Plain Talk: Mentoring Challenges (222)

Episode 222 – Plain Talk: Mentoring Challenges

Jim Tew: Hello, Honey Bee Obscura Podcast listeners, it's Jim back. I've got a topic this week of brand-new beekeepers and us, because we are so hopelessly related. In my defense, a lot of these topics that I choose to discuss, they're in the beekeeping fringes. They never have been mainline topics and they probably never will be, but they're the little picayune details that affect our bees, how we keep our bees, our attitude toward bees. I've got a brand-new person, just classic. He's 42 or so. He's bought a home site with seven acres of land, and he wants goats, chickens, and bees.

He's never had a beehive in his life, and I have known his mother as a coworker for my wife for 25 years. You just get stuck. I don't want this guy to crash and burn, but I don't want to be responsible for a new beekeeper's bees right now either. Can we talk about this for a while? This is Jim Tew, and I come to you about once a week at Honey Bee Obscura, where I make a major effort to talk about something that's 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 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.

Jim: I don't know if you'd be surprised or not, listeners, to find out that I don't routinely mentor individuals. It's not because I'm really a cool guy and too important. It's because I've always been honestly uncomfortable with taking on the responsibility for do this and don't do that to a new beekeeper, just to find out that doing that, whatever it was, didn't work. Then I always feel responsible. Don't worry about that. I've got a queen I can give you. Since that didn't work, I'll bring another frame of brood over.

It's just a La Brea Tar Pit kind of thing, but yet, new beekeepers really need someone to hold their hands. I'm sure through the segments that we've done here at Honey Bee Obscura that Kim and I, or I've talked about this because it's just a passage of life. At one point, every one of us, you and me, were brand-new beekeepers, and we had to have somebody-- I remember my people. We had to have somebody to stand there and hold our hand. When my wife's coworker said, "Don wants to get bees," and I thought of you right away. Isn't that the whole world opening up, listeners?

Since I know a lot about bees, and since you know a lot about bees, all I have to do is just bring this complete novice to you and to me, and we can make this person become a world-class beekeeper. Right away, I gently pushed back, and I gave him an old copy of The Hive and the Honeybee. I gave him one of my books and several magazines, and I told him via his mother to read this, "And when you understand it, get back to me." Then I said, "No, no, I'm kidding," but it is an introduction. There's a huge-- well, not huge, there's a large bee meeting this weekend, too, right here in Worcester.

I've told him, if at all possible, to be at that, and he said he'd be there. What else should I have done? I'm arranging for him to get packages, I'm putting him in touch with a package hauler, and then when they get here, I will help him install them, I guess, or something. The first chance I get, I want to get him inside the local beekeeping group. As a group, as a committee, I would like for them to help him along. I'm just too long in the tooth to take on a commitment to another new beekeeper's bees, but this person is a friend of my wife. I've got to try.

How do you explain to this new guy? How do you go into detail that so much of beekeeping now is demanding? This is just not like putting up bluebird boxes and then waiting for a bluebird crop to come by. I don't want to say too much about it, but beekeeping isn't as cheap as it once was. If you want to spend some money on beekeeping, believe me, you can spend some money on beekeeping, and it does no good to reminisce. It does no good, Jim, to reminisce.

When you remember what bees used to cost and how whimsical we were about them, to treat each bee now with such dignity and protection, it's almost inconceivable how much beekeeping has changed over the years. That's my segue. From my memory, what do you, from your old memory, tell this guy? You might tell him something like, "Hey, there's no beekeeping magic. There is no pied piper of beekeeping. My bees die, too." At this moment, listeners, I've got dead bees back there.

I've got a fresh bevy of reasons why my bees died, but they're all the same basic class of reasons, and the bees are no less dead and will require cleanup, and importantly, they will require money to buy replacement bees. Every year, replacement bees are more dear. Someone who has not yet seen the inside of a beehive in his life, how do you tell him, it happens to be a man, how do you tell him that his bees are probably going to die? Our bees always die.

When they die, you use the resources you've invested, the equipment, the protective gear, the knowledge, and you lock and load again, and you start over again. It happens to all of us. We have to tell him that there's no magic here, that my bees die as much as his bees or as your bees do. Do you tell him that right off the bat, or do you let him find that out on his own? Good luck is helpful.

I love beginner good luck, where they just do a hit and miss thing or a slapstick thing, and it works, but even in our lives, mine and yours, just blind good luck is really helpful, but we know the bad luck part of it. We have that all the time. How many bad luck stories do you want? I had trees fall on my beehives in the yard back here. I've had bees run over by tractors, so bad luck is everywhere, but you just take whatever comes your way, and you work to make good luck happen again.

Throughout that whole thing, every chance you get, I would recommend, and I honestly do it myself, I do it on this podcast series, I explore the underbelly of beekeeping, why dead bees do what they do when they're dying, and what's the difference between scout bees and guard bees, and I do it because I want to. Said before that bees have no interest in me studying them. They don't study me, apparently, any more than they have to, so what would I tell this new beekeeper? Here I am, this guy doesn't know anything.

The bees are going to cost you probably $140, $150 a package, maybe upwards of $200 for a four or five frame split, and the chances of those colonies dying the first year in Ohio, if you just go by raw percentages, it's probably going to be about 45% to 55% chance of them dying. This needs to be something that you're committed to. Honestly, if you're lumping him with goats and chickens, he's dividing his passion already. He doesn't have a classic case of bee fever.

This guy's just building a gentleman farm on seven acres, and he may get bee fever, so I can't say no, I wouldn't say no, but I would say that dividing up his energy, dividing up the time that he has to learn and to commit, is not really going to be a greatly helpful thing to his beekeeping part of it, specifically. You think about that while we hear from our sponsor?

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Jim: Beekeeping should be fun, right? If I tell this guy, "Hey, beekeeping is fun." Okay. Is it really? I used to run never more than a half marathon, but I used to run half marathons. I would train for them, work for them, not a hero, never was very good at it. I never finished last, but never finished first, never will. Was that run fun? No, it was absolute hell. It was just miserable, but it was completely and totally fulfilling to prepare for it, to get ready for it, to be there on race day, to feel the energy, to run, take off, get through it, but nothing about it was truly fun.

How do I word this to this new guy? I would rather say beekeeping is rewarding. Beekeeping is challenging. At times, on those spring's days, when apple bloom odor is just filling the air and there's a free swarm landing in your equipment, that is fun. That is enjoyable. Those days are rare. For all of us, there has to be a core reason for you and me both. Why do we keep on doing this? If we know that our bees are not all that healthy and are not always going to survive, what's the psychological reason that we keep on keeping on?

I can give you mine, but I choose not to, because right now, they're personal, but bees mean more to me as a survival tool and a sanity device than they've ever meant. That's just me. That's just me right now. It's changed. We have been through so much in my experience, and I'm just old, but I'm not like the oldest thing you've ever seen. I'm just regular old. I've told you, I saw box hives. I've worked with box hives and gums. I knew box hive and gum beekeepers, and there was a stage of time, pamphlets were printed, and work was done to get those bees into new, modern, improved boxes.

I've busted up more homemade beehives than you can imagine and never photographed any of them. I just have just three or four. Why would you photograph this whole homemade stuff? I'm going to put it in a new, modern hive, and then we'll photograph that. Now, I just really wish that I'd taken time to study those natural nests, that natural nest configuration, the natural nest biology. What's this got to do with a new beekeeper? You stand there and you decide how far back, how much overload do you want to give this guy?

I had an experienced beekeeper tell me. I've told you because he gave me a lifelong thought. He said, "I don't want a highly experienced, long-time beekeeper to be a mentor for a new beekeeper." They assume too much, they leave out too much, and they give too much information. He said, "The best mentor, in my opinion, for a new beekeeper is one who has kept bees five to six years." They're still learning. They're still energetic. They don't have this vast store of information. They just give the beginning beekeeper what they can digest, grow, and implement.

Because if you're talking to me, I'd be explaining to the guy about how difficult it was to take honey off a box hive. Exactly when this move to plastic started, and I'd be off in right field, in areas that are probably not going to be helpful to that guy in the next day as he shakes packages. All those old box hives and things, they add to my dimension. If you're old enough out there, there may be a few of you who've actually transferred bees from-- now, primarily from the wall of a house. I would argue fairly strongly that the wall of a house is the modern-day box hive.

A lot of people have done cutouts where they took bees out of the wall of a house, whereas in my earliest days, we transferred bees from gums. I've written and talked about plastics. When I talk to this new beekeeper, he will come into and be introduced into a world of plastic beekeeping. Just a short list. I did it just to amuse myself. Hive bodies, outer covers, bottoms, frames, foundation, comb honey equipment. Ironically, I'm surprised to tell you honey processing equipment is mostly plastic equipment. Now, plumbing, queen cages, protected gear, excluders, and here's a biggie, honey jars.

Just between you and me, was anybody there when we transited from keeping bees in glass jars to putting bees in gallon jugs, plastic? There was a group that to this day would argue with you that putting bees in plastic was not good. They're probably more right than wrong. Let me tell you, when one of those five pound, half gallon glass jars full of honey hits the floor, you're going to rethink that plastic microtoxicity thing all over again, because it would make a spectacular mess. How far down the path would you go with this guy?

I know, I know, I know you're going to tell me, "Jim, why are you even having these thoughts?" I'm telling you what I would be thinking. I'm telling you the energy that I would be stifling not to go into detail with when you keep this information for this guy, day 1, step 1, that's a cork plug in the queen cage. You use the sharp point blade on your knife to pop that cork out. Some people stick a nail through it, ergo, ergo, ergo, that kind of thing. It needs to be that kind of information as this guy grows and develops into it.

We haven't always been this way. Those old meetings that I was going to and the people who helped me, they were all dedicated beekeepers, but they were all dedicated to something else much bigger. Either farming or my uncle who helped me extensively was a watch and clock repairman, part artist, part time piece mechanic. How he got into beekeeping? I don't know, but I'll tell you, speaking of mentoring, it was miserable because he would make me re-bore the holes and the end bars so that they were microscopically machinist straight if he decreed that those holes bored in the end bars were sloppy and we're not on a straight line.

He kept bees absolutely perfectly. When he would wire those frames, that was not too taut. You couldn't play a tune on the wires, but you almost could. He knew exactly how much to tighten them. You didn't bow the end bars. Then because he was a watch and clock repairman, he could make everything. He made his own wire embedders and made me one. Of course, I don't know where mine is. Long, long gone. That was my mentor. That was one of my mentors. I can call other mentors by name who were fairly famous beekeepers. They're not here anymore, so I better not do that.

Those guys struggled in telling you what not to do and what to do, how it was, how to raise your own queens, and how to make your own queen cups when you're doing that, why are you buying those queens? They cost two dollars and a half each then. Why don't you just raise your own? Here, take a stick, make a cell cup base and there you go. They went off out in right field, too.

What I'm trying to find my bearing on, what I'm trying to pursue is how to gently and tenderly introduce this guy into beekeeping and then somehow politely and professionally hand him off to the entourage of new beekeepers in the area and let him fit in with that clan and let them grow as a group instead of me having to go over to his place on an assigned day when miraculously I can keep the appointment and the weather is good and everything is all right and he remembered to bring matches and all the things that you tend to forget.

Strut that smoker up and then have a look at that brand new package that he just installed two or three or four days before. Am I arrogant? I promise you, I don't mean to be. Am I old and somewhat tired? Not that one. I'll give in to that one, but I want this guy to have a bright happy time. I would say that he's got a half a strike against him already by diversifying his energy, time, and passion. Beekeeping is not easy. I don't know how far to go. I'll pass the play it by ear when he comes around and I start talking to him. There's so much that we still are struggling to understand ourselves.

Anytime I'm lured to get off the subject on are those high-tension electric lines going to affect my new bee yard here, or is the sound of the commercial dairy going to keep them up at night across the way there, I'm just going to avoid all that whole thing. I'm glad the guy came up with the bees. I'm glad that the system worked. Varroa did that. Varroa made the public aware that bees had died. As much as we hate Varroa, they have really been a great unintentional emissary for introducing the public to the value of bees.

I'm firmly committed to believing that guy wanted bees on his seven acres because he's heard how short supply bees are. They're more important than they ever have been. They're more complicated. We've got a lot more pests to deal with. This guy needs to know this is a very valuable undertaking, but it's a little bit like violin making. You've got to really get good at it to make a good violin. There's going to be a lot of junk along the way. I'll do the best I can.

If you have any advice for me, if you want to send this guy to YouTube channels you've done or whatever, let me know. I'll be happy to help him as much as I can and to also introduce him to those who can help more. I hope you know how much I always enjoy talking to you. It's really therapeutic for me just to come out and talk about bees. Thank you so much. Until next week, I'm Jim, telling you bye.

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