Archive Special: Bee Yard Smells with Kim Flottum (213)

Episode 213 – Archive Special: Bee Yard Smells with Kim Flottum

Jim Tew: Hey, listeners, Jim Tew here. We're going to be gone for a short time, but while we're away we hope you enjoy this short archive segment that we've produced for you. Kim, how's your sense of smell, buddy?

Kim Flottum: It's pretty good for some things and not good at all for other things.

Jim: How is it for beehive things because one of the things that doesn't get discussed very much is really what smells are going on at what seasons of the year. If you got any experience in this, let's talk about it if you got sometime.

Kim: Okay.

Jim: I'm Jim Tew.

Kim: Hi, I'm Kim Flottum.

Jim: We're coming to you from Honey Bee Obscura, where today we want to begin talking with you about the various odors, good and bad, inside of beehive.

Kim: And outside of beehive.

Jim: Good point, and inside your house sometimes for that matter, and inside the cab of your truck. It just goes on and on, doesn't it?

Introduction: Welcome to Honey Bee Obscura, brought to you by Growing Planet Media, the producers of the Beekeeping Today podcast. Join Jim Tew, your guide through the complexities, the beauty, the fun and the challenges of managing honeybees. Jim hosts fun and interesting guests who take a deep dive into the intricate world of honeybees. Whether you're a seasoned beekeeper or just getting started, get ready for some plain talk that will delve into all things honeybees.

Jim: Kim, the biggest odor that I know of and the one that I dislike the most has to become from our old, old friend, the smoker.

Kim: Yes, I like the smell of a smoker weak and distant. If it gets in my eye then I don't like it, but if I smell one across the room, I like the smell of a smoker.

Jim: Just give me a few seconds to get my arms around that because that's the worst thing I've ever heard you say. That thing is repugnant, Kim. It smells like something was on fire and somebody threw water on it.

Kim: Let me tell you something, where that comes from. I can tell you exactly where that comes from. You remember the perfume from the first lady you dated in high school? I bet you do.

Jim: I'll say yes just to keep you going, I suppose.

Kim: That's what a smoker does. When I'm around a smoker, I'm doing something I enjoy doing and I've always enjoyed it, so a touch of smoker smell is always pleasant for me. Too much and it becomes overpowered.

Jim: Well, I'm going to give in. You know this, we used to burn leaves. Can't do it now, don't want to do it now. I guess it pollutes too much, but the smell of burning leaves was always autumn. The smell of oak and hickory burning was a campfire, so why would smoke be any better? It's such a characteristic, and I've always wondered why, Kim, after all the intelligent people who've come and gone and are still here in beekeeping, why can't we come up with something better than this smoker, but then I'm totally off the subject on this whole thing. Let's keep it manageable. What do you burn in your smoker, Kim? What do you burn and how does that smell?

Kim: There you go because different beekeepers burn different things. It's what you got available. Sometimes you go out and get it on purpose because you like the way it burns or like the way it smells. I use pine needles. I've used pine needles for 30 years. I planted two pine trees in my yard when I moved here, and I've used their needles every summer since. That's what I use, and I got more than I need. There's lots of different-- sometimes I'll throw in some-- I buy a lot of wood mulch, put around the base of plants. Sometimes I'll throw some of that in. I don't have a woods handy or real handy to go around and get-- what do they call it? Old dead wood.

Jim: Punky wood.

Kim: Punk wood. I don't have a place to get that, but I know people that do and they burn that a lot. Some people burn just straw.

Jim: See, where I want to go with this, all these things have distinctive odors. Do you pick out a smoker fuel because of the odor that it's got? Do you have an odor that you really like that comes from what? You said pine straw, pine needles. I burn pine needles. It has a very classic odor, doesn't it?

Kim: It does, and I like it because I got it. [chuckles] It comes down to that.

Jim: Well, that's true. When I was in University of Maryland, what, 200 years ago now or so it seems like, everybody was big on burning burlap, and you had to go to all these places to burlap that had been not treated with any kind of decay-resistant material. That burlap had a very distinctive odor. Now, when I smell someone on those occasions who's burning burlap, I go all the way back to my years in Maryland.

I burn planer shavings from my woodshop. If I don't have any planer shavings, sometimes you can buy animal bedding, and that's usually aromatic cedar. I don't know if that's good or not. It has a distinctive odor, it burns a long time, it can burn very hot, but I wonder if burning aromatic cedar is bad on me and my respiratory system and my bees' respiratory system. I don't think any smoke is good for either us or the bees, but we got to do something.

Kim: Yes, you're probably right there. You know what? I don't know where you keep your bee suit when you're not wearing it, but I keep mine in the garage, and every time I walk in the garage, I can smell my bee suit.

Jim: I don't know how to keep that clean. I was going to say it's a dirty secret, but it really is a dirty secret. Those bee suits are rugged, boy. They smell like smoke, and they got propolis and honey and wax all over them. My wife says, "Not in our washing machine, you're not. You can just take that outside and use a pressure washer on it."

Kim There you go.

Jim: All those clothes have that odor. Are you leading up to the honey house and to the storage building? What is that unique odor? Just the odor that's characteristic of bees, when you smell old bee equipment in storage.

Kim: Yes, you walk into a commercial outfit, and I'm going to say they all smell just about the same because it's concentrated, but it's old honey, it's old propolis, it's old bee suits, it's smoky. It's beekeeping.

Jim: Is it a good smell? It's a good smell, isn't it?

Kim: I'll go back to that perfume that I mentioned earlier. Yes, it's a good smell. I walk in, I get that hint and I said, "I'm home."

Jim: I don't think I've ever seen that product readily available, Kim, beekeeper perfume. The smell of an old smoker.

[music]

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Jim: It all has that distinctive odor about it. It's not going to go away, is it? Nobody has come up with anything any better. I know someone will call and say, "You can atomize your beads with sugar syrup." I want to tell you, if you got no nectar flow going and robbing is nearly starting and it's a full column in, you start spraying those things with sugar syrup. You're going to probably get it eaten alive. It helps sometimes, but you got to use smoker. You got to use a smoker.

Kim: There's another side of this coin. I like the smell of smoke, because like I said, when I'm smelling smoke, I'm thinking beekeeping and I'm home, but you know what? Dead bees.

Jim: Oh, man, I knew you were going there. I knew you were going there.

Kim: That's a smell I don't like, and it is as distinctive as it can be. There's nothing else that I've ever experienced that smells as bad as a bottom board full of dead bees.

Jim: Kim, I almost have a need to tell the people who might be listening to us who are fairly new to this that you have to get through these times so you'll know what the good times are like. When you smell dead decaying bees, you realize how good, happy, live, healthy bees smell. It's really obnoxious, isn't it, Kim? One of the most distasteful jobs in early spring is going out and cleaning up the deadouts and dumping all those soggy bees out.

Kim: It's the F on your report card. Something went wrong, and it's probably something you did or didn't do.

Jim: I always feel guilty. You can't blame yourself every time. I mean, even in the wild, every beehive doesn't survive every winter, but still, when I stand there on my watch, something went wrong with that unit and it croaked. Now I got the stink to clean up, the mess to clean up. What do you do? You just dump them right in front of the hive, or do you take them someplace else, give them a proper burial?

Kim: [chuckles] The other side of that is when you open a hive and there's that distinctive odor that's not dead bees.

Jim: You're on a roll today, aren't you, with this whole thing. Let's just go from one bad thing. We're going to get all these bad things done at one time, right?

Kim: There you go.

Jim: Because I know what you're talking about. Sometimes if you've done things right, you can pull up in the yard and open the door of your truck and think, "Uh-oh, something's got something here." Especially if it's runaway American foulbrood.

Kim: I have had that experience one time, not with my bees. I was with another beekeeper, and we pulled into the yard, and it was summer and the windows were down, and he shut the truck off and he said, "Smell that?" "Yes, I smell that?" That's what it was. It's a very distinctive, very unpleasant odor, American foulbrood. How would you characterize it?

Jim: It is sour. It has a sour, degraded, decaying smell. When you said unpleasant, can I say disagreeable? Then I'll give you unpleasant because I know that it's American, and I know how unpleasant what's going to happen is coming along. The odor itself smells like something soured, eggs that went bad.

Kim: I've got chickens. Every once in a while, an egg will get laid someplace other than the nesting box and it gets ignored, and then two weeks later, some chickens running around and breaks that egg, and I walk into the henhouse and I'd be up. I know exactly what it is. It's that rotten egg smell.

Jim: I think I want pancakes in the morning for breakfast, Kim. I just don't think I want eggs for a few days. This whole thing, though, I'm serious, this whole thing about the odor and the stink of-- how can you tell beekeepers who have a smell, European or American? All I can do is tell you it has a distinctive odor. It has an unpleasant, distinctive odor. You think, "What is that smell?" the first time you come along. There's no easy way to learn to recognize those smells. If you're smelling it, something's not right.

Kim: Anyway, of course, is to grab a couple frames and take them and show them to somebody that is going to be able to identify it for you. You know there's there's some of these programs on the web that you can call up with your cell phone and take a picture of and it'll identify it for you or you can just take a picture of it and take it home and show it to somebody. There's a lot of electronic things available now that you can do right in the field and you'll get a diagnosis that's correct and probably instructions on what to do next. Knowing the smell is the first clue. European foulbrood has a smell too. There's another one, bacterial disease.

Jim: It's very similar, but it's not the same. I would say I had a friend one time who had it, but I know what it smells like because I've done this long enough that everything comes your way if you do it long enough. There is one new area that I want to talk about, and that's the odors that are not considered to be healthy. That comes along when you're trying to treat for maybe Varroa and you're trying to sublimate as you've been told to do to turn oxalic acid into a gaseous form, and that has an odor that you don't want to be smelling. In most cases, you need to wear some kind of respirator for it. There's an entirely new topic area for odors in the hive, and thus these toxic odors that result sometimes from pesticides that we're using.

Kim: Long ago, I drew the line. If I got to wear a gas mask to keep bees, I'm either going to quit keeping bees or quit using gas masks so I don't have that odor in my life. I don't use those products. I'm glad people do. I know that they work, but that's one I miss.

Jim: I hope you cut me some slack because I use them, because other people use them. It's recommended. It's in the technology, it's out there, so I need to know what's going on. This is what's happened to me, as I would wear the respirator to keep out the odors that I didn't want coming in from the pesticides I was using. I noticed that it was also keeping out the odors of the smoker.

Now, you said you liked that odor. I'm saying, well, a little bit goes a long way with me. I've actually become comfortable saying that a respirator isn't the end of the world because I'm using smoke, which in a way is a pesticide. Not truly, but it's a bee-manipulative substance. It's an odor. I like that I wear the respirators more often than not now.

Kim: That's an interesting phrase you used, a bee manipulator. That's what sting pheromone is, too.

Jim: Yes. That's true. That's what manipulates them. I'd forgotten that as an odor. How can the smell of almonds-- you said bananas. How can such a pleasant smell be the end-all combat to the death for honeybees, but it is. Almonds or cherries is what it smells like, a very pleasant odor.

Kim: The only time you smell it, you know something bad's going to happen right now.

Jim: It just happened. If you smelled it, you got to be somewhere close to your nose. [laughs]

Kim: You open up a hive sometimes, and you'll get a whiff of it because there's some bees on the top. Ours are between the frames that got their stings out and they're wafting it up towards you. All that is, is get out of our house smell.

Jim: Can you sense that orientation pheromone when the bees are all fanning? You got a swarm going in.

Kim: No, I can't smell that. I know that there are people that say that they can, but it's not something that I've been able to pick up.

Jim: I want to say that I smell it, but it's more like a thought than a reality because all these bees are scenting and fanning and you're thinking, I'm smelling straw, I'm smelling hay or something. Then you realize that it's all these thousands of bees that are blowing out this odor. I don't know if I've told you this before. I'll touch it and get off of it. I have a reaction. My face and around my eyes breaks out in a rash when I'm confined in a car with packages of bees, or if I picked up a swarm or something and I don't know, told myself, "It's your imagination." No, it really isn't.

I break out in a light rash around my eyes and nose, where I'm having some kind of allergic reaction to the what? The odor, or to bee hair. At this point, Kim, we're really getting out in the right field because this is something that I'm not really sure that I'm even smelling, but I do sense a pleasant, clean odor with all those thousands of bees or scenting, or when I have bees packages and I'm confined in the cab of the truck with them. Can you think of any other odors that you don't want to smell since you've just listed over and over again the-- what's the word I would want? The undesirable smells of beekeeping.

Kim: Well, we've got a bunch of them here, that's for sure. Undesirable. Unwanted. There's a lot of good ones, too.

Jim: I was wondering if you want to talk about the good ones, maybe next time or at least some other time. There are good odors in beekeeping, beekeepers.

Kim: Yes, there are. I think that's a good idea. Next time, let's get the good things.

Jim: Well, we'll say we got through the bad odors this time, and then some other time, we'll do the good odors. I wanted to go through this with you because it's such a prominent part of beekeeping that every beekeeper has to learn individually.

Kim: It's not something that you often just come up to another beekeeper and you ask them what they think about this smell, that smell, whatever. I hope it helped.

Jim: It helped me. I enjoyed talking about it. All right. Until we talk again about the good stuff.

Kim: Good.

Jim: Next time. Hey, thanks to everybody for listening. Hope you'll consider subscribing. Appreciate it very much. Bye-bye.

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