts to see what the impact was on those, but I'm sure it has other benefits that others have noticed and observed in their own apiary. And what is your, is that your top product right now? Because there have been other products that came out. The liquid is being around the world, the liquid is our top product. It's the one that everyone can add to their syrup.

It's the one really that probably offers the best value for money because you just add. adding it to your syrup, you only need a small amount of it in there. And as you said, it keeps in the same levels, though. It also breaks down the spores or other pastures in the colony. It's also good for the gut protects their gut. So all those stuff and basically the bees do better with it. Second, that would definitely be the fondant. The fondant has really grown.

Our biggest in the fondant has been making quick in them. Yeah. In fact, everyone I know puts that fondant on for wintering where I am. It's a step up. By the way, I'd like to, if you don't mind, mind, I'd like to mention some of the observations I made about the fund and I like to do micro macro photography and video work. One of the favorite things that I used to have promoted myself, dry sugar. You would just drop in the top of a hive. Some people call this the mountain

camp method you would put it on paper or make a sugar brick, right? So add moisture, solidify the sugar. And this cuts down on moisture in the hive and gives them the energy that they need to stay warm through winter. So it's an emergency resource. I made a shift when the hive light fondant came out, and we've spoken at different gatherings of beekeepers and places where innovators talk and share. And so I thought it was interesting to see how the bees would metabolize it. In other words, what's their access level, dry sugar, how much energy do they spend to collect the carbohydrates that they need from it? And then let's compare that to fondant. So the amount of the amount of of licking that the bees had to do on the sugar brick to get a resource from it the amount of

effort that they expand because it's straight sugar so obviously there's a good calorie boost for them but then compared to the fondant they were taking it much quicker and there were much quicker trips to and from the fondant so and i haven't by the way you know we're talking about it in this interview but i have not shared those videos i made those early last year and i saved that for my presentations but uh It was a clear advantage. Now, the next quicker resource that they could take in would be a liquid. So the fondant was a great intermediate between a break of sugar compared to liquid, which we don't feed in the wintertime here.

And then the other thing I was looking for, the tongue of the bee is called the Glossa, right? And it has hairs all over it. So someone said to me that, well, they're hurting their mouths when they're licking a solid sugar. and I thought, well, that doesn't make sense. They don't use their manuals and so on. But then I realized what they're talking about, they're stripping away the tongues, the tongue's hair. And so how would we demonstrate that?

Get it be to stick out its tongue and look at the hairs or look at the dry sugar afterwards to see if there was a residue of hairs from the bee's tongue in and on the dry sugar. So, and then, of course, the fondant doesn't have that rasping effect. They don't work so hard on it. gathering the faunette and they're drawing it right in and they're taking it down below. So the dry sugar actually was much more energy intense for the bee to gather those resources

and also damaging to the tongue of the bee. Did you get, do you get photon grass or something? Could you see? I made videos and then I took the, I took the segment that they were working because they make little holes. If you've seen sugar breaks that the bees work it, they had these little holes where their tongues just keep passing through. And then I take that section, away, put it under a microscope, and then I get in because I can't even with macro photography see those fine hairs, but with a microscope you can. Now, is it dramatic? Do they end up with bald tongues? No, it's not that dramatic. There's a few hairs, so you really have to

inform them because they're also not in every hole. But it's also just another level of why something like a fondant would be easier on the bees and easier for the bees to get the resource from. So, and I know this isn't why we set up this talk today, but it's just, these are observations that I make. And it was really interesting to me that it kind of did back up that what some people were telling me, which is that, you know, the solid sugar, because when we put in dry sugar, the humidity inside the hive causes that to solidify it. It ultimately becomes somewhat of a sugar brick. So the bees are still working that, but they need water to do it, of course, so it has less moisture. But anyway, it was just an interesting observation that aside from the effort,

that it's also to a tiny degree damaging to their tongue. We get a, well, so, so I don't know if you get it as well, we get Ivy Honey in the autumn in the fall and it crystallizes really hard. And I tend to use, I keep it and I'll use it then for colonies that for making splits they don't to make in next year to make sure they have some emergency food. But man, they are slow to eat that. I was just in the hive there yesterday and like the bits of ivory that were left are still right there in the middle of the collier where they should have eaten all that honey up ages ago

but they've eaten all the honey around it but not the ivy honey because it goes rock hard so it's probably a similar thing just takes a lot more effort for them to consume it. That's interesting. What kind of ivy are we talking about? It's like a tree ivy. I don't know what the...

It's a general... Does it grows on the tree or... Yeah, yeah, well there's a ground and a tree one but I think the tree produced the most amount of the nectar. I didn't know the name of it, actually. Iberius, fibers. I can't remember, but yeah.

So it just, it crystallizes fast and just becomes very. Very fast, yeah. It's very interesting. Okay, so if you would, I, you know, these are questions just I have in general, but describe your natural environment where you live. Like, what's the landscape like? Is this agricultural?

Are there issues with natural, areas being preserved? What's what's the climate and the landscape like for a bee? I always say it's the worst place in the world to keep bees. So they survive the heat. They survive the cold, but the wind and rain, they're not so fond of. And that's, it's, it's, I'm on the west coast of Ireland, as close to you guys as I can get. So it's, the Atlantic comes in, hits it all the time. So it brings in windy, stormy, rainy weather all the time. So the bees of a hard time. The landscape is pretty beautiful, I have to say. Live near all my life, but it's still very beautiful.

It's, I'm on the edge of sort of arable land to kind of bog land up on the top of the hill, which doesn't help the wind either. But, and it's, it's, mainly it's sort of, the lands aren't farmed for, for, for, for, feed or improv or that, they have cattle or sheep grazing on them. They're not, they're not, they're not intensive agriculture by any means. And it's great.

So it means they got a lot of wildflowers. The big one being, being the, Blackberry, that's the bramble. That's the big one for us. But we get wildflowers throughout the year. There's a hawthorn, it's called white thorn, that can flower and give a big yield sometimes. I'm not near any big tree,

so I don't get any of the lime or the, chest not or anything like that. And yeah, it's very mild. It doesn't really freeze very, less so in the last couple years. It really hasn't frozen a long time. And it never gets very warm.

I mean, it's funny. It's rare it gets in the 20. Well, that was, it really gets in the, what are you guys? It'll be like 80s, above 80. It doesn't really get above 80. It's, uh, it's. And then what's the low would you say? So, so.

Not below freezing anyway. They're just hovering above freezing a lot of the time. But generally you sort of mild, but it feels colder because it's damp and windy. You know, like in other places there are, like it might be well below freezing and cold and dry and not windy and doesn't feel half as cold. Right. Yeah. So the feel, the feels like what they call the real feel is very different from the actual temperature. Yeah.

but so cold and wet. That doesn't, you're not doing a very good job. Are you just trying to keep people out of your area? Is that why you're not doing? No, it's, no, it's, it is, look, it's stunningly beautiful. I'd have to say, like, Connemara, as you probably are maybe heard of Connemar. It's, it's stunning. It's really beautiful.

And part of the reason it's stunning is because it is on the West Coast. So it's rugged and it's sort of barren looking. And, but it's great. I mean, you don't come in the middle of wintertime. It's a gray and dark place. We're fairly northern. So we're up and kind of up the land of like the Aleutian Islands nearly,

you know, relative to you guys. It's quite a bit more north. And it's the gold stream that keeps us warm. Like the Aleutians get super cold because they get the Arctic Stream. But we're pretty northern. So at night time it gets dark. What times it get dark at like 5 or 6 o'clock?

And it's not bright again until 80 o'clock. Whereas in the summertime, now it's bright to 11 o'clock. Which is nice. And summertime's great. now there's an arts film in Goaway. There's an arts festival in Go away right now. It's fantastic. After that, there's a horse racing event. Before that, there was a film flower. Some of these small towns got, like, under 100,000 people in it. But there's a huge, you've lost of it. Small town under 100,000 people. I don't know if you realize my town has

405 people. Okay. So, when you say small town, it's very different from what I'm sorry. It's all relative. It's all relative. Yeah. I'm trying to find out of small towns where a couple of A million, yeah. Yeah. Okay. So then overall in Ireland, are there environmental issues or challenges? Are there people concerned about, you know, agriculture at all? Is there plenty of natural landscapes still remaining?

Because in a lot of countries all over, they have challenges with maintaining hedgerows and getting farmers not to use all the land just for crops or livestock. Do you have those issues there in Ireland or is everything pretty balanced? Yeah, I know. That's perfect. Yeah. Not unfortunately. No, we have a lot of it's EU driven. So a lot of it's the EU regulations, you know, that can be a burden of EU regulation. They're very strict, very strict to my business and all that as well.

But at the end of the day, they do bring a standard that is good. So like hedgerows is a lot of, and there's a lot more grants now for farmers leave, land, wild. But they're funny criteria and stuff like that. and it's not ideal, but they're working towards. It certainly is a big push now. There's, I think now things come up there on bees recently where they're, yeah, try and get in different, different, different,

there's different new funding now for more. So there's also a lot of funding for bee research and for in the environment and how to protect them, that sort of stuff. And it's not just the honeybee, obviously it's the other bees as well. There's about 100 different bee species in Ireland. I'm doing solitary bees and mining bees and the bumblebees and stuff like that.

So, but yeah, like Ireland is, I suppose, relatively unique in Europe and that it's not really, really intensively farmed. I was in France there a while ago and it's like, you know, big huge fields, not much. It's still pretty good, but not a huge amount of wilderness. Yeah. And Italy is even worse. So it just worked with Italian researcher, and he would be worked on bacteria of that. And he reckons that the soil in Italy has, you know, 10, 20 years, you know, left, if that, in it. Italian soil has 10 to 20 years later.

Yeah, it's so intensely, intensely ag culture before just sort of just so it dies. The building's not useful anymore. You know, when I'm going through France, looking at all the fields of wheat and thinking that every time that wheat's harvest, they spray it with the herbicide to kill. the wheat plant so it dries quicker so they can harvest it quicker. That's all over the wood. That's all over the room.

Yeah, and people, you know, I've been a rant here. People are always like, you know, what's the important organic? What's it for me? Like, but if nothing else, you're stopping that, you know? Yeah.

So, yeah, the stent of, like, the herbicides being used is, is nuts. Yeah. That's very interesting. Now, in the area where you are, are there native honeybees there, Are they a non-native species? Yeah, yeah.

So that's something I'm very passionate about and I would have been involved in the selling up of what's called the Native Irish Honeybee Society. It's basically the AMM-Apis Milifera, but we've identified that Ireland, I guess, probably do it as weather, has its own ecotype. So it's slightly different DNA

from other AMMs. AMM would have been spread across the whole of Europe sort of from the bottom of France up and over it from Russia to Ireland but because of selective breeding and people wanting different strains it's pretty much gone certainly in its original form

there is some in Russia there's some in places possibly up in Northern Europe up in like I'm not even sure about that there are little pockets I know the little pocket of in France they're trying to keep some of that so I'd be strong keep that people people

bring in a lot of bees. They're, you know, which I get it, why they do it. They are going to be probably on good, when they're good weather, they're going to be more productive. But the problem is, is, I don't know, but basically what happens is someone brings in different asternet bee. Their drones will make with someone's queen. And what you get is these really aggressive hybrids.

And I've been around, people got stung really bad from these aggressive hybrids. And it's just, I kind of think what we have is special. it's involved with us and I like I said I get people bringing them in but it does upset me because it generally

what happens to people bring them in to bekeeping for a year or two and then you know do something else and they've destroyed what you're going to be bringing for the last 30 years yeah and I'm glad that you hit on that

because it is often a brand new beekeeper that looks around and finds out what should be is going to have a specific trade that they personally want and then they're bringing it in what for this native Irish honeybee's society what kind of influence do they have over maintaining some of those original genetics?

So, to the fair, as a couple of people doing on an awful. I always don't even on the beginning. I'm not really involved that much anymore. So we sponsor a couple events, stuff about that. But they've done a lot. So they've made areas of conservation, voluntary areas of conservation. They've done a lot of press, a lot of media work to really highlight it. So people become aware of it because half the problems, people don't know what they're doing.

They've lobbied with the government. The government repeatedly says, oh, we can't ban bees coming to Ireland, yet there's other, based on EU regulation, yet there's other countries that have consistently banned other bees coming into under the EU regulation as well. So not really sure what's going on there. They're trying to bring legislation to change stuff.

So it's, yeah, basically trying to get it recognized as a kind of important indigenous species. Which it is. it gets unique. And certainly for evolving in the West of Ireland and I mean that survives in the West of Ireland, it's got to be unique. Well, that's what I was thinking. The climate you described would be very

specific to the adaptation of a species, right? So losing that species then would be a big drawback, I would think. Yeah, and it's really interesting. Some of the stuff about it, like the like the

couple of things like the bees, the bookfast, not the book last week, but the indigenous bees, the AMMs here, you know, they don't build up as big as quickly and they're more frugal with their stores, whereas a bookfast bee will, you know,

build up super quick and make loads of honey, but, you know, they don't know, like I've regularly, you know, built bees up for the honey flow and it rained for the whole point flying and feeding them in the middle of it, you know. But even to the point of like,

even more local than that, there's a friend of mine, Jared Coyne, who has bees even more west than I am, a good maybe 60 miles west of me. And he swapped queens with a guy in the middle of the country John Somerville.

And so what will happen is the queens that Jared has from the far west, when they get over to the midlands, they will start raising brood way later than the ones that are already there. And the opposite thing happens, the ones

that go far away to the west, they start raising breed much earlier. And the only time difference of 100 miles. But the difference in the climate, the bees have adapted to that 100 mile difference and they're raising the brood in the springtime at different times because they know

it comes a bit later over here. So, and I'm sure we talked about this before, but we can hit on it again. What inspired you to focus on bee nutrition in supplementing what they're already getting from the environment? What was start off in the very beginning? What was Naseema Serrani.

That's what I was actually looking at the very beginning. It had just sort of been kind of discover what was going on. It was causing a lot of problems with bees. I wanted to trigger something specifically on that. And that's what I end up making, which works with nutrition as well. But a lot of it is keeping this disease levels low in the colony as well, which allows the bees to thrive. And for those who are listening, often they don't even know what disease we're talking about, because nozema, these sports are not talked about enough, in my opinion. And we had nozima apis before, but we're not finding that very often. So Nozima, Serrani is the focal point because that's what we find

most often in the gut of the bee. So how did you become aware of that? And what made you think that you could do something to mitigate the impact on the bee's help? It was getting a lot of press the time, to be fair. And I know Spain was having huge losses with Nassima Serrani. It's funny how it works. In some countries, you get really big losses. In other countries, you don't get the losses. but I've always been adamant about the fact that like in America it's played down a lot as same as other countries as well it's not really a problem but

I fail to see and there's really to correlate as well like but I fail to see how a couple of million spores in your gut that actually the only way those spores replicate is by basically piercing your gut lining destroying the reptilian cells and using the energy from your cells

to replicate and basically tearing a hole in your gut in the process is not going to be debilting towards a bee. And there's lots of stuff where they show like links with pesticides, links with even varus of it with the virus of that. Basically, your bees, when they have Nassimus phara, will survive, they'll survive, but they're stressed. It's like only eating, you know, really bad food for you the whole time.

But even worse, it's destroying your guts. So maybe, you know, drinking too much whiskey all the time. I don't know what the equivalent is in human. And I think the reason it doesn't get a lot of attention is because there's a sublethal impact that they don't deserve, they don't observe in a dramatic way. They don't wake up and see a bunch of dead bees on the landing board or in front of the hive. It affects longevity of the bee, the overall health and resistance to other diseases on the part

of the bee, as well as it reduces their ability to metabolize resources that they're gleaning. So it has an impact that you almost just need to do research on to even know because the backyard beekeeper is not, you know, understanding that this bee is, living five weeks instead of six and a half or seven. And that extra week that it would have been able to forage, for example, would have had a positive impact on the overall health and productivity of the hive. So sublethal impact is actually very important. And they focus so frequently on the road instructor might almost exclusively, as if that is the culprit and everything else is okay if we could just get rid of it. But this is another level of overall B help, which could

then, of course, help that be sustained itself against the presence of the varroa mites and the pathogens that those mites bring with them. It doesn't eliminate the varroa mite, but healthier, stronger, more robust animals handle challenges better. Am I right? 100%. I think, like, you know, if you don't manage varroa, you're nowhere, you have to manage varroa. It's such a big beast.

It's small and all it is. Well, there is a reason why that is the focus, but I'm just saying there are a lot of other things we can do as well as. This is not in place. Oh, 100%. Yeah. Yeah. And what I'm saying is if there was no Veroa, you can guarantee they'd be a lot more focus on the semen surrounding. Sure. Yeah. And tracheomites and other things that we've started to ignore. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So the new, the new one, the trobolapis might. It's called tropalalepes. Yeah. They call it tropymite for short. So people don't have to say tropolaea. But yeah, we're hoping that that never arrives here. We're trying to fight it on the current colonies of bees where they exist. Dr. Samuel Ramsey is very active and animated about that mite. Because we have this, well, we don't have a, we don't deal with.

Reproduction is faster. This thing moves fast, much quicker, much more agile than the road instructor might. So we can make everyone happy letting them know that there's yet another mite it could actually completely wipe out colonies much quicker than the Verodistructor might. Yeah, and I think it's not a question of keeping it out. It's like all these things like in Australia, it's just a matter of time, system at our time, you know, that's kind of why I brought up, because I think that even I hadn't really realized how real it could be.

But it's going to come to Europe sooner, probably sooner than a few years. And to put it in perspective, entire regions. There are some people that think, we'll just let it go and then we'll deal with the bees that survived the mite and then they'll have resistance, blah, blah, blah. This has wiped out entire regions of bees. Entire commercial beekeeping areas have been completely obliterated by it to the point where they had to bring an entirely new stock. And I'm talking large areas. So for those who don't know what we're talking about, look up the tropi mite, tropol laylaps, and see what the impact has been in other countries and see what it's done to the bees.

So we definitely don't want that here And I hope that through science We find some way to cope with them Now the products that your company has put out One of the newest things I believe last year was your pollen patties, right? Is that the newest before What we're about to talk about today?

That is the Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the money we brought out last year There's I suppose there's two things we can talk about today So if you don't count those two things, it would be the newest. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So and so the pollen paddies, what's been the feedback on that and how are people using them?

Really good. We're out of stock, actually. So, yeah, we're going to be this week or so. Yeah, really good. People like them. They like the consumption rate. They like the fact that because of the 15% pollen in particular, those parties they really like, that they consume them quicker.

They like that fishing plays with a small high. Beedle. They like the fact that hive live is already in. There's like a full dose of hive live in every single patty, so they like that as well. We also do smaller boxes of them, so we do a box of two pounds,

so two individual patties in a small box for people to have smaller number colonies or hives. So that makes it easier for them to work with. What else do people say about them? Yeah, it's really the consumption rate. The fact that bees really like it and do well on them, Yeah.

And the time of year that they're putting those on? Yeah, that's really surprised us. We always thought it was going to be a, you know, it is still spring food. But, you know, people use it. Like, we could have sold an awful lot the last couple of months if we hadn't run out of stock. People use it all the time during the summer. I guess the dirt is a big one when people use it for. And also, they use it in the autumn because they want to make sure they got good strong bees going under the wintertime.

Right. The nutritional boost before they make those fat-bodied winter bees that have to live for months in the cold, the snow, right? Yeah, because this happens early on after they've done harvesting of honey after they've done that. They're trying to recover some of their colonies. I think some people are using them where they're building up nucleus hives if they're doing splits and making smaller colonies to get them robust enough to get into winter. me personally because I wouldn't put them on all the hives. It's the little ones that I want to culture and build up quicker so that they can get in. As you described, I don't know if you watch American weather, but huge storms have come through.

And so in some areas, they're challenged because they have a combination of a dirt and then foul weather that keeps the bees from foraging adequately. And that's an area where something like those patties would then be able to be put on. and that provides a smaller colony with all the resources that they need to sustain those periods in those times of dearth, as well as the challenges the weather's offering. And I think a lot of new beekeepers don't understand that they've seen a frame of brood and it's full of eggs and some of those eggs have already hatched. And so we've got young larvae in there. And then without recognizing the challenge it's about to hit that colony,

if they don't provide a supplement, and I'm not saying they have, have to, but they will sustain losses. In other words, they could come back, check the same frame and find it empty as if no eggs were laid as if there was no breed there at all. And that's because the nurse bees, without the resources coming at, consume them. And this can help hold the fort, nutritionally speaking, and get them through that period so then they can resume when the next floral resources are blooming. Is that a good description of how it might be used? That's good, yeah, but I also want to mention the research. Can I remember is the palm, the program Portuguese apismalifera,

that they sponsored working with the commercial beekeeper feeding them protein patties before wintertime and basically showed that the colonies that come out and winter after winter were stronger, particularly ones that had pollen, that were fed pollen because obviously pollen's better than any of the substitutes. It's got exactly what the bees need. So, I mean, it's always been the case of me. I'm sure you've seen it as well. Collinies coming in stronger, going into winter strong, come out of the winter even stronger. Collies going in week, don't do half as well.

They'll get a lot longer to build up. So by giving them protein in the fall, you're ensuring that you've got strong colonies going. And it also allows a longer brood period as well because they'll raise proof for that bit longer, which means they don't have to live as long throughout the wintertime, the winter piece. And you, did you contract with global patties to have these made? Yeah, yeah, global parties make them choice. And now I have another question. Since we touched on a little bit, the pollen substitutes that a lot of people use,

how did you, and why did you make the decision to use actual pollen in your protein patties rather than some top-performing pollen substitute formula that would have been tested? How much of a difference? Oh, the pollen has the complete balance of what they actually is, what they have. actually what's they evolved with over the last 20 million years, you know. So it's key. On subs are okay. They're just not as good.

They don't have the same as the classic case of, you know, it's only as good as where they're balanced. If you start and something out of balance, they can't use the rest of the protein. I'm not explaining that correctly. It's like a, was it Randy Oliver, had the example of a leaking barrel that if you're, if the struts in the barrel, say, one of the ingredients, one of the amino acids is something that the bees need so if one of the struts is too low

doesn't have enough mineral all the rest of it pours out of the barrel because of the fact that you don't have enough of balance they can't use the rest of the amino acids if they don't have the right balance so pollen has that right balance so and there's yet to be a pollen substitute out there that has a

so the complete amino acid profile yeah yeah 100% yeah and other stuff as well but but it's it's mainly You would have vitamins and minerals naturally as well, pollen would. But the biggest part is the right balance of amino acids. It's hard to do synthetic or without pollen. And so once again, the reason that you said that you're sold out is because you anticipated the market would be near the end of the growing season.

Yeah, well, actually, more than spring was so busy for us. And then we were like, we'll be putting an order in because the problem with pollen is a six-month shelf life. So it's an awful difficult balance getting that right. And we said, will we put another order in or not? And we said, oh, no, we'll hold off because we didn't want to be sticking around with stock over the summertime. It was a mistake. We should have to order it because we would have moved it.

That's a good question. So then the shelf life of your finished patties would be six months? Of the pollen patties, yeah. Yeah. They last a bit longer than already pollen patties because they have the hive alive in it. but they're still six months is about the number. Well,

and what's the best storage for those? Keeping them cool. If you're going to store them for longer, if you're not going to use them, where you put them in the freezer. Oh, right, the freezer. So would you... Yeah, yeah, because pollen,

protein degrades with time. Did you see it's a bleak at more than six months? Have you had them in a freezer for the last? Yeah, yeah. You get a year and a half of them. Yeah. Oh, okay. Well, I'm glad I asked.

All right. Because they're expensive. I mean, why not you put them right in the freezer? I would. And meanwhile, I've got mine sitting right over here on the shelf. Peace, of course. And so let's talk about what's new, what's coming up, what's coming out. Oh, well, the first new thing, which you've probably heard of before is our new hive two.

We've gone to something that isn't a feed. This is sort of taking the standard hike, well, one of the classic hive tools that is out there. and I just making it, in my opinion, better. So we did a couple of things. First of all, it's super thick. It's really strong as three mills, which means it's not going to bend when you're putting it on the supers,

which I love. It's got a nice long, long bevel edge on it, so it's easier to slide into the supers. Some of them are a bit short and stubby, you can't get it in and under. This is fairly standard. you put it in to use for levering out frames, stuff like that.

And the hook, the hook, I, there was so many, you know, I bought loads of higher tools in developing this, and there were so many hooks that just didn't make any sense. They were too wide here. They were the wrong shape. You couldn't have to spend any to getting that right. And on top of that,

you probably can't see it, maybe you can. There's a serration there on the hook, which allows you, when you're levering the frames up out of the box, that it doesn't slip down in, which I used to find always being a problem. So it levers off that much easier to lift frames out.

and it was in two colors. Cost of fortune to put it in two colors, but I was sick of losing hive tools and by putting two colors, so the green, well, the yellow is for, it is for if you lose it in the green area and the green is for if you lose it,

like a grass, and the green is for you lose it in like a dry, brushy area and still got the metal showing as well. So it's going to be a lot easier to find this hive tool than the standard hive tools. So that green and yellow

has nothing to do with your branding because those are already your colors? Yellow, it's more of the orange, more of the orange for the, for the, for the High Will Live, but no, actually, it's the golf balls. Okay. They do a research on golf balls finding golf balls and these are the colors.

Oh, is that right? Okay, that's funny. Now, let me ask you, is that stainless steel? Yeah, stainless steel, yeah. So does it work on a magnet? Would a magnetic tool holder? Yeah. Yeah, I use a magnetic.

Holder, yeah. Yeah, so that people understand the difference because I've seen people angry when they get something. It's, oh, this is stainless steel and a magnet works on it. Yes, 400 series stainless is magnetic. So it can be held with a magnet. 300 series stainless would not have enough hair on prison to be magnetic. That's the difference. So you get it?

Pardon? I didn't know that. Oh, you didn't? Well, I'm glad we talked today. But, yeah, 400 series is what we call corrosion resistant by background in non-destructive testing and inspection. So we would put stainless steel jackets on things that we needed to retrieve magnetically with 400 series so that we could do that. So there you go. Glad we added that.

So we can settle that argument before it even comes up. Cool. So that's the hundred. I think that's pretty straightforward. look, it's very practical. And it's like, there's lots of different types of hive tools. I've used loads of them. This is by far and away the best design that I've used anyway.

So, and I know I'm talking myself up or what we designed, but I'm really happy with that. And then the other thing is a little product placement here in the background. Now, see, can you, you see that? I have a live easy feed syrup. Yeah. So this is our new, our new baby. This is basically syrup in a bag. I can show you a bag of it. This is this here. You see that? Yeah. So this is just very briefly, but basically what it is is syrup. It comes in a bag that you can put directly on top of your frames and the bees can feed directly from the bag. It's syrup, it's inverted syrup. I'll talk about syrup in a minute, but it's very, it has hive live added into it.

It's super handy. So basically, you just basically have your box handy, whatever, whenever you eat, every got the eyes, bees need food. Put it on, you put a couple of holes in the top of it. So the bag, you're put on the book here so you can see it easier. So the bag is designed that there's a flat part, which is sitting on, and then there's a, a raised dome part. Okay. And so the idea being is that you put on top of your frames, you put some holes in the top of it here. Simply. Is it lifted a little higher because it's off? Oh, there you go. Okay. Oh, so it's not just like a Ziploc bag here where it's the same on both sides.

Exactly. Flat bottom and a dome top. Okay. And so basically you pierce the bag a couple of times to get the bees access to it and the bees will come up and feed it. And because again, because this is high alive it, they'll be much even quicker if you take out, I know the smell straight away. They'll go up and take it. The beauty of it is, is there's zero mess. There's zero issue of washing or cleaning up afterwards. It's super quick.

You have it there when you need it. You can put a couple of bags on at one time. You've got a big colony or just a single bag, depending on what you want to do. If you just want to do a stimulant, for instance, in springtime, you might just put one bag on, maybe a fewer number of holes in the autumn time. You might want to have a couple of bags on and have bigger holes.

They can take it down quicker. It's a two to one syrup. It's inverted syrup. So it has the right blend of fructose and glucose in there, which is important. No high fructose corn syrup around that. Okay. I wouldn't want to use that in the same way. I don't use pollen in my palate to make sure I've got all the right ingredients.

what else can I say about it? So it comes in a box of nine. They're two pound bags, nine of them in a box. Yeah. What kind of clearance do you need on top of the frames to accommodate that? About an inch. I mean, your standard equal do it, no problem. It's about an inch.

Okay. Now, how long have you had this out? Obviously, you must have done. testing. Are we doing testing ourselves? Yeah, that's why this, this is not out yet. This is coming out. It'll be in the States in the next couple of weeks.

Okay. Yeah, yeah, this is all very brand new. We, yeah, we work with a manufacturer in this for a long time. And yeah, really happy with it. So now how would this compare use-wise with the fondant that we're currently using? So the fondant, the fondant was always designed to be a, overwinter feeding thing. And it's actually the fond that gives the idea to do

it because what happened we realize is a lot of people who are using the fondant all year around. And that's fine. They can use it all year round. But this is sort of a quicker way of them to take down feed. It's a more practical way to take it. They can store this as well in the comb.

They tend not to store fond in the comb that much, whereas they'll store this in the cone. And it has the advantage too as well as that with Hive Alive, when it's in syrup and when the bees are take you down storing you in the cone it's working better

because what it's doing is the hive of life is breaking down spore walls of pathogens that are in the colony so whether that's bowel broods or the semas

is able to break down the spore walls so you basically you're sort of cleaning out your eye in the process so you have a lower disease a load of pathogen level

in your colony which is one of the reason why the colonies do so well when to use hive alive so by using this syrup you're allowing that to happen, whereas it's fond of it don't tend to store in the comb. Now, so how does this differ?

It is invert sugar. So how does this differ from when people mix up, let's say they mix up two to one themselves, and then they added the high-lides syrup to it, what is different as a two-to-one pre-mix in this bag from what they would make themselves by mixing it? So other than the convenience of the bag, is that this is made with enzymes, so you're not heating up the sugar syrup. So you probably know about HMS.

That's a toxin for bees that's made when you heat up sugar syrup. The longer heated up, it's particularly in high-fructose corn syrup. But it also can be made when you're making it up at home because even your top water, the pH of your top water can influence that as well. So this doesn't have any HMO. like zero or some of that, whereas you can easily make it at home if you

heated too much to have a level that's burging on toxic, especially for storing it because the longer it's stored, the more the HMF builds up in the heat in particular, if you're short it in the heat. What else? You've got the hive live already mixed into it. That's easy. You know exactly got the right amount in there.

And only the other thing as well is when you're making up, it's not a huge deal, but when you're making up syrup in a pot or whatever, some heating, whatever you want to do to make your, to make your two to one mixture. What you're, in the process of heating, what does is it breaks it down into the fructose and the glucose and the sucrose. So it's very hard for the beginning to know what's at what stage do I stop heating it to know it's at the right ratio of fructose glucose glucose sucrose. Whereas this is at the right ratio.

You know, it's 40, 30, 30 is what it is 40 for fructose and 30 for the glucose. So if someone purchased those, what's the shelf life on that mixture? Shelf life is a year and a half on this. Year and a half, so 18 months. And storage requirements, any special considerations? Just keeping it cool, really. Not letting stick it out in the heat. Could you put in the freezer?

I wouldn't, no. I wouldn't. That would be a good idea. I'm glad you mentioned that. Okay. Because it wouldn't actually freeze. be really cold. Yeah, but it would be a solid.

Yeah, well, it probably wouldn't expand that much, but. Oh, you're worried that it would expand and defeat the bag a little bit. Yeah, that's, you don't want that in the freezer. Okay, good. I'm glad we mentioned it. Yeah, that could go off the wrong, really. Okay. Now, and I'm sure instructions come with it, but what size holes and how many holes

would they be putting on the backside of that? You can just do small holes like people use, cocktail sticks or things like that. They don't have to be huge holes. You can also put slits in it, but you want to be very careful if you put a slit in it, it'd be very hard to move it again or anything like that,

you know? So you would just put multiple small holes and putting a big slit in it. But if you want them to take it a brick, you could put a slitter two into it with a sharp blade. So you haven't considered including like a paper clip or something

to poke holes in it. No, but you can use the high tool. Look at it. It happened to have one of these amazing tools. Yeah. Just hit it with the corner. just yeah just broken a couple of holes yeah yeah yeah exactly all right so and that's going to be available in August yeah yeah probably probably the middle of August at this stage yeah

okay we actually uh I think we're going to be I think we might I think we're going to have pre-orders on the website I'm not sure if you're interested in check it out we probably will have pre-orders on the website for that as well okay quickly is going to So what's the forecast price point on that here in the United States? It's about 50 bucks, which works out if you're buying, you know, it'll be on a gallon to a syrup. It works out cheaper. If you're buying large volumes of, you know, if you're buying a half a total of syrup, it's definitely more expensive. But it's more the convenience to what you're paying for there.

Yeah. So you get how many packs in a box? You get nine packs. They're two pound packs. Okay. All right. What else should we know? What's going on?

Anything? We just finished our new website. We've been busy. We finished a new website. We were just moved to a new warehouse. We were having lots of hassle with delays and stuff like that, with orders, stuff like that. So we moved to a new warehouse to speed that up. It's still in the process, but certainly by the middle of August, it will definitely be sorted out.

Sorry, it's happened, but, you know, it's still the odd teething problem with the new warehouse. but it's going to be a lot quicker and a lot more efficient. Yeah, just little things like that. Just trying to make, you know, better service for the customers to make the whole process easier. We made the payments easier as well,

stuff like that. That just makes, we're having people who cards were getting accepted randomly and that's gotten fixed as well. Just all these teething problems. It's true. Yeah. Well, last year,

I remember everybody wanted their fondant. So I always take care of myself first and get mine. And then I tell people about stuff. but they needed fondant and they didn't there was a fondant shortage there for a while

right last fall? Yeah we're better with that and the very beginning though was nuts we just couldn't make it quick enough it just was nuts but now we can forecast better

you know and I think you're right it's it's the convenience because the fondant packs my grandsons are helping me now with beekeeping and putting fondant packs on top of the intercover

was a huge for the past two winners has been a huge bonus for us here and I did make the mistake and leave some of them on longer. What is a drawback? Because here we are in July, and we were doing a hive inspection two days ago, and I found a fondant pack on it.

What's the drawback to leaving your fondant on for six months? I don't think there is any. Sometimes they can go a bit gooey and ugly, but... Or it almost solidifies. It actually dries out. It gets really stiff. Yeah, yeah. And then it'll be slow to take it down.

And you can melt that down again, use it put into syrup if you want to as well. Okay. Yeah, actually, it's something I, you know, the Fondon thing as well, it's something I kind of want to push this wintertime. So like, part of the reason in cause of Fondon is people started buying it much early than we thought they were going to buy it. We thought they'd be starting from buying it like January, you know, maybe December. But people start buying in August, September, you know, very early in the year. But I do genuinely believe that a huge amount of losses can be. be prevented from using the fondant because so many people have their bees going into winter

with not enough food. I think, oh, Roa got them or whatever, but either the food wasn't enough food or the food was too far away from them or whatever it is, that it happens, it happens so often. So I think there's an awareness thing to go out there as well that just by having the fondant, you just, it's there if they need it. Yeah. And I do want to hit on that again that because I'm one of the people that told people for years, Well, we didn't have a lot of options, so putting dry sugar up was better than nothing.

But the bee's ability to transfer that through the winter cluster, those resources. The dry, the sugar breaks, the dry sugar, it can work, but it doesn't get to all the bees. It doesn't cascade through them. Because I have observation hives, we get to see when they hit a resource that they need to survive, and then they spread that around mouth to mouth to all the other bees. through the hive. The fondant accelerated that so much. The dry sugar, it was almost like the colonies that consumed it were colonies that were so strong. They would have been okay anyway. It's, I mean, it is an emergency resource, but I think the fondant was a step up from that. So that's why the hive

alive fondant really did benefit what goes on with my bees, because other than that, sugar or nothing. It's what I didn't have anything else to put on it. So that filled, and I wasn't competent. I'm not a cook. You know, I'm not going to make my own fondet. For the same reasons that we describe, you could produce HMF, you could have it too hot and so on. The other thing is, like with the hive-live syrup, even when we create two-to-one sugar syrup or something like that, it has to be cool before you add the hive alive. I believe it's under 120 degrees Fahrenheit. What happens to it if you put it in while it's still a little too hot?

It's okay, but the seaweed extracts in particular is the active seaweed actus, the anti-fartureoleal. antifungal, that stuff, they don't, they're quite sensitive heat, so they don't work as well. It's not going to kill them or biotoxic the bees or anything. They just defeat some of the benefit. Yeah, yeah, you're just not getting good value from what age it would be if you're buying the thing. But yeah, there's a, there's

a line, it's better for the bees to be looking up at it than looking for it. So when it comes to food and it's not even, it's actually not even really in the December time period, it's the period just before the first flow. That's the time you lose your bees, you know?

Sure. Yeah. When they just run out of food or the food's way out on the edges and maybe it's cold and they're back in a cluster and they can't go out to food and like, oh, what do we do? And literally they're, you know, trying to get the bottom of the cells when they get all the food out. But if there's food right above them, because the heated cluster, they can go up. They can't go out, but they can go out. Correct. Be there for them. Yep.

And that has to do again with the smaller colony size that they don't have the extra workers to take that risk to bring those resources into that cluster. And once they brewed up, they're locked in. so it's very important yeah absolutely all good stuff all great information are there any expos or any conventions going on here in the United States

that you might be attending Linda is going to you've met Linda haven't you I think you went Linda if you haven't Linda's go to EAS she and then we have another one we got what's next up to that I think we're generally got the

HPA we go to NABB as well And that's January? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's a couple other shows. So there's the ABF the same time. And there's another one which has got Wind of as well around the same time. What is it?

Is it from your area? I can't remember. I was just on email. I was actually recently. That's just towards the end of January. So we're kind of thinking maybe we might just hang on and do all three shows. Now, do you post anything on your website that lets people know where they can come and meet you, which conventions you're attending.

We put stuff on Facebook. We have a Facebook group as well. We put stuff on Instagram. But you know what? I don't know, to be fair, I don't know if we flag it enough of what shows we're going to be at. That's a good point, actually. I think it would be very helpful because I know a lot of people just want to see it and

want to talk to people direct. You know, they want to see kind of what's going on. Also, they want to get those specials where they pick it up without paying shipping and things like that. Yeah. Oh, I forgot. We've another new product. We've got T-shirts now as well. We're all very marketing now. Yeah, T-shirts. So you have the merch. Where's the T-shirt? Do you have one handy? I don't have one handy. No, I can run across. I don't have one handy, no. I don't have one. I need to give you a T-shirt.

Yeah, I would wear one for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep. Wait to send you a T-shirt. Okay, so you have T-shirts, 100% cotton? Organic. 100% organic cotton. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like I said, we. don't mess around. Okay. I just again, it's the same thing, you know, you think about cotton fields being sprayed with chemicals

for all time and it's like, no, I don't buy into that. That's just, there's a shelf life on that. Yeah. Now, do you have, do you have cotton in Ireland growing? No, no, no, no. So, all right. So I can't ask you about cotton honey. No, you can't.

Because I guess beekeepers that live near cotton fields, I guess their bees are on those blossoms. So I think it's a, it's a nectar flow for them. We don't have cotton where I live either, but a lot of the southern beekeepers swear by those crops. I had buckwheat honey for the first time there in France. It's black. Very strong, very dark. Yeah. Yeah.

And buckwheat in your head, you think of it as a wheat like a grass, but it's not. It's very different. It's almost a milkweed looking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it looks like a weed. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's a very, you know, it's a strong.

full-bodied honey that, you know, people like. And you either like it or you don't because it's a very strong dark honey. So that's great. Any closing thoughts or comments that you have for anybody listening? No, no, just thank you for the time, really, of let me speak. It's great. It's great to be able to talk to you and your listeners and be able to tell people about our products so they can learn more and make a decision benefit for them or not.

No, looking forward to catch up with you again. And, yeah, yeah. Actually, I think your name was on the show that I'm thinking of the ones in the end of January. You're going to show at the end of January next year? I could be. I'm going to a lot of places right now, and I'm bad. I don't list where I'm going to be. I just like to show up that way because if people knew I was there, they'd know to avoid it.

So I surprise them and ambush them. It's too late for them to get out of the auditor. I was thinking the opposite. There's so many people going there and put the whole place down. Yeah, all right. Okay, well, thanks a lot. It's been great talking with you, and thanks for sharing about what you're producing there in Ireland. All great stuff. Thanks for much. Thanks for English. Thanks for English.