Plain Talk: It's Not Just Keeping Bees (179)

Episode 179 – Plain Talk: It's Not Just Keeping Bees

Jim Tew: Listeners, I've got a thought, but I'm not sure exactly how I'm going to put it into words for you until I hear how I say it. I'll start like this, as I've said before in articles and other podcasts, most of beekeeping is not keeping bees at all. It's putting together equipment, it's painting equipment, it's reading about bees, it's going to meetings, it's bottling honey, it's actually inside the beehive, looking for a queen, checking things out.

That is a precious small amount of time, that we spend so much time preparing for it. One of the things that's really struck me, again, and it struck me over and over and over and over again, literally thousands of times, is that the season waits for no beekeeper. While I'm worried about swarming and losing my bees, and-- Have I had a queen replaced? Do I have mites under control? Is this hive stand sinking too much on one corner?

All of these issues, while I'm trying to be the best beekeeper I can, very mundane things still happen. The grass keeps growing. It's that time of the year, grass, weeds, and shrubs keep right on growing, no matter how much I'm concerned about swarming. It's not beekeeping. I have tried everything I know through the years to coexist with grass, weeds, and shrubs, and at best, it's a standoff.

I'd like to talk with you about this today, for just a few minutes, see if you've got any ideas and thoughts on where this is going. Hi, I'm Jim Tew. I come to you once a week from  Honey Bee Obscura, where we try to talk about something related to bees and bee management.

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'll delve into all things honeybees.

[music]

Jim Tew: I don't know how to start other than just to jump in. I thought, several years ago-- I'm just not going to fight it anymore. Just let the grass grow. My apiary is fenced with a stockade-type fence that's private. I'll strategically pose my photos, take out the disheveled yard, unkept yard, whatever. I couldn't do it, listeners, because I couldn't walk. As the season progressed, you try to move hives around, and you work with the supers, you take a super off and you go back to your hand truck or whatever.

You're walking in grass that was knee-deep, and I'm already not a young man anymore, it was just about prohibitively restrictive to try to walk in that tall grass. It was easy to stumble and go down. There's bees all around me, I got my protective gear on, that smoker's going, and I've got tall grass. Having tried to cut grass, I'm going to talk more about that. Having tried not cutting grass, I still haven't come to an easy solution.

The whole concept is, it's not beekeeping. When I say, "Okay, I got to go cut some grass," well, that means I'm using a mower, and that mower had to be purchased, it had to be maintained, it had to have the oil changed, I had to buy fuel for it, I had to be careful with that fuel, store it, and stabilize it so that it's always fresh, and all of that really had nothing directly to do with the condition of the queen inside my colony. It was all that preparatory work.

This concept of how do we deal with these tasks that help us do the things we actually want to do, work with bees, how do we manage our time, our money, and our energy in dealing with these things? In years gone by, in so many years gone by, in so many yards gone by, at one time or another, I and the people who used to help me do this must have tried every conceivable thing there is. One of the things we tried early on was landscape matting, landscape film.

Sometimes, you'd kill the grass underneath, other times you wouldn't, you'd just put the matting down, and then, on top of that, we would put a thick layer of mulch, and then on top of that, we would put whatever particular hive stand we were using. The hive stands were never standardized. That worked okay for a while, for a year, for three years, but it's like getting a haircut. It looks good immediately, but from that point on, it begins to look less and less good.

After a while, this mulch business had to be replaced, and then there's that matting and that plastic underneath. That was a pain to get up because it had all this wet, decayed mulch on it. It worked for a while, and then, finally, I decided this really isn't working long enough for me to justify doing this. We moved on to other things. Listeners, you had to be there 25, 30 years ago. I'm old enough, I'm far old enough to remember the world before string trimmers and herbicides.

The world looked different, fence rows looked different. If you didn't use a field gate just about four to five, six times a week, during the summer months, you wouldn't be able to open that gate. There's no string trimmer, there's no herbicide. You had to take a weed sling and go out there, cut the weeds down with this blade on a handle, and knock them down to get the gate open. Then once you got it open, there's a little lane, two ruts, going back into the field. All that's gone now.

That's all gone because there's mowers that goes behind tractors, there's herbicides, there are string trimmers. We have really done a good job of neatening everything up. I remember those times, when there were just flowering weeds and bushes everywhere, the lawns, the roadsides, the fence rows, and I'm not reminiscing, but it's really, really gone. Even the state I live in, Ohio, the states I drive through, Michigan, Indiana, they all do a great job of keeping the roadsides cut and mowed.

Times have changed, haven't they? I don't see them changing back anytime soon. I remember when the world was not just completely herbicided. My word. That was what we went to next. When we gave up on the matting, at the time, Roundup was a going thing, and other kinds of chemicals like that. That's appeared to be the end all. It seemed to be perfectly safe. I realize that there's some concerns about that now, that's in the literature and the media.

At that time, it looked like it was completely safe, didn't appear to have any effect on the bees. Let's go to it. Off we did go, and it almost became a common beehive product. It was some kind of herbicide to keep the weeds and grass knocked down inside the apiary. That went on for a while. The problem is, it grew back. It grew back fairly quickly. It was a little bit like the matting and the mulching. It didn't stay knocked down. What I'm beginning to realize, after decades of doing this, is that this is a Sisyphean project.

We're going to always be doing this. We're going to always be dealing with this. It's not going to ever get to a point where you just say, "Wow, that's done. Now we can move on." For probably 7 to 10 years, I was a proponent, I'm sorry, of using these common chemicals to keep the weeds knocked down around the beehives, in the yard, around the hive stands, at the fence gate, and wherever else. That began to wear thin just because it had to be done so often.

It was no difference than that and doing the other projects, was always having to mix this stuff up, haul it out there, buy it, mix it, spray it, apply it, get rid of it when you didn't need it anymore, and not kill the grass where you didn't want it killed. I moved on from that to, of course, mowers. Mowers have always been here. I don't remember, I don't know what the advent of mowers first was. I know reel mowers, when I was really a young kid. Everything was those old reel mowers.

I never knew why that complex mower system of cutting grass with that bladed reel would have been developed before just a simple blade on the shaft of a gasoline engine, but there it was. We moved to mowers, and what a complex move that was. Let's take a break here, from our sponsor, and I'd like to come back and talk about the world of mowers.

[music]

Bee Culture: Ready to take your beekeeping skills to the next level? Dive into  Bee Culture, the magazine of American beekeeping, where each month, you'll get expert insights, equipment tips, Varroa control strategies, and sprinkles of humor from Stephen Bishop and Ed Colby. Exclusively for  Honey Bee Obscura listeners, subscribe now at beeculture.com for just $35 a year. Use the code PODCAST for a special bundle offer.

Receive your hard copy delivered monthly, along with full online digital access.  Bee Culture, your ultimate beekeeping partner. Join our buzzing community today.

[music]

Betterbee: Give your buzzing buddies the ultimate upgrade with Better Comb. Accelerate your bee colonies' growth and honey production with our innovative solution. Made from a synthetic wax that mirrors the qualities of natural beeswax, Better Comb offers a clean slate for your bees to thrive without any pesticide or disease residue. Don't compromise on quality. Opt for Better Comb and watch your colonies flourish. Learn more at betterbee.com/bettercomb

[music]

Jim Tew: What I quickly learned was that the mower has to fit the yard, and you probably have the mower for other reasons. If you're thinking ahead, you're probably going to set the yard up based on the mower you've got. For instance, when I worked at Ohio State, we had access to tractors and brush hogs that would go behind the brush mowers, bush hogs. That got all kind of names. To use that tractor and that mower in the bee yard, it had to be a huge yard. I'd estimate it was more than a quarter acre.

The hives were two per stand, near the ground. We had to put them about 12 to 15 feet apart. The aisles were about 20 feet wide. It was a gigantic yard just so we could keep this mowed down. All that did was just mow the aisles. Then all the weeds that was left between the hives had to be dealt with individually. I'm off the subject now. In that day and age, it was on the university campus, and neatness counted. We had to really work at it. We used everything.

I haven't mentioned trimmers yet. We used trimmers. We used herbicides. We used tractors, mowers, smaller mowers. We did everything. It was a lot of work just to keep the grass knocked down, for no other reason than appearance sake, number one. Then, number two, for accessibility. The thing that sometimes happens is that if you've got a smaller mower, then you can set things up more compactly.

The mowers are going to have to get between the colonies and do the work that you want done concisely and neatly. Smaller mowers will allow for smaller yards. There's all kinds of mower equipment, and it seems like there's more on the way. Every day, there's a new model. I just marvel when you ride up and down the roads here, Northeast Ohio, at the diversity and the styles of mowers that are available.

It is no wonder that cutting grass is such a penchant that we have, because we have so much specialized equipment to do it. It's been estimated that there's about 50 million acres of lawn in this country. Now, just let me just put these numbers out here, but I can't hang my hat on them. About 18 million pounds of chemicals to keep that 50 million acres in line. I don't know-- What about the water? 10,000 gallons per acre, more per year, for the supplemental automatic sprinklers and whatever.

We're just cutting that grass for the appearance of it. Now, I'm on thin ice here. Some of you I'm talking to right now are in the lawn care business. I grew up cutting grass. One of my first jobs as a kid was cutting grass, with a push mower, I and a friend. I'm not opposed to it. I just didn't know it was going to become such a thing, and in the process, that we would lose so much, number one, and number two, quite honestly, I didn't know I was going to become a beekeeper and that I would care that we were cutting down all this clover.

That we were using broadleaf herbicides to kill the clover, the dandelions, and the other blooming plants off, out of the lawn, so we would have a perfectly clear, pure grass lawn. I didn't see all that coming. Now I find, listeners, that I am at a mixed point in life. Why couldn't we have developed lawns that were low-growing clover? It would have been nice, lush, would have been a bee-supportive plant.

It would have had nice white flowers. I don't know how the grass thing happened. Even if you say, "Well, it was grazing animals in England," and that brought the idea here that you could graze animals on. Now, you graze animals on clover. I don't know how grass varieties got ahead of clover varieties. Unless there's just more to this than I understand. I don't understand. I've talked to some of my peers through the years, in my university of life.

Could some kind of low-growing clover, some kind of low-growing blooming plant be developed? Yes, it could, but there's not much of a financial incentive for it right now. We used all these mowers to cut this stuff back and to keep it mowed short, and basically turned it into a nice, scenic, green desert. It's what it's been called. Not my wording, but a green desert. Not much can live there other than subterranean insects, boars, and whatever, moles, but not going to support any surface wildlife to speak of.

I tried the mower thing. I got mowers right now, and use them when I can, when it works, depending on the height of the grass, but I got to get to it. String trimmers turned the world around in every way. I just can't imagine going back to anything other than string trimmers now. They started so simple. Weed Eaters. The first ones I remember was a brand named Weed Eater.

Apparently, it was a very simple design early on, that a guy came up with a piece of fishing line and an electric motor, he improvised this thing, and everything else is where we got to now. I have two or three of these machines, and I use them constantly. Even if you've got mowers, even if you put down mulch, even if you do everything, you're probably going to have to get that weed eater out sooner or later, to get that going.

It worked well enough, but the bees don't like those things, so I found out, get your job done, get that thing started up, be suited up, have your smoker going, get the weeds knocked down. You're not trying to manicure this thing like it's going to be some award-winning lawn. You're just trying to keep the weeds under control, I think, so you can just live and walk in your bee yard, and be able to carry this equipment around when you need to.

I've tried all the other contraptions, most of them, these plastic blades and the horizontal brush blades, all those things. They didn't really help all that much, and I ended up going back to just the common string trimmer. I've never heard of anybody who had anything go wrong, but I just want to remind you, if you're out there with a string trimmer and you got a can of gas somewhere close by, and I told you to light that smoker, you can't forget that gas is there, and you can't forget that smoker is there.

I've never heard of anything happening, so please, don't be the first. Just last year, I've written about it in the bee magazine, because my grass would get away from me so badly, I had to do something. I went down to a big supply store that sells every style of mower, chainsaw, and contraption known to the lawn care world, and right there was a walk-behind string trimmer, heavy-duty thing.

The string on it can't be called a string, it needs to be called a cord, so I bought this walk-behind trimmer, and that really helps a lot, but let me tell you, just because you walk behind it doesn't mean that you still don't break out in a sweat. It doesn't mean that you still don't have to have that protective gear on. You're still going to have to have all of that. What I've struggled with all these years is trying to find some way to keep the vegetation under control in the yard at a time when I want vegetation there.

I sometimes fear, from a bee standpoint, we've gone too far keeping things too neat, too clean. I don't want to be that first guy on the street who lets things really go wild and has the neighborhood look at him, saying, "What's up with that?" I don't know. I'll leave you where I started. My bees need foliage. My bees need flowering plants. Not all the time. Sometimes, I need to cut them back in my yard.

Other times, I wish that there were places where you could just let it go and just let the bees be bees. I have found no perfect solution, no best answer to this situation. Keep looking. Let me know what you do, how it works out for you. I'd be happy to talk to you. Thanks for listening to me. I always enjoy talking to you. I look forward to talking to you next week. Thanks a lot. Jim telling you bye.

[00:21:02] [END OF AUDIO]