Plain Talk: Considering Spring Packages (209)

Episode 209 – Plain Talk: Considering Spring Packages

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Dr. Jim Tew: Hello again, Honey Bee Obscura Podcast listeners. It's me, Jim, back with my new weekly weather report. It is blistering cold on this particular day, and has been cold now for well over a week. I go through this anxiety every year as long as I can remember of, oh my stars, my poor bees are out there in this weather and I'm in here by the fire. I always begin to think what should I have done differently? What could I do?

One of the things I definitely think about here in this early December time period is that, can you believe it? It's time to order packages.

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Jim: I thought you and I would talk about this, not so much from a how-to standpoint, but more so from a complaining, contorted, this is a weird procedure we go through kind of discussion. I hope you don't mind if we do that. I'm Jim Tew. I come to you from Honey Bee Obscura once a week where I talk about something to do with plain talk beekeeping.

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 honey bees. Jim hosts fun and interesting guests who take a deep dive into the intricate world of honey bees. Whether you are a seasoned beekeeper or just getting started, get ready for some plain talk that'll delve into all things honey bees.

Jim: I've confessed to you in previous segments that I've had some changes in my life. There's been some family health issues that have made me reprioritize a lot of things and deprioritize my bees in many instances. With that reality and bright light of my life right now, I have to expect that a lot of my bees, some of them my bees, all of my bees, I don't know yet, are not going to survive this winter. What's that word? In true Sisyphean ways, I will roll that rock up the hill and I'll start again next year. I want bees in my life as long as I have life. If I have to, I'll just start again.

Honestly, listeners, all down through the years, I've bought packages every year anyway, even those years I didn't particularly need them and, honestly, didn't always want them. I just felt like I was being left out. Everybody is getting their packages, everybody's got trucks coming and going, everybody's got pick-up dates six up, Jim, and he didn't order any. As a matter of course, I would usually order two, three, four packages just to not be left out of the spring party. We'll talk more in a bit about brand new people who don't know any more about beekeeping than they know about piloting an aircraft.

We'll talk about them in a few minutes because even after all these years, I try to stay on the same path that I used last year to order my packages. There's so much confusion, so many variation, so much risk, so much timing, so much you should have ordered two months ago kind of thing that it makes it confusing and it makes it very difficult to tell you, or especially a brand new person, how to go about this procedure. Here's the deal, after all these years, I've got some friends. I've got a bee supply company about a 45-minute drive from me that has packages come in every year, so I just stay on that pathway.

Anyway, it's time to begin thinking about ordering packages if I want to get the specific date that I want. Now, here's the thing about that. What dates do I want? What dates do you want? I have a few benchmarks. Unless this climate change thing changes that too, historically, May the 5th has been the accepted day that the king blooms open on apples here in Northeast Ohio. From a pollination standpoint, from a swarm standpoint, from all kind of standpoints, that was a benchmark. You should have bees by then. They should be built up by then on that May the 5th date. Way back in probably late April, early May, I should be scurrying all around, picking up whatever packages I had decided to order for that year.

When you order, the dates you choose, or your business, my beekeeper friends in Alabama, my beekeeper friends in the Southwestern US, you have totally different dates, totally different concepts for ordering, but not all that much. It's always been a conundrum for those of us at the time who were living in the South because you would order packaged bees, and those bees were building up and being produced on the same nectar flow that I was on. You wanted to get your packages as early as you could from your neighboring package producers because we were sharing the nectar flow.

I do hope that makes sense. If I've got my bees in the South in a later date, then the season was essentially already well underway, if not mostly passed, and then I would have to feed more to get my bees through it. I need to say now, and I'll say again, that feeding is certainly a way to go withS. Indeed, listeners, those commercial corn producers didn't always even want a huge nectar flow because it made the bees sticky when they shook them.

If those bees have full crops, if they're full of nectar they've just collected and then here comes the shaking crew to shake all those bees through funnels or through vacuums to load them up, either by regurgitating, bouncing them or whatever, they would pull that nectar back out. Then they would stick to the sides of the funnels. They would not be pristine bees when you bought them. Can you believe it? I was told many times some people like Reg Wilbanks at Wilbanks Apiaries, that they really didn't want a huge nectar flow. They wanted to feed corn syrup so they could control how sticky those bees were so they looked good when you got them. There's an oddity.

Those of us who live in Northeast Ohio, we're golden. Our nectar flow seasons are completely separate from those in other warmer regions of the country, so we don't have to worry about sharing nectar flows. Do you want them early or do you want them late? Here's the deal, I just want bees because if I can get them early, then I don't miss any of my nectar flow. What I do also not miss is those occasional late-season spells where the weather relapses back to cold burst. That's not a big deal if you put your bees on drone comb, and they had some access to food there. They could get through two, three, four days, a week of this cold snap and be okay.

I want to tell you that if you've got your bees on foundation, and they're just clustered on nothing and are living on what they've got in their honey crops or what little bit of honey or feed that you've got in feeders, then it's okay if you lose some sleep at night because those bees are not particularly well suited to survive this relapse. That's a reason for ordering early, you don't miss any of the nectar flow, or ordering late, you don't have to deal with those late season reversals that cause the bees concern. Now, I've agitated myself worrying about when I should order, now, early, or late. Let me think about that for just a few minutes while you hear from our sponsors here.

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Betterbee: From all of us at Betterbee, thank you for making this another amazing year. As a special thank you to Beekeeping Today Podcast listeners, we're offering an exclusive 10% discount on your next order, up to $150 in savings. Just visit betterbee.com and use the discount code winter, that's W-I-N-T-E-R, at check out, but don't wait too long. This offer is good only through 11:59 PM Eastern Standard Time, December 31st, 2024. From our hive to yours, we wish you a joyful holiday season and a wonderful new year.

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Jim: I've cleared my head and I'll tell you this, I just want bees. I have somewhat of a luxury, as do most of you, of having bees. If I have bees, then you can make bees. If I really shook a package of bees late and they came in late and maybe I got a good price, or maybe someone didn't want them, or someone didn't pick them up, there's always a deal. Why do some people order package bees and then not go get them? They paid for them, but every year, there's someone who doesn't pick them up or someone who picks them up days and days later and the bees are half dead in the package. People's lives are people's lives, so whatever happens happens.

I would take bees at any time in the spring season because I can parasitize my existing colonies, or my stores that I've got, or equipment that I've got, drawn comb that I've got, and I can mitigate the changes and those late season weather flips that come along almost every year. I can't tell you when to book your packages. I would want to get them pretty much in mid-spring, whatever your spring season is. That's not advice. This is just a conversation so that you are fairly safe from the weather, but you've still got a good deal of the spring season left. How many packages to order, that's a personal decision.

When I don't need bees, and I've admitted sometimes didn't really even want them, I just get a couple of packages just to stay in shape. What's this new plastic package like? What's the new procedure like? What's the changes in queen replacement? Just to stay abreast of what the package people are doing and how things are evolving. The number of packages that you want is strictly up to you. Right now in my life with all this going on outside of beekeeping, oh, do I dare tell this to everyone who's listening? You think I've got thousands of colonies? No, I probably got 10. I wouldn't have any more than a dozen, and that's probably six more than I can manage.

Now I'm off the subject, but let me finish digging myself into this hole and see if I can get myself out. What I really want are bees to watch, bees to observe, bees to consider and pontificate on and wonder why they're doing whatever. That's number one. Number two, I want bees for photography work and for video work so you can write articles, do a video for my YouTube channel, or have some basic information for this podcast that I'm doing here for you right now.

I don't really want or have any particular system set up for a ton of honey. I used to. That used to be my goal like everyone else, but so far right now, that's not really what I'm trying to do. How many packages you order are strictly up to you. I'm probably not going to get more than four or five this year, but that is strictly just me and that is just strictly where I am in life. That has absolutely nothing to do with you.

When I was putting this thought together and trying to deal with my anxiety, I wondered how in the world someone who doesn't know anything about bees wades into this. I bet you every one of those people situation is different, is unique. They know someone. They had a neighbor, they had an uncle, they had someone who could help, I don't think it would be many people who just outright knew nothing and knew no one who just decided to dig into this bee thing and figure out how to make it work.

I was going to make this comment at the end, but I think I'll do it now. I don't use the postal system not because I don't like them or care for them. I have used them, but using the postal system, using UPS, that's a unique sub-world. If you're going to order packages and have them ship through those systems, then they come with their own unique requirements and expectations of shipping guarantees, pickup, and importantly, listeners, zones. Depending on what zone you're in, those two agencies won't ship very far into other zones. There is a limit.

The new people have to wade through all that too if they're using those unique systems of delivery. A guy who used to work in my lab a long time ago has become a professional bee hauler. A good friend of mine in Alabama is a package hauler. Once a year, they make thankless trips to go with a truck and a trailer usually. My friend here in Ohio has a custom built trailer with airflow systems and electronic monitors so he can keep up with the health and the conditions back in the trailer. They put a lot of money in this, and they'll go down and pick up hundreds of packages at one time.

Now, that's the discussion beyond the scope of this discussion on how they book those, when they call, how they arrange it, what the dates are, it's snowing when you go get them. All those things are the haulers problems. Boy, that makes my life much more simple. I don't have to worry about any postal delivery or any other technique like that, UPS that's going to have unique expectations put to it. I just deal with this person, order my packages from them, and go pick them up. Oh, the first three-fifths of my beekeeping career, those people didn't exist.

I've gotten calls from my local post office that your bees are in, could you come get them right now? They would always say, "The packages are leaking and there's bees everywhere." Those of you who have experience in beekeeping know that in most cases the packages were not leaking, those are hobo bees that were attracted to these 40 or 50 packages that I had sitting on the back loading dock, probably in the sun. They were attracting, what? Wild honeybees from the area, but they were not packages leaking.

The postal system was not really surprised to have this cargo freight to deal with. They also would sometimes ship baby chicks and earthworms and all kind of things. This is not like beekeeping or bees were in a category all by themselves. In that way, having these people haul packages for us eliminates all of that and it makes it simpler just to go pick them up on the day. You get to talk to people and slap on the back and see people you've not seen since this time a year ago, me ordering just two packages to go pick up, I enjoy doing that.

The queen thing, I've had a package supply guy tell me that he has a tail light policy on queen replacement, that that queen is guaranteed as long as he can see your tail lights. That was funny when I first heard it. It was sobering the second time I heard it. By the third time I heard it the third year, I wanted to say, "Okay, enough with that. We don't have much of a queen warranty anymore."

The way I've stumbled through that on those occasions when I either got a dead queen or a poor queen, rather than hop back in the car and run back up there and demand another queen or buy another queen as the case often was, it's been my experience that it's really almost as good to have, let me just say, a six-pound package instead of a three-pound package. Therefore, I could build up these bees really fast, and then at my convenience and maintaining my sanity, get a queen and split them back out and not have any horrific setback on the whole thing.

The queen thing has changed a lot. The queen used to have a bit of a guarantee and I have personally used that guarantee. Package producers of years and years gone by when queens and bees were plentiful would, yes, send you another queen if there's a dead loss. I've had horror stories, I've had those people tell me that at five and six queens, they had to say, "Enough already. You should have read some books before you ordered these bees." If you're listening to this podcast, I bet you're an established beekeeper. The luxury that we have is we can order these packages really anytime we want them.

If they come in and the weather's bad, we can hold them, which is always nerve-wracking to me, to have these packages of bees out in the shop, all that humming, trying to atomize them, mist with sugar syrup and keep them fed. Just worry about them until the weather breaks enough to install them. Normally, I have some drawn comb, I have boxes already built, I maybe have some honey from last year that I can rob from other bees. Honey in the comb is just like gold to bees. You can take any feeder you want and toss it if you're comparing that to honey stored in the comb. That really helps a lot, us already having some of the infrastructure in place.

Secondly, experienced listeners, just having been through this over and over again takes the edge off of the anxiety. On this cold, blustery winter day, it's down around 14 degrees Fahrenheit, I'd like to talk about feeling guilty about my bees and worrying about my bees, but I just can't. I'll just do whatever it takes to stay back in the bees next year. What I wanted to say, what was on my mind is that here in the second week of December, it's time to start thinking about who I'm going to order from, the dates that I want them here, the last date that I could possibly live with, and importantly, how many packages do I want.

I need to wait to see how many of my bees survive and decide if I want to split them out, and maybe not order packages, just order queens. Now that my time is up, how about if you just buy splits? Sometimes it's actually the similar cost to buy splits, but that can be a talk for another time. No doubt through the years Kim and I have already done that, but it probably should be addressed again. Sometimes ordering splits are better than ordering packages.

You see, isn't this confusing? How are you going to get them here, how much are you going to pay, when are you going to order them, who are you going to get them from, all of these things are your questions and my questions that we have to decide how we're going to answer before we start the season again. "I got to stop," and then you have to talk to someone who says, "I think I want to get in bees. How do I go about that?" It's already in the first week in July and you have to say, "Okay, you need to be ready by next April or May because, unless you buy an established colony, you missed the window."

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Jim: There's those people that'll turn up in your life late. This has been a rambling discussion, but I've enjoyed doing it. It's on my mind. I hope it makes some sense. You got any comments on how you guarantee yourself bees every season with packages or splits or divides? I wouldn't mind hearing from you. Those who write me, I deeply appreciate it, just knowing that you're out there. Time is gone for this week. Until we can do this again next week, I'm Jim telling you bye.

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