Living Homegrown Podcast Episode #15 Backyard Bee Keeping. Show Notes:

Transcription

1 Living Homegrown Podcast Episode #15 Backyard Bee Keeping Show Notes: This is the Living Homegrown Podcast, episode #15. Announcer: Welcome to the Living Homegrown Podcast, where it s all about how to live farm fresh, without the farm. To help guide the way to a more flavorful and sustainable lifestyle is your host, national PBS TV producer and canning expert Theresa Loe. Theresa: Hi there everyone and welcome to another episode of the Living Homegrown podcast. I m your host, Theresa Loe. This podcast is where we talk about living farm fresh without the farm, through artisan food crafts, like canning preserving, growing your own organic food (no matter how large or small your backyard space) and just living a more sustainable lifestyle. If you d like to learn more about any of these topics of my online canning courses, just visit my website LivingHomegrown.com Today I have a really special guest on the podcast. I have with me Joe Lamp l, the host and executive producer of our TV show, Growing a Greener World on PBS. Now you may know Joe from either our television series or from one of the other popular gardening shows he s been on such as Fresh From The Garden on the DIY network or Garden Smart on PBS. And he also makes regular appearances on NBC s Today Show, ABC s Good Morning America, The Weather Channel and much, much more. He s a really busy guy! Joe is known for being very devoted to organic gardening, sustainable agriculture and eco-friendly living. Basically just all of the things that I cover here on my podcast as well. So as you can imagine there are a lot of 1

2 different things that we could talk about when I have him here on the show. But what I wanted Joe to talk about today is his adventures as a backyard bee keeper. We just launched season six of our television series and the very first episode, #601, is a year in the life of a beginning backyard bee keeper. And that bee keeper that we followed for the entire year was Joe. Now having bees is so important to the production of our food that we grow and the food that we eat. And I know many of you are interested in keeping bees both for pollination of your garden and for the wonderful honey that you can harvest. So I just thought it would be fun to have Joe on the show to talk about his experience as he learned the ropes of this brand new hobby. So here s our interview. Theresa: Hey Joe, thanks so much for coming on the show. Joe: You are welcome. Gosh! It s been awhile, right? Theresa: Yeah, like we don t talk to each other every single day [laughs]. I am really glad you could come on today. I already said in the intro that there are a lot of different things we could talk about on the podcast but I wanted to talk about bee keeping today because it s been so interesting to watch you over the past year and watch you go from a total newbie to a seasoned bee keeper. So, we ll dive into that in a second, but before we started, I would love to have you tell everybody just a little bit about the TV show we produce together, Growing a Greener World. Joe: Yeah, I would be happy to do that! And it s just fun to be out there six years later you know you and I really started this conversation about kind of a crazy idea that I had on a bus on a rainy night in Raleigh at the Garden Writers Conference. And here we are six years later, with a hundred and something episodes with a national TV show that has won a few worlds. And we travel the country and beyond filming it. So it s been a wild ride but to the point of the show you know it just was something that I felt was important that wasn t out there. Nobody was telling the story of not just gardening, because the show is definitely rooted 2

3 in that, but about living with a lighter footprint. About living a more sustainable lifestyle where you re thinking more than just about yourself and what you re going to do for yourself that day. About you know how to do you leave this place a little bit better than you found it. And gardening really is connected to that in a lot of different ways, especially through food. We all know how food is connected to everything else in our existence. And so I just think the show lent itself well to that format where we could branch out in so many different directions and still bring it back to you know sort of our core interest and where our friends are and our fans are and that s with gardening. But you know it s just really about living a more sustainable eco-friendly life with starting with gardening. And you know one last thing I ll say about it. So it was very important when we created the series and every episode that we find a way to attract an audience that isn t or may not necessarily be interested in gardening per se. And so maybe it s cooking, maybe it s recycling, maybe it s something related to a craft or a project that doesn t necessarily scream gardening, but it does resonate with this younger audience. And I felt like if we didn t have a way to do that and bring in gardening through he back door we re going to lose everything. Because with this generation coming up and their parents, you know with mom and dad working all the time, I felt like we were losing that connection to gardening. And we just need to keep that going because of the importance that it has. And all the more reason now than ever because of the loss of heirloom seeds you know we know that story and it s just important that we really make sure that we connect with folks and I think we ve done a decent job of that. Theresa: I think we have to and I think what has surprised me the most is we ve been on this journey building this show is some of the incredible stories that people bring to us. You know we had some ideas and lists of what we wanted to do but a whole world of other ideas are always open to us and people write to us and or on facebook and let us know other stories. And so we ve gone down some other paths that we never even considered like some of the urban gardening stories that we ve told or even rooftop 3

4 farms in New York City. Things that were completely out of the realm of what we were looking to do so it has been really incredible journey. So it s been a lot of fun. Joe: It has been a lot of fun. That first year you know the hardest part was culling down to the 26 episodes that we ended up doing. Because we had a huge bucket list and some great ideas. But over the six years that we ve had these shows now now the caution is that we don t kind of tell the same story that we ve already addressed. And yet there s a different pathway of that topic that we haven t addressed yet so we look at that but I m mostly excited at this point six years in about everything on our list ahead of us because now i I think we re starting to branch into some very unique areas that are beyond just gardening and farming and just that but still totally connect to health lifestyles and green living. But they are not as closely related to the topics that we ve covered in the past. So I think that s going to really going to freshen up the show a lot but it s still going to have the flavor that we all really know and love. So I m really looking forward to the future. Theresa: Me too! And one of things I ve also really enjoyed that we ve added in the last two years, I think two years, has been filming at your property. And using headquarters, which is actually your home, in the stories. So I wanted you to describe to everybody what you were doing at your property and how we ve been using it in the show. Joe: Yeah, so five acres here in a northern suburb of Atlanta. When you re on the property you feel like you re in the middle of nowhere but when you need to go to the grocery store it s five minutes away which is great. You know everything you could possibly want. So it s kind of the best of both worlds. But here on the property I wanted to have that big organic food garden that you know we talk about so much. We use it all the time whether we re on location somewhere else or we re here. I mean the topics related to that. And so I needed that where I live. Where I could you know bring the cameras to where you know the gardner lives and where the host of this 4

5 show lives and I could keep an eye on it. So it s great for that because it s what I love to do anyway. But more importantly it s just really cool to finally have more control over our environment where we film so that I know for sure everything in there is organic, how it was grown, when it was grown, what the source of the plants or the seed was, because we always talk about that. But you know it s been a long time coming because we spent the last three years while we ve built ht garden clearing the land around the garden and it s kind of funny because here I am you know this gardening guy with kind of a national reputation of doing it and knowing what to do and all that but if you pull the camera back and get a wide pan of the property it s kind of barren because we have been removing all of the understory and really just what people would call the crash trees that really don t need to be here so that we can make room now to come in which we re going to do in an episode, the last episode of this season, which is called creating the landscape from concept to completion. So now that the food garden is in, the land is clear, the beds are in place, we re coming in with the trees and the shrubs and native perennials and all the great things that are going to attract the wildlife and the pollinators. And that s what I ve really been building up to. So the kind of the crescendo is yet to come. But it s on the way and we filmed that show in September. We ve already started it but really we started it three years ago when I began clearing the property. So we ll go from just focusing on the food garden to you know a landscape that is sustainable. And conservation oriented and all the ways that you know you do that with the idea of attracting and protecting the wildlife and the pollinators and what you put in and what you don t put in. So pretty cool stuff. Pretty excited about that. Theresa: I think that s what s been so great about it because unlike some of the DIY shows where they just go in and they in one tear out an entire landscape and put in something else. It s not real and it s not attainable for anyone else. So one of the things we always try to do is not only show 5

6 people when we re showing the topic what s in it for you, you know how you can apply it at home. But real life what works and what doesn t work. We ve had some episodes where we show what went wrong. So I think that s been so fantastic because for me you know working on the show and helping with the stories but also watching it I learned so much from seeing someone do it in real time. I mean it s not real time but we re showing this particular episode that I m going to be featuring here is a year in the life of a bee keeper. So we followed you for an entire year and showed you what worked and what didn t. And I think that s so important because it s so real and I think you learn more that way. Joe: Well it s an excellent point. And I m glad you mention that because I think one of the other reasons why it s so important that we have the garden set here where I live is that it is real. And we ve made a decision with this show is to always be real. I mean that was never a question but many television shows that I ve been involved with and that we know, they wouldn t even imagine sharing failure, or showing what didn t work out. You know, although we re not a reality show as people have come to know that term, we are a very real show. And so yeah, I mean when things go south we could choose to not bring that up and not talk about that but I think that the best lessons in gardening and in life are the ones that you learn from your mistakes. So if we make those mistakes why not share those? Because there are a lot of people that watch our show that don t know what we know yet but they re learning through us. And I m happy to share those experiences and those opportunities. And you know it s already happened several times we ve shown on the show, it happened in the bee episode and I m sure it will happen again and when it does we ll be sure to show those moments as well. Theresa: Yeah I think it takes some of the fear away so people think well if Joe Lamp l can make a mistake, then it s okay [laughs]. 6

7 Joe: Yeah, that has clearly been stated before! Theresa: [laughs] Yeah, nobody s perfect! And so many of the shows only present the perfect tomato and I think it s really important. Well with your bee keeping you know that I ve always wanted to be a bee keeper but I m highly allergic so I ve been living vicariously through what you ve been doing going through the whole process of becoming a bee keeper. And I d like to know, tell everyone what made you interested in bee keeping? Joe: it s always been a fascination of mine. I think nature in general you know anything connected to nature draws me in instantly. But when you begin to learn about the complexity of bees and how they live in that colony and they each have a specific job and how organized. It just blows my mind the more I understand bees or try to understand bees, the more complicated it becomes, but the more amazing it is with their systems and their order and their classes and all of that. And not to mention the importance that they play in the role of our food system and all of that. So when we had gone out and filmed at various places and they had their beehives and everything I just I knew that as some point I was going to have bees myself and I found it fascinating when we visited other people. And I just had now the opportunity to do it here. And I know many people are fascinated by bees. Whether they ever would pull the trigger to keep them themselves, I think before they know whether or not that s something they want to take on, you need to do your homework. So again, here is an opportunity through the show of allowing people to see the homework that we did and then put it into place and bring the cameras along for the highs and the lows and you know a little more insight into whether people really want to keep bees themselves. So I think we probably address some of that in the episode. Theresa: I think it was pretty clear how much everybody learned working on the show when we were editing it. And we were sitting there watching, all of us, we don t normally watch the shows when we are all in the same room. You know I m in Los Angels, you re in Atlanta, we re all over the country. But for this particular time we were sitting in a room altogether 7

8 watching some of the raw footage and it was absolutely fascinating and I think I turned to you or to Carl our director and I said Man, this is just like a show on PBS. And we all started laughing. It s like national geographic or PBS, this is like Nova. It was so interesting. I think it s been a real learning experience even though I m stepping back, way, way far back so I don t get stung but it s been so interesting to watch the whole process. Joe: Well and then the other thing though the course of a year certainly you re going to accumulate a lot of footage. But it s not like everyone was here everyday filming my every move around the bees but you know over 12 months you get a lot of footage. But after all the editing it was amazing how much of the show we had to leave behind. We had this discussion many times as the edit process was going on was how do we cut this down to really 21 minutes as the essence of the material. How do we make this an hour show this should be a special, it should be a pledge drive, it should be a part two or whatever. You know just for delivery deadlines it became just the one show that we started out with but there is a lot there that we didn t get to show that I think begs for us to come back and figure out how to come up with part two and make it merge seamlessly with the first part. Theresa: I think that would be great if we are able to do that. There is so much to learn. And I think that s one of the questions people have is where do you learn this? And we weren t able to show everything. So when you first were starting this and you thought okay, I want to start keeping bees, where did you go, where did you get training? Joe: Yes, thank goodness there is a bee keeping school. It s a one day workshop. For me it was at the Atlanta Botanical Garden through the Atlanta Bee Keepers Association. But it was amazing how many people came. They sold it out. They sell it out in one day. It was a big, huge room so I would imagine it s about a couple hundred people that sign up for this all day course on Saturday in the winter before you would get your bees. And they bring in all the you know extension experts from the university system and then some local experts and then a couple master bee keepers. One of which, Linda Tillman was my mentor. I had contacted her 8

9 when I knew I wanted to have bees and that we were going to film this episode. I said listen, I need some help and your name has come up, you ve got a great blog and would you do this. Stand beside me literally as I go through this and help me with this on the show and off the show. That s how it was for me. So it was the all day workshop, having a mentor I can t emphasize how important that is. Joining a bee club in your area, there are lots of those all over. And then of course there are lots and lots of books and podcast and videos and online courses. I m kind of a sponge for information. When I find something I m really interested in I kind of suck it up through every medium there is. So all of things I mentioned I had done prior to getting my bees and then of course I didn t just stop there. The bees are just one more element. It s funny I guess the take home from all of the this in the year I have done this is I started not really knowing anything and now I feel like I know so much more, I know I know so much more than I did when I started, but there is so much more that I don t know. Does that make sense? Theresa: [laughs] Yeah. Joe: Now that I know more I know that there is a lot more that I don t know. Theresa: [laughs] Yeah. Joe: It keeps it exciting. Theresa: Well it s complicated and there is a lot to it! In the last episode, in Episode 14, I said a lot of people feel that way when you go to grow fruit trees. You start to learn and you realize how much more there is to learn. But you can grow as a gardner when you re following a tree and I think you can grow as a bee keeper. It s going to be step by step and the hives will get larger and you ll learn more and they ll get healthier and be working alongside you in the garden. So I don t think you have to learn it over night. 9

10 Joe: You don t. I think you feel the pressure because you ve got this box of 60,000 living things that are like all in there and you feel like you need to do something. But then again, when you step back from that literally and process that information, bees have been around a lot longer than we have and they have just managed just fine without us in the holes of trees and in the ground and wherever. And we step in and decide we need to step in and intervene and if we don t things are going to south and all that. And there is a little truth to that because of how we use insecticides to day and how we move them around but for the most part they re fine. But you don t know that right away. And yeah it is still important to inspect your hives. If you ve going to keep honeybees there s a routine where every 10 days or so you should inspect the health of your hives if you really want healthy, productive hives. And then you start inspecting them when you re new you don t really know what your e looking at. And even when you have your mentor by your side who is doing it for you those first few times. You know they re talking about these things about the hive and you re looking at it and they re pointing it out, but you re looking at it though a big hooded veil and you know you re sweating and you re nervous and you think you re going to get attacked. Theresa: [laughs] Joe: And their mouth is moving and you hear noise but it s like Wah, wah wah. You don t know what they re saying because you can t really process it. It s all happening so fast! But then you start getting a little more confident and before you know it you re doing it all on your own. And then there isn t anybody there with you. And you think you know what you re looking at but our e not sure whether you re seeing what you think you re seeing is what you re seeing. So then you call and them them and you try to describe what you think you saw and you think you ve got a problem and you think you re going to get the magic answer from your, from your wise counsel. And then they often times as I ve often found out all through the years it s Well, it depends. It s like, What? What? 10

11 Theresa: Not what you want to hear. Joe: Not what you want to hear. But then again it s also a little disarming and reassuring that it s not necessarily an absolute. And so there s, it could be one thing it could be another. And this is from people who have been doing it for decades. So I don t know it s a funny thing. It s fascinating and yet even the experts I guess the comfort is even the experts don t always know the exact thing. So you know there is some protocols that you do and so long as you re doing the best you can with that, you call it a day and you re happy. Theresa: Well we, we standing on the sidelines filming and watching the filming of you we were giggling because when you first started you were decked out head to toe. There was not one spot anywhere on your body that a bee could get you. And at the end you were going out there without gloves on and you were handling the bees. So you got confidence as you went along which was kind of neat to see as we went from the beginning of the year to the end of the year. Joe: It was for me too. And that just speaks to your comfort level once you understand the psychology of bees and that they re not there to attack you. They re not that kind of pee. They re pretty much passive. They know they re going to die if they sting you. They re not there to do that. And if you re gentle, everything is great. And in the course of the entire year, I got stung four times. Theresa: Wow, that s good! Joe: Which I don t consider that that bad. Theresa: Yeah, that s really good. Joe: So and then you get used to it. And you feel the sing and your e like oh whatever and you take your hive tool and you just scrape off the stinger and you don t miss a beat. It s almost like an after thought. 11

12 Theresa: Yeah Joe: But you know it is fun to see yourself you know progress from that michelin man where you re completely covered up to you know shirtless and well not really! I m teasing. Theresa: [laughs] No, no no. We didn t see you get that far! Well when someone is just thinking about starting this and they have all those fears and you we ve talked about the training but I m sure that one of the first steps that they have to do is to first see if they can even have bees in their backyard right. Like check with your city ordinances, right. Is that what you recommend people do? Joe: I do recommend that. And honestly I didn t do that here. I know I live in a rural area where it s zoned for agriculture so I knew that wasn t an issue here. Theresa: I know you do here in Los Angeles in my particular city you, it s kind of interesting, you can have bees because I investigated it, but you have to get a permit from the fire department. Which is kind of interesting. But the fire department comes out and they want to make sure that the pathway from the garden to the hive is not like across a sidewalk where people are trying to walk by. They want to see where you want to put the bees and where the bees would travel. But you can get a permit and they do that so if people complain about a hive or there s a loose hive that takes off that swarms they know who to call. And come get your bees! But I thought that was kind of interesting so I m sure every city is different. Joe: It must be. I did not even know that that s kind of crazy. Because bees can come from all over. They re not native to the US but now that they re here they re everywhere. And that leads me on an interesting point in that a month or two into my hive keeping process I was driving by the hive one day just dropping some stuff off at the barn and I looked at the two hives that I have and there was this huge cloud of bees. 12

13 And for any veteran bee keeper that s just standard operating procedure. There s a season called swarming season and it typically happens in May about a month after you get your bees typically and that s what was happening to me. But because I was new I didn t know that so I was kind of freaking out. Well it turns out it s normal and it s not a problem. Typically they cluster up in a tree near the hive and what s happening is they re looking to expand themselves and they re going to take the Queen somewhere else and start a new colony. You know I didn t know any of that so I was getting answers to that and trying to figure out how to save the hive, was I going to lose my hive now that they were all leaving. Well the bees, this was one of the fascinating things about them, they know they are going to swarm, they know they are going to leave, they know they are going to want more room, so before they go they create new queen cells. And they create a number of them so that they re not going to leave the bees behind without another Queen because you can t have a living hive without a living Queen. And they know that. So it just blows my mind how cool they think through all of this. Theresa: Yeah Joe: And I learned all that. But anyway, my point is this went on several times that year. And I would look up and there would be this big huge cluster of bees right about the hive. And it happened so often, it happened like days in a row. And my daughter would come in one day and she say, Dad, there s another cluster of bees up there. And I m serious - I mean 60,000 bees all clinging to one branch that you could reach up and touch. And I called my bee keeper on that and I said okay, this has happened like three days in a row. They go away and they come back, at least I think they come back. Is that my bees coming back? And he said, and this is one of those Well it could be or it may not be! Theresa: [laughs] 13

14 Joe: And I m like oh that helps! And he said well the thing about it is there are bees out there that aren t from your hives but they smell the pheromone or hormone from the Queen that was up there before and they are attracted to that so they may come in there from somewhere unrelated to your property but because they pick up that scent they cluster there temporarily looking for a place to literally hang out. And then they go off and find a place to live. And then the next day. So anyway, to your point about the fire department about wanting to tell people where to come to go get your bees that may or may not be your bees. See I didn t know that before! Theresa: No I didn t know that until now! I knew about the swarming, but I didn t realize they can be from somewhere else. Joe: They can! And then you have to decide well are you going to rescue those bees? Are you going to capture them and put them into a hive? Well this happened so often and by then I had added three more hives and we can maybe talk about that but I was still I had no vacancy, I was at full capacity. But I had this cluster of bees I wanted to save and so one day Carl happened to be here filming something else so I said, Carl, these bees are right here and I want you to film this because I m going to grab all these bees and knock them into a bucket and put them into an extra box that I had. You know a few months before I was decked out form had to toe and scared to death I was going to get stung to literally reaching up into 60,000 bees without even a pair of gloves and escorting them into a bag or a box and dropping them into a hive box. Theresa: Very cool. Joe: And it s just kind of a rush really. And to play a role in ensuring their viability is not only cool, it s just a neat experience. Theresa: Did Carl have to use a telephoto lens because he was so far back? [laughs] 14

15 Joe: Carl, our director, has gotten pretty used to the bees so he s pretty fearless as well. Theresa: Well that s good! So since we re on the topic of these bees swarms, I know one of the questions I had which I didn t learn until we did this show was where do people get bees? I had hear of mail order bees. One time when I was picking up my chickens, I was mail ordered some chicken and someone said there were also some bees there being picked up so I knew you could do that, but is that the most common way for people to mail order their bees? How do people get their bees? Joe: I know it s common, I m not sure it s the most common way. Because in my search both times I went and got bees I drove to the bee keeper s place and got them. And there s a season for us. For us it s like late March or late April at the latest when the Queen and the colony has formed and there s enough bees to get going. But in our case we drove to the bee keeper s place. And a lot of people do that. And yet they re mailed as well I just don t know which is more popular. For me and for a lot of people it s nice to be able to go check them out and when you pick them up you know that you have a really healthy hive. And in my case the bee keeper we were working with for this show had personally picked out a couple nuc boxes for me which was one way to do it. And the second time we got them we got them as packages which was a slightly different way and we can, we can look into the screened box and see all the bees just going nuts and take them home. Actually when you have you know a few thousand boxes of packaged bees they all start looking the same. Theresa: [laughs] Joe: But anyways, you know you re leaving with some healthy bees. And so I assume that is probably a pretty common option around the country. 15

16 Theresa: It probably depends where you live. So if you live some place where you can t go get bees just nice to know you could mail order them if you need to. Joe: Yeah. Theresa: Well in all this journey over this past year has there been anything n the bee keeping journey that surprised you? Joe: I don t know if I would call it a surprise but I would call it a realization. It s kind of like gardening. When you think you re really into something and you want to get started gung-ho and you dive in with both feet. You know I did that with my hives. But I only started with two and I would say two is very manageable for anybody. But in short order because I had one hive swarm and I felt like that hive was at risk and wasn t going to come back full stride. And I wanted more hives eventually because they look cool and I wanted more pollinators around I wound up getting three more hives. And then it became quite a task to keep up with that schedule of inspecting your hives every ten days or so. Now you can like I said before you can just assume that they re going to be fine and they very well may be. And that means that you re not inspecting them every ten days. But if you re really wanting to be a real bee keeper your job is to make sure that that hive remains healthy. And therefore you need to get into each of the hive boxes and pull out each of the frames. So after they have developed their brooding area which is the bottom box and the Queen is there with the workers and the drones and they have the eggs and everything there and you go up a box and there are more frames and that is where they start storing the honey and probably a box above that. And before you know it 8 frames per box at minimum, you re probably at frames per hive and you do the math on that depending on how many hives you have and your whole weekend is inspecting your hive. Now it s not really that bad because there is a learning curve and the more you do it the faster you get. But for me in the first year I found myself thinking, oh my gosh, these five hive boxes, inspecting them every ten 16

17 days, with a busy life as I know everyone has, it just really adds to your todo list and you have to decide if you re okay with that. Or if you re okay with just letting them do their thing and trusting that it s all going to be okay and you ll maybe get some honey at the end of the day. You know you just have to decide where you are on that. For me I tend to want to be you know more hands on so it kind of bothered me when time would get away from me or I couldn t keep up with that schedule and then I would have a question and the bee keepers, my mentors, would say, well how many days was it when you last noticed the queen cells, were they capped or not capped, and all these questions they want to know and I can t give the answers to that because I haven t been doing my diligence on keeping up with it. The other thing and I have one more thing to say about that, is that in talking with the experts they really make note, literally notes, they don t just make mental notes because you just can t keep up with all those hives and every little detail if you don t write it down, so note taking is really important and keeping track of the dates that you inspect and the progression of the hives and the various developments in the hive on that day of observation. Because from that point there are so many days from before it converts from the egg. So everything is tied to the number of days and you have to know that to know if everything is progressing properly and your hive is healthy. So that s when it starts to get a little bit heavy and sometimes overwhelming if you re really trying to be as fastidious as you can be. And it can become a little overwhelming. But that s the part I want to tell people is don t beat yourself up over that because there is room for a lot of grace there. But I tend to be hard on myself and when I wasn t able to answer those questions I felt like I wasn t being a good bee keeper. And yet my hives were still healthy and everybody s happy, but it is, it s something to keep in mind. You know to really have the answers for people when you have questions you need to know those things. 17

18 Theresa: That s an excellent point and I m glad you said having two, two hives was manageable. I think ti s people don t think of it as having a pet but it s almost like having a pet or however many hundreds or thousands of them but it s not like having a pet dog where you re having to check on him every single day. So they do have some independence. Joe: They sure do. Theresa: Well I know you ve had incredible success with the pollination on everything that you re growing that needs pollinating and you have a lot of fruit trees so it s been really great that way and I know people will find out when they watch the episode you didn t get any honey this year but you re looking forward to honey next year. Joe: Yup, well this last year the first year that I had the hives I got honey but it wasn t enough that I felt like I could safely take enough to really do anything where I would not jeopardize the honey that the bees needed over winter. Because that is their sole food source. So when it gets cold, they re relying on that honey to survive. It s what they need to eat, it s how they it helps them stay warm, it gives them the energy to keep their wings up to generate the heat and all of that. So if I m taking that away from them that puts their whole colony in jeopardy. And I just wasn t, I just didn t have that much quantity. Because when the bees split, they swarmed and they only left behind a smaller amount of bees and well now they re kind of rebuilding that whole hive and so I lost a lot of ground. And that is one of the things that happens that is common but it happens but when it does happen you run a high risk of the amount of honey that is accumulating being less and so you need to know that. And that s one of the reasons you need to go in there and inspect the hives. Theresa: Yup, yup I think that s a good lesson. Joe: Mmmhmm. 18

19 Theresa: Well Joe, thank you so much for taking time out to be on the podcast. I really thing this will help people out who just might be considering the hobby. And I ll have a lot of links in the show notes for more information including a link to Episode 601 where they can follow you all along on your first year and the good and the bad and everything that happened. So thank you so, so much for being on the show today, I really appreciate it! Joe: Well it was a lot of fun Theresa, and it was my pleasure. So thanks for having me. Theresa: So that was my interview with Joe. I hope you enjoyed it even if you r not going to become a backyard bee keeper. I just find the whole bee experience so fascinating. If you would like to watch the episode, the television episode that we were talking about, #601, in its entirety on our website, I will have links for that as well as more information on backyard bee keeping. I ll have all of that in the show notes for this podcast episode. You can get those show notes at LivingHomegrown.com/15, that s slash 1-5. I ll have all the links and everything right there for you. So that s it for this week, thanks so much for listening! Just keep working on your food choices that are local, seasonal and home grown. See you next time! Announcer: That s all for this episode of the Living Homegrown podcast. Visit LivingHomegrown.com to download Theresa s free canning resource guide and find more tips on how to live farm fresh, without the farm. Be sure to join Theresa Loe next time on the Living Homegrown podcast. [bloopers] 19