Sept. 10, 2026
Reflections on the 300th Episode
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RSS Feed In this special 300th episode of Honey Bee Obscura, Dr. Jim Tew heads back to his bee yard for a thoughtful look at where the podcast began, where it has taken him, and why these weekly conversations have come to mean so much.
Jim remembers how the late Kim Flottum repeatedly tried to persuade him to give podcasting a chance. Jim was committed to video and initially saw an audio-only program as a step backward. Kim, however, was persistent. What began as an experiment with short conversations eventually found its rhythm as the relaxed, 20-minute “plain talk” discussions listeners know today.
Jim recalls the friendship—and occasional disagreements—that made his conversations with Kim memorable, from eight-frame equipment to queen introduction and the value of a beekeeper’s time. But he also reflects on the difficult years that followed, including Kim’s declining health and death and the loss of Jim’s wife. During that period, returning to the bee yard and talking with listeners became an important source of normalcy, focus, and continuity.
Now, 300 episodes later, Jim considers how his own approach to beekeeping continues to evolve. He may work his colonies differently than he once did, but his curiosity remains. And that, perhaps, is what Honey Bee Obscura has always been about: not having every answer, but continuing the conversation.
Most of all, Jim has a simple message for listeners who have traveled this road with him: thank you.
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Thanks to Betterbee for sponsoring today's episode. Betterbee’s mission is to support every beekeeper with excellent customer service, continued education and quality equipment. From their colorful and informative catalog to their support of beekeeper educational activities, including this podcast series, Betterbee truly is Beekeepers Serving Beekeepers. See for yourself at www.betterbee.com
We’d like to thank Vita Bee Health for supporting the podcast. Vita provides proven tools for controlling Varroa—from Apistan and Apiguard to the new VarroxSan extended-release oxalic acid strips—helping beekeepers keep stronger, healthier colonies.
Thanks to Bee Culture, the Magazine of American Beekeeping, for their support of Honey Bee Obscura. Available in print and digital at www.beeculture.com
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Honey Bee Obscura is brought to you by Growing Planet Media, LLC, the home of Beekeeping Today Podcast.
Music: Heart & Soul by Gyom, All We Know by Midway Music; Christmas Avenue by Immersive Music; original guitar music by Jeffrey Ott
Cartoons by: John Martin (Beezwax Comics)
Copyright © 2026 by Growing Planet Media, LLC
WEBVTT
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Hi listeners, I'm walking back to my scruffy bee yard.
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It's pretty close to September 10th or so.
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Summer is well underway.
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Goldenrod has maxed out.
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Beginning to wane some.
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This, uh, segment today is selfishly
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from me.
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I've been told that I talk too much about age, but I'm always shocked.
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To suddenly be officially an old man and young people hold doors for you and they let you step up in line and they help you at the airport gate.
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That was always for somebody else.
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That was never going to be me, but here it is, me.
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I gotta get through the barn shed, you know that.
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Listeners, today is my 300th.
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My 300th segment.
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300 times I've said hello here.
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It's Jim Tew
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Coming to you from the bee yard.
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I just can't believe it.
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I'd like to reflect some on that.
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Since January the 10th.
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2021.
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Started then.
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Beekeepers on Jim Tew and 300 times.
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I've come to you once a week.
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trying to talk about something to do with plain talk beekeeping.
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Welcome to Honey Bee Obscura, brought to you by Growing Planet Media, the producers of the Beekeeping Today podcast.
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Join Jim Tew, your guide through the complexities, the beauty, the fun, and the challenges of managing honey bees.
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Jim hosts fun and interesting guests who take a deep dive into the intricate world of honey bees.
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Whether you're a seasoned beekeeper or just getting started, get ready for some plain talk that'll delve into all things honey bees.
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Listeners, uh, I had a web channel, I had a YouTube channel.
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And I made the, uh, decision to really go under that.
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So I spent oh, I don't know, four thousand three thousand five hundred dollars on a on a video camera a Canon high resolution video camera and
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I did the best I could to produce videos.
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I used the Apple system for editing and I really was putting my heart into it.
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I had a few followers.
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I was never doing anything other than just playing.
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I wasn't trying to be
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the end-all, be-all video channel.
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And Kim, Kim Flottum, kept coming to me
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saying he wanted to do a podcast with me.
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And I immediately turned him down.
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Because why would I give up video casting which had pictures and sound?
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Just to do something conversational.
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It seemed like I could have been going backwards.
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Kim was the most persistent fellow that you've ever seen.
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And after a week or two, he came back to me and he pushed me again.
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That this would be fun.
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And you have to, for those of you who knew Kim, you just have to love him.
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That guy
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That guy could sell you anything.
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He kept saying it won't take it won't take 15 minutes a month.
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Let's just do it and see if you like it.
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I still turned him down.
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On the third time, I don't know why I relinquished.
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Maybe I realized that if Kim was right, I did have 15, 20 minutes a month to make two
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Ten minute segments.
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How bad could it be?
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We could talk about anything.
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It was just going to be conversational.
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It was not going to be analytical.
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Sitting at a table during the break at a bee meeting.
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And he wanted that to be that kind of conversation.
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All right, Kim, alright.
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I'll do that
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And I agreed to it.
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And we didn't do two to four ten minute segments before we realized that you could barely get through the introduction and the sponsor announcement
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Before three and a half minutes was already gone, then you had to talk at the speed of light to get any point across.
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So just within a few segments, Kim and I settled comfortably on about a 20 to 25 minutes segment.
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My daughter takes about 20 minutes to drive to work every morning.
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She calls me every morning and she talks while she drives to work and somehow that 20-minute segment seemed to work
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With you people.
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Now when I watch a YouTube channel on a guy getting a truck out of a stump mire or
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A guy finding arrow points along the Ohio River.
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I specifically looked for something around 20 to 25 minutes long.
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It's almost like my attention span has been altered.
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And I have to admit that I had a good time with Kim.
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So most of the time it was a good time.
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Sometimes it was challenging.
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Kim and I were the old Siskel and Ebert kind of relationship.
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We could disagree on things.
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Kim kept saying that eight-frame equipment was the way to go.
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Well I never saw eight-frame equipment.
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I don't mind if you use it.
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I don't have any.
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I like it.
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It's kind of quaint looking
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It's still around, but it's not as popular as the 10-frame, but he never missed a chance to sell eight-frame equipment, saying that as he aged, we needed the lighter weight
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Well as I aged I couldn't tell the weight was that much less.
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It was still too heavy for him and still made me cry and creak when I picked it up, but he loved it.
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So I let it go, but we argued back and forth.
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He wanted to leave Queens in longer and longer and longer to be sure these expensive queens worked
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Released correctly. Longer and longer and longer made me uncomfortable because I didn't know how long the queen had been in the cage when I got her.
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And I didn't want that valuable bug to stay in that cage for something like what, couple of months?
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I didn't know how long she had been banked before I bought her, so we disagreed on things like that.
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But we agreed on a lot of things too
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Kim loved to say, what's your time worth?
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And I never said it on the air, I guess I'm saying it now, but would every time Kim would say it about every other to every third segment, what's your time worth?
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You want to repair frames
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What's your time worth?
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You wanna cut grass in the bee yard every week?
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What's your time worth?
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Well every time he would say it, something on the back of my neck would stand up because I wanna know what else you were going to be doing with that time.
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Were you going to be taking a nap?
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Well, I guess that's valuable to some of us, but if you're not doing anything else, then your time is just worth the life's time you've been allocated.
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So we cut and sparred back and forth, back and forth, and Kim's health began to go downhill.
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He kept failing medical tests.
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He had heart issues.
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He had
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He had joint issues and so we would have to work segments around Kim's medical appointments and then Kim
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Got worse and there's no reason to be sappy and sad here.
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Most of you know the story on that.
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Kim was the editor of the Bee Culture magazine forever
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By far the longest editor that Bee Culture has ever had in tenure.
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His health declined and declined, and Kim was always optimistic.
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He's going to be taking this radiation therapy and it's going to bring him right back and he'll be good to go again.
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He was optimistic till the day he wasn't here
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So Jeff, the executive director of this podcast, who makes everything sound good, and I did everything we could to work with Kim.
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While he went through all that.
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It really had an effect on me.
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Just after Kim was gone, as he was leaving, my wife got sick.
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I've told you about that through the years.
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It's been today
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It's a year and a half that I've not had my wife.
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And I want to tell you, listener, that you, my friend
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We're right there with me during the darkest times of my life.
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This podcast began to mean ever so much to me.
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It was reality.
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It was an opportunity to come back to the bee yard, sit here and talk to you for a while and things be normal.
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And when I went back in the house, things would be horrifically abnormal.
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I can't tell you how much you meant to me as a listener, giving me focus and direction.
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This is all very selfish because some of you
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who are listening to this were going through or are going through now issues of your own.
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Guess I'm being selfish.
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It was very, very helpful to me to come back to my bee yard.
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I didn't have to do anything.
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Just come back here and let the Duke Bees do their thing like they had always done, like time was endless.
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It wasn't endless.
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I'm trying to tell you straight up, plain talk, that I didn't initially think that this was for me
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And then as time passed and since 2021, so many major changes have occurred in my life and the life of the podcast that it has become
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significantly meaningful to me on this 300th podcast.
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Let's take a break and hear from our sponsor while you try to figure out where is he going with all of this
00:10:42.320 --> 00:10:53.920
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Based in Greenwich, New York, Betterbee serves beekeepers all across the United States.
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Visit betterbee.
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Better be, your partners in Better Beekeeping.
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We'd like to thank Vita Bee Health for supporting this podcast.
00:11:38.360 --> 00:11:49.560
Vita provides proven tools for controlling Varroa, Apistan, and Apiguard to the new Varroxsan extended release oxalic acid strips, helping beekeepers keep stronger.
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healthier colonies.
00:11:51.279 --> 00:11:57.440
After Kim was no longer available, it fell to me to do something.
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Kim and I talked about anything
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We talked about the last meeting we were at.
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We talked about how to have a good meeting.
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We just talked about anything
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But after Kim was gone, that be kind of became a one-sided conversation, with me having a one-sided conversation.
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I
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I began to go back to the bee yard.
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I began to follow my bees more closely, but I didn't really want it to be a how-to segment that you and I were having.
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I wanted it to be that discussion at a bee meeting where we both had seen something in our colonies.
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And we were curious to know if that's appropriate this time of the year, if that's abnormal, whatever it might be.
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I went through that.
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for quite a while.
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Try as I might, I've gotten older and older, and so picking up equipment and lighting smokers and
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ripping into the hives just to see something that I could talk with you about has become more and more of a non-option.
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The bees seem perfectly fine with me not doing that much with them.
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A little mic control and then everything else is on their own.
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I lose some bees in the winter and I talk about that.
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Some of my bees survive the winter and I talk about that
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I don't cut grass as much as I used to.
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Right now I'm in a weedy bee yard with all these plants that are blooming and are there are just foraging insects.
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everywhere.
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There's metallic bees on these blooms.
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So I tried to talk about planting bee plants and bee gardens and whatever, and you know if I just do nothing
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I mean there are bumblebees, there's honey bees, there's metallic solitary bees.
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I just enjoy
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Coming back so much.
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So I've come up with all these sloppy names and I have offended beekeepers en masse who are not where I am on this beekeeping journey
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I love beekeeping, but I really don't love hard, hard, hot, sweaty work.
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I live alone.
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I have three supportive daughters who know where I am all the time.
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They monitor my phone.
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They monitor me if I don't answer the phone on the second call.
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And my closest daughter, I've named that the curse of the closest.
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The one who's the closest is the one who bears the brunt.
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Unfortunately, it seems like I'm just surrounded by death and destruction, but my neighbor of 46 years, her husband died five years ago
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and over the weekend a month ago then she passed.
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So I'm surrounded by these things and they were such good neighbors.
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The man before he passed never complained about the bees being around his watering devices.
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He seemed to like having them there.
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He said they were good for his garden.
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I talked to all these people.
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I talked about the neighbors and what we went through and how close I am.
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I have a long narrow acre
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I put my bees all the way back at the back to get as far away as I can.
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And I've talked about the relationship with neighbors who are not beekeepers.
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I stopped to buy some wood
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for my solo outdoor fire kit from the neighbor down the street who had a giant pile of wood and he didn't know me and I didn't know him.
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As it works out his name is Josh and my name is Jim.
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And I said I live down the street.
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He said, yeah, there's some guy down there who has bees down the street.
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I said, well that that would be me.
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He's a new guy on the street.
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I don't know how he knew that already
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But I'm that guy on the street who has bees and this jungle of a bee yard back here
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Kim and I would come up with different topics to discuss off the cuff.
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It would be something somebody asked about, a suggestion that you made, or something you wanted to hear about that we felt like we could discuss for 20 minutes.
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Topics were always as valuable as gold.
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After Kim was gone and I was trying to pick up the slack and be a one-man band,
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For me, even, it became tedious.
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And I could tell if it's tedious for me, it has to be tedious for you
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And I found Anne Fry, who's a really proficient beekeeper.
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She works for Betterbee.
00:16:27.540 --> 00:16:31.459
And she's become a fairly constant, frequent
00:16:32.079 --> 00:16:33.519
discussion factor here.
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She's gone a long way toward giving you good bee information that I'm just not qualified to give anymore
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I can give you anecdotal information, I can give you historical information, I can give you psychological information, but exactly what you should be doing and what the latest, greatest is.
00:16:52.520 --> 00:16:55.400
I'm far more dated than that.
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This three hundredth episode is, you know nothing special.
00:16:58.840 --> 00:17:06.040
It would it be more special if I make it to four hundred or well, I guess five hundred will be a significant day
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On the 200th episode, I just made a comment that it was my 200th episode and then moved right on.
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But I'm in a different place now, physiologically and psychologically.
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I just wanted you to know how much I've enjoyed doing this for you, how much it's made me think about what bees are doing and why they're doing it.
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It's made me grow.
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It's made me into my probably my last stage of beekeeping.
00:17:35.320 --> 00:17:38.200
My daughters have told me to stop cutting my own grass.
00:17:38.200 --> 00:17:38.919
I've got a
00:17:39.060 --> 00:17:43.780
I'm not, it's an old Kubota tractor, diesel, mower deck on it.
00:17:43.780 --> 00:17:49.060
I've cut my own grass and cut other people's grass since I was 12 years old.
00:17:48.840 --> 00:17:55.880
And my daughters told me, Dad, you got to stop doing that because we don't want you on a tractor by yourself down there since you live alone
00:17:56.560 --> 00:18:04.160
I've often thought that when I come back to the bee yard, I need to have every communication device known to man because nobody comes back here but me.
00:18:04.160 --> 00:18:07.280
This is my little spot in the world.
00:18:07.220 --> 00:18:12.900
And my bees, little spot in the world, if I could say that they're mine.
00:18:12.900 --> 00:18:14.340
Where's all this going?
00:18:14.340 --> 00:18:18.260
I just wanted to tell you, on the 300th episode.
00:18:18.040 --> 00:18:23.640
How much I appreciate you for staying with me during the moody times, the blue times.
00:18:23.640 --> 00:18:29.640
During the bad segments, you know you gotta have bad segments so you can have good segments every now and then.
00:18:29.640 --> 00:18:32.760
You can't tell good if they're all good.
00:18:32.679 --> 00:18:40.200
So every once in a while you just come across the dud that nobody really cares for, and the other times you come across one that really matters
00:18:40.340 --> 00:18:44.020
I'm always looking for unique discussions.
00:18:44.020 --> 00:18:52.179
I've just come across the fact that something that was injected into my knee has a chemical name very close to some of the chemical components.
00:18:51.760 --> 00:18:53.039
of honey bee stings.
00:18:53.120 --> 00:19:00.880
I'm trying to go back to chemistry I cannot understand to see if there's something there that I could talk about.
00:19:00.740 --> 00:19:10.740
It was a discussion this morning that Lyme disease seemingly has miraculously cured a woman who was massively stung by Africanized bees.
00:19:10.919 --> 00:19:15.400
Those kind of things interest me and those kind of things become a discussion topic.
00:19:15.400 --> 00:19:18.120
I don't want to be an authority.
00:19:18.120 --> 00:19:23.960
I want to be a conversationalist with you and you and I talk and you interact and add and
00:19:24.060 --> 00:19:34.700
have your input too on topics that are really right at the cusp of my ability and sometimes easily within my ability.
00:19:35.060 --> 00:19:36.580
Is that enough?
00:19:36.580 --> 00:19:45.300
I hope to be here a hundred episodes from now, five hundred episodes from now, if Jeff can tolerate me and my lateness and my tardiness.
00:19:45.240 --> 00:19:49.000
And my impromptu thing will continue to evolve.
00:19:49.000 --> 00:19:49.400
Dr.
00:19:49.400 --> 00:19:53.160
Masterman has sometimes been involved and has good suggestions.
00:19:53.160 --> 00:19:56.360
I'm going to follow up on some of those.
00:19:57.000 --> 00:20:00.440
As I depart here, I'd like for you just to have a nice segment.
00:20:00.440 --> 00:20:01.720
Think about yourself.
00:20:01.720 --> 00:20:03.720
Think about your own bees.
00:20:03.720 --> 00:20:11.159
Think about this flower field that I'm looking at that has all this activity on these fall flowers on a beautiful day.
00:20:11.440 --> 00:20:14.639
With the gentle breeze blowing on our 300th segment.
00:20:14.639 --> 00:20:17.360
We've come a long way together.
00:20:17.360 --> 00:20:20.480
And I really want to say thank you for it.
00:20:20.480 --> 00:20:24.159
And I hope you stay here for a lot longer.
00:20:24.159 --> 00:20:25.760
On a fairly short episode,
00:20:26.200 --> 00:20:30.760
I'm Jim telling you thank you, and I'll talk to you next week.
00:20:30.760 --> 00:20:31.880
Bye-bye.
00:00:01.280 --> 00:00:07.440
Hi listeners, I'm walking back to my scruffy bee yard.
00:00:07.440 --> 00:00:11.840
It's pretty close to September 10th or so.
00:00:11.840 --> 00:00:14.960
Summer is well underway.
00:00:14.480 --> 00:00:17.680
Goldenrod has maxed out.
00:00:17.680 --> 00:00:19.360
Beginning to wane some.
00:00:21.200 --> 00:00:25.920
This, uh, segment today is selfishly
00:00:27.439 --> 00:00:28.960
from me.
00:00:28.960 --> 00:00:34.079
I've been told that I talk too much about age, but I'm always shocked.
00:00:35.739 --> 00:00:46.059
To suddenly be officially an old man and young people hold doors for you and they let you step up in line and they help you at the airport gate.
00:00:46.560 --> 00:00:48.560
That was always for somebody else.
00:00:48.560 --> 00:00:54.080
That was never going to be me, but here it is, me.
00:00:54.080 --> 00:00:58.800
I gotta get through the barn shed, you know that.
00:01:00.360 --> 00:01:03.720
Listeners, today is my 300th.
00:01:04.920 --> 00:01:08.120
My 300th segment.
00:01:08.120 --> 00:01:10.920
300 times I've said hello here.
00:01:10.920 --> 00:01:12.040
It's Jim Tew
00:01:13.259 --> 00:01:19.579
Coming to you from the bee yard.
00:01:19.579 --> 00:01:21.579
I just can't believe it.
00:01:21.579 --> 00:01:25.179
I'd like to reflect some on that.
00:01:25.179 --> 00:01:27.659
Since January the 10th.
00:01:28.259 --> 00:01:32.100
2021.
00:01:32.100 --> 00:01:35.060
Started then.
00:01:35.060 --> 00:01:39.780
Beekeepers on Jim Tew and 300 times.
00:01:39.780 --> 00:01:42.020
I've come to you once a week.
00:01:43.259 --> 00:01:47.979
trying to talk about something to do with plain talk beekeeping.
00:01:47.979 --> 00:01:57.179
Welcome to Honey Bee Obscura, brought to you by Growing Planet Media, the producers of the Beekeeping Today podcast.
00:01:57.860 --> 00:02:06.659
Join Jim Tew, your guide through the complexities, the beauty, the fun, and the challenges of managing honey bees.
00:02:06.659 --> 00:02:12.660
Jim hosts fun and interesting guests who take a deep dive into the intricate world of honey bees.
00:02:13.340 --> 00:02:21.660
Whether you're a seasoned beekeeper or just getting started, get ready for some plain talk that'll delve into all things honey bees.
00:02:21.900 --> 00:02:27.420
Listeners, uh, I had a web channel, I had a YouTube channel.
00:02:28.060 --> 00:02:37.980
And I made the, uh, decision to really go under that.
00:02:39.140 --> 00:02:51.540
So I spent oh, I don't know, four thousand three thousand five hundred dollars on a on a video camera a Canon high resolution video camera and
00:02:52.680 --> 00:02:56.440
I did the best I could to produce videos.
00:02:56.440 --> 00:03:01.880
I used the Apple system for editing and I really was putting my heart into it.
00:03:01.959 --> 00:03:03.160
I had a few followers.
00:03:03.160 --> 00:03:05.480
I was never doing anything other than just playing.
00:03:05.480 --> 00:03:07.000
I wasn't trying to be
00:03:07.220 --> 00:03:12.980
the end-all, be-all video channel.
00:03:12.980 --> 00:03:17.860
And Kim, Kim Flottum, kept coming to me
00:03:18.580 --> 00:03:23.300
saying he wanted to do a podcast with me.
00:03:23.300 --> 00:03:26.180
And I immediately turned him down.
00:03:26.180 --> 00:03:33.060
Because why would I give up video casting which had pictures and sound?
00:03:32.720 --> 00:03:34.799
Just to do something conversational.
00:03:34.799 --> 00:03:38.319
It seemed like I could have been going backwards.
00:03:38.319 --> 00:03:42.799
Kim was the most persistent fellow that you've ever seen.
00:03:43.180 --> 00:03:47.900
And after a week or two, he came back to me and he pushed me again.
00:03:47.900 --> 00:03:49.260
That this would be fun.
00:03:49.260 --> 00:03:53.420
And you have to, for those of you who knew Kim, you just have to love him.
00:03:53.420 --> 00:03:54.380
That guy
00:03:54.520 --> 00:03:56.280
That guy could sell you anything.
00:03:56.280 --> 00:04:00.760
He kept saying it won't take it won't take 15 minutes a month.
00:04:00.760 --> 00:04:03.480
Let's just do it and see if you like it.
00:04:03.780 --> 00:04:05.220
I still turned him down.
00:04:05.220 --> 00:04:08.580
On the third time, I don't know why I relinquished.
00:04:08.580 --> 00:04:15.700
Maybe I realized that if Kim was right, I did have 15, 20 minutes a month to make two
00:04:16.680 --> 00:04:18.360
Ten minute segments.
00:04:18.360 --> 00:04:19.720
How bad could it be?
00:04:19.720 --> 00:04:21.080
We could talk about anything.
00:04:21.080 --> 00:04:23.800
It was just going to be conversational.
00:04:23.800 --> 00:04:25.720
It was not going to be analytical.
00:04:30.540 --> 00:04:35.580
Sitting at a table during the break at a bee meeting.
00:04:35.580 --> 00:04:39.740
And he wanted that to be that kind of conversation.
00:04:39.740 --> 00:04:41.500
All right, Kim, alright.
00:04:41.500 --> 00:04:42.780
I'll do that
00:04:43.300 --> 00:04:44.740
And I agreed to it.
00:04:44.740 --> 00:04:55.620
And we didn't do two to four ten minute segments before we realized that you could barely get through the introduction and the sponsor announcement
00:04:55.740 --> 00:05:02.940
Before three and a half minutes was already gone, then you had to talk at the speed of light to get any point across.
00:05:03.820 --> 00:05:13.260
So just within a few segments, Kim and I settled comfortably on about a 20 to 25 minutes segment.
00:05:13.580 --> 00:05:17.580
My daughter takes about 20 minutes to drive to work every morning.
00:05:17.580 --> 00:05:26.540
She calls me every morning and she talks while she drives to work and somehow that 20-minute segment seemed to work
00:05:26.740 --> 00:05:28.500
With you people.
00:05:28.500 --> 00:05:34.900
Now when I watch a YouTube channel on a guy getting a truck out of a stump mire or
00:05:35.160 --> 00:05:38.600
A guy finding arrow points along the Ohio River.
00:05:38.600 --> 00:05:42.600
I specifically looked for something around 20 to 25 minutes long.
00:05:42.600 --> 00:05:47.960
It's almost like my attention span has been altered.
00:05:47.920 --> 00:05:54.320
And I have to admit that I had a good time with Kim.
00:05:54.320 --> 00:05:56.880
So most of the time it was a good time.
00:05:56.880 --> 00:05:58.080
Sometimes it was challenging.
00:05:58.080 --> 00:06:02.560
Kim and I were the old Siskel and Ebert kind of relationship.
00:06:03.180 --> 00:06:04.940
We could disagree on things.
00:06:04.940 --> 00:06:08.699
Kim kept saying that eight-frame equipment was the way to go.
00:06:08.699 --> 00:06:10.940
Well I never saw eight-frame equipment.
00:06:10.940 --> 00:06:12.220
I don't mind if you use it.
00:06:12.220 --> 00:06:13.099
I don't have any.
00:06:13.099 --> 00:06:13.740
I like it.
00:06:13.740 --> 00:06:15.500
It's kind of quaint looking
00:06:15.360 --> 00:06:25.760
It's still around, but it's not as popular as the 10-frame, but he never missed a chance to sell eight-frame equipment, saying that as he aged, we needed the lighter weight
00:06:25.940 --> 00:06:30.260
Well as I aged I couldn't tell the weight was that much less.
00:06:30.260 --> 00:06:35.940
It was still too heavy for him and still made me cry and creak when I picked it up, but he loved it.
00:06:35.840 --> 00:06:38.640
So I let it go, but we argued back and forth.
00:06:38.640 --> 00:06:44.080
He wanted to leave Queens in longer and longer and longer to be sure these expensive queens worked
00:06:44.320 --> 00:06:53.520
Released correctly. Longer and longer and longer made me uncomfortable because I didn't know how long the queen had been in the cage when I got her.
00:06:54.020 --> 00:06:59.460
And I didn't want that valuable bug to stay in that cage for something like what, couple of months?
00:06:59.460 --> 00:07:05.140
I didn't know how long she had been banked before I bought her, so we disagreed on things like that.
00:07:05.140 --> 00:07:07.540
But we agreed on a lot of things too
00:07:07.820 --> 00:07:11.500
Kim loved to say, what's your time worth?
00:07:11.500 --> 00:07:19.420
And I never said it on the air, I guess I'm saying it now, but would every time Kim would say it about every other to every third segment, what's your time worth?
00:07:19.660 --> 00:07:21.180
You want to repair frames
00:07:21.240 --> 00:07:22.760
What's your time worth?
00:07:22.760 --> 00:07:25.800
You wanna cut grass in the bee yard every week?
00:07:25.800 --> 00:07:27.160
What's your time worth?
00:07:27.160 --> 00:07:35.880
Well every time he would say it, something on the back of my neck would stand up because I wanna know what else you were going to be doing with that time.
00:07:36.180 --> 00:07:38.900
Were you going to be taking a nap?
00:07:38.900 --> 00:07:48.420
Well, I guess that's valuable to some of us, but if you're not doing anything else, then your time is just worth the life's time you've been allocated.
00:07:48.039 --> 00:07:55.000
So we cut and sparred back and forth, back and forth, and Kim's health began to go downhill.
00:07:55.000 --> 00:07:57.000
He kept failing medical tests.
00:07:57.000 --> 00:07:58.280
He had heart issues.
00:07:58.280 --> 00:07:58.759
He had
00:07:59.320 --> 00:08:06.520
He had joint issues and so we would have to work segments around Kim's medical appointments and then Kim
00:08:07.220 --> 00:08:10.580
Got worse and there's no reason to be sappy and sad here.
00:08:10.580 --> 00:08:12.580
Most of you know the story on that.
00:08:12.580 --> 00:08:16.259
Kim was the editor of the Bee Culture magazine forever
00:08:17.360 --> 00:08:23.360
By far the longest editor that Bee Culture has ever had in tenure.
00:08:23.360 --> 00:08:28.080
His health declined and declined, and Kim was always optimistic.
00:08:27.920 --> 00:08:33.440
He's going to be taking this radiation therapy and it's going to bring him right back and he'll be good to go again.
00:08:33.440 --> 00:08:36.720
He was optimistic till the day he wasn't here
00:08:38.080 --> 00:08:49.680
So Jeff, the executive director of this podcast, who makes everything sound good, and I did everything we could to work with Kim.
00:08:49.420 --> 00:08:50.940
While he went through all that.
00:08:50.940 --> 00:08:54.300
It really had an effect on me.
00:08:54.300 --> 00:08:58.380
Just after Kim was gone, as he was leaving, my wife got sick.
00:08:58.380 --> 00:09:00.620
I've told you about that through the years.
00:09:00.620 --> 00:09:01.980
It's been today
00:09:02.540 --> 00:09:06.940
It's a year and a half that I've not had my wife.
00:09:06.940 --> 00:09:10.459
And I want to tell you, listener, that you, my friend
00:09:11.440 --> 00:09:15.200
We're right there with me during the darkest times of my life.
00:09:15.200 --> 00:09:18.800
This podcast began to mean ever so much to me.
00:09:18.800 --> 00:09:20.960
It was reality.
00:09:21.600 --> 00:09:30.000
It was an opportunity to come back to the bee yard, sit here and talk to you for a while and things be normal.
00:09:30.000 --> 00:09:35.760
And when I went back in the house, things would be horrifically abnormal.
00:09:35.420 --> 00:09:41.100
I can't tell you how much you meant to me as a listener, giving me focus and direction.
00:09:41.100 --> 00:09:43.980
This is all very selfish because some of you
00:09:44.420 --> 00:09:50.660
who are listening to this were going through or are going through now issues of your own.
00:09:50.660 --> 00:09:52.259
Guess I'm being selfish.
00:09:52.259 --> 00:09:56.660
It was very, very helpful to me to come back to my bee yard.
00:09:56.660 --> 00:09:59.060
I didn't have to do anything.
00:09:59.079 --> 00:10:05.480
Just come back here and let the Duke Bees do their thing like they had always done, like time was endless.
00:10:05.480 --> 00:10:07.480
It wasn't endless.
00:10:07.420 --> 00:10:14.300
I'm trying to tell you straight up, plain talk, that I didn't initially think that this was for me
00:10:15.060 --> 00:10:27.140
And then as time passed and since 2021, so many major changes have occurred in my life and the life of the podcast that it has become
00:10:28.140 --> 00:10:34.620
significantly meaningful to me on this 300th podcast.
00:10:34.620 --> 00:10:40.780
Let's take a break and hear from our sponsor while you try to figure out where is he going with all of this
00:10:42.320 --> 00:10:53.920
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00:11:26.040 --> 00:11:27.240
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00:11:34.759 --> 00:11:38.360
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00:11:38.360 --> 00:11:49.560
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00:11:49.920 --> 00:11:51.279
healthier colonies.
00:11:51.279 --> 00:11:57.440
After Kim was no longer available, it fell to me to do something.
00:11:57.440 --> 00:11:59.839
Kim and I talked about anything
00:12:00.320 --> 00:12:02.960
We talked about the last meeting we were at.
00:12:02.960 --> 00:12:05.120
We talked about how to have a good meeting.
00:12:05.360 --> 00:12:07.440
We just talked about anything
00:12:07.600 --> 00:12:15.440
But after Kim was gone, that be kind of became a one-sided conversation, with me having a one-sided conversation.
00:12:15.440 --> 00:12:15.600
I
00:12:15.959 --> 00:12:17.720
I began to go back to the bee yard.
00:12:17.720 --> 00:12:24.279
I began to follow my bees more closely, but I didn't really want it to be a how-to segment that you and I were having.
00:12:24.279 --> 00:12:30.760
I wanted it to be that discussion at a bee meeting where we both had seen something in our colonies.
00:12:30.040 --> 00:12:36.760
And we were curious to know if that's appropriate this time of the year, if that's abnormal, whatever it might be.
00:12:36.760 --> 00:12:38.519
I went through that.
00:12:38.339 --> 00:12:40.500
for quite a while.
00:12:40.500 --> 00:12:46.339
Try as I might, I've gotten older and older, and so picking up equipment and lighting smokers and
00:12:46.480 --> 00:12:53.840
ripping into the hives just to see something that I could talk with you about has become more and more of a non-option.
00:12:53.840 --> 00:12:58.080
The bees seem perfectly fine with me not doing that much with them.
00:12:58.080 --> 00:13:01.280
A little mic control and then everything else is on their own.
00:13:02.080 --> 00:13:05.280
I lose some bees in the winter and I talk about that.
00:13:05.280 --> 00:13:08.880
Some of my bees survive the winter and I talk about that
00:13:09.259 --> 00:13:11.740
I don't cut grass as much as I used to.
00:13:11.740 --> 00:13:19.180
Right now I'm in a weedy bee yard with all these plants that are blooming and are there are just foraging insects.
00:13:19.120 --> 00:13:19.760
everywhere.
00:13:19.760 --> 00:13:22.880
There's metallic bees on these blooms.
00:13:22.880 --> 00:13:30.560
So I tried to talk about planting bee plants and bee gardens and whatever, and you know if I just do nothing
00:13:31.120 --> 00:13:37.279
I mean there are bumblebees, there's honey bees, there's metallic solitary bees.
00:13:37.279 --> 00:13:39.360
I just enjoy
00:13:40.180 --> 00:13:41.620
Coming back so much.
00:13:41.620 --> 00:13:52.580
So I've come up with all these sloppy names and I have offended beekeepers en masse who are not where I am on this beekeeping journey
00:13:54.060 --> 00:14:02.380
I love beekeeping, but I really don't love hard, hard, hot, sweaty work.
00:14:02.380 --> 00:14:04.300
I live alone.
00:14:04.420 --> 00:14:09.620
I have three supportive daughters who know where I am all the time.
00:14:09.620 --> 00:14:10.980
They monitor my phone.
00:14:10.980 --> 00:14:15.220
They monitor me if I don't answer the phone on the second call.
00:14:15.140 --> 00:14:20.340
And my closest daughter, I've named that the curse of the closest.
00:14:20.340 --> 00:14:24.580
The one who's the closest is the one who bears the brunt.
00:14:24.720 --> 00:14:32.560
Unfortunately, it seems like I'm just surrounded by death and destruction, but my neighbor of 46 years, her husband died five years ago
00:14:32.540 --> 00:14:36.220
and over the weekend a month ago then she passed.
00:14:36.300 --> 00:14:41.019
So I'm surrounded by these things and they were such good neighbors.
00:14:41.019 --> 00:14:47.260
The man before he passed never complained about the bees being around his watering devices.
00:14:47.140 --> 00:14:48.980
He seemed to like having them there.
00:14:48.980 --> 00:14:51.380
He said they were good for his garden.
00:14:51.380 --> 00:14:53.140
I talked to all these people.
00:14:53.140 --> 00:14:57.140
I talked about the neighbors and what we went through and how close I am.
00:14:57.140 --> 00:14:59.460
I have a long narrow acre
00:15:00.120 --> 00:15:05.240
I put my bees all the way back at the back to get as far away as I can.
00:15:05.240 --> 00:15:09.720
And I've talked about the relationship with neighbors who are not beekeepers.
00:15:09.720 --> 00:15:11.800
I stopped to buy some wood
00:15:12.220 --> 00:15:22.540
for my solo outdoor fire kit from the neighbor down the street who had a giant pile of wood and he didn't know me and I didn't know him.
00:15:22.540 --> 00:15:26.860
As it works out his name is Josh and my name is Jim.
00:15:27.040 --> 00:15:29.440
And I said I live down the street.
00:15:29.440 --> 00:15:33.440
He said, yeah, there's some guy down there who has bees down the street.
00:15:33.440 --> 00:15:35.680
I said, well that that would be me.
00:15:35.680 --> 00:15:37.280
He's a new guy on the street.
00:15:37.360 --> 00:15:39.760
I don't know how he knew that already
00:15:40.120 --> 00:15:47.240
But I'm that guy on the street who has bees and this jungle of a bee yard back here
00:15:48.400 --> 00:15:52.480
Kim and I would come up with different topics to discuss off the cuff.
00:15:52.480 --> 00:16:02.960
It would be something somebody asked about, a suggestion that you made, or something you wanted to hear about that we felt like we could discuss for 20 minutes.
00:16:02.320 --> 00:16:05.600
Topics were always as valuable as gold.
00:16:05.600 --> 00:16:11.360
After Kim was gone and I was trying to pick up the slack and be a one-man band,
00:16:11.840 --> 00:16:14.400
For me, even, it became tedious.
00:16:14.400 --> 00:16:18.640
And I could tell if it's tedious for me, it has to be tedious for you
00:16:19.620 --> 00:16:25.459
And I found Anne Fry, who's a really proficient beekeeper.
00:16:25.459 --> 00:16:27.540
She works for Betterbee.
00:16:27.540 --> 00:16:31.459
And she's become a fairly constant, frequent
00:16:32.079 --> 00:16:33.519
discussion factor here.
00:16:33.519 --> 00:16:40.639
She's gone a long way toward giving you good bee information that I'm just not qualified to give anymore
00:16:40.500 --> 00:16:52.740
I can give you anecdotal information, I can give you historical information, I can give you psychological information, but exactly what you should be doing and what the latest, greatest is.
00:16:52.520 --> 00:16:55.400
I'm far more dated than that.
00:16:55.400 --> 00:16:58.840
This three hundredth episode is, you know nothing special.
00:16:58.840 --> 00:17:06.040
It would it be more special if I make it to four hundred or well, I guess five hundred will be a significant day
00:17:05.800 --> 00:17:12.040
On the 200th episode, I just made a comment that it was my 200th episode and then moved right on.
00:17:12.040 --> 00:17:17.160
But I'm in a different place now, physiologically and psychologically.
00:17:17.560 --> 00:17:28.360
I just wanted you to know how much I've enjoyed doing this for you, how much it's made me think about what bees are doing and why they're doing it.
00:17:28.840 --> 00:17:29.960
It's made me grow.
00:17:29.960 --> 00:17:35.320
It's made me into my probably my last stage of beekeeping.
00:17:35.320 --> 00:17:38.200
My daughters have told me to stop cutting my own grass.
00:17:38.200 --> 00:17:38.919
I've got a
00:17:39.060 --> 00:17:43.780
I'm not, it's an old Kubota tractor, diesel, mower deck on it.
00:17:43.780 --> 00:17:49.060
I've cut my own grass and cut other people's grass since I was 12 years old.
00:17:48.840 --> 00:17:55.880
And my daughters told me, Dad, you got to stop doing that because we don't want you on a tractor by yourself down there since you live alone
00:17:56.560 --> 00:18:04.160
I've often thought that when I come back to the bee yard, I need to have every communication device known to man because nobody comes back here but me.
00:18:04.160 --> 00:18:07.280
This is my little spot in the world.
00:18:07.220 --> 00:18:12.900
And my bees, little spot in the world, if I could say that they're mine.
00:18:12.900 --> 00:18:14.340
Where's all this going?
00:18:14.340 --> 00:18:18.260
I just wanted to tell you, on the 300th episode.
00:18:18.040 --> 00:18:23.640
How much I appreciate you for staying with me during the moody times, the blue times.
00:18:23.640 --> 00:18:29.640
During the bad segments, you know you gotta have bad segments so you can have good segments every now and then.
00:18:29.640 --> 00:18:32.760
You can't tell good if they're all good.
00:18:32.679 --> 00:18:40.200
So every once in a while you just come across the dud that nobody really cares for, and the other times you come across one that really matters
00:18:40.340 --> 00:18:44.020
I'm always looking for unique discussions.
00:18:44.020 --> 00:18:52.179
I've just come across the fact that something that was injected into my knee has a chemical name very close to some of the chemical components.
00:18:51.760 --> 00:18:53.039
of honey bee stings.
00:18:53.120 --> 00:19:00.880
I'm trying to go back to chemistry I cannot understand to see if there's something there that I could talk about.
00:19:00.740 --> 00:19:10.740
It was a discussion this morning that Lyme disease seemingly has miraculously cured a woman who was massively stung by Africanized bees.
00:19:10.919 --> 00:19:15.400
Those kind of things interest me and those kind of things become a discussion topic.
00:19:15.400 --> 00:19:18.120
I don't want to be an authority.
00:19:18.120 --> 00:19:23.960
I want to be a conversationalist with you and you and I talk and you interact and add and
00:19:24.060 --> 00:19:34.700
have your input too on topics that are really right at the cusp of my ability and sometimes easily within my ability.
00:19:35.060 --> 00:19:36.580
Is that enough?
00:19:36.580 --> 00:19:45.300
I hope to be here a hundred episodes from now, five hundred episodes from now, if Jeff can tolerate me and my lateness and my tardiness.
00:19:45.240 --> 00:19:49.000
And my impromptu thing will continue to evolve.
00:19:49.000 --> 00:19:49.400
Dr.
00:19:49.400 --> 00:19:53.160
Masterman has sometimes been involved and has good suggestions.
00:19:53.160 --> 00:19:56.360
I'm going to follow up on some of those.
00:19:57.000 --> 00:20:00.440
As I depart here, I'd like for you just to have a nice segment.
00:20:00.440 --> 00:20:01.720
Think about yourself.
00:20:01.720 --> 00:20:03.720
Think about your own bees.
00:20:03.720 --> 00:20:11.159
Think about this flower field that I'm looking at that has all this activity on these fall flowers on a beautiful day.
00:20:11.440 --> 00:20:14.639
With the gentle breeze blowing on our 300th segment.
00:20:14.639 --> 00:20:17.360
We've come a long way together.
00:20:17.360 --> 00:20:20.480
And I really want to say thank you for it.
00:20:20.480 --> 00:20:24.159
And I hope you stay here for a lot longer.
00:20:24.159 --> 00:20:25.760
On a fairly short episode,
00:20:26.200 --> 00:20:30.760
I'm Jim telling you thank you, and I'll talk to you next week.
00:20:30.760 --> 00:20:31.880
Bye-bye.
