Laurence meets Jurgen Binder on Bees, Hive Management and Better Results
In this on‑camera interview at Apimondia, host Laurence talks with German beekeeping educator Jürgen Binder about the essentials for novice and intermediate beekeepers. They stress that the first step is simply becoming a beekeeper, then focusing on bee health, which includes recognizing diseases such as EFB, AFB, sac brood, chalk brood, and Nosema, and maintaining the hive temperature at around 35 °C. A large portion of the conversation covers hive insulation: wooden hives are preferred over polystyrene because of environmental concerns; insulation should be placed primarily above the brood cluster (roof or crown board) to provide thermal inertia, while walls can be less insulated to allow condensation to drain. Alternative natural insulators like straw, cork, or reclaimed poly‑brood boxes are discussed. They advise limiting apiary size to 8‑12 colonies to avoid foraging stress and to keep management manageable. Inspection philosophy is highlighted – inspections should have a clear purpose, be minimized as experience grows, and aggressive colonies should be inspected last to prevent pheromone spread. Queen selection focuses on consistent temperament (calm, “puppy‑dog” bees) and brood pattern health; they sell F1 queens with a guarantee of calmness, offering replacement if needed. The dialogue also touches on the importance of ongoing education, community support, and the broader impact of planting bee‑friendly flora, arguing that improving landscape can be more effective than hive tweaks alone.
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I am here with Jürgen Binder from Germany, and we got chatting at Apimondia. Turns out he is in beekeeping education too, so I thought I'd take this opportunity to get him to speak to camera and give you some advice. This man knows everything. So Jürgen, pleased to meet you.
Hi. Hi.
So give me some advice for my followers, my beginner beekeepers. I want you to teach them how to become better beekeepers.
How to become a beekeeper?
Yeah, or a better beekeeper.
A better beekeeper?
Yeah.
You first should become a beekeeper.
That's step number one. Before you become a better beekeeper, become a beekeeper.
Become a rubbish one. Okay, then. You know, My beekeeping school, the English name of my beekeeping school is Better Beekeeping.
Better Beekeeping. Okay, cool. Nice.
I want to teach the people to have bees which are more healthy.
More healthy. Okay.
Bee health is the most important thing to be happy with your bees.
I couldn't agree more. Yeah. And I think a lot of people around the world, but in the UK, they sometimes do this with beekeeping. They don't want to look. They say, oh yeah, I don't want to look for that. But I like to teach them and show them every method to work out if they've got EFB or AFB or sac brood or chalk brood or Nosema. And unless you've got an understanding of all of these things, you don't know what it is.
Yes, but these are already illnesses. Yeah, these are all these illnesses. I mean, there is a wide range. Bees can live but are not healthy.
Okay.
And I think what is very important for bees is temperature. Yeah. Bees have a temperature in itself. This is 35 degrees.
Yeah.
And if we offer our bees a box, a house, a living room. Yeah. We should give the bees an insulated living room as we use it.
This man is already talking my language. So if I could offer you a wooden hive or a poly hive, insulated poly hive, which one would you choose?
I would choose the wooden hive.
Oh, you would choose the wooden hive?
I would choose the wooden hive. Yeah. In the first view, this polyesterine hive is better. Yeah. Because it's better insulated.
Yeah.
There are two problems during this, in my opinion. Yeah. First problem is it is a petroleum product.
Okay. Yeah. No plastic.
And we waste We waste our environment sooner or later. Later, after 20-30 years, then we throw it away. Okay. And we have already thrown too much plastic in our environment.
We have.
This is the most important reason, in my opinion.
Very good reason. I'll come back to it at the end. I'll let you do quickly what I—
And the second point is we can— the mass of this polystyrene is little.
Okay, yeah, yeah.
And if if we would get a big mass to temperature, and this mass would be heated, it keeps temperature, and it keeps the temperature stable.
Thermal inertia.
And that's why I was not inventing it, but I developed methods to insulate the existing wooden hives.
Nice.
To improve the space, the living room for the bees. In winter, it's small. In summer, it's bigger.
Oh, nice. Flexible sizing.
A flexible size to somehow imitate the polystyrene. And this is a— and I do it with straw.
With straw?
You can do it also with other better materials, but then you go again to plastics or petroleum.
So 2 things. First one, I did this. I had a little project like this. Yeah, I bought myself— so on a wooden beehive, I bought myself some insulated cork. cork foam board. So it's just cork, natural product. And I clad the outside of 2 sides.
Yes.
And then I had to do internal cladding on the other 2. And it worked really well. Like it made it more insulative. It reduced the footprint down a little bit. And I had to work out a way to hold the box because I'd filled in. But it was really good. And I think it didn't— it might not have given you the same U-value as polystyrene. But there's no plastic, there's no petroleum, there's no chemicals. So I like that. And then the second one was, you're like this. Yeah. So I bought myself About 100 Suyenti polybrood boxes, and I'm really not a massive fan of the design. So I don't want to sell them to someone because I don't think they're a very good box, and I definitely don't want to chuck them away because of what a waste of plastic. So guess what I'm doing with them? I'm dismantling them because they're modular. Yeah, and in my apiary, I'm cladding an internal kitchen. I've got a kitchen at my apiary with the old beehives. So they will be there forever as insulation still. I'm not chucking them away. He's good, isn't it?
This guy is crazy, isn't he?
You've got— you hit the nail on the head. This guy is crazy. Well, that's a brilliant introduction. What other advice? So advice number 1 was insulation is key. Where is the best place?
So advice number 1 was first become a beekeeper and then later, yes, you can maybe become a better beekeeper.
Advice number 1, become a beekeeper. Step number 2, insulation is good. But where is the most important place to put the insulation in the beehive then?
The most important place?
Yeah.
Inside.
Inside. Okay, so what I teach people on my programmes, yeah, we have at the bottom of our wooden hives and our poly hives, we have like an open mesh floor.
Yes.
And then in America, there's a— it's not fashionable, but what they have is like top ventilation.
Yes.
And I do not like top ventilation. So I teach people that the best place and the place where you want the best insulation is directly above the cluster. And then you want the walls to be less insulated than the roof. Yeah. So when the condensation forms, it tracks down the walls.
I agree.
Falls out the bottom. So you agree? Okay. So that's— so we say even on a wooden hive, if you just insulate the top, like with a crown board, that's actually— that's probably the best. That's the first place that you want it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But listen, they are here in the conference. There is a guy from France and he is insulating even much more and even reducing The the flow of the air. Yeah, it is even more successful.
Okay.
And for for me, I know him. I I understand his system. But you know, you have to be very experienced to work with this system. And that's why I I suggest finding a good compromise to improve the wooden or the the existing boxes. I like the existing boxes. with small, small things.
Yeah, it's evolution as opposed to revolution.
Instead of coming with something completely new, you have to buy it new, you have to learn how to use it new, and there are a lot of dangers. I tell you, dear young or beginning beekeeper, beekeeping is not easy.
It's not.
Beekeeping is funny.
Yeah, challenging.
It makes happy. But it is hard work. To treat the bees in a good way is not easy.
It's not.
You have to learn it, to learn to read the bees, like you have to learn to read a book.
Yeah, I agree.
It's a language.
It is. And sometimes you do that, don't you? You kind of like, you crack the crown board and you open it and you go to pull the first frame. You're like, oh, they're just— the behavior is a little bit different. I'm going to close it up. It's not right. Leave it, little tiny puff of smoke, leave them for 10 minutes, come back, and they're calm again, aren't they? You just, you get to read and understand what's going on, I think.
That's it. And sometimes beehives don't want to be disturbed.
No.
I have this seldom, 2 or 3 times a year, when I come to a beehive, and even with smoking, they attack me, and they tell me, don't touch me today.
Yeah, and you see it if, you know, if you've got like wasps buzzing around, and all of the flowers have shriveled up, and then you start going in and taking Things out. The bees are just like, "No, do not come in now." And this is part of the thing that I teach everyone on my channel in that you need to do inspections when you need to do inspections. And then if you don't, if you if you can't say to yourself, what is the reason that I'm going in to do an inspection? You shouldn't be inspecting your bees. Yeah, we do. We talk. We know. We know.
Main inspection. Yeah.
Because what's the point? Well, you're going to add is risk.
Yes. Kill the queen. The more experienced you get, the less inspections are necessary. But I tell you a story. When I was beginner, yeah, go on. Uh, I had 30 beehives in one place.
Okay.
And I learned from somebody stupid things.
Yeah.
Open all beehives and then start to work. And then I opened all beehives.
Wow.
30 beehives.
Yeah.
And then I started thinking, why have I opened these beehives? And I did not know No. Why opening?
I told you.
You know what? I closed every beehive and I went home without doing everything, anything. And this was such an important moment for me. You first have to know why you are going to the beehive and why opening and what to do. And of course, as a beginner, you don't know this.
You don't.
But you learn it.
You don't. And another thing that I see when I go into my hives like that, Say you go into an apiary and there's 30 colonies and most of them are calm and friendly and there's like 2 or 3 that are just, you know, they're the angry ones and they get you. And then you do them at the end, don't you? Because they kick off and they start causing all this problem throughout the rest of the apiary. I find if you do them at the beginning, then even the friendly colonies get, you know, the pheromones there, the attack pheromone, and it just, it leads to a really unpleasant experience. Whereas if you leave the angrier ones to the end, it's a lot nicer. And it's just, it's that experience, isn't it? Learning how to work.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the bigger an apiary is, The more difficult it is in the end.
Yeah.
So in my opinion, not more than 8 or 10 beehives should be in one place.
We are talking the same language. I remember the biggest mistake that I ever made. This is how bad a beekeeper I was. Yeah. I didn't want to take the feed to all of the different apiaries. Yeah. So I brought all of the bees back to one apiary, about 150 colonies, and fed them there. And I had 30% die. Yeah, overwinter. I was running apiaries with 30 or 40.
In which countries?
In UK.
Aha.
I was running—
In the south, this is possible.
Kind of middle.
Sicilia, Spain, Italy, it's possible.
Okay. But what I learned was having 30 or 40 colonies in an apiary is not right. So I tell my people now, 8 to 12 maximum, no more than 12, because 12 is a nice number because it fits like 4 on a pallet.
Yeah.
But I had to learn that the hard way. And it's true, as soon as you start putting more colonies in there, you get diminishing returns for more work. So who wants to do like less for more or more for less?
And you know why? Because of course the bees are searching, looking for food. And if you have too many bees in one place, they don't find enough food and they just basically share it between all of the hives.
That meant if you've got less hives, they're just going to get more.
Yes.
So we have less or more stress?
There is more stress if there are too many bees close together. Yeah. It's like in a big city. There is much more stress than in the countryside.
There is. Right, so we've covered loads there. Any other good tips that you can give to my viewers? How can you make them a better beekeeper?
To take lessons and to listen to the experienced beekeeper. Yeah.
That sounds like I paid Jürgen to say that and we're advertising for Beekeeper. Jörg is a beekeeping educator as well.
But yeah, you know, especially beginners like to watch videos. Yeah, yeah. But a beginner cannot identify if it is a serious message or it is a message, a video Made from a beginner.
I think that's a very astute observation, and it's something that I have as a challenge, which is I need to make the videos watchable, I need to make them enjoyable, I need to make them educational. But people can watch that video and think, oh, beekeeping is easy, look at this guy, that is so easy. And we know that it's the complete opposite, isn't it? It's very, very challenging.
And, you know, people want to hear it. easy. Yeah, at the beginning, because they want to start. Yeah, but no, it is not easy. You know, the German poet Goethe was saying—
Go ahead.
Every beginning is easy. Difficult is to continue.
Yeah, and it's so true in beekeeping. Year 1 is easy, year 2 much more difficult. Yeah, I think so.
So you should be patient.
Okay.
You should be ready to learn at least for 40 years, maybe a bit longer.
You never stop learning in beekeeping.
You don't stop learning.
No, you never get to the end.
No.
Nope.
And the longer— the younger you work with bees, the more you observe.
Yeah, that's my favourite thing, you know, is just observing bees. I sometimes do that. I'll go up to the apiary and I'll say, right, I'm going to start work in half an hour and I'll get a chair and I'll just sit there and I'll just watch the bees for a bit. It's very calming.
I actually put 3 beehives in front of the window of my office.
Oh nice.
So I can watch them all day. Yeah, very good. When I'm sitting at the table doing something.
I was chatting to these guys, Futuristic Beehive, which are these like hexagon beehives that you have inside your house and is clearly not going to be a way to manage bees, but they're cool and they look amazing. And it's, how do you bring that new generation of beekeepers into like the beekeeping arena without making it too boring? Like, what are your ideas?
This is fun fact, you know, such structures in a house and also all these other trees or whatever is in the market, This looks nice at the moment, but it is not good for bees. Trees may be good if they are really thick.
Yeah.
But how to manage them, how to work with them? And also here, if you are a really experienced beekeeper, you can also manage a difficult beehive.
Yeah.
But the beginner should use The easy beehives.
Definitely. So this is kind of what we based our whole business on, really.
Why do we agree on almost all points?
I'm not even joking. Yeah, we randomly met, we were introduced by someone where I was trying to get a connection with someone else. And Jürgen said, let's go and do a chat. And I said, well, let's definitely go and do a chat. I'm up for that. And that was it. We just came straight in. We didn't know anything. And we do seem to agree on everything. But what we want to do is sell nice calm bees to beginners. Yeah, and we want to give them all of the support that they need. So we're not just saying, here's your bees, God, don't contact us. It's like, come back to us, send me pictures, send me messages. Like, we want to help you with that education and we want to help you get the very best out of your bees. If you fail with the bees, I fail as well. And that's like really my mantra. I like to help people and want to just— I want to see them happy. And I get lovely messages from people saying, we bought our first nuc of bees from you and we got this much honey. Okay, they swarmed a couple of times and there were a few mishaps. We got them back on track and the kids got involved and they say, thank you for bringing us a really rewarding hobby. And that for me is like, that's the reason that I do it.
And if you, after a while, you start to estimate also good queens.
You do?
What is a good queen is the question. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What is a good queen?
Well, for me, what do I like in a good queen? So for me personally, I like consistency. Yeah, so if I'm sending a lot of queens, I want to be able to say to people, well, this is the level of expectation. So I don't want to send someone a 10 out of 10 queen and somebody else a 6 out of 10 queen. So for me, I want to send everyone an 8 out of 10, 8 out of 10, 8 out of 10, so they know what they're going to get. Our most important thing is temperament. I want puppy dog bees. They've got to be the calmest, calmest bees because that's what we sell people. We say we sell the calmest bees in the UK. So we need to make sure that those bees are calm. And I educate people and I say, We're selling you an F1 queen here. Yeah. So this colony, her daughters are going to be nice and calm. If that colony swarms and then they requeen themselves, you're diluting what is there. They might still be as calm, they might not be as calm, they might get a little bit aggressive. And if you want to get them back to calm, this is what you need to do. So you're kind of giving them all the facts. You're not saying these bees are going to be calm for 7 years if you just leave them on their own.
It's just not true.
It's not true. So we're completely open, we're completely honest. And we say, you know, if you need to get it back up, it's another £40 to get the additional queen. You get back to the nice calm colony, you get back to bounteous honey crops. And I think it works like our business model as well.
For beginners, I think this is the most important point to have calm bees. But in my opinion, this is not the most important thing.
I think health's got to be number one. You need to have nice health.
But how would you detect health?
What, the health? So, like, for me, when I'm assessing a queen, I'm looking at brood pattern like that. Any brood disorders are an immediate no. So sac brood, chalk brood, anything like that, even one cell, it's gone. But yeah, brood pattern, I want to see it.
So you eliminate the queen without hesitation?
Without hesitation.
Yeah.
So we do that because—
We sacrifice one small animal to keep the whole.
Yeah. And I think a lot of people with beekeeping struggle with that concept. So I do some videos where I'm saying, I have to kill this queen or the other 60,000 bees are going to die because she's just laying drones. And some people say, that's evil, you shouldn't kill that queen. And I say, but I've saved 60,000 bees. It's a lack of experience. Yeah. And a lack of understanding, I think, of the dynamics of it all.
This is dreaming. Yeah.
Well, this is going really, really well. I could sit here talking all day, Jörgen. Go on, give me one more thing that we can agree on.
If you really want to save bees, it is much easier to change the landscape, to plant flowers, bushes, small trees, than to learn how to keep bees.
I'm not going to say another word and we are going to end on that. Thank you so much, Jürgen. It's been a pleasure. That was brilliant, man.
Nice meeting you. It was really incredible.
That was so much fun.
