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A Conversation With Kentucky's State Apiarist, Amanda Skidmore
22 Plays29 minutes ago
On this episode of Hort Culture, we delve into the fascinating world of bees with special guest Amanda Skidmore, Kentucky's State Apiarist. Amanda shares insights into the current state of honey bees and native pollinators in the Commonwealth, discussing some of the challenges they face as well as some programs to support them and help populations grow. She highlights the crucial role both honey bees and native bees play in our ecosystem and offers practical advice for individuals looking to make a difference. From planting bee-friendly gardens to providing nesting sites for native bees, Amanda outlines simple yet effective steps everyone can take. For those interested in becoming beekeepers, she emphasizes the importance of joining local beekeeping clubs and provides contact information for the Kentucky Department of Agriculture. Tune in to learn how you can contribute to the health and well-being of these vital pollinators and help them thrive in Kentucky.
Kentucky State Apiarist Office
Beginning Beekeeping For Kentuckians
Beekeeping and Honey Production
Questions/Comments/Feedback/Suggestions for Topics: hortculturepodcast@l.uky.edu
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Hort Culture' Podcast
00:00:04
Speaker
Welcome to Hort Culture, where a group of extension professionals and plant people talk about the business, production, and joy of planting seeds and helping them grow. Join us as we explore the culture of horticulture.
00:00:18
Speaker
Hey everybody, coming in at you live, not live, this is pre-recorded podcast, but it's snowy outside. We are read our live, none of this is edited. yeah we take out that In a sense, yeah, I mean for the four of us, it's or the five of us, it's live. Very live, right? That's something. yeah Yeah, it's snowy at my house, and it's about to be a real muddy.
Weather, Food, and Mud Season
00:00:44
Speaker
yeah it's ah ah I don't know how to feel about it. I'm trying to stay positive, but it is i it is still winter. I don't like mud season. it's We're deep within mud season right now. yes yeah No pun intended. It feels early for mud season too, but ah here we are. We are, the ground is unfrozen at this point. It's a slushy snow here in Kentucky at the time of this recording. And I don't know, I have mixed feelings about slushy snow. It's one of my least favorite. It gets gray on the road and and kind of slops around everywhere. So there's not much anything to, there's not much fun about is it. Isn't that there that no a Noah Cahn song? That's the season of the mud or something like that. That is it, yes. Oh, stick.
00:01:33
Speaker
I get stick it, I get sticking. Well, okay. we Make things out of both of them
Featuring Amanda Skidmore and Honey Recipes
00:01:41
Speaker
put together. So it's the mud, wonderful, mud, wonderful time of the year.
00:01:47
Speaker
I think I might be glitching. My brain might be. I just want to point out that we have yet, we're 30 seconds in and we have not talked about food yet. I hope some of you are impressed. Record for us. I wasn't sure if we should bring it up while we talked about mud or how exactly I was working on my segue for that. Oh, OK. So you were working on something, though. Not not a surprise. I obviously it had to do with cheese. I'm sure all of you are shocked. Of course. Well, I was going to. I mean, if we're talking about mud, does anybody anybody hear a fan of a like a dirt cup? The dessert? Of course. Yes.
00:02:24
Speaker
Absolutely. Absolutely. I used to do a kids plant camp and our favorite thing to do was at the end of the day, we had them make dirt cups and learn about soil layers and then we send them home with all the sugar and we were like, yeah, thanks for sending your child. Um, they're sugared up now. Bye. See you later.
00:02:43
Speaker
Yeah, I mean that might be it. Speaking which held the fallout of her our guest knows a little bit about um sugary products, I should say. maybe How was that segue? Yeah, there's also insects and dirt cups, you know, and that's kind of like, is that where you were going with that? I don't know. And before we jump right in, I want to know everybody's favorite honey recipe because we have beekeepers meetings coming up. or We're always trying to come up with things. And I know Amanda, ah Kentucky State, April, Amanda Skidmore is with us today. But I know Amanda, you've got some good recipes for honey.
00:03:24
Speaker
Yeah. Um, actually I get to help with the state fair and all the recipes that get submitted to the state fair for the cookery contest. Uh, the folks behind the scenes get to kind of like preview and test on our own. So we have secret stuff like secret recipes, even man. a little bit. Yeah, you can kind of tell the ones that got pulled from the internet and then the ones that um have been worked on for a while. I believe the the lady who won the sweepstakes last year, she submitted into 19 different categories. um And she
00:03:59
Speaker
had all kinds of things from like a honey almond cake. And you could tell that she was like this amazing grandma cook, like everything she had was just amazing. um But like honey almond cake, she had honey breads, baklava, um all sorts of delicious honey related things. I do love a good honey cake. That's one of my absolute favorites. That's a traditional with my family growing up in the Eastern part of the state. And it was made with buttermilk. Our honey cake was made with walnuts, buttermilk, and of course all the flour and all the other typical cake things, but I absolutely love it. A good honey cake is hard to beat. Honey and nut cake, I guess, technically, if you want to, you know, be specific about it, but good stuff. Yeah. Alexis might have a little like experience with judging some cakes and stuff at one point in our lives. so We did it once and
00:04:53
Speaker
we We thought we could, yeah, we went on doing again. We thought we could taste just everything and it was a bad, bad decision by the, by the end of it. What do you mean? At the state fair, you like, we're judging a, like multiple things and try to take a bite of each.
00:05:10
Speaker
We became impromptu judges at a smaller county fair once when other judges did not show up for the culinary section.
Beekeeping in Kentucky: Community and Health
00:05:17
Speaker
And of course we were thrilled about it. And we were like, oh, we got this. And I just remember like, but we Alexa started on one end of the table. I started on the other. And by the time we met each other in the middle, we were like, I think I'm going to be sick. And then, you know, we, we tried, we tried everything and you know, they were like, he didn't have to try everything, but we did. like We finished off the smell. You gotta use this bit bucket. That's what it's there for. When when you taste when you when you judge honey and you taste ah the honey, you have to taste all of them. And most of the time people submit multiple jars. um So yeah, the people who are doing the honey
00:05:58
Speaker
Tasting and judging usually end up pretty buzzed by the end of the day because they just have so much burger ru who you did Oh my goodness, yeah the state fair I forget that there's I mean, that's the long-standing tradition here in Kentucky all of the the Activities related to honey. I mean, it's it's like the big show for honey in the state of Kentucky. Yeah, we we have a bees and honey room um that's an educational space, but also where all the competition things are going in. So we really um are excited about it. This year, we've entered a few new categories. So as soon as the premium book comes out, um we're excited. we We included things like quilts this year um and poetry. um We took feedback from a lot of people to kind of mix it up. So it's going to be very bee focused.
00:06:43
Speaker
I like that. Well, artsy. That's just one tiny part of your job, which I sometimes I think people don't realize that is part of your job to, you know, yes, state fair. ah But do you care just to like share a little bit like your general overview of your position? And before we kind of talk more about, you know, some of our the specialized things that you do and offer in the state?
00:07:06
Speaker
Sure, kind of just a big picture. I am here to help beekeepers keep their bees healthy. um I kind of cover everything from when you put your bees into the hive until you take um products and bees out of the hive. um I work with doing the certified health inspections, so if there's potential pesticide exposure or A um person that needs to move hives out of the state and the state they're moving to requires a health inspection before the bees arrive. I help with that. um I'm involved with the statewide pollinator protection plan, um which is kind of a guidebook for how to protect pollinators in Kentucky. um And I also participate in different research trials um and help beekeepers when they call or go do site visits.
00:07:58
Speaker
And I cover all 120 counties, so you never know where I'm going to be. That is a big territory. So is it fair to say, I guess, in your position as a, as a state aperist here in Kentucky, are you both education and regulation kind of the end? Do you do kind of both? Yeah. Yes. sound like you did Yeah. That's a combination. Yeah. Yeah. That's really cool. It covers a lot of ground though.
00:08:19
Speaker
And I know that there are, you were telling us earlier, there are a lot of beekeeping clubs in Kentucky. And I'm sure you knew that before you took this position because you were, sounds like a beekeeper before you, you know, of course came into this position. ah But yeah, a lot of beekeeping clubs in the state from what it sounds like. Yeah, ah we have 72 different individual clubs um across the state. So just about anywhere someone's located, um they can ah get to a bee club pretty easily. The information for finding bee clubs is on the Kentucky State Beekeepers Association website. They have the the
00:08:57
Speaker
um links to all the local clubs. um So they're kind of the statewide umbrella organization. um And some clubs are members of the state organization, and then some clubs are independent, but we list all of them on that website. So no matter where you're at, you're able to see where clubs are meeting. And if you want to join a club and and hang out with beekeepers.
00:09:18
Speaker
Yeah, I know that's one of the things you guys do is it's ah probably a ah job in itself to keep all that updated. is ah Is that what you guys encourage people to do to kind of self update that when there's been a change in like officers or meeting patterns?
Amanda's Journey in Apiculture
00:09:30
Speaker
Or do you reach out to people? How does that work?
00:09:33
Speaker
so that update and Yeah, so it is kind of ah a massive list to update. And it kind of goes both ways. If a new club um comes together or um new officers come into place, we encourage them to to reach out to me. um And I will update the list accordingly. And then if I haven't heard from ah a club for a while, I start making phone calls and tracing down um who's in charge and helping to keep that list as accurate as possible.
00:10:01
Speaker
Yeah. So I have a question, Amanda. How did you get here? Because like, a lot of people don't even know what a state apiarist is, let alone like become this and get to do this really cool job. So like, tell me your, tell me you your story, Amanda. How far back in time do you want to go?
00:10:19
Speaker
but at a very young age I remember sitting in class with you at some point. so say wait We can go earlier than that. so I remember I've been squashed with you for hours on end. so out yeah that I not realize you guys had all this history with Amanda. Yeah. way back yeah and So I grew up in Lexington. And um when I was in high school, I was in an art class. And I am not an artsy person at all, as Alexis and Jessica can probably tell you. um But the art teacher at the end of the semester, she looked at me and she was like, you really need to find something better to do with your life because it's not art. Which was kind of harsh.
00:11:06
Speaker
which is a little bit harsh. But her husband was a professor in the UK entomology department, and um she suggested that I intern with him um over the summer to get some high school credits.
00:11:22
Speaker
And so I had the opportunity to kind of start learning about insects and how they interacted with the world. And and then as I got into undergrad at UK, I was involved in both the entomology and sustainable agriculture programs, which is where I met Alexis.
00:11:38
Speaker
and um but kind of solve the connection between insects and how our food is grown, both from the pest side, where insects um kind of attack our crops, and then also from the pollinator side, where they're important for pollination aspects or they're natural enemies, predators of those pests.
00:12:00
Speaker
um And how those interactions work really intrigued me. So I stayed at UK for my PhD, which is where I hung out with Jessica. um And we looked at the integrated pest management in specialty crops in Kentucky. And it also overlapped with um pollinator health, because whenever you're you know working pest management in a food system, you've got pollinators right there.
00:12:26
Speaker
so I looked at that um and then I um wrapped up at UK, did a postdoc at um Purdue for a couple years, um and I had the opportunity to go to New Mexico State University to work as their integrated pest management specialist for small and urban farms um across the entire state of New Mexico.
00:12:53
Speaker
So um I was there. We worked on all kinds of different specialty crops as well as developing um pollinator related resources. New Mexico has over a thousand species of native bees.
00:13:08
Speaker
um And so there was a lot of work that had been done with the native bees. And and that led to a lot of questions about honey bees and how they interacted in um the desert climate. And could that be a possible avenue um for agriculture producers to look at? um Or what were the interactions between native bees and honey bees? So that's kind of where a lot of the honey bee related work came in.
00:13:35
Speaker
um After that, that kind of all happened around COVID. um And so really drove me wanting to come back towards Kentucky. So Morehead State had an opportunity for me to come and um be a professor in their Department of Agriculture. So I taught um college classes for a couple years um before going into some grant writing. um And then I was friends with ah Tammy Potter before she retired, and she was the former state apierce. So when I heard that she had retired retired from the position,
00:14:13
Speaker
um I thought that it was a really cool job. I've told her for years how cool I thought her position was and I had the opportunity to apply for it. And kind of all of those experiences led to being able to um step into this position. So it's kind of a long loopy story. Yeah. So you've been in other geographies even, I mean, well beyond Kentucky, it sounds like and worked a lot in honey bee health, which I guess, you know, it was great yeah background experience to support your current role because that's a big deal in Kentucky. I'm sure that there are some problems with bees in Kentucky that have to be addressed kind of health problems. So that sounds like that's a great support experience. yeah All of those experiences, it's awesome. Very cool. I have a fun fact that made me feel really old. When I was in the county, ah we had,
00:15:08
Speaker
our Ag Agent, County Ag Agent retired and we got a new Ag Agent. And he came in young and fresh, just graduated. And he told me that Amanda was his professor in college. And I, he came immediately. He was like, she said to tell you hi. And I was like, excuse me, what? I just graduated college. I'm not really sure how she's a professor, but, uh,
00:15:35
Speaker
That's the way it fought felt, but he had all wonderful things to say. so Since you were born in the 1900s. I was born in the 1900s. In the 1900s, that's right. Time does pass quickly. it does But Amanda was sharing some of her past, you know, it started making me think about different projects and unique things, other than I know we're here to talk about honeybees and the state APA stuff, but like,
00:15:57
Speaker
ah with your IPM ah stuff with the squash bees and those unique bees we were looking at and using little tiny vacuums, which some may sound weird to people, but we were going out and vacuuming these adorable little squash bees, yeah, up from the flowers and putting them in the cooler, not to kill them or anything, but just to like count and look at them before releasing and um just another, you know,
00:16:25
Speaker
Another little pollinator that people don't think about, right, that plays a big role in the the grand scheme of things. How big are B vacuums? I need to know, like, I need a better mental image. They're the little dirt devils, like what you had in the 90s that were like the little tiny, ah like clean your steps with um dirt devils. um And then they chop them in half and add um a ah container to them and a long plastic tube so that you can kind of stick that tube down into the flower turn the shop back on or the little handheld shop back on um and suck the bees into the container.
00:17:05
Speaker
bees in a bottle. Can you imagine how disorienting of an experience that would be?
Understanding Honeybees and Native Pollinators
00:17:10
Speaker
The bees are like, whoa, what kind of pollen did I just get into? It's this weird wind that I've never experienced before. That is wild. Well, as much of a vortex as it creates, they and It doesn't hurt them to to do that. so Like Jessica said, we can um vacuum them up. They're in a sealed container. and We can put them in a cooler so that they don't overheat, um study them, and then be able to re-release them. um so yeah Technically, meeting a clown as a child didn't hurt me, but you know if I remember the experience. Let's put it that way. in oh i'm sure
00:17:49
Speaker
was spin ah yeah i was I've always been amazed. like you know When I first started catching a swarm, I've been a beekeeper in the past. I'm a washed up beekeeper now, but I was always amazed at how kind of resilient bees are because the first swarm I caught, I think I shot the with a shotgun because the limb was too high. So I took a 12 gauge and shot the limb out of the tree. the The swarm hit the ground out of a tulip poplar.
00:18:12
Speaker
And I was like, wow, I've really just shredded everything in here because there's no other way to get it through it in the, I kept a, you know, deep, uh, hot buddy in the back of the truck and just took my staple gun, stapled down the, you know, the screen wire and got it home and it was fine. And I was like, wow, these are, that's pretty amazing. And I actually got the queen. They're pretty resilient. Uh, man, that you may not know, but our listeners know that the novel Huckleberry Finn was loosely based on raised childhood. I like it. So he has lots of folksy. Did not grow up around a river though. Incredible. He might actually be Huckleberry Finn from the 1800s. Well, so you mentioned, you know, I think honeybees get a lot of visibility and a lot of people are thinking about them. They're sort of them in the monarchs as this elevated class of pollinators. But you said the PPP, the Pollinator Protection Program, and some other stuff that you're working on. And you said the native bee.
00:19:06
Speaker
ah stuff that you had done in the past. i'm I'm just kind of curious. Can you can you talk a little bit about maybe some things that people don't necessarily realize about honeybees as far as their non-native status? And like what's the as far as numbers of species, numbers of insect pop, you know, insect populations, etc. Like how many native bees are there compared to honeybees where the honeybees from any of this stuff? I think I'm I think this stuff's really cool.
00:19:32
Speaker
Okay, yeah, so um I'll just big, big overview. um Honeybees were introduced to the United States by colonists who first came over. So the first um Jamestown colony has records of having bees.
00:19:49
Speaker
um brought to it. um Before that in North America, we didn't have any Apis mellifera, which is the honey bee genus and species. um Several million years ago, we did have an Apis genus bee in the North American continent, um but it um became extinct. um So it it had not been here. However, we have about 4,000 native species of pollinators, or bee pollinators,
00:20:19
Speaker
um In North America, in Kentucky specifically, we estimate that we have between 450 and 500 unique species of bees. um the ah Let's see what group is it. One of the groups right now, um Department of Nature Preserves, is currently going through and um ah checking records and doing an active study on native pollinators to determine how many native bees we we actually have on record in Kentucky. So that's going to be some cool information here.
00:20:52
Speaker
um coming out hopefully pretty soon. um But it's ah it's a really interesting question because it's one that we don't have an exact number for, just an estimate. um As a noob here, that what you're telling me is, for honeybees, when we think of honeybees, traditional people give them hives, that's one species.
00:21:11
Speaker
correct. Yep. And there's 400 other species of native of native honeybees estimated in Kentucky. And maybe they would would not be considered honeybees. When you're thinking about it, think about it like breeds of dogs. um So like bumblebees would still be considered a bee, the little black sweat bees that get you when you're outside sweating, um those are a type of bee, those shiny green helixed bees. Those are all of um the different kinds of bees that are closely related to a honey bee, but are not in that same genus and species.
00:21:48
Speaker
so So it would be almost like when we think about the honey bee as a bee, that would be like saying a robin is, that's the birds. Birds are, but think about all the different kinds of birds we have compared to that. I mean, that is pretty crazy. And I think as far as just messaging out to the public and what people think about bees and in terms of this relationship with honey, it's one of those, I think it sometimes surprises people to hear, wow, there's hundreds of other species Well, and importantly to know, you know, honeybees have a caste system, right? They've got a colony with a queen. um The workers are all female. um And then they have drones that are only around for a certain time of year. But they all live in one big colony and they work as a unit together.
00:22:33
Speaker
Most of the other um native bees that we have are solitary. So they either dig an individual nest in the ground um or have nests in trees or twigs, um grasses. So it's not like they work as a colony. They're all individuals. So when you start talking about pollinators and pollinator protection and bee habitats, um it's very diverse. And so we have to take a lot of different approaches to look at it.
00:22:59
Speaker
what What might be some of those those approaches? Yeah, so when we're thinking about protecting our native pollinators, we're looking at things like don't move the leaves, or if you've seen the campaign leave the leaves um in the wintertime, a lot of times our native pollinators will overwinter in that kind of um protected material, either in the soil underneath of that. um Sometimes they're in like the stems of grasses.
00:23:28
Speaker
um And so we want to try to be careful not to disrupt that life cycle. um So that's one thing that we would do with native pollinators, whereas honeybees live in a colony um that we can prepare for winter. We work with and interact with um much more closely.
00:23:47
Speaker
so it's ah At the USDA level, the USDA recognizes honeybees as a form of livestock. At the state level, um Kentucky has never recognized bees as a form of livestock for several different reasons. But um when you're thinking about it, honeybees would be considered a managed pollinator. We as humans are managing them and manipulating their living conditions, the size of their population, um how they access, you know, um ah growth. We do artificial insemination and breeding and really interact with them much more like livestock than we would a um native species of animal.
00:24:30
Speaker
um or even wild. It feels really fascinating. I mean, the breeding over the years, you know, talk about the hygienic bees or the, you know, the weaver bees or whatever, all the different breeding that's went into that for different characteristics. I mean, what are the major types now that you're seeing out? I mean, we're all used to like a little three banded Italian or whatever, the super common, chill representative of bees everywhere. But I mean, what what types of bees do you see as far as honeybees go?
00:24:57
Speaker
in the state, what are the most common things that you see? I'm always curious about that. Yeah, so so what Ray is talking about is um just like with any species of animal that we have a breeding um program for, there would be different strains or different lines of bees. So there's Russians, there's Italians, there's Germans. um And a lot of that ties back to where that original um
00:25:28
Speaker
genetic material came from when it gets worked on. um So there's a huge mix of that and depending on who you talk to, there's going to be preferences for um one or the other type of bee.
00:25:43
Speaker
However, they all on average tend to to perform the same types of behaviors. um And so it's really hard to pin down and say this is like the best one, um or along those lines, because even in like micro habitats, they can perform differently, um just slightly. So it was fascinating. hard to narrow it dale Yeah, yeah, it's really hard. And depending on like the a first I've worked with a lot over the years, fieldcraft and Rob Mountain,
00:26:11
Speaker
and a lot of the ah ones way going way back, even before Tammy. But i ah Rob was a fascinating, he was an aparist in the past, but he was a South African beekeeper. And to hear him talk about keeping bees in South Africa, because I guess people still have a certain reaction when they hear South African bees, because their aggression levels and their proximity alert that goes off is far greater than bees that we're typically working with.
00:26:38
Speaker
But yeah, even bees in other parts of the world are fascinating to me. But he opened my eyes to, like, people actually do, you know, make honey from bees, even in that part of the world that where that's a type of bee that maybe ah has different behaviors than what we're used to, but it's just so fascinating.
00:26:56
Speaker
Yes, so we have apis mellifera here, but there are other apis species.
Challenges and Advice for Aspiring Beekeepers
00:27:03
Speaker
I believe there's seven known apis species total. um So different parts of the world have other types of honeybees, like um the giant Asian honeybee, which is apis dorsada, which is over in Southeast Asia um that has open comb that just hangs off tree branches or buildings. um And the colony lives on that instead of being um inside of a structure like what um Apis mellifera, which is the Western honeybee or European honeybee, it's got a lot of common names, ah prefers, but what we would typically think of as a honeybee.
00:27:37
Speaker
yeah i'm what so glad you oh yeah i I'm so glad you mentioned about like them being like tiny livestock, right? Because I think there are lots of misconceptions for people out there who are new to the bee world or love the idea of having bees, right?
00:27:54
Speaker
And so they think like, I can get a hive of these and I can set them out there and they'll do their thing and I'll get honey. And then those magically survive the winter and I won't have to treat for mites and all of those other things. Right. And I know with your position, like with us, with our extension stuff, you do a lot of outreach.
00:28:13
Speaker
of educating and I assume you probably have gotten some like interesting questions over the years through that or if you know want to share any of those interesting things you may have heard or like any projects you're currently like working on with some of the beekeepers with those things that I think people just don't think about like because they are little livestock and you do have to take care of them and feed them and water them and all all the things. sorry All the things, yeah. and They're very expensive.
00:28:41
Speaker
They are very expensive. That's, that's one of the things when I have a ah beekeeping like 101 class that I do. um So I have kind of just an introduction to bees that um I've worked with a couple different extension agents to do in their counties.
00:28:56
Speaker
and And it's mostly a summary of what beekeeping is. um It's definitely not as intense as going to a bee school, which I would highly recommend to anyone who is interested in getting into to bees to actually go to like a formal bee school. ah You can just Google bee school and it will come up with like all these options. But um a lot of what I do in those 101 classes is talk people out of getting bees. For some of the reasons that Jessica just mentioned, um a lot of people come into bees with the misconception that raising honey bees will help pollinators um because they hear about pollinator decline and they're very concerned that
00:29:44
Speaker
um we're losing pollinators. But there's that misconception that honey bees serve in the same roles that our native pollinators do. So oftentimes we encourage folks who want to help support pollinators to um go down the line of um developing pollinator habitat in their own yards, um providing um resources for all different kinds of bees um to have support um And thinking about it from the perspective of if you're bringing a honey bee colony into a new location, um you're all of the sudden bringing in, um at peak season, 60 to 80,000 new mouths to feed.
00:30:28
Speaker
um that still need pollen and nectar and resources from flowers. So instead of helping the native pollinators in your area, what you're doing is you're bringing in um bees. And if you just set them and leave them there and just let them go, that's not helping the situation. That's actually leading to them getting more diseases. um spreading diseases to the native bee population um ah and can cause your neighbors who are beekeeping to see um higher disease and pest pressure. So if you're not willing to invest in it and look at it as kind of a livestock operation where you are actively managing your colonies,
00:31:15
Speaker
um then it can really have a negative environmental impact. If you're looking at it from a small business perspective, um then we have the different management tools that we can use to to make that more sustainable. um And we have other options um from from looking at it as like a managed life spark, if that makes sense.
00:31:40
Speaker
Yeah, lots of lots of I guess the key word there is management and you have to know why you're getting into it. so yeah why evening mean Yeah, just to put a little bit of a finer point on that to and and repeat basically what you said so someone.
00:31:55
Speaker
cares about the environment, they care about pollinators, they want to do their part to offset this process of of damage that's being done to pollinators and threat threats, et cetera. Beekeeping would be way down the list of things that they could do. and And as far as efficiency of the amount of money that they could spend to do other things instead, like planting stuff, like maybe even just not doing things, like not picking up some of the sticks and leaves and other things. um Is that what I'm hearing from you? that The beekeeping is sort of its own thing. It's like you wouldn't you wouldn't go out and buy cattle if you were interested in protecting local wildlife. Exactly. You would do other things instead. This reminds me of that meme that have you guys seen where um someone like points to their unmowed area by a stream or their lawn and it's like, I don't mow this. I don't do this for the pollinators. But then they go down the list to like their laundry that's not folded and they go, For the pollinators and the dishes. For the pollinators. I like the dishes, yes, for the pollinators. yeah But it's sometimes it's the things you don't do which are really valuable. Yeah. And in remembering that getting into beekeeping is an investment. To to really get started, um ah first we encourage someone to attend a bee club and find a mentor. Kentucky actually has a really great
00:33:17
Speaker
um beekeeping network that really focuses um a lot, many of the clubs do, on mentorship. um So going to a club, finding an established beekeeper that you can kind of shadow. um And we really encourage you to consider doing this for up to a year so you can really work through the the whole season. um Some people don't realize until they're covered in you know 10,000 bees that that's not a comfortable situation for them to be in. You have to have heavy things. I mean, beekeeping is heavy work. i mean So you really don't want to invest all of all of that money and time until you know if it's something you really would like to get and involved in. um And then we encourage people to start out with at least three colonies that way. um and In a lot of cases when you're beekeeping, um the bees make resources for themselves, but some colonies are better at that than others. So sometimes during the season, you're finding that you need to borrow
00:34:14
Speaker
um resources from one colony and add it to another colony so if you only have a single colony um and it starts struggling and you don't have any of those resources it can make it unsuccessful for you. I made that mistake the first year and if you have a single loss you have a total loss and then I learned all about making nukes and the the benefit of that three to five hives because you've, I mean there's there' is what's known as and what normal winter losses.
Cultural Significance and Joy of Honey Production
00:34:41
Speaker
yeah You may lose some colonies through the winter and that's a normal thing so that is so critically important and even though I'm a beginning beekeeper I consider myself, I learned that and I stress that to people thinking about getting into it is if you can do it at all
00:34:57
Speaker
make sure three to five just don't question it if you can get into it with that number you can make nukes and have some other strategies of stores and resources that you can share yeah that's a great point and and that if you look at the cost break now down now uk has a really great um extension guide that kind of breaks down the economics of beekeeping in Kentucky. So I'll point it back at you all to to share that resource. But um if you you look at the cost to getting started on average um for three colonies, it's going to be about $1,500 to get all of the bee veils and equipment and frames and hive boxes and then the bees themselves
00:35:41
Speaker
um That's kind of like your starting cost um to to get into it. um And then it just keeps going up from there. Once you get started and you get into a local club and you start eating honey cakes, it just is this addiction. It can be because it can be a lot of fun. I mean, we're describing beekeeping as a lot of work and it definitely can be a lot of work. and it's blood warning yeah It's very rewarding. and it's ah It's just so unique and just the history behind honey. I guess it goes what all the way back to like Egyptian records.
00:36:16
Speaker
We find like yeah and even before then, I mean, it's such an ancient what shelf. Is it the only shelf stable like natural food source that lasts that long? I mean, it's just honey's pretty incredible. I mean, it is beekeeping is incredible and honey's itself as a product is pretty incredible.
00:36:31
Speaker
Well and it's it's also exciting too when your bees you know you feel like you've worked with them and you've interacted with them and um a lot of people will talk with their bees and ah engage all throughout the season so that by the time you get to where you can actually harvest some of your honey or the first time you get to taste the honey that's coming out of your hives. Any beekeeper will tell you that they've got the best honey and it it all comes into the work that they've put in and um the excitement around you know working with their bees. So yes, there there is a lot of work that goes into it to do it in a way that keeps your bees healthy.
00:37:09
Speaker
um which I think is super important to to remember is that we want to be good stewards of the the animals that we're working with, right? You wouldn't just leave a cow with um a predator attacking it all the time. You would take steps to manage that predator. So just like with a larger livestock, things with bees, right, like varroa mites,
00:37:35
Speaker
you would take actions to treat that. um So I think it's really important to remember that those are parts of parts of this too. yeah And that I think I want to talk to beekeepers before they're just like, oh, well, they're, you know, we want them to build immunity, or we want them to do all these things. And I'm the reminder that they're not native species. So it's not exactly the same as you know wanting a native plant is adapting to a drier soil, it's we brought this in, um which leads me to a probably a dumb question, but one one I hadn't thought about until you mentioned that they came over in Jamestown. So are we saying there was probably not honey in the US prior to Jamestown, like the native tribes were not harvesting honey out of a tree somewhere? That's pretty incredible when you think about it. Correct. That's right it's pretty incredible, yeah.
00:38:28
Speaker
so should have I just never thought about it. like Jared Diamond, it should have been guns, germs, steel, and honey also. That's actually an interesting point. so These bees right traveled with um folks as they moved from place to place. Some of them right swarm and escape out into the environment um and get into things like bee trees or um have lived on their own. It's almost like dandelions at this point, right? Dandelions are not a native species, but they're here and they're not going to go anywhere. It's very similar with honeybees. We would say they're not a native species, but a little bit like dandelions, they've naturalized to North America. um So, Kentucky actually has a ah couple really cool areas. um One's over in Hazard, where we can um have folks that have done genetic testing to show um how their bees are related. And we have um some folks that have like 70% matches to some of those original colonies that came over.
00:39:38
Speaker
And it's because of the unique yeah it's because of the unique geography of some of the haulers in Appalachia, that those bee populations, unless you were to bring bees in from the outside, those honeybees are going to the same mating areas. They're in that same zone. And so those genetics stay more ah true. So we have some Apis mellifera mellifera that we can point to and say these came over in the 1600s.
00:40:04
Speaker
um and they moved with people um and that their genetics haven't been crossed because it's been such an isolated population for so long. So so I think you know if maybe we hopefully have dissuaded some people who were going to get a beast from doing it because it would have been a bad idea. and ah And this is a horticulture podcast, though honey is considered a specialty crop by the USDA. the a lot of the folks that we are coming to this they're coming from the plant world. and so if you had and You've covered some of these already, but if you had to give a you know top three, five, whatever things that people who are plant-related people who are concerned about pollinators, maybe they have bees neighbors who have bees or something that they want to do something besides leaving the leaves maybe,
00:40:56
Speaker
what other things might might they think about doing as plant or as as who we call them true leaves. um is We try to try to bring a cult vibe to the podcast. Culture. Yeah, I like it. like Yeah. like Be those that kind of shortlist of things or things maybe people people wouldn't think of.
00:41:15
Speaker
Yeah, so I think one of the thoughts is um to have plants that are blooming year-round.
Exploring Honey Flavors and Community Activities
00:41:24
Speaker
So for honeybees or native bees both, they um need those food resources, right? The pollen and the nectar provide the sugars, proteins,
00:41:35
Speaker
um ah carbs that the bees need to survive. So the more plants you can plant that would be blooming from March through November, the better. um And we really encourage you to look for native plant species um because those are going to match up with the native pollinator species more closely. Honeybees are considered a generalist pollinator. They'll kind of go to anything that has a good pollen and nectar reward.
00:42:03
Speaker
um They'll avoid saying our name honestly yeah no some flowers that don't have um a lot of nectar or a lot of pollen. um But oftentimes what you'll see is if they find a good resource, this is why there's such a benefit as um pollinators for things like apples or almonds. um Once they find that really good food resource, they go back to their colony and they communicate it.
00:42:31
Speaker
then the rest of the colony or a portion of the rest of the colony will come and they will work that particular flower species until they've, they've utilized all of those resources and then move on to the next. So it gives us like, um, top different, now this is going to get into the weeds a little bit. I know, you know, where I'm going with this, uh, the different types of honey. Is that what gives us Lynn honey or black locust honey or in East Kentucky?
00:42:56
Speaker
we even started getting out of ah autumn olive honey on the reclaimed strip mine areas, which is very unique. Is that how we get that then? They find something, they really just bring their friends and just you know really work the area. Yeah. In big picture, yes. A colony is usually not going to pick just one food source. um it's going to have lots of different food sources. So all of those different flavors are going to come into the hive. However, if we have a um plant that is predominantly in bloom, um we're going to see those flavors um be the predominant ones. We can do DNA testing to show what the bees have like exactly, which is really, really, really cool. And it's
00:43:43
Speaker
becoming more and more affordable. So a lot more um beekeepers are are doing it because everyone's curious, um especially because from year to year, season to season, right? You're plant folks, you know, not everything's going to bloom at the same time. Some things are going to have good years, some things are going to have bad years. Right, right, when all the locusts are in bloom. Yes. Exactly. With the locusts bloom, yes. Yep.
00:44:05
Speaker
So and in general, and this is just some big generalizations for Kentucky, um early spring, we're mostly going to see things like black locusts. That's going to be your really clear honeys, um like the the almost water white type clear honey. It's really beautiful. yeah Yeah, I think it is. It doesn't look like a honey honey, but it's really pretty when you get it. Yeah. Yeah, and it's got more of a confectionery powdered sugary taste to it. um And then as we move more into um May, June, we're going to see more of that tulip poplar. And that's where you see that kind of um amber color come in a more
00:44:45
Speaker
um flavorful honey. um And then you'll have like wildflowers and everything else that starts to mix in um throughout the summer. And then towards the end of the summer, um usually in Kentucky, we have a practice of leaving fall honey for our bees because it's not a particularly productive um season, at least for the past five to six years. It has not been a productive honey season and our bees need those resources going into the winter.
00:45:13
Speaker
um But you could potentially see goldenrod or kudzu honey um towards the fall end, because there's so much of that pollen and nectar available. um And those have really unique tastes. And then there's some folks that that target those tastes with like buckwheat, um which almost has a sporgamy... Yeah, if you can get a predominant buckwheat honey. yeah And some people really like that. I'm on the lighter end. I really like um if you go out to like Oregon, you can get um raspberry honey, um which is from raspberry flowers. I've had peach honey, which has come from like bees that were on peach orchards. And if you
00:45:55
Speaker
um Pull the honey frames out of the hive while your bees are at a particular location or particular part of the season. You can capture that better um flavor profile-wise versus if you let your honey go all summer and then you harvest at the end, you kind of just have a mix of everything.
00:46:13
Speaker
I love all the flavors and it's amazing and yeah that what you get. It's so amazing and so cool. Our bee club at my office they do an annual honey tasting event at the end of the season that they like bring a jar from their harvest and it is amazing to see beekeepers who are neighbors, who harvest it around the same time, and the honey will taste completely different, right? I mean, they're just a few miles down the road from each other, and just what their bees are bringing in at that time for where their bees chose to go, it'll have a very distinct
00:46:46
Speaker
different flavor to it. So it's really, bees are just so cool, right? yeah so A fun story to tie in into that, the idea of neighbors having honey that tastes differently. We had someone bring honey to the state fair um that tasted like Elmer's glue. who Right, we had to taste all this honey and we could not figure out, like, one of their neighbors had also some lid samples, so afterwards we
00:47:16
Speaker
So afterwards, we um kind of talked to both of them because we we can see after everything's grated where it came from. Before it gets judged, we can't see. But afterwards, so we were just like, where did this honey come from? um And so we talked with the beekeeper and we talked with their neighbor because their honeys had such a completely different taste and determined that it was probably the water source. The neighbor with the funny tasting honey um had a sulfur spring. And that was probably where the bees were getting their water um versus going to a spring or um a water trough or something um that had fresher water in it.
00:47:59
Speaker
It's interesting. I mean wow yeah that i never never would have thought as much about the water source, but it kind of makes sense, especially with sulfur, because it's so diffused. You have a little bit of that, and you find a lot of sulfur water, and especially eastern regions of the state, that's very common. And bees need what we would say would be dirty water. So if for example, have you ever like It's rained, you're walking down a path that has like tractor tires and there's all these little yellow butterflies that are flying around. You see this in Kentucky all the time. um Those butterflies are there because they're looking for the salts that those puddles of water and those tractor tires is kind of leeching out.
00:48:40
Speaker
um And honeybees are the same way. They need those different minerals from their water sources to kind of add in with the other nutrients that they're getting. um So oftentimes they won't go to like the clean source of water. They're looking for and something that's a little dirtier. There you go, butterflies and puddles. That's awesome. Well, before we wrap up, I wanted to ask, do you have any good bee jokes?
00:49:09
Speaker
Oh, I am the worst at jokes. Are you good at laughing at them? I can, I can laugh at them. Well, then that sounds like you're very good at them. no It's about the joy. Well, I got, I got a couple that I, I say until you go to a bee conference and there's just all these bee puns that people try and they land flat every time.
00:49:30
Speaker
That sounds like it's painful after three or four days. You're just like, I can't say something kind of funny. And then people not laughing is one of, it's one of my all time favorite feelings. It happens to me a lot, but sorry just kind of throw that out. What do you, what do you call, what do you call a wasp a wannabe?
00:49:50
Speaker
Oh, this is for a former a former teacher, um a former former professor teacher. Um, what do you give a B on the first day of class? A syllabus. Okay. Okay. And how do, uh, how do bees style their hair with a honeycomb? Hmm.
00:50:13
Speaker
ah see I was waiting for buzz cut. Oh, oh sternness the wheels are turning now. So the you're, you're reading this. There you have it. Yeah. Food for thought. I would imagine that the both the just the personality of the beekeepers that I know combined with the low hanging fruit, that there would be a high density of puns in those interactions. I bet that bee clubs are just like beehives that there's no two exactly the same. I mean, and the ones that I've worked with over over the years in a different county, you go from one county to the next and they each have their own personalities, but it's, it's, I bet you work with some interesting people.
00:50:52
Speaker
ah Definitely. I know you work with passionate people in beekeeping for sure. Yes. And that is, I think, probably one of the most rewarding parts about um working with beekeepers. i I make a joke at the beginning. See, I can be kind of funny. Maybe we'll see if you guys think it's funny. you will come i I am on the edge of my seat.
00:51:13
Speaker
at the beginning of um a lot of my talks that this is why I um Quit teaching higher education because kids just it in college classes are not interested in the topics you're teaching but you come into a room of beekeepers and They are excited to learn they're excited to share their knowledge. They want to be there um and so that is really rewarding. um So no matter what clubs I've been to, it's been a lot more exciting, especially than teaching college classes. I like that. imagine I got one more that's a good one. Brett's not gonna stop. He started. why why didn't the beat Why couldn't the bee go to the dance? It's a sad story. It was a mothball. Oh. Is that a naphthalene joke? It is,
Connecting with Beekeeping Resources and Events
00:52:04
Speaker
isn't it? We can appreciate that, though.
00:52:07
Speaker
I'll be puns aside. I can tell you um something funny that ah has relation to bees, but we were talking about the different types of bees, right? You say like the Italian bees or the South African bees. Make sure if you're talking about these in public, you keep saying the word bees because when you someone um particularly, let's just say it's ah and an older woman, for for example. And when she's talking about those damn Russians in public, you're like, the beast, the beast, we have to make sure that she- Alexis, you're not an older woman.
00:52:43
Speaker
Yes, that was you. No, but Jessica knows exactly who I'm talking about. I know exactly who you're talking about right now. It's extra funny when it's coming out of like a 70 year old woman's mouth and she's going, those damn Russians! Because they sting, like they're very aggressive. Got a bit of an attitude sometimes.
00:53:01
Speaker
so yeah her italian don go out with her like yeah Yeah, I have also gotten stung by her damn Russian bees. So well, I just wanted to throw out there. Uh, we were talking about the, you know, things that you could do to help the bees. We do have an episode on pollinator gardens that you can go back and listen to if you've not already. And so that is from March 10th of 2024.
00:53:27
Speaker
Uh, that is season two, episode 10. I like being able to say we have seasons. So, you know, I like it to episode 10. Um, but if you were interested in being like, Amanda, you've inspired me to do the the plant things for the bees and not.
00:53:43
Speaker
necessarily be a beekeeper. That is an episode that might be the Whovian of you. So Amanda, where can they find you, what you're doing, if they want to get involved, like give us the down low on that. Yeah, so um I'm in the state vet's office at Kentucky Department of Agriculture.
00:54:03
Speaker
um But I, like I mentioned earlier, cover all of the different counties, so I'm kind of everywhere all at the same time. um So the easiest way to get a hold of me is to either email me or call me. um But I do site visits all across the state. I visit bee clubs all across the state.
00:54:23
Speaker
um And this year we started hosting what we're calling state a purist office hours, um which is a monthly zoom meeting on the fourth Tuesdays, um where I kind of just go through what we're seeing at a state level for bees anything beekeepers should be.
00:54:41
Speaker
aware of any big announcements for things like B schools or conferences. um And then I also do some Q and&A. So if people have questions, um I will prepare material to go over those questions and share resources um along those lines. So I try to be as accessible as possible.
00:55:01
Speaker
Where can they find like links for that? Are you posting that on a Facebook page or just the KDA eight website? or where they So the easiest way would be to reach out to me through email. um The way that state government works, I'm not allowed to have social media. um So I have to rely on the beekeepers to get the information out. um So my information is pretty easy to find if you go to the Kentucky Department of Agriculture um state apiary program website um and then I can connect folks with the different resources. um Information is also available at the Kentucky um State Beekeepers Association website as well. They have um a calendar with events on it and they post the um
00:55:48
Speaker
a monthly meeting. Super cool. Awesome. Well, any other final bee jokes out there from you people? Just a reminder to all of our audience to be yourself and believe in yourself. be Believe in yourself.
00:56:07
Speaker
believe. Well, um nothing more b before we go. Well, if you enjoy bee jokes, leave us a review on this podcast with ah hopefully five stars because of how great those bee jokes are. And you can tell us which one you like or share one of your own on there. It'll help other bees. Or if you can't choose, if they're all so good that you can't choose.
00:56:33
Speaker
that That's obviously the case for everybody, but we would appreciate that. You can also find us on Instagram at Hort Culture Podcast. You can shoot us a message on there or check out the email in the show notes. If you've got any questions or suggestions for episodes or suggestions for future ah Bad Dad jokes on other episodes, feel free to send those our way.
00:56:59
Speaker
But we appreciate you all being here today and we hope you keep listening and that you will catch us here next time. Have a great one.