Beekeeping Efficiency with Anne Frey (255)

Episode 255 – Beekeeping Efficiency with Anne Frey 

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Jim Tew: Hey, listeners, it's Jim. It's Thursday morning. Today I've got Anne Frey here with me. Say hi, Anne.

Anne Frey: Hi, Jim. Hi, everybody.

Jim: She's from Betterbee way up in New York. Are you lying on the beach and having some sunshine up there or how's it going?

Anne: No, it's been raining for about three weeks, and it's chilly.

Jim: No, she's sitting here with an insulated jacket on. I knew it was anything but that. For all of you folks who don't live in cooler climates, just coming in, it's messy. We could talk about that, but we're not going to talk about that. Anne and I want to talk with you for a few minutes about a slippery, elusive concept of efficiency and beekeeping. Is there such a thing, Anne?

Anne: Yes, you could try to be efficient. I just want to make sure that we don't make it all into some kind of mechanized, no fun anymore. You can still have fun.

Jim: Mechanized wonderment. Listeners, I'm Jim Tew, and I come to you here about once a week at Honeybee Obscura, where I really do my best to talk to you about something to do with plain talk beekeeping. Anne is here. Anne, introduce yourself.

Anne: Hi, I'm Anne Frey from Betterbee, that's in Greenwich, NY, and we're having a chilly, rainy weather, and I'm glad to be sitting inside.

Jim: We're going to talk to you some about efficiency and beekeeping from our perspective.

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Jim: Anne, it's common knowledge because I complain about it every time I get a chance. I'm an old man now. I want wheels on everything. I want something to pick things up for me. I don't want to have to bend over unless I'm picking up three things. You work a lot more bees than I work. What are some of the pointers and ideas you come up with that help you be efficient in beekeeping in any way possible?

Anne: In general, I came from being a large hobbyist to turning into this small commercial when I started working at Betterbee, and I realized that anytime we can use a machine to to help us out instead of carrying the stuff by hand, use that machine. Even if it's as simple a machine as a handcart or what you call a Dolly, use the pickup, but use the wheelbarrow.

Jim: When I was doing all that, I like right away what you're saying, because the pickup thing when I was with my brothers and we had a little bee operation, we had about 400 hives. We had a Tommy left gate on that pickup, and that thing was just worth its weight in gold. It was slow and sluggish and noisy, but we abused it and it took it. That truck is long sold, and that lift gate is long gone, and the truck I replaced it with didn't house up to the gate. I used ramps. I can tell you you can't push a beehive on a hand truck up a ramp. You got to pull it up the ramp backwards. If you're doing that, you can slip and you and that hive go back down.

I'm doing anything I can to keep from picking up a beehive by myself. I would still use the ramps and get it up.

Anne: That sounds horrible, pulling it up a ramp. I'm just trying to also not carry beehives around as much. We're mainly talking about supers full of honey or other things, like moving a lot of equipment to the bee yard. Just like put it in the truck and drive across the yard, even if the yard is only-

Jim: I understand that.

Anne: -50 or 60 feet.

Jim: Anne, I'm jumping ahead of you here, but we haven't talked about this, but I've got two or three trailers, all the way from very small to a large enough trailer to hold my small tractor. I would frequently use those trailers for anything. I actually tried to use a trailer to bring in a few supers that I could attach my extractor to in the back of it, and then I tried to use the spring shackle system to absorb the vibration, and it worked reasonably well, but the tongue jumped around.

When it was starting to run the trailer tongue. It was a small trailer, but bounced around. I've had a notion that efficiency and beekeeping would be to use the same piece of equipment to go bring in four or five supers, then to ratchet strap the extractor to the back end of the trailer, but strapped and then haul them right back out to the beehive to let them clean it up. It worked more than it didn't, but I can't say that I achieved efficientness.

Anne: Yes, you got to try new things. If you find out it's no good, stop doing it. Definitely don't get stuck into a rut where you did a thing and then the next year you just do that thing again because it's what you did. Be willing to change.

Jim: That's painful. You really hurt me because I'm in a rut right now. I've told everybody a dozen times that I use old deeps because I've got so many of them. I inherited them from my dad's equipment supply, the operation he had. I must have inherited 1,500 knocked-down deeps.

Anne: Oh.

Jim: I just keep using them because I've got them. I can't tell if that's efficient or if that's crazy.

Anne: Sometimes you got to refresh your frames. What if you threw away a lot of those frames and used your circular saw and turned all those deeps into mediums?

Jim: Yes, I could do that.

Anne: Then you'd be really proud.

Jim: Let me ask you a trick question that I don't know the answer to. Are the hand holes cut the same distance from the top edge on deeps and supers?

Anne: No, I think they place them halfway. I've done that trick with some deeps that people gave me, and it just ends up that the hand hold is strangely close to the bottom.

Jim: That's what I was thinking. When I did that before, the hand hold was in an odd place, but it didn't matter. It just looked like your equipment was sinking. I got to tell you, this making splits and changing equipment out and whatever and interchanging equipment when you got everything the same, it makes it easier, but picking it up, we talked about that, when you're picking up a deep full of honey, it's all I can do anymore. I don't know if I could even do it anymore, to tell you the truth.

Anne: It's nice to have the Tommy lift, but it's also nice to have a trailer that has a big wide ramp, not just those tire-width ramps. Even just walking up onto the trailer, up the ramps, it's better than sometimes lifting it in. That kind of stuff, we're talking about supers, so let's talk about maybe the is your honey extracting area efficient. Bring the supers in. Is your area set up logically so that it goes from super to untapping to extracting and then into some other supers and out the door, or is it just cramped and illogical?

Jim: Wouldn't you say you would use what you've got, sometimes cramped and illogical, may be all you've got, so it's what you use. Do the best you can with what you've got, where you are. I'm not in any way arguing with you, but I know what you mean because I had the opportunity when we built that bee lab at Ohio State to lay it out. Everything followed a logical sequence around the room.

Anne: That was a luxury.

Jim: That's a luxury because if all you've got is the kitchen, then that's going to be a mess to set up.

Anne: It's also like you may walk in and say the extractor should go in this corner, but that corner is right near the door. If you could just shift the extractor a little ways away and have the uncapping area near the door where the supers come in. Just thinking a little more, maybe rotate the setup, things like that. The other thing is, like you said, when you had that chance to build your own lab or extracting room, when people are growing, that's the time that they have to think most about this.

Jim: When they have that rare window to make changes, that's true in life. When you're replacing the roof, go ahead and put those leaf cords on the gutters while you're up there.

Anne: Yes, that kind of thing.

Jim: Thing that kind of thing. Anne, let's take a break and hear from our sponsor, and then come back and finish discussing more about this extracting room layout.

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Jim: Listeners and Anne, are you familiar with that noise that your shoes make when you track through honey?

Anne: Oh, yes. It's like tch, tch, tch.

Jim: You get that little sound, and you know you're tracking honey all over creation. I have a beekeeper friend in Tennessee who covers his entire floor in heavy brown craft paper. Tapes everything down. I don't know how he does that. My knees wouldn't do it, but his entire floor is covered, and then when it's over, he rolls it all up, and his floor underneath is reasonably clean.

Anne: It's not actually the honey. It's the adhering bits of wax that are the problem.

Jim: Yes, and the propolis that-- What's your comment? What's your thought? What's your take on flooring in the kitchen, how to protect it, on flooring in a garage when you're trying to use a temporary space for an extracting room? How do you keep from getting propolis, wax, and honey all over everything?

Anne: Well, I think it's definitely important, especially if you're floor, say in the kitchen, is ceramic because the grout, the place where that stuff is going to really stick, and it's hardest to get it out. I like the idea of covering it. I know some people cover it with flattened cardboard boxes, things like that, even go as far as just laying down another layer of boxes if that one gets messed up. Thinking about the floor is definitely going to keep your marriage closer to intact.

If it's a garage cement floor, maybe unpainted, that floor might be holding a lot of dust, so covering it is a good idea. Could be one of those blue tarps from the Home Depot, that kind of thing. Are you still talking about efficiency, or-

Jim: Yes, we are.

Anne: -you still have changed over?

Jim: No, we have not changed. I want to be efficient because I got to clean this room up.

Anne: Yes, not needing to be having a whole half a day to clean it. Good idea.

Jim: I want to say one thing here. Don't try, and tell you why you shouldn't try it, because I did. Don't try just to use newspaper. That will tear right off the floor, and then you've got a big mess with torn-up newspaper everywhere. It's not thick enough. When we say roll out paper, it's heavy-grade construction paper that I'm talking about. Anne mentioned rolling out a tarp-

Anne: A blue tarp.

Jim: -to get all that done.

Anne: I'm picturing you walking around with squares of newspapers stuck to your shoes.

Jim: They still go squeak, squeak, squeak even when you get newspapers stuck. You said early on that efficiency is a relative thing, and that many times people just want to enjoy beekeeping, and they really don't want to get all fretted out about trying to be as officious and effective as possible. Go with that comment. It was very reflective.

Anne: Well, I think a lot of people get into beekeeping just for the enjoyment of being outdoors, learning things about the bees and nature, and relaxing, and efficiency gives me an impression of the lines of people marching into the factory, and slamming the time card into the box. Then the other line is walking out, and that's what I get when I think efficiency, but it's got to be some kind of a middle ground. If you're building frames, it's okay to build them one at a time when you're a beginner with one or two hives.

When you need to build 100 or 200 frames, why not try a frame jig? It's 10 at a time. It's a new thing, and it doesn't mean you're turning into a factory. It just means you're being smarter.

Jim: One of the things that has come down, and I bought a brad nailer, a pen driver, I guess it'd be called years ago, and those things were expensive. Now they're cheap, affordable. When you've got those 10 frames in that jig you talked about, I'd also suggest that you go probably to Harbor Freight. I don't have one. I've still got the old good ones, so I don't know how the cheap ones work.

Anne: Well, they're good. Harbor Freight has inexpensive stuff that's so inexpensive. You don't mind if it only lasts one year, which sounds horrible, but you could get a brad nailer for $30.

Jim: I would certainly do that before I'd use the inch and a quarter nails. Especially trying to drive the nail through the end bar into the top lug of the top bar.

Anne: That's an important spot. A lot of people skip that.

Jim: No, but it's so much easier to pin nail it with that. I would like to add that to it. That's a kind of efficiency for reasonable money that's available to beekeepers now.

Anne: Goes to the idea of using a machine to help yourself if you can get that machine.

Jim: Well, we got these things brought in. We've talked in and around being efficient with trailers and hand trucks, and using Tommy lift gates for those people who really have access to equipment. Then we've talked about trying to be efficient, getting the floor cleaned up, and how to lay out an extracting room. Now, I've got a few empty supers to get back to the bees. What am I going to do to efficiently get these supers where? Back on the bees? How do I do that, because if I'm taking honey off, there's probably a dearth.

I don't want to get frantic, robbing going. How can I efficiently get, let's just say, eight supers back out to get them on the bees, or into a storage barn, which I probably wouldn't do because that's going to get real moldy doing that. Can you help me with that?

Anne: Well, I would say if they're just sticky after extracting, I wouldn't bother putting them back on the bees. Those little remnants of stickiness are just going to get cleaned up in the spring. I'd say handle that box one last time, so put it away. Mine never got moldy. I would stack them on four bricks that had a metal queen scooter on it, stack of supers that are sticky. Of course, the barn door is shuttable. Bees can't get in there to rob it. Then you don't want a crazy cloud of bees coming, but not mold problems because there's air going through. As far as maybe it's heavy with honey, but it wasn't capped. Is that what you're describing?

Jim: It could be. Right now, I'm not trying to put a hard description on it.

Anne: Well, that goes into the efficiency of how you deal with the hives in your bee yard. I would say you're getting all those supers. They're covered. They're on the truck. You bring the truck extremely close to the bee yard, and then every hive that you're going to pop them on, you're just extremely fast about it, because you don't want robbing to start.

Jim: Yes, I do not.

Anne: Just covers off, super's on, covers back on the end. It's like 10 seconds a hive. This also has to do with some other things I thought about for efficiency, which is how is your bee yard set up? Is it set up so that you can get your truck right in there to the center of things? That's something you may have prevented by the way you already set things up, but when you have a chance to redesign, think about wild things like driving a truck into the bee yard.

Jim: Also, we've talked about hand trucks and dollies, just like you can just roll them right across that grass. Many times, pulling a heavy loaded dolly or hand truck can be surprisingly demanding when you're pulling it through overgrowth grass, trying to get 25 yards to a truck.

Anne: True. There's a problem with hand trucks, though, which is that the step at the bottom or the platform at the bottom, it's usually only six or seven inches out. What do you do? Do you have a special hand truck?

Jim: Is that a question or is that an hypothetical question? Yes, I do have a special hand truck, and yes, I do have those that just have the little tongue there, about six to eight inches out that tends to want to throw the colonies off instead of tilt them back over.

Anne: The special hand truck with the deep platform at the bottom, it's big enough to get a cover on it. You could have that at the bottom of your-

Jim: Correct. It is.

Anne: -stack of supers. Where does a person get that? Is it a special welder person that you know that made it for you, Jim?

Jim: No, it used to be available from bee supply company, as it was called a dolly mover. I don't know if it's still available or not. Now you're making me feel privileged for having one. I will say this, it was not just for beekeeping equipment, it's a heavy-duty hand truck.

Anne: Maybe Uline or something like that would have that.

Jim: Yes. That would move thousands of pounds, but it had a narrow wheel base. It wants to top all easy if you have a tall hive on it, but now I'm really off the subject on the specialty hand trucks. You can get motorized hand trucks. If you're going to go wild and crazy here, you can get motorized hand trucks. Probably battery-operated now, but I'm going to breathe in a bag because I'm over the edge now.

Anne: Don't even talk about that.

Jim: Don't even talk about it. Anne, how do you handle mice and that bee equipment that you just put in that barn a few minutes ago? You're keeping out bees and everything else, but I know there's going to be mice in there.

Anne: There's mice in the barn. Can't avoid that. The quad of bricks, the metal queen excluder, and the stack of supers on the metal queen excluder, and then something like the metal queen excluder at the top, or maybe just a real telescoping outer cover on the top. There's no place for the mice to get in. This year, for the first time, we have put our supers out in the bee yards, not to get robbed, but to have them ready for spring.

Usually, we put them in barns, and then when spring rush we're working with nukes, which is at the same time you got a super-- supering always gets done too late. This year, we won't have to pull them out of barns and bring them to different places. They're already there, and they're covered with tarps. They're weighted down. It's just ready to go.

Jim: I like that. Anne, we're out of time. Is there anything that really is hanging on you that you want to say as we wind the clock down here?

Anne: Jim, I think I would just say that you could try to be efficient, you could try to be more efficient, but it's always going to be a moving target. You might find that things were more efficient in the past, and you got to abandon something that you started doing. Or you might think all winter on how to be efficient and then [music] institute one of those things in the spring. It's always changing and moving.

Jim: While, of course, I agree with you, I wouldn't have suggested we move that direction. Anne, we're out of time. I always enjoy talking to you. It's quiet here in my shop by myself when I'm talking to myself and these imaginary people I'm talking to so often. I'm always glad to have you here. Thank you for--

Anne: Thank you, Jim.

Jim: Thank you for coming by.

Anne: Thanks for having me.

Jim: No, I'm sure we'll talk again. Bye-bye, everybody.

Anne: See you later, folks

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