Feb. 27, 2025
Electric Bee Smokers, Dangers of Fertilizers, Crazy Beekeeping Stories
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On this episode we learn about a fun new beekeeping product in development, an electric smoker that works as easy as the push of a button.
Our guest is Michael Erpenbeck from Technically Beekeeping. We discuss beekeeping in the Chicago area, new inventions for beekeepers, wild & crazy beekeeping stories, and much more!
In our bees in the news section, we discuss a new study that highlights the dangers of fertilizers to honey bees and other pollinators. Also discussed, apiaries in solar power farms.
Beekeeping and the beekeepers, it's all about he love of honey bees!
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Special thanks to our presenting sponsor, Mann Lake! https://www.mannlakeltd.com/
Mann Lake discount code: MLBEELOVE10 for $10 off a $100 order.
https://www.beelovebeekeeping.com/
https://technicallybeekeeping.com/
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4Ps_QYnc1X188fkq50qpDE-uhzDD_Sre
Transcript
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May I have your attention please? The following is not the real Jeff Vox review.
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If your formerly white beekeeping suit looks like you washed it in orange
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propolis, you might be a beekeeper. If once a year your kitchen becomes sticky
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from floor to ceiling, you might be a beekeeper. If the thought of someone
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microwaving crystalized honey makes your skin crawl, you might be a beekeeper.
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Welcome, welcome to Be Love Beekeeping presented by our good friends at Man Lake.
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In this episode we'll be talking with Michael Erpenbeck about his beekeeping journey
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and, and this is the cool part, his new invention which is an electric bee smoker.
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But first, let's see what's the latest news in the honey bee world.
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First we have data from a study out of England that shows that excessive use of fertilizers is killing bees and flowers.
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Let me read a couple of quotes here. The research which is published in the journal NPJ Biodiversity
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shows that even moderate application of nitrogen fertilizers leads to a dramatic decrease in flower numbers,
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reducing them by five-fold while also having the population of pollinating insects like bees.
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Kind of makes sense, fewer flowers, fewer pollinators. The study goes on to say as you increase fertilizers,
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pollinator numbers decrease. That's the direct link that our knowledge is never shown before.
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It's having a drastic effect on flowers and insects. The knock-on effect goes right up the food chain.
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Now let me explain just a little bit because that may sound slightly counterintuitive.
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This study is based on grassland areas. Let me quote another piece here.
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Almost a quarter of the Earth's land area is agricultural grassland, contributing to the livelihoods of over 800 million people.
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While fertilization methods have boosted global food production, it has come at a substantial environmental cost,
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leading to an increase in air and water pollution as well as loss of biodiversity.
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Strikingly, the research found a near-doubling in pollinator abundance and richness in the untreated areas
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versus the areas that were treated with high levels of fertilizers.
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I'm not a scientist, but this is not specifically saying that fertilizers like nitrogen are in themselves killing honeybees.
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What it is saying is that when more grass grows up, there are less flowers, therefore there are less bees and other pollinators.
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So bottom line, let's think about how we're doing things. Whether you live on a farm or in a suburban or even urban environment,
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what can we learn from this? How should we go about doing things in the future?
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And then this interesting article about solar panels and bees.
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Dominion Energy has announced plans to add beehives to its black bear solar farm in Dillwood, Virginia.
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It may seem like solar panels and bees wouldn't go together, but what they're saying is this is actually an example of the growing field of agrivoltaics,
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which seems to pair solar farms with actual farms using the shade provided by the panels to enhance the growing of certain crops,
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providing space for sheep to graze, or in this case, to shelter beehives.
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The theory is that the solar panels will give the beehives cover.
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The bees will pollinate surrounding crops, which in turn will help create a cooler microclimate, helping to increase solar panel efficiency.
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So if everything works right, these kinds of solar farms with honeybees will provide more energy,
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and the surrounding farmers will get healthier crops than if either type of farm had been attempted alone.
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So there have been studies done on this overseas with sheep grazing and winemaking and other kinds of things around solar panels taking advantage of the shade.
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And, you know, seems like a good idea. Let's see where this goes down the road.
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If we can create clean energy and help pollinate more crops seems like a good thing for everybody.
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That's our news for today. Now let's jump right into the interview.
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I'd like to welcome to the show today Michael Erpenbeck. Did I get it right this time, Michael?
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You got it right.
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Hallelujah. I messed it up three times. We're editing that stuff out. But you live in the Chicago area, right?
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I do. Yeah, I live in a little bit north of Chicago.
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So just about a mile, sorry, about an hour north of Chicago.
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Now we're going to talk today about your beekeeping journey and about how your engineer side has jumped in.
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And you've actually invented some new products that I think are going to be awesome.
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And you're still working out a couple of bugs, but we'll get into that.
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It's going to be a fun conversation.
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But we're going to do things a little bit backwards today and start with Michael's wild and crazy beekeeping story.
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What do you want to tell us about?
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So I'll start out with the one that happened with my sister.
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So my sister, she took over the family house.
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She ended up inheriting the family house where we had bees for my mom.
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And it's kind of funny. She ended up having a party to celebrate that.
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And so she said, I want to move the bees. And this was in the middle of summer, worst, worst possible time.
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Wanted to move it just 20 feet away from the house.
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I said, no, said no, like five times. She finally guilted me into it.
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And so I ended up going at dusk, packing up all the bees, moving them.
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But I hadn't realized that I had actually thrown my hive tool in with my beeval and had ripped the beeval.
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So I ended up getting stung probably three times in the face from this adventure.
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Went to the party the next day and everybody said, why are you beekeeping Michael?
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You know, this is horrible.
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And it ended up coming off without a hitch other than my sister ended up getting stung, which I actually kind of saw as karma.
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So she was the only person that got stung at the party other than myself moving the bees.
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Crazy thing. But yeah, that was that was a fun time.
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Admit it. You loved it when she got stung.
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Oh, I loved it. Yeah. Luckily, it was just in the leg. But yeah, she it was one of those freak things like honey bees don't just fly up to you and sting you.
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So I'm pretty sure they knew who was who was involved in this.
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They are very smart. They are.
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Give us a little bit of history. You're a second generation beekeeper, right?
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Yep. Yeah. So I'm a second generation beekeeper.
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So, you know, going back into the 80s, you know, we there were no varroa.
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So, you know, as far as that goes, much easier time to keep bees, but my parents had probably about 20 hives.
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And, you know, we would do fun things like go to the state fair and enter, you know, honey into honey competitions.
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My sister was actually the Kentucky Honey Queen, which is like educational and promotional program for young women to be able to talk about bees.
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And they get to wear a crown and go around the country kind of representing beekeeping, which is really a fun thing, you know, looking back and, you know, remembering those times.
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They'd be part of parades and things like that. And it was always a fun time.
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Yeah, as far as going back to being a second generation beekeeper, that's kind of how I got into this journey.
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I was surprised about six years ago, getting back into beekeeping that, you know, we're still using the old equipment that we use.
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And as a kid, I remember having my dad light the smoker for me because it was too dangerous for me to light on my own.
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And, you know, in today's world, certainly people are much more conscious about handing a child a tool like that.
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And so it's one of the things that started to kind of kick up in my mind of, you know, remembering how much fun it was beekeeping with my family and thinking,
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why are we still using these dangerous tools that, you know, aren't our family friendly?
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Any idea when a bee smoker was invented?
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Yeah, it was in the 1850s. So that's when the patents came out around the bee smoker.
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The gentleman's name was Moses. He invented it.
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When you really look at it, it hasn't been innovated on very much in a very long time.
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People have put things like fans on the back of it instead of the bellows.
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You know, people have changed out the fire chamber to put paperization technologies and things like that onto it, but still have bellows.
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But, you know, you don't really see anybody taking the whole design and saying, how do we just make this super simple where you just press a button?
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That's what I'm trying to do right now with my invention.
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And I'm guessing it helped that you stepped away from beekeeping for a while, came back.
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So you had sort of fresh eyes. It wasn't just, oh, this is the way we've always done it.
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Yeah, certainly.
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But no offense to, was it Moses? This is very old technology.
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I mean, this feels a little bit like caveman technology smokers do, no offense, but it's about time we've got something new.
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I know one of the things that drives me crazy.
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Yeah, just to get the name was Moses Quinby.
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Moses Quinby. And I've talked about this, I think, on this show before.
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Where I am, I have to worry about the fire danger.
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But my other issue is sometimes I'm only going out and working two or three hives at a time.
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And by the time I've got that smoker going, which takes a while and I put a bunch of fuel in and then I'm done.
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Yeah.
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Well, it's still going.
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And I either have to figure out how to put it out or put it somewhere safe to let it just burn itself out for a while.
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And I would love something where I could that's not going to start a fire and I could just grab it, push a button, smoke the bees a little bit and be done and only be using as much fuel as I need and things like that.
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So tell us a little bit about your invention.
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Yeah, and Eric, I completely agree with you that that's that's part of what what I what also got me into it.
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So part of what got me into this is that when I get into working with my bees, I'm looking at something like, you know, what what is the egg laying pattern look like or whatever.
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My smoker actually dies on me at that at that exact moment right always always seems to be you know you start getting really into it.
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And I call it smoker babysitting right where you have to light it, you have to keep it lit, and then you have to tend to it after it's lit.
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You know, sometimes for quite a while I put mine into a trailer at my B yard.
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And it's got a wooden floor I come back the next day and all the fuel has burnt out even though I thought that I had extinguished it or I throw it out on the ground next to the trailer and you know I see a little bird spot and I'm like oh I thought that was completely out.
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And so you have to realize that there's a lot of distraction that happens with that and I think you know I want to focus on the bees not on the smoker.
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Yeah, that's a really good point.
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Okay, now you were recently with this product and some others, by the way, at the North American Honeybee Expo.
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Go ahead and tell us what the reaction was like when you showed this to people.
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But first you better explain because we can't see it right now. What does this contraption look like? How does it work?
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Sure. Yeah, so one I start out with how it works and then I can actually tell you how it developed also.
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That might be helpful to understand how it got to where it is.
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So the way it works is imagine a power drill where you have a battery attached to it and you can just slide the battery in like you would in a normal power tool.
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And then you have a cartridge that contains liquid, food grade liquids, that is also detachable and you can attach it onto the smoker, press one single button and then you're smoking your bees.
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Does it take any time to warm up or anything like that?
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Nope, it's instantaneous. I just press the button and smoke comes out.
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What did you say the smoke is made from?
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So it's made out of food grade oils. So I have a mixture that I make that is mimicking the smell of smoke.
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So what I've found is you can use floral scents and things like that that will distract the bees.
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But we can go deeper into the smoky smell.
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But what I have found is that it creates engorging in the bees and that it actually works very similar to the way that smoke works with bees.
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So what I'm trying to do is get to that smoky smell that the bees react to.
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Could you also add something in that would kill Varroa mites while you're at it?
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I haven't built that one yet.
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But I actually am looking at certain types of smells that detract from different types of pests like small hive beetle, for example, they don't like the smell of peppermint.
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So I'm wondering if, for example, maybe we can put a peppermint oil in there and that will chase them off, right?
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So there's different types of things that I think we can do over time that will, again, a lot of this is working with the beekeeping community as a beekeeper myself.
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And just trying to learn from other people, you know, what have you used in the past?
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Like I say, some beekeepers I talk to, they're like, well, I use peppermint candies in my hive.
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And it's like, well, okay, maybe if we use peppermint oil, it'll have the same smell that forces out small hive beetles.
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So there's a lot of that type of experimentation that I think is really useful to come up with different applications for this other than just smoking your bees.
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Just a quick break here to thank our presenting sponsor, Man Lake.
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Birds chirping, flowers blooming and bees buzzing.
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Now let's visualize you enjoying beekeeping so much more with some new gear.
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And don't forget your discount code MLBLOV10, it's in the show notes, for $10 off your first $100 purchase.
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I'm feeling better already. Now back to the guest.
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So you had a line of people at the Expo wanting to see this. What was the general reaction?
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The general reaction was really, really very supportive. I was very, very happy to see how supportive everyone was at the BXBow.
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So I actually went to both the North American BXBow and then recently the Midwest Honey Bee Expo.
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Both places, yeah, people were amazingly supportive of the products.
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I think part of it is the simplicity where it's just, it's basically a power tool for beekeepers.
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So as sort of a power tool for beekeepers, you don't really have to do anything.
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You just press a button and you load it up with big grade oils, right?
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But as far as the amount of people coming to the booth, yeah, I was really impressed by just how many people ended up showing interest.
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And actually a lot of them also want to help out with productizing this.
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So they want to help out with making it the best smoker that's possible.
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And that's part of sort of the journey here, right, is not to just say, here's a liquid that's perfect and you're going to use this or you're going to use that.
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It's really to involve the beekeeping community and have a journey of discovery to figure this out.
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Well, and just in case somebody thinks this is some sort of infomercial, not only are we not getting paid for this, but you can't even buy this yet.
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Right. And actually I had a lot of people come up at the show and you'd see the man would be standing there with his hands, you know, crossed.
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And I would say, well, this isn't for sale. And all of a sudden his hands were done crossing.
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He'd say, darn it, I wouldn't buy it.
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I was trying to act tough. Sell me.
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Oh, wait, you can't.
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Yeah, there was no sales pitch there. Yeah.
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And so they actually start asking me, can I buy the prototype or something like that?
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But yeah, the the the funny thing is, like you say, it's not for sale right now.
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I'm just trying to prototype it.
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And I'm working with beekeepers to send them prototypes.
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I have like a spring prototyping.
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I have a what's called an insider club where I'm allowing insiders.
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I should probably explain that.
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So I have a VIP club, which is called a very important beekeeper club.
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And they're helping me to prototype this.
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I have what's called an insider club, which is people that sign NDA so that we can show them the newest and greatest stuff.
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And this spring, what I'm doing is working with them to use it in their own apiaries to test out the different smells, different floral smells, different smoke smells.
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And I see what the bees react to giving them just labels on their A through F, you know, which one did you like the best, which one did your bees like the best, or which ones did your bees react to the best, I should say.
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Getting that feedback from lots of different people.
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Like you say, I think a lot of people are reacting to this very, very favorably because it's just a very open model, right?
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Like I'm not, not trying to sell people on the product or anything else. I'm just honestly, I'm just trying to help the beekeeping community to not have to deal with the smoker anymore.
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Yeah. Love the way you're doing it. Your brain doesn't just stop with smokers.
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I saw something that you put together that's for jar feeder. Will you explain that?
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Sure. So for the jar feeder, I've developed a, well, I started out with this question with the jar feeder. It is, how do I make the perfect hole size for a jar feeder?
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And I tried different permutations of that with different holes, different patterns.
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And I'd also made an open close version of the jar feeder where you just open it and close it with a handle.
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And what was interesting is the bees reacted the same for all of them. And so what I had done is I had taken a deep, and I had put on the bottom of the deep hole where the bees come through the center.
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And then above that, I have four different holes with feeders in them, where the bees have 25% chance of going to one of those holes.
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And then I have cameras on the bottom that are taking pictures of what the bees are actually doing on an hourly basis.
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And so in looking at the film footage, what I ended up finding was that there were really no big differentiators between whether the bees liked one different hole size better than the other, one different pattern better than the other.
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What I ended up finding was that there's actually a traction issue with jar feeders.
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And the traction issue is that with most of the feeders, including most of the metal feeders that you have out there that are DIY, they can't actually get a good footing.
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And so when you actually watch the footage, you actually see the bees claw going into one of the holes as they're feeding.
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And so if there's more holes, they typically just put their claws into the holes, and then they feed from one of the other holes.
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And so what I started to realize is there's this traction issue, because with this open-close version that I had with handle, I actually started seeing bees hanging off of the handle and holding on and feeding really vigorously.
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And I'm like, well, what's the difference there?
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Because the hole size is the same, the pattern is nothing unusual.
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And so I just kept racking my brain on it and racking my brain on it.
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And I started to realize, oh, you know, there's traction on that handle, and the bees really like that.
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And so I went back to the drawing board and said, what can I do with that in order to give it more traction?
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And I started looking at different materials and I said, well, what about sponge?
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Because sponge, it has a really good ability for bees to hang upside down on, first off.
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And then secondly, it becomes a membrane for the entire community to be able to drink from.
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And what I ended up finding is that the bees were really super vigorously feeding off of it.
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I think it also helps that the sponge also permeates a lot of that snarl so that the bees can find it really quickly and come to it really quickly.
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Now, I made a big mistake. We really should have started with an explanation.
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Because if we have some new beekeepers listening, they're going, what is a jar feeder?
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What's a jar feeder?
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Sure.
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So I'm going to give a very brief explanation.
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Correct me if I don't get it right.
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If you, for example, took a quart jar, like something, you know, the fruits in or whatever, a quart glass jar, the metal lid that goes on it.
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If you were to then take that and poke a bunch of small holes in it, when you put the sugar syrup in it, turn it upside down so that the lid is on the bottom.
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Then either a little bit drips through or the bees somehow have a way of making a little bit drip through at a time.
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Did I say that okay?
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Yeah, exactly.
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So it's just a canning jar and people turn them upside down.
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And oftentimes you can use something like a pin to prick holes into it.
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Some people even use nails.
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And so the real quandary is what is the right size?
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And part of this is that when you turn it upside down, and I have videos on this that we could also show on how the vacuum works.
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But when you turn the jar feeder upside down, what happens is a vacuum builds up in that jar.
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And so it doesn't spill out.
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A lot of people would think, well, I'm turning this upside down, pulls in it, why doesn't just push out to the bottom.
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But it doesn't push out because a vacuum seals in just at the right level where the bees can come up and feed from a droplets that come out of it.
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And so I started with the jar feeder just because I thought it was kind of an interesting question that I'd never seen answered before of how do you build the perfect bee feeder using a jar feeder.
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And it really kind of went down a really deep hole, which ended up being really interesting because, like I say, I don't think it works the way most people think it does.
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I think a lot of people just do it because they've always done it that way.
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Like I say, a lot of the issues that I found with traction make a lot of sense when you see, for example, a lot of people who distribute these jar feeders as like commercial product already pre-drilled holes in these jar feeders.
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They don't put a center hole.
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And part of it is because bees can't get to the center hole because of the traction issue.
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So part of what I'm trying to do is build a better jar feeder so that's simple. You just put in an insert into a jar feeder and you can feed your bees really easily.
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I was just going to say so I can buy some of those right now, right?
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No, no, no.
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No, not that either.
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I'm like the king of I think or so.
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I love the way your brain is working.
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You're taking super old technology and just trying to make it a little bit better or a lot better.
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So as beekeepers, we appreciate that.
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I want to learn something about beekeeping from you.
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I imagine it's a quite a cold climate.
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Is it very wet where you are?
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It's very cold.
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It's not very wet.
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So in Chicago, beekeeping is more about keeping the bees alive through the northern winters.
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So a lot of it is trying to deal with beekeeping when it's negative 16 degrees Fahrenheit out.
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It can be a challenge for that reason.
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I use polyhaggs myself.
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I'm not necessarily saying it's the best technology out there, but I personally use polyhaggs,
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which are made out of polycyrene.
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So the walls of them have an R value of five, meaning it's insulated.
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And it helps in both the hotter summers that we get and also the colder winters that we get.
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Because in Chicago, the actual weather varies very significantly in comparison to most places in the world.
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Like if you go to certain places in California, it only varies by tens of degrees sometimes.
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But you go to Chicago and the summers can be over 100 degrees and the winters can be negative tens and things like that.
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So it can vary very widely.
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So for you and other beekeepers in the area, what's your average survival rate in the winter?
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It's about 50 to 75 percent for me.
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And it depends, obviously, on how they were going into winter.
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And then I split pretty heavily in the spring.
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What's your favorite way of splitting?
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Actually, what I'm looking at is maybe getting a keeper's hive in the next year and using some of the Damare method of being able to move the frames.
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But as far as splitting goes, my favorite way is just to take half of the hive.
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So what I'll end up doing is building up a second deep, take that second deep, put it over on the side,
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and then either I'll buy a queen from a breeder or I'll end up taking that second hive.
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And maybe sometimes I'll even raise our own queen.
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So a walkaway split or?
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Walkaway split, yeah.
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Yeah, or you're going to buy a queen and put in the new box.
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Okay, what's your secret sauce for Varroa mites?
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I don't want to get into a whole treatment thing, but I do use oxalic acid a couple of times a year.
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So I think as far as oxalic acid goes, I'm sure there's some people that love it, some people that hate it, but that's kind of the way that I go.
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All right, I'm going to ask you to tell us about one other thing.
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You said that you had two great wild and crazy beekeeping stories.
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The other one happened to a member of your family has something to do with a cow.
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Let's hear it.
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Sure.
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Yeah, so yeah, this is all hearsay, right?
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And urban legend.
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But yeah, my dad ended up calling up my mom and saying, hey, one of the cows pushed over one of the hives.
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And she said, well, I don't have a suit with me.
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And so she said, I'll go back to the house.
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I'll get the suit.
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And because this is at our farm, not at our house, we were keeping a lot of our bees.
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And so yeah, she ended up saying, well, I don't have a suit. My dad said, well, you don't need one. Just push it back in place.
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It's not that bad.
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So she got there and she started pushing it in place.
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And you can imagine bees everywhere.
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She's getting stunned.
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She calls my dad and says, you're going to have to take care of this.
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And she's super angry.
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So he comes back out and he says, did you run to the red barn?
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And she's like, yeah.
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She's like, how did you know? And he said, well, there were pieces of clothing all the way from one place to the other.
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Because she must have gotten stung a hundred times.
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Oh, one of those stories that she always comes back to, like, you always should go out with a bee suit, right?
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And you should always come prepared working with bees.
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And marital advice?
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Marital advice.
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You should never tell your wife to go fix a beehive without a suit on.
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Exactly. Yeah, that's the other one.
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I imagine he never heard the end of that.
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No, he never.
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Well, she still sells a story.
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So, okay.
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Yeah, he never heard the never heard the end of it.
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She's 85.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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All right, Michael, was there anything else you wanted to share with us today?
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I'll talk a little bit more about two pieces.
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That's okay.
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Do it.
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One is how did I get here as far as the the bee smoker and how did I build it?
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I think one of the things that was really interesting when I started doing the YouTube channel and talking about the bee smoker is the demographics of people that started to come out of the woodwork.
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And so I kind of expected that a lot of beginner beekeepers would be interested in it.
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People that are commercial beekeepers who just want a convenience, maybe they're really good with their traditional smoker and they want an alternative.
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But what was interesting is a lot of people with disabilities started to reach out to new people with issues with smoke, people that had issues with their hand.
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So, for example, a guy named Lee contacted me and said, hey, I'm 85 years old.
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I can't do a bellows anymore because of my arthritis on my hands.
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I want to have a one button smoker.
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Right.
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And so that was one of the interesting things that started to come out from it.
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The other is that I started to realize that a lot of people that were signing up for my very important beekeeper club were actually coming from hotter places, things like Australia and from California from Texas.
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And I was kind of scratching my head for a while, like what's what's the interest in those areas.
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And it was really interesting because I started talking to them and say we have fire bands and so there are large swatches of time where we either can't use our smoker or we feel self conscious about using it because we might start a fire.
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And so one of the things that I've tried to do in developing this is to make it super safe.
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In other words, like you can put the nozzle up to your hand and it doesn't burn you, right.
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So those are some of the things that started to come out in the data that I started to realize.
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And so this has a lot of real world things that can help people right.
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In other words, it's not just a convenience thing.
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It actually is something that can help the beekeeping community, not only in being able to do things faster like I would have talked about the smoker babysitting, but also it can help out a great deal with people with disabilities with not starting fires.
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And like I had said earlier, people that have families that also want to show the experience with their kids and not get their kids burnt.
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So it's not just a fun gadget and I love gadgets.
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Okay, what was the other thing?
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It's not just a fun gadget.
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The other thing is how I developed it.
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As far as how did I come up with the idea, I actually started out with a meat smoker.
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And I think a lot of people kind of get curious how did I start out with this.
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So I started out with the meat smoker and meat smokers are devices that you use for smoking meats like steak and then also seafood and those types of things to give them like a smoky smell.
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And so I looked up on Amazon, I'm like, what also produces smoke.
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And I found that there were a lot of these meat smokers.
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And so I started buying those and using them with my bees and started to realize these.
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They seem to have the same reaction with the bees as a traditional smoker, you know, because I'm burning this fuel.
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After using it for about a year that way, I started to realize that, you know, there's easier ways to use a smoker than stuffing, you know, a fire, fire can like we do.
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After that, I ended up going into building my next prototype, my next prototype, you can see on my YouTube channel, it's probably easier to see, you know, on video, how these things evolved.
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But finally getting to where I am now.
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And yeah, it's been a really cool journey.
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On a side note, I had a young family come up to my booth at the North American B expo, and a little girl came up and said, I love the smoke, you know, they're all playing with it.
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There's four kids there and they're all running the smoker and have fun.
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And the little girl comes up to me and says, I love it, but it needs bubbles.
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Right. And so you can see on my Facebook page and also on my YouTube page that we actually just for the fun of it, we went out and got some of the little bubble on and we were able to run it with bubbles the next day.
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Smoked bubbles. The kids love that.
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We're trying to have fun with it too, just, you know, include the younger generation, you know, and have fun with it.
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Right. Well, thanks for being with me today. If anybody wants to find your more information, it's at technically be keeping dot com.
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Yeah. And then we also have the YouTube channel, which is YouTube dot com at technically deep keeping.
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Thanks a lot, Michael.
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Thanks again for joining us here on be love beekeeping presented by man Lake.
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Another great place for more information on everything related to this podcast is in our email newsletter.
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You can sign up for it for free at be love beekeeping dot com.
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And remember, if you're not just in it for the honey or the money, you're in it for the love.
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See you next week.
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May I have your attention please? The following is not the real Jeff Vox review.
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If your formerly white beekeeping suit looks like you washed it in orange
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propolis, you might be a beekeeper. If once a year your kitchen becomes sticky
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from floor to ceiling, you might be a beekeeper. If the thought of someone
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microwaving crystalized honey makes your skin crawl, you might be a beekeeper.
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Welcome, welcome to Be Love Beekeeping presented by our good friends at Man Lake.
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In this episode we'll be talking with Michael Erpenbeck about his beekeeping journey
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and, and this is the cool part, his new invention which is an electric bee smoker.
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But first, let's see what's the latest news in the honey bee world.
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First we have data from a study out of England that shows that excessive use of fertilizers is killing bees and flowers.
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Let me read a couple of quotes here. The research which is published in the journal NPJ Biodiversity
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shows that even moderate application of nitrogen fertilizers leads to a dramatic decrease in flower numbers,
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reducing them by five-fold while also having the population of pollinating insects like bees.
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Kind of makes sense, fewer flowers, fewer pollinators. The study goes on to say as you increase fertilizers,
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pollinator numbers decrease. That's the direct link that our knowledge is never shown before.
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It's having a drastic effect on flowers and insects. The knock-on effect goes right up the food chain.
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Now let me explain just a little bit because that may sound slightly counterintuitive.
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This study is based on grassland areas. Let me quote another piece here.
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Almost a quarter of the Earth's land area is agricultural grassland, contributing to the livelihoods of over 800 million people.
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While fertilization methods have boosted global food production, it has come at a substantial environmental cost,
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leading to an increase in air and water pollution as well as loss of biodiversity.
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Strikingly, the research found a near-doubling in pollinator abundance and richness in the untreated areas
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versus the areas that were treated with high levels of fertilizers.
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I'm not a scientist, but this is not specifically saying that fertilizers like nitrogen are in themselves killing honeybees.
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What it is saying is that when more grass grows up, there are less flowers, therefore there are less bees and other pollinators.
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So bottom line, let's think about how we're doing things. Whether you live on a farm or in a suburban or even urban environment,
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what can we learn from this? How should we go about doing things in the future?
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And then this interesting article about solar panels and bees.
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Dominion Energy has announced plans to add beehives to its black bear solar farm in Dillwood, Virginia.
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It may seem like solar panels and bees wouldn't go together, but what they're saying is this is actually an example of the growing field of agrivoltaics,
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which seems to pair solar farms with actual farms using the shade provided by the panels to enhance the growing of certain crops,
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providing space for sheep to graze, or in this case, to shelter beehives.
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The theory is that the solar panels will give the beehives cover.
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The bees will pollinate surrounding crops, which in turn will help create a cooler microclimate, helping to increase solar panel efficiency.
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So if everything works right, these kinds of solar farms with honeybees will provide more energy,
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and the surrounding farmers will get healthier crops than if either type of farm had been attempted alone.
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So there have been studies done on this overseas with sheep grazing and winemaking and other kinds of things around solar panels taking advantage of the shade.
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And, you know, seems like a good idea. Let's see where this goes down the road.
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If we can create clean energy and help pollinate more crops seems like a good thing for everybody.
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That's our news for today. Now let's jump right into the interview.
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I'd like to welcome to the show today Michael Erpenbeck. Did I get it right this time, Michael?
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You got it right.
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Hallelujah. I messed it up three times. We're editing that stuff out. But you live in the Chicago area, right?
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I do. Yeah, I live in a little bit north of Chicago.
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So just about a mile, sorry, about an hour north of Chicago.
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Now we're going to talk today about your beekeeping journey and about how your engineer side has jumped in.
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And you've actually invented some new products that I think are going to be awesome.
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And you're still working out a couple of bugs, but we'll get into that.
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It's going to be a fun conversation.
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But we're going to do things a little bit backwards today and start with Michael's wild and crazy beekeeping story.
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What do you want to tell us about?
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So I'll start out with the one that happened with my sister.
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So my sister, she took over the family house.
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She ended up inheriting the family house where we had bees for my mom.
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And it's kind of funny. She ended up having a party to celebrate that.
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And so she said, I want to move the bees. And this was in the middle of summer, worst, worst possible time.
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Wanted to move it just 20 feet away from the house.
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I said, no, said no, like five times. She finally guilted me into it.
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And so I ended up going at dusk, packing up all the bees, moving them.
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But I hadn't realized that I had actually thrown my hive tool in with my beeval and had ripped the beeval.
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So I ended up getting stung probably three times in the face from this adventure.
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Went to the party the next day and everybody said, why are you beekeeping Michael?
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You know, this is horrible.
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And it ended up coming off without a hitch other than my sister ended up getting stung, which I actually kind of saw as karma.
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So she was the only person that got stung at the party other than myself moving the bees.
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Crazy thing. But yeah, that was that was a fun time.
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Admit it. You loved it when she got stung.
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Oh, I loved it. Yeah. Luckily, it was just in the leg. But yeah, she it was one of those freak things like honey bees don't just fly up to you and sting you.
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So I'm pretty sure they knew who was who was involved in this.
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They are very smart. They are.
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Give us a little bit of history. You're a second generation beekeeper, right?
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Yep. Yeah. So I'm a second generation beekeeper.
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So, you know, going back into the 80s, you know, we there were no varroa.
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So, you know, as far as that goes, much easier time to keep bees, but my parents had probably about 20 hives.
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And, you know, we would do fun things like go to the state fair and enter, you know, honey into honey competitions.
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My sister was actually the Kentucky Honey Queen, which is like educational and promotional program for young women to be able to talk about bees.
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And they get to wear a crown and go around the country kind of representing beekeeping, which is really a fun thing, you know, looking back and, you know, remembering those times.
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They'd be part of parades and things like that. And it was always a fun time.
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Yeah, as far as going back to being a second generation beekeeper, that's kind of how I got into this journey.
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I was surprised about six years ago, getting back into beekeeping that, you know, we're still using the old equipment that we use.
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And as a kid, I remember having my dad light the smoker for me because it was too dangerous for me to light on my own.
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And, you know, in today's world, certainly people are much more conscious about handing a child a tool like that.
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And so it's one of the things that started to kind of kick up in my mind of, you know, remembering how much fun it was beekeeping with my family and thinking,
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why are we still using these dangerous tools that, you know, aren't our family friendly?
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Any idea when a bee smoker was invented?
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Yeah, it was in the 1850s. So that's when the patents came out around the bee smoker.
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The gentleman's name was Moses. He invented it.
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When you really look at it, it hasn't been innovated on very much in a very long time.
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People have put things like fans on the back of it instead of the bellows.
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You know, people have changed out the fire chamber to put paperization technologies and things like that onto it, but still have bellows.
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But, you know, you don't really see anybody taking the whole design and saying, how do we just make this super simple where you just press a button?
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That's what I'm trying to do right now with my invention.
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And I'm guessing it helped that you stepped away from beekeeping for a while, came back.
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So you had sort of fresh eyes. It wasn't just, oh, this is the way we've always done it.
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Yeah, certainly.
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But no offense to, was it Moses? This is very old technology.
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I mean, this feels a little bit like caveman technology smokers do, no offense, but it's about time we've got something new.
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I know one of the things that drives me crazy.
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Yeah, just to get the name was Moses Quinby.
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Moses Quinby. And I've talked about this, I think, on this show before.
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Where I am, I have to worry about the fire danger.
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But my other issue is sometimes I'm only going out and working two or three hives at a time.
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And by the time I've got that smoker going, which takes a while and I put a bunch of fuel in and then I'm done.
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Yeah.
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Well, it's still going.
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And I either have to figure out how to put it out or put it somewhere safe to let it just burn itself out for a while.
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And I would love something where I could that's not going to start a fire and I could just grab it, push a button, smoke the bees a little bit and be done and only be using as much fuel as I need and things like that.
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So tell us a little bit about your invention.
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Yeah, and Eric, I completely agree with you that that's that's part of what what I what also got me into it.
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So part of what got me into this is that when I get into working with my bees, I'm looking at something like, you know, what what is the egg laying pattern look like or whatever.
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My smoker actually dies on me at that at that exact moment right always always seems to be you know you start getting really into it.
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And I call it smoker babysitting right where you have to light it, you have to keep it lit, and then you have to tend to it after it's lit.
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You know, sometimes for quite a while I put mine into a trailer at my B yard.
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And it's got a wooden floor I come back the next day and all the fuel has burnt out even though I thought that I had extinguished it or I throw it out on the ground next to the trailer and you know I see a little bird spot and I'm like oh I thought that was completely out.
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And so you have to realize that there's a lot of distraction that happens with that and I think you know I want to focus on the bees not on the smoker.
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Yeah, that's a really good point.
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Okay, now you were recently with this product and some others, by the way, at the North American Honeybee Expo.
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Go ahead and tell us what the reaction was like when you showed this to people.
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But first you better explain because we can't see it right now. What does this contraption look like? How does it work?
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Sure. Yeah, so one I start out with how it works and then I can actually tell you how it developed also.
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That might be helpful to understand how it got to where it is.
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So the way it works is imagine a power drill where you have a battery attached to it and you can just slide the battery in like you would in a normal power tool.
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And then you have a cartridge that contains liquid, food grade liquids, that is also detachable and you can attach it onto the smoker, press one single button and then you're smoking your bees.
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Does it take any time to warm up or anything like that?
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Nope, it's instantaneous. I just press the button and smoke comes out.
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What did you say the smoke is made from?
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So it's made out of food grade oils. So I have a mixture that I make that is mimicking the smell of smoke.
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So what I've found is you can use floral scents and things like that that will distract the bees.
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But we can go deeper into the smoky smell.
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But what I have found is that it creates engorging in the bees and that it actually works very similar to the way that smoke works with bees.
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So what I'm trying to do is get to that smoky smell that the bees react to.
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Could you also add something in that would kill Varroa mites while you're at it?
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I haven't built that one yet.
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But I actually am looking at certain types of smells that detract from different types of pests like small hive beetle, for example, they don't like the smell of peppermint.
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So I'm wondering if, for example, maybe we can put a peppermint oil in there and that will chase them off, right?
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So there's different types of things that I think we can do over time that will, again, a lot of this is working with the beekeeping community as a beekeeper myself.
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And just trying to learn from other people, you know, what have you used in the past?
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Like I say, some beekeepers I talk to, they're like, well, I use peppermint candies in my hive.
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And it's like, well, okay, maybe if we use peppermint oil, it'll have the same smell that forces out small hive beetles.
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So there's a lot of that type of experimentation that I think is really useful to come up with different applications for this other than just smoking your bees.
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Just a quick break here to thank our presenting sponsor, Man Lake.
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And don't forget your discount code MLBLOV10, it's in the show notes, for $10 off your first $100 purchase.
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I'm feeling better already. Now back to the guest.
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So you had a line of people at the Expo wanting to see this. What was the general reaction?
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The general reaction was really, really very supportive. I was very, very happy to see how supportive everyone was at the BXBow.
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So I actually went to both the North American BXBow and then recently the Midwest Honey Bee Expo.
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Both places, yeah, people were amazingly supportive of the products.
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I think part of it is the simplicity where it's just, it's basically a power tool for beekeepers.
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So as sort of a power tool for beekeepers, you don't really have to do anything.
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You just press a button and you load it up with big grade oils, right?
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But as far as the amount of people coming to the booth, yeah, I was really impressed by just how many people ended up showing interest.
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And actually a lot of them also want to help out with productizing this.
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So they want to help out with making it the best smoker that's possible.
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And that's part of sort of the journey here, right, is not to just say, here's a liquid that's perfect and you're going to use this or you're going to use that.
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It's really to involve the beekeeping community and have a journey of discovery to figure this out.
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Well, and just in case somebody thinks this is some sort of infomercial, not only are we not getting paid for this, but you can't even buy this yet.
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Right. And actually I had a lot of people come up at the show and you'd see the man would be standing there with his hands, you know, crossed.
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And I would say, well, this isn't for sale. And all of a sudden his hands were done crossing.
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He'd say, darn it, I wouldn't buy it.
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I was trying to act tough. Sell me.
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Oh, wait, you can't.
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Yeah, there was no sales pitch there. Yeah.
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And so they actually start asking me, can I buy the prototype or something like that?
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But yeah, the the the funny thing is, like you say, it's not for sale right now.
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I'm just trying to prototype it.
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And I'm working with beekeepers to send them prototypes.
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I have like a spring prototyping.
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I have a what's called an insider club where I'm allowing insiders.
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I should probably explain that.
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So I have a VIP club, which is called a very important beekeeper club.
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And they're helping me to prototype this.
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I have what's called an insider club, which is people that sign NDA so that we can show them the newest and greatest stuff.
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And this spring, what I'm doing is working with them to use it in their own apiaries to test out the different smells, different floral smells, different smoke smells.
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And I see what the bees react to giving them just labels on their A through F, you know, which one did you like the best, which one did your bees like the best, or which ones did your bees react to the best, I should say.
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Getting that feedback from lots of different people.
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Like you say, I think a lot of people are reacting to this very, very favorably because it's just a very open model, right?
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Like I'm not, not trying to sell people on the product or anything else. I'm just honestly, I'm just trying to help the beekeeping community to not have to deal with the smoker anymore.
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Yeah. Love the way you're doing it. Your brain doesn't just stop with smokers.
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I saw something that you put together that's for jar feeder. Will you explain that?
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Sure. So for the jar feeder, I've developed a, well, I started out with this question with the jar feeder. It is, how do I make the perfect hole size for a jar feeder?
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And I tried different permutations of that with different holes, different patterns.
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And I'd also made an open close version of the jar feeder where you just open it and close it with a handle.
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And what was interesting is the bees reacted the same for all of them. And so what I had done is I had taken a deep, and I had put on the bottom of the deep hole where the bees come through the center.
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And then above that, I have four different holes with feeders in them, where the bees have 25% chance of going to one of those holes.
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And then I have cameras on the bottom that are taking pictures of what the bees are actually doing on an hourly basis.
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And so in looking at the film footage, what I ended up finding was that there were really no big differentiators between whether the bees liked one different hole size better than the other, one different pattern better than the other.
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What I ended up finding was that there's actually a traction issue with jar feeders.
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And the traction issue is that with most of the feeders, including most of the metal feeders that you have out there that are DIY, they can't actually get a good footing.
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And so when you actually watch the footage, you actually see the bees claw going into one of the holes as they're feeding.
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And so if there's more holes, they typically just put their claws into the holes, and then they feed from one of the other holes.
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And so what I started to realize is there's this traction issue, because with this open-close version that I had with handle, I actually started seeing bees hanging off of the handle and holding on and feeding really vigorously.
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And I'm like, well, what's the difference there?
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Because the hole size is the same, the pattern is nothing unusual.
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And so I just kept racking my brain on it and racking my brain on it.
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And I started to realize, oh, you know, there's traction on that handle, and the bees really like that.
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And so I went back to the drawing board and said, what can I do with that in order to give it more traction?
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And I started looking at different materials and I said, well, what about sponge?
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Because sponge, it has a really good ability for bees to hang upside down on, first off.
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And then secondly, it becomes a membrane for the entire community to be able to drink from.
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And what I ended up finding is that the bees were really super vigorously feeding off of it.
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I think it also helps that the sponge also permeates a lot of that snarl so that the bees can find it really quickly and come to it really quickly.
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Now, I made a big mistake. We really should have started with an explanation.
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Because if we have some new beekeepers listening, they're going, what is a jar feeder?
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What's a jar feeder?
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Sure.
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So I'm going to give a very brief explanation.
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Correct me if I don't get it right.
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If you, for example, took a quart jar, like something, you know, the fruits in or whatever, a quart glass jar, the metal lid that goes on it.
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If you were to then take that and poke a bunch of small holes in it, when you put the sugar syrup in it, turn it upside down so that the lid is on the bottom.
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Then either a little bit drips through or the bees somehow have a way of making a little bit drip through at a time.
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Did I say that okay?
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Yeah, exactly.
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So it's just a canning jar and people turn them upside down.
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And oftentimes you can use something like a pin to prick holes into it.
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Some people even use nails.
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And so the real quandary is what is the right size?
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And part of this is that when you turn it upside down, and I have videos on this that we could also show on how the vacuum works.
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But when you turn the jar feeder upside down, what happens is a vacuum builds up in that jar.
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And so it doesn't spill out.
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A lot of people would think, well, I'm turning this upside down, pulls in it, why doesn't just push out to the bottom.
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But it doesn't push out because a vacuum seals in just at the right level where the bees can come up and feed from a droplets that come out of it.
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And so I started with the jar feeder just because I thought it was kind of an interesting question that I'd never seen answered before of how do you build the perfect bee feeder using a jar feeder.
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And it really kind of went down a really deep hole, which ended up being really interesting because, like I say, I don't think it works the way most people think it does.
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I think a lot of people just do it because they've always done it that way.
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Like I say, a lot of the issues that I found with traction make a lot of sense when you see, for example, a lot of people who distribute these jar feeders as like commercial product already pre-drilled holes in these jar feeders.
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They don't put a center hole.
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And part of it is because bees can't get to the center hole because of the traction issue.
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So part of what I'm trying to do is build a better jar feeder so that's simple. You just put in an insert into a jar feeder and you can feed your bees really easily.
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I was just going to say so I can buy some of those right now, right?
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No, no, no.
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No, not that either.
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I'm like the king of I think or so.
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I love the way your brain is working.
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You're taking super old technology and just trying to make it a little bit better or a lot better.
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So as beekeepers, we appreciate that.
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I want to learn something about beekeeping from you.
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I imagine it's a quite a cold climate.
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Is it very wet where you are?
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It's very cold.
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It's not very wet.
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So in Chicago, beekeeping is more about keeping the bees alive through the northern winters.
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So a lot of it is trying to deal with beekeeping when it's negative 16 degrees Fahrenheit out.
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It can be a challenge for that reason.
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I use polyhaggs myself.
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I'm not necessarily saying it's the best technology out there, but I personally use polyhaggs,
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which are made out of polycyrene.
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So the walls of them have an R value of five, meaning it's insulated.
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And it helps in both the hotter summers that we get and also the colder winters that we get.
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Because in Chicago, the actual weather varies very significantly in comparison to most places in the world.
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Like if you go to certain places in California, it only varies by tens of degrees sometimes.
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But you go to Chicago and the summers can be over 100 degrees and the winters can be negative tens and things like that.
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So it can vary very widely.
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So for you and other beekeepers in the area, what's your average survival rate in the winter?
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It's about 50 to 75 percent for me.
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And it depends, obviously, on how they were going into winter.
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And then I split pretty heavily in the spring.
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What's your favorite way of splitting?
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Actually, what I'm looking at is maybe getting a keeper's hive in the next year and using some of the Damare method of being able to move the frames.
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But as far as splitting goes, my favorite way is just to take half of the hive.
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So what I'll end up doing is building up a second deep, take that second deep, put it over on the side,
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and then either I'll buy a queen from a breeder or I'll end up taking that second hive.
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And maybe sometimes I'll even raise our own queen.
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So a walkaway split or?
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Walkaway split, yeah.
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Yeah, or you're going to buy a queen and put in the new box.
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Okay, what's your secret sauce for Varroa mites?
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I don't want to get into a whole treatment thing, but I do use oxalic acid a couple of times a year.
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So I think as far as oxalic acid goes, I'm sure there's some people that love it, some people that hate it, but that's kind of the way that I go.
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All right, I'm going to ask you to tell us about one other thing.
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You said that you had two great wild and crazy beekeeping stories.
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The other one happened to a member of your family has something to do with a cow.
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Let's hear it.
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Sure.
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Yeah, so yeah, this is all hearsay, right?
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And urban legend.
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But yeah, my dad ended up calling up my mom and saying, hey, one of the cows pushed over one of the hives.
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And she said, well, I don't have a suit with me.
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And so she said, I'll go back to the house.
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I'll get the suit.
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And because this is at our farm, not at our house, we were keeping a lot of our bees.
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And so yeah, she ended up saying, well, I don't have a suit. My dad said, well, you don't need one. Just push it back in place.
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It's not that bad.
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So she got there and she started pushing it in place.
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And you can imagine bees everywhere.
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She's getting stunned.
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She calls my dad and says, you're going to have to take care of this.
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And she's super angry.
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So he comes back out and he says, did you run to the red barn?
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And she's like, yeah.
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She's like, how did you know? And he said, well, there were pieces of clothing all the way from one place to the other.
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Because she must have gotten stung a hundred times.
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Oh, one of those stories that she always comes back to, like, you always should go out with a bee suit, right?
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And you should always come prepared working with bees.
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And marital advice?
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Marital advice.
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You should never tell your wife to go fix a beehive without a suit on.
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Exactly. Yeah, that's the other one.
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I imagine he never heard the end of that.
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No, he never.
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Well, she still sells a story.
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So, okay.
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Yeah, he never heard the never heard the end of it.
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She's 85.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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All right, Michael, was there anything else you wanted to share with us today?
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I'll talk a little bit more about two pieces.
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That's okay.
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Do it.
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One is how did I get here as far as the the bee smoker and how did I build it?
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I think one of the things that was really interesting when I started doing the YouTube channel and talking about the bee smoker is the demographics of people that started to come out of the woodwork.
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And so I kind of expected that a lot of beginner beekeepers would be interested in it.
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People that are commercial beekeepers who just want a convenience, maybe they're really good with their traditional smoker and they want an alternative.
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But what was interesting is a lot of people with disabilities started to reach out to new people with issues with smoke, people that had issues with their hand.
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So, for example, a guy named Lee contacted me and said, hey, I'm 85 years old.
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I can't do a bellows anymore because of my arthritis on my hands.
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I want to have a one button smoker.
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Right.
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And so that was one of the interesting things that started to come out from it.
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The other is that I started to realize that a lot of people that were signing up for my very important beekeeper club were actually coming from hotter places, things like Australia and from California from Texas.
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And I was kind of scratching my head for a while, like what's what's the interest in those areas.
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And it was really interesting because I started talking to them and say we have fire bands and so there are large swatches of time where we either can't use our smoker or we feel self conscious about using it because we might start a fire.
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And so one of the things that I've tried to do in developing this is to make it super safe.
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In other words, like you can put the nozzle up to your hand and it doesn't burn you, right.
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So those are some of the things that started to come out in the data that I started to realize.
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And so this has a lot of real world things that can help people right.
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In other words, it's not just a convenience thing.
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It actually is something that can help the beekeeping community, not only in being able to do things faster like I would have talked about the smoker babysitting, but also it can help out a great deal with people with disabilities with not starting fires.
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And like I had said earlier, people that have families that also want to show the experience with their kids and not get their kids burnt.
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So it's not just a fun gadget and I love gadgets.
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Okay, what was the other thing?
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It's not just a fun gadget.
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The other thing is how I developed it.
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As far as how did I come up with the idea, I actually started out with a meat smoker.
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And I think a lot of people kind of get curious how did I start out with this.
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So I started out with the meat smoker and meat smokers are devices that you use for smoking meats like steak and then also seafood and those types of things to give them like a smoky smell.
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And so I looked up on Amazon, I'm like, what also produces smoke.
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And I found that there were a lot of these meat smokers.
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And so I started buying those and using them with my bees and started to realize these.
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They seem to have the same reaction with the bees as a traditional smoker, you know, because I'm burning this fuel.
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After using it for about a year that way, I started to realize that, you know, there's easier ways to use a smoker than stuffing, you know, a fire, fire can like we do.
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After that, I ended up going into building my next prototype, my next prototype, you can see on my YouTube channel, it's probably easier to see, you know, on video, how these things evolved.
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But finally getting to where I am now.
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And yeah, it's been a really cool journey.
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On a side note, I had a young family come up to my booth at the North American B expo, and a little girl came up and said, I love the smoke, you know, they're all playing with it.
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There's four kids there and they're all running the smoker and have fun.
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And the little girl comes up to me and says, I love it, but it needs bubbles.
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Right. And so you can see on my Facebook page and also on my YouTube page that we actually just for the fun of it, we went out and got some of the little bubble on and we were able to run it with bubbles the next day.
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Smoked bubbles. The kids love that.
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We're trying to have fun with it too, just, you know, include the younger generation, you know, and have fun with it.
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Right. Well, thanks for being with me today. If anybody wants to find your more information, it's at technically be keeping dot com.
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Yeah. And then we also have the YouTube channel, which is YouTube dot com at technically deep keeping.
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Thanks a lot, Michael.
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Thanks again for joining us here on be love beekeeping presented by man Lake.
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Another great place for more information on everything related to this podcast is in our email newsletter.
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You can sign up for it for free at be love beekeeping dot com.
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And remember, if you're not just in it for the honey or the money, you're in it for the love.
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See you next week.
