Plain Talk: Tall Grass In The Bee Yard (287)

Episode 287 – Plain Talk: Tall Grass In The Bee Yard

Jim Tew

Hey listeners. Well, this is embarrassing because I know what's coming. But I want to have you walk back to the bee yard with me. Haven't been back here in several days. It's been raining a lot. And it's been beautiful days when it wasn't raining, so I know I know what I'm going to find And I want to talk to you about it. See if you have any advice. I'm going to find gigantically tall grass, weeds, whatever. Not trying to make you feel sorry for me, but I do this by myself.

I'm not a young man, but I am really devoted to having having bees in my life, even if I'm not a good beekeeper. Just nurses, I'm Jim Tew. I come to you here about once a week where I try to 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 Jew 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're a seasoned beekeeper or just getting started, get ready for some plain talk that'll delve into all things honey bees.

Jim Tew

Making my way through my cluttered storage barn Yepper. It looks just like I thought it would. What I was going to bring up and what I don't know what to do about. And I'm not begging for sympathy. I'm just trying to accept where I am in life. If you're not there yet, and I hope you're not, you will be one day, and then you'll be having these thoughts too. When I look at this tall grass, it's about belt high, it's already headed out. By the time I finish this presentation, this discussion, this thought It's g uh I'm gonna be starting to sneeze. It's just what I am.

It's I have springtime allergies. Many of us do. And if I get out here and try to weed trim I'm going to go crazy. Why don't you ask me why don't you take some kind of treatment or something or whatever? Uh it's just one more drug I'd be taking. And I just don't want to take anything else. I'll take enough as it is So if you happen to be coming up really soon on seventy-eight and you live alone And you got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen colonies of bees. And they're all vibrant and happy.

How would you maintain the grass in the yard? Tell me, tell me, okay, I'd go cut the grass. Well when the grass is already waist high or in some cases taller it's going to take one fine lawnmower. It's going to be 90 later today The bees are not going to like any kind of mower back here, so they're going to be cranky about all that. I'm not trying to put up a fatalist attitude here. I don't always know what to do Walking through the grass riding out. Here's a hive on the ground that should be picked up, not no bees in it. I just don't know what to do.

Now let me tell you the rub. I've got a walk behind Tremor Five horsepower thing runs a real heavy twine. Well how'd you use that Jim? Well I'm going to have to use it to some extent But I'm also going to tell you that it may be walk behind and that may help and it may have heavy twine, but you gotta push it through these tall grasses and weeds So I did this last year. It's in exactly the same situation. And last year what happened is I had a ridiculously amount of tall natural forage in my yard And I bet you 80% of it was flowering forage.

And the bees and the butterflies and other insects just loved it. It was pretty I unintentionally made a wildflower garden. But what a sloppy way it is to do it. So I guess my plans are to cut as much as I can and just leave the cutter back here. Cut as much as I can. Let somebody know where I am, some of my local friends here And then check in and check out with them while I come back here and try to cut this by myself I don't this is this is kind of a sad presentation, is it?

I feel you know I feel so so oh pity me pity me no I don't want you to pity me pity me I've actually, after my event that I had to go through, my life-changing event, I'm pretty good now So I don't really need much sympathy. I just got to figure out how to be a beekeeper my age and do it alone. So many of the people I would have talked to, like Kim Flotham He was a year older than I am or was or whatever. Well, he's gone now. So more and more I'm the one left standing.

I'm gonna get back to this because I want to talk about Roundup, but not right now Alright, I said before I wasn't going to talk about swarms on the when I last week, but this time I do want to mention this. There's two mating swarms or two after swarms or something. And honestly I've never known what the difference is in a secondary swarm or an after swarm and a mating swarm. I would suspect that they're all the same. I didn't really want the bees, but they were hanging out where the guy was going to be cutting grass, so I hived them.

That's another story I may tell you in a minute So that little beehive is alive and I thought, well, I'll hive it just to have an extra queen. as though I'm ever going to know if I even need an extra queen. Now I'm walking across the yard through tall grass upsetting my groundhog path And here's the other hive and they're also storming out of it. So those two little hives must have had a queen because by now they would have been dead. So the two little hives are alive. No doubt I'll be talking more about those as the season progresses, because there's no way they're going to overwinter, he said.

not realizing how resilient bees can be. Here's a chair in the weeds. I'm going to sit down in the sun by a beehive. It'll probably have no part of me doing this It's one to be hot later today. Alright, let's take a break and then I want to come back to the other issues.

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Jim Tew

When I had a lot of bee yards and I had help to manage them at Ohio State As did many beekeepers. Some of you didn't, but many beekeepers did use Roundup. And we used it readily. We we we bought gigantic amounts of it. We had 25 or 30 yards and Some of them you wouldn't see from one week to the next. And I don't know about that. I sat there this morning on my iPad asking ChatGPT what the story was on the safety of that compound, that chemical Glycophate and I got a mixed root reading.

The EPA and other agencies in this country say that the risk is acceptable But the World Health Organization says that it's a probable carcinogen. And they give a different diagnosis, but they're looking at it from a hazard standpoint. And I don't want to bog you down with the difference in a hazard and a risk because I'm not sure I really got it. A hazard is something that apparently shows toxic activity under laboratory control conditions. A risk is something that's developed through use and field situations. So the EPA says if you just use it a bit and you use it by label instructions, the risk is tolerable.

The World Health Organization says if you're around this stuff too much, breathing it, getting it on you, that there is a hazard of some kind of cancer developing over long-term use. I've just decided not to use any of that. I do have weed tremors, but the only person I've got to run them is me But what I think I really have to do is to figure out how to come out here and do what I can in a B suit in the heat in the tall grass and not try to take on everything at one time. But here's the oddity, I actually enjoyed The flower garden concept last year.

I enjoyed the birds and the wildness instead of just having more lawn to cut. But it was so wild and what I can tell you for a fact is you got I've got to help pathways because just walking around out here just a bit ago was more than I could possibly handle To try to discuss what was going on with then. I've got to do something.

I've got to cut pathways, and I have to accept the fact that I'm not going to have the neat, nice mowed lawn and the pretty apary stylish statement that I'm eager to bring people back to I'm going to always have an apri that I think that I would never invite somebody to come back with, but I want bees. I just can't keep them the way I used to I'm uncomfortable being so honest with you because if you're half or a third my age, you're nowhere around what I'm exposed to. I know you people in the South. I I grew up there. I used to stand the heat.

But I don't know what I would do if I were back in the deep south again, somewhere in South Alabama, with the summer heat, humidity Because here in Northwest Ohio it's hard enough on me, but you people have figured out something. If you're not a young person anymore and you keep bees I'd like to know how you do it. I got a good friend in Tennessee who's not as young as he once was He says he has friends who volunteer to help and they want to come over. Well I don't have any friends like that.

I don't know if I even want friends like that because they'd be back here saying, oh Jim, this yard's a mess And you're writing B articles and producing a podcast, you shouldn't be doing all this advising. So sometimes I don't know if I even want friends over here that w who would help There's a bee on a hive here that's attacking a bee that looks like it's got hairless black syndrome. And that bee is really not welcome here. As a younger man, I would have been taught that that bee was a robber.

And she looked like that because she'd been into so many fights and fracases That the body here had all rubbed off. But the bee that was trying to drag her away left her there. She's sickly, but anyway, I'm off the subject now. I'll figure out something to do. I'm not going to use the chemical sprays. I'm not going to try to make this place look like a manicured lawn But it's just amazing. It's just amazing. It's just amazing how life goes on no matter what excuse you make for not participating in some aspect of life. I knew when I walked back here the grass was going to be running wild.

And the longer I let it go, the worse the job is going to get. The bees don't seem to mind In fact, most of the bees are shaded by the grass and probably don't really want the entrances exposed to direct sunlight and heat. I'll figure out what to do. I'm terrible at answering questions and writing back to you. But if if you're doing something in the heat, you got some age on you, you got any kind of technique? Are you putting down mulch or something I haven't considered that would just compact the grass and give you a walking path.

Is there something I'm not considering other than chemicals and getting out here running hot, sweaty equipment I don't know. Those two hives that I told you were set up small while I'm just dumping on you about all my shortages They don't have all the frames in the colonies and so when I finally get around to working with them You know what's going to have to happen I'm going to have to cut the comb out and tie them in but that day It was a classic slip shot beekeeping swarm day, two small swarms, not on the same day apart.

I didn't want either one of them, but I couldn't just let them go I put them in empty boxes with just enough frames to attract them and they immediately go to the cavity volume that's left. They don't go to the frames. Even if the frames were okay. They prefer the open space and they prefer to do their own thing. I'm willing to tell you that I'm comfortable saying that that's the way they want it. I've had that happen other ways.

There's a colony here behind me that's short four frames and I know what's gonna be on the top of it, but that's one of the colonies that wintered over that I didn't think would make it So I'm not one to be too panicked about it. I I would like to open those colonies up though. I am completely intrigued by natural bee nest And I know that this Langstorth High that I'm sitting beside is the design of it and the similar designs to it are hundreds of years old.

But always die hard and I've said time and time again that those box hives and gums were around for eighty-five to ninety years after modern hive equipment was produced just because many times Beekeepers learned the craft or the trade from other beekeepers in the family, and that's how they did it. They didn't go by those expensive hives. I'm intrigued by that. So these natural nests that are building in these small colonies, I was inclined to let them go just to see what I could tell about them. They have a unique way of attaching comb to the tops of the hive so that it's stunningly rigid.

And I I've often wondered is there Are there different types of beeswax? And I think the answer to that is no. But why is the connecting comb so persistent. If I took the top off those colonies and pulled out that natural nest on the colony top from the bottom side and broke off a comb I can guarantee you that an inch or so of the comb would remain stuck on the top. And you have to catch it underneath and cut it off.

It could be that they add propolis to it immediately And then as they build the comb over time, they add propolis to it too to solidify it, strengthen it. But then that makes me ask, all right, all right, Jim. So if these bees are adding propolis immediately to the wax as they build these new combs in their tiny colonies. Does that mean that bees are flying out collecting gum? as aggressively and eagerly as they're flying out collecting nectar to come back to secrete wax. I don't know. There's a lot of natural nest designs that that went away because we when I had a a hand and destroying these box gums.

I thought they were just trash. I mean why would you even make pictures of these things? I don't c I don't why would you ever want a picture of that? So I have precious few photos of it and I wonder now how bee biology, the natural bee biology actually works because we we just have never spent much time on that Tom Seeley said he was a bit remorseful about all the the gums he opened up to count and check and modify and destroy those colonies and that's a lot like what I'm feeling too It's a blazing nice hot day and I will not complain about it.

How many times did I sit out here during my dark my dark period of my life and tell you how cold it was and my bees were going to die and I'm sitting here now by more bees than I ever dreamed. I would have right now. They need a good beekeeper. I've said that time and time again. I got those two colonies that intrigue me, the small ones Small colonies always intrigue me. They don't require a lot of smoke. They don't come sting you like crazy like these big colonies here would do, so I enjoy working them more.

And I've got to do something about this grass to at least open pathways. so I can get to my columns. Right now everything looks good. Life is comfortable. I don't really have any complaints. I just have a task that I need to do. And I need to get off my rear end and do more of it. Thanks for listening to me rattle on and on. I'll talk to you again next week. I'm Jim, telling you good bye.