North American Honey Bee Expo UNCENSORED 2024

I'm on my way to the North American Honeybee Expo courtesy of Cayman Reynolds. In this video, you are going to follow every single step of my journey, and this very first step is I am traveling to Manchester Airport to get on a flight to Atlanta. 10-hour flight, 5-hour layover. I think I get to Atlanta at about 5 AM in the morning, like UK time. I'm gonna be absolutely shattered, but stay tuned. This video is going to be a long video, but you are going to see every single tiny little detail of, without a doubt, the best bee conference in the world. So I managed to make it into the airport, and there is something very strange going on at this airport, which is everything is to do with bees. Like, there's the Apiary restaurant, the lighting is hexagonal, there's a bee bookshop. It's a good omen that this is going to be a very, very good bee conference, but I think I'm a little bit late, so I've got to jump on my plane now. So I'm waiting to board the flight now. I've got a 10-hour flight to Atlanta. But don't worry, I've got plenty to do. Loaded up my laptop with tons and tons of videos to get them edited, work to do on thumbnails. It never stops at Black Manzin Honey. So 22 hours later, I've arrived at Louisville, Kentucky. I'm very, very tired. That is a seriously long flight. I'm gonna go and find a hotel to stay in, get a good night's sleep, and then straight into the convention tomorrow morning. So I made it to my hotel at about 2 o'clock US time. Turned out it was about a 24-hour round trip, so I had a really, really good sleep to catch up. But I'm fully refreshed, invigorated, and today I'm ready for the first day of the B-Expo. So I've made it to the Kentucky Exposition Center, and oh my God, it is absolutely huge. Like, I genuinely can't quite get over the scale of this place. It's like a mega-sized airport. It's great though because I'm here a little bit early, so it's about half 9 on the Thursday. Conference doesn't start until half 12 officially on the Thursday, so So I'm going to get inside, I'm going to go and see if anyone's there, I'm going to try and grab a coffee and just go and see and meet some people and get a sneak peek inside the expo before it officially opens. Right, so I found my way in, I got my badge, and it's like nothing I've ever seen before. It is absolutely vast. Like, I'll just flip the camera around and show you the scale of it. I can't quite get over how big it is. It's like— the best way to describe it is like being in an Absolutely monstrous airport, and I mean like a huge, huge airport. Now I'll just go into this room here, like the Honeybee Expo room, just give you a quick close-up of what it's like. So you can see in there all the guys getting ready, a few hours before the conference goes live. But just like, how big was that room? Absolutely crazy how big it was. So let's get inside the Honeybee Expo and see what it's all about. So first thing you notice as you walk in here is just look at the size of the place. Got the stream team set up directly as you walk in. Everything over here is just bigger and better than it is at pretty much any other big convention that I've been to. Huge amount of variety, loads of really cool stalls just warming up, but over the next few In the next few days, it is going to get absolutely rammed in here. Let's go and talk to some people, find out what they're up to, and see how they're preparing for the North American Honeybee Expo. So I'm at the North American Honeybee Expo, and this is by far and away the coolest thing that I've seen so far. Premier Bee Products have come up with a hive called the Propola Hive. In this video, I'm going to show you absolutely everything about it. So the demonstration piece they've got over here is a lovely piece of old red Oak with some wild comb inside. And the idea behind these beehives is that they are manufactured inside to have the most amount of surface area that they possibly can, and then it is covered with pure bees' propolis. I'm going to hand you over to Matthew Schock, who's going to tell you why this is one of the coolest products at the North American Honey Bee Show.

Hey everyone, uh, Matthew here at Premier Bee Products. So we are launching the Propolis Hive at this year's show. We're super excited about it. Essentially what we've done is we've mimicked the inside of a tree cavity with the Propolis Hive. The reason this is important, there's been research done for 10 to 15 years now on the importance of having a propolis-rich environment in your hive. Propolis is incredibly antimicrobial for all sorts of things like foulbrood and chalkbrood. There's studies done on how it reduces the fertility of Varroa. There's just There's so many positive benefits right now coming out about propolis. The really, the key thing is bees have been doing this since the beginning, and we're kind of finally just starting to figure out why that is. It's really important. So that's what we've done. We've roughened up the inside of this hive, as you can see. It gives them the most amount of propolis that they can envelop their hives in. So we talk about 3 things. To keep it simple, number one, we restore the propolis envelope, which is what we've done here. Number 2, it resists disease. So we've talked about it— foulbrood, chalkbrood, varroa, even a little bit. I mean, there's, there's a lot to read up on, and we've got resources on that for you. But then, yeah, number 3 is raise more bees. There have been studies done about how up to 2 frames of bees per hive additional, which is big for pollinators. It's big for people that have weak colonies. It's just a sign of strength in your hive. So we're really excited about it. We want to make a big deal. We want to make this known. It's very important for hobbyists, commercial guys alike. So thanks for stopping out, Laurence. Yeah, this is great.

So how cool is that? I really, really like the idea. And what I love so much with all things to do with innovation is people trying new things. Do not shun new ideas like this. This could be groundbreaking, it could be revolutionary, and anything you can do to make the environment that the bees stay in and the bees are kept in more like their natural environment surely got to be a good thing. Now I'm guessing that there's no real major issue with cleaning the boxes either. You can still dip the boxes in caustic soda, you can still scrape them down as best as you possibly can, but I would say with this hive setup like this, you're probably better off dipping it To make sure that when you reuse your boxes, they're going to be completely sterilized. You wouldn't be able to kind of scrape the propolis out, and then if there's any AFB or any EFB, you might have a little bit of an issue with that. But I can't see that being an issue if you're going ahead and doing some caustic soda dipping on these boxes. It will get every little thing out. What I love though is the way that they've kind of scribed into the side of the wood and increased the surface area to get the maximum amount of I wish they had this in the UK. Definitely something that I would buy, but a really cool innovation at the North American Honeybee Expo.

They, they sell this thing and I just bought one.

You know, you, you do me a, a great honor to ask me to do this.

So, wait, I got, I gotta say, before you say anything, Lawrence, I, I noticed, I noticed from— I was standing right here and, and I heard you talking I said, man, there's a limey around here somewhere.

Is it what?

A limey?

A limey. Brilliant.

Yeah, because you got a great accent.

Oh, thank you.

Great accent.

I do like it. I do like it. It will be completely different. Yeah, here we go. It's definitely working now. Yeah, because you can see it.

That's good.

Yeah.

Am I on? Is my recording?

There you go.

You can see it's recording. Yeah, yeah, everything's good now. Right, this is the 4th time that I've done this interview with We've missed Ed's night, it's the 8th time. The 8th time.

It's unbelievable, the unprofessionalism of Lawrence.

It is absolutely shocking. Like, I've come here, I've bought this new piece of kit, I'm trying to make it almost professional with audio mics. And so the audio's gone, the audio's in my pocket. We're on the 8th take. It's definitely recording this time. So thank you for being on the video.

Thank you so much.

Oh, you're very welcome.

Well, thank you for asking me for the 8th time to be on.

You know you must be special if I'm coming back and asking you 8 times.

No, I think it's more of desperation.

Desperation and sheer embarrassment because I thought I can't just leave the last 10 seconds of the last one on.

So anyway, it's probably better than the one that we're doing right now, so I don't know why he's wasting his time.

At least, at least we're laughing about it, aren't we? So why the North American Honeybee Expo for you, Jeff?

Well, this is, this is my second one that I came to. And, and the first one I came last year, I was just like just blown away at just the enormous of this place. I mean, it's just like, but and this year it's even bigger. It's even bigger. More, more vendors, more merchandise, more, more and more. And, and not only are there more vendors, but there's more speakers too this year as well. So it's, it's a place where new beekeepers, old beekeepers, commercial beekeepers, vendors, they all come together under one roof and you can explore so much.

Yeah, it is brilliant. I'm just listening to you talking about that and looking around and the sheer scale, like, is genuinely overwhelming, especially for us in the UK. We don't have anything Kind of anywhere near as big as this.

There isn't any in continental United States. This is the largest bee show that there is. It's awesome, and Cayman does a great job of putting it on.

I don't know how he does it. I look around, so my back—

I know how he does it. He's a beekeeper.

Oh yeah, he does amazing things. So, so like, beekeeping for me is like a sideline. I'm a project manager by trade. And managing something like this, doing what Eamon's done in terms of project management, it's like a full-time job with 6 people, maybe.

Well, he does, he does have a good team, plus a great wife who helps with it on this project.

So we spoke on the previous 4 videos that I didn't record very well. 8 videos. Sorry, I'm trying to get the number down to reduce the embarrassment. We're going to keep it the truth. Putting me right every time. What for you is like the What is the most important beekeeping lesson?

So I've been keeping bees since 1978, and, and in all those years that I've been keeping bees, uh, I've been blessed with a very simple mind and simple life. And so I would say that is the big thing in beekeeping. Keep it simple. Learn to keep bees in a specific area That you are in. And if all possible, get bees from the area that you live in, because if you get bees in the area you live in, there's a greater likelihood of the chance of them surviving because they're already familiar with that environment. And then the other thing, and I think the most important thing, is to have fun doing it. To keep that newness of Keeping bees alive from the first day that you do it till the day you stop breathing and just have fun doing it. So the trick in making it new each day for you is, of course, you having the desire to do it. You have that. That's a gift that God gives us, that desire. And so if you have that desire, nurture that desire. To want to learn about bees. And for me, I see God in bees. So for me, it's a very easy connection. Find a connection and then grow with that connection with your bees and the knowledge of learning.

Well, I think that's really good advice. And you say to keep it fun, but your videos, it comes across that that is what it's all about.

I'm always having fun. And I'm telling you, Life should be fun, and I'm not saying that it's not going to be hard, but even, even in hard times, we still need to have fun. It may be hard to feel that fun, but still never lose that inside peace that God gives each one of us.

It's brilliant. Talking about fun, and we're being photobombed behind, I think. We're going in and photobombing. That's brilliant. What a perfect way to end. Keep beekeeping fun. Photobomb people as much as possible. Do at least 8 takes before you get things right.

There you go, 9 if it takes.

All right, nice.

God bless. And I didn't say— oh, let's see, it's—

hello, Mr. Ed!

Hello!

There we go, perfect. God bless everybody. Thank you. So I think I've embarrassed myself enough at this point. I've been trying to film as many people as possible and I just can't get to grips with this video camera. It's really driving me a little bit mad and it's so embarrassing. Trying to do videos. Genuinely did that video with Mr. Ed 8 times in a row, and what a legend, like, just putting up with me the whole time and just doing the same video again and again and again. I don't even know whether it's actually filmed properly at this point, but we are at the point at the North American Honeybee Expo now where they are starting to let people in. So all of that time there, we were just mingling around and it was just vendors and people, but now they're starting to let people in. So I'm gonna have a little bit of a break. I'm going to go to the toilet. I'm going to get myself a drink, and then the real games begin now. So I was just filming that video there with Mr. Ed at the Cowan Manufacturing booth, and I walked past and they said, "Do you want a free t-shirt?" And I thought, "Well, yeah, yeah, I love a free t-shirt. That's very kind." And they've given me a lot of free stuff here, and this is just standard apparently out here. So I've got a free t-shirt. I've got like a hat. I've got a pencil. I've got a yo-yo. Have a look at all this free stuff that they're just giving. to people. And what a great way of doing it, like, it's brilliant. Just give away some free t-shirts and stuff and then get people to wear them. I should probably be wearing my Cowan Manufacturing hat at that point. Like, look at that brilliant hat, they've just given that away for free. And, and they continue to still put things in, so I'm going to flip the camera around and I'm going to show you all of the things that they've given me. So I've got a nice bag, there's some hats there, bottle openers, planners. I've got a yo-yo for my daughter. All these nice t-shirts, all of these nice people giving things away. How brilliant is that? And then this is my little gift set here. Absolutely amazing. So you can see I've got my hat in there, but all those other things— Cowan Manufacturing, absolutely amazing. So I'm feeling a little bit parched and I had to get myself like a tea and a coffee. And one of the things that's really different here is like everything is free. Tea, coffee, biscuits, it's free. But it's not free, like it's sponsored by a company. So my cup of tea here is sponsored by Rossmann Après, and I've not got to pay for it. Um, but thank you, Rossmann Après, that's very kind. And what a cool thing to do, just to sponsor everything like that. And obviously they're getting a good, good bit of marketing out of it, but I just thought really, really clever way of doing it. And look at this, just like biscuits. I'm gonna take a biscuit there, have that for a snack.

Take a cookie.

But these are all free, all sponsored by Rossmann Après, and then If you want to give a tip, the tip goes to charity. I thought that was a really, really nice way of doing it.

Right?

If we get our little logo in the background here. Definitely.

There we are.

Hey, I like it. Right. So I am with Paul Kelly from the University of Guelph. The best videos going out there. Like my absolute number one inspiration. We I just I kind of come straight over and said, "Can you be on the video?" We started filming it the other way around, and you've also let's get a hundred. Research Center in there. It's brilliant, isn't it? Thank you so much. What do you think of the North American Honeybee Expo? Well, I'm really, really excited to be here, Laurence. It's an amazing opportunity. We get to meet so many beekeepers. Uh, I'm getting this opportunity because we started doing a few YouTube videos, and now I get to— at events like this, I get to meet the people who watch our videos and kind of hear their stories of what they're doing with bees, and then meet some This is such a great opportunity to share information, and that's why people are so excited here. It's fun. What is amazing, and you hit the nail on the head there, is the sharing of the information, isn't it? And that's what I love about your channel because it's so geared up for that information sharing, and you leave no stone unturned. Like, you go into it in so much detail, but you keep it so simple at the same time. Like, they genuinely are my favorite videos. to watch, and I've learned, I've learned so much, and it's been an inspiration for my own channel. So thank you very much. We'll give a shout out again to the Honeybee Research Center, and I'm gonna buy myself a hat. All right, so there is one thing that I really, really wanted to find at this show, and I probably walked around 20, 30 times trying to find Apis Engineering. I just couldn't find them, and then luckily I found them. I found them. So finally here This is the thing that I'm the most looking forward to at the North American Honeybee Expo, and it's not big shiny honey extractors, and it's not meeting all of the other YouTubers, which obviously is really good fun. So the product in question is the simplest product in the world, and it is a grafting station for use within your truck. And I know that sounds like not a, a very kind of fancy product or something that's really shiny, but it really fixes So I've gone over to the owner, Dale, and spoken to him and said I wanted to buy one, and amazingly he has said that I can have one for free. I just got to do some videos on it, which I would have done anyway. I would have done loads of videos on it because it is so, so cool. And then tell me about this product here then. So the mobile grafting station, why did you develop it and what's it all about? So anybody that's kept bees for any length of time and has an outyard knows that it's easier to graft right on the spot and You don't have any chilled brood or any of that, but it's always been a pain to hold on to the frame with your knees and you know how it goes. So I developed this, it hangs on your steering wheel and just as simple as that. So it is as simple as that. Like, I'm going to take this home, I'm going to do a number of videos on it, but I'm just over the moon. Like, I come over here and I was looking at all of this other stuff and the one thing that caught my eye and the first place that I had to come was Apis Engineering. to find one of these and make sure that I got one before they sold out, which I guarantee they will sell out. So I'll give you a close-up of it now. Really, really nice, thick— what's it made from? Aircraft-grade aluminum. And I'm looking at it now, it's really thick as well. This isn't like cheap thin aluminium— aluminum, as I should call it over here. This is really solid aircraft-grade, going to last a lifetime, I guess. Yeah, aero quality. So there we go, look at that. It's really going to help my beekeeping. Suitable for Langstroth frames, suitable for National frames. We need to do a deal and get these for sale in the UK because this is absolutely brilliant. So walking around the expo, and I only just found this out the other day, but actually I was sponsored to come over here by a company called Helco Limited. Uh, no, didn't, didn't have any idea at the time, but went on the website. Apparently, yeah, they sponsored me. So I've just come to their stall. I thought if they're going to sponsor me, I probably should do some kind of advertising for them. So the first thing that we're really cool is they've got like these courtesy carts. I just think this is brilliant. I'm going to just turn the camera around now. So look at that, Hilco courtesy carts. And how cool are these carts? Like, I've never seen anything so cool. And these are not only for people buying stuff from Hilco, but they're also for anyone who wants to use them. Obviously got some really good advertising on there. And then you walk through the Hilco store and they have got Absolutely tons of stuff. Like, look at all this stuff they've got here. Loads of cool woodenware, got observation hives, got swarm traps up here as well. Mokas on display. And then we've got some deep hive bodies, some medium supers, and then loads and loads and loads of honey extraction equipment. Just take a look around in it, it's absolutely packed already. This is only the Thursday. I think the Friday and the Saturday is supposed to be a lot busier. And then look again, you can just take hats.

I love it.

Definitely gonna have to take one of these hats. I'll put it on my videos. Don't forget the name: Hillco Limited Liability Company Beekeeping Equipment. So I found Bruce from Bruce's Bees, one of my favorite people on YouTube for the amount of effort that he puts into his videos. We've just done a little bit of work on the stream team there. It was really good fun. But thanks, Bruce, for coming on. What do you think of the North American Honeybee It's something else.

I've been to the last couple of conferences and they were impressive, but this is even more impressive. So every year it gets bigger and better.

It really does. And we were talking earlier about college football, weren't we? What does the A mean on your hat?

Alabama. Alabama is a college football team, American football, and they're a pretty powerful, dominant team. This year they made it to the playoffs and they lost.

And so how many, how many people turn up to the games?

I think they have over 100,000 in their stadium. Like 102,000 people at the home games.

And if you want to get like the cheapest possible seat there, it's like, what, $100?

Well, for the big games, probably. Big games, probably, I would guess, uh, $100 probably or more. A lot of the smaller teams, not, you know, not as big a game, probably less. But for the big games, you're going to pay a lot of money to go to a ball game.

So if you see anyone with an A on their hat like that and you want to get them talking, you just say, Well, the red hat with the A.

Now, the Atlanta Braves baseball team has a similar A, but they're blue and red. So if you see a hat like this though, yeah, yeah, that's the, uh, Alabama.

So Bruce, what I love about your videos, and we were discussing this earlier, is the amount of effort and detail that you put into them. If anybody's not following or subscribed to Bruce, like, get involved. They're really, really good videos, and you can just see the amount of work that goes into them. They just Tell a really nice story, and they are really, really good to watch. So definitely it's Bruce's Bees.

Yeah, that's what it's called. All of them are just Bruce's Bees.

Bruce's Bees. And what's kind of on your hit list? Like, I have a hit list of videos about 300 long, and then I duplicate them all the time. So whenever I have an idea for a video, I write it down.

Okay.

What's— so it's probably only about 15 videos that I've just written the same one down again and again. But what are your videos for this year? Like, you got anything in the pipeline?

Well, typically Yeah, I mean, basically, you know, in the past it's been almost like a vlog, and I'll talk about my journey, every— what I'm seeing in the hives, and I point things out. Um, I've done some videos showing how I do splits and things like that, but I mean, I kind of— every year it rolls around again, like you mentioned. But this year I want to focus a little bit more on the basics, kind of like what you're doing, no-nonsense beekeeping type of a topic. I need to get better. I need to talk to you about how to be more simple because I'm more complicated. Yeah, I think that's a good thing.

Yeah.

So that's going to be my goal this year, but really just kind of continue on with my journey. I want to continue to present videos. As opposed to every little thing I'm doing, I'm going to try to maybe be more focused on concepts a little bit more than every time I do an inspection. So I'm not really sure. It kind of, you know, with beekeeping, it kind of comes as it happens. And we were talking just a minute ago about how you go in a hive With the intention of doing one thing, and you see something completely different. And so that happens a lot too in my videos. You just don't ever know what you're going to find.

Nice. And then what's the best video that you've done? Like your favorite, and what's the one in terms of like the performance?

The performance would be—it was called Abandoned Bees. It's a video I did, what about three years ago probably, and it really did well. Just had a guy that lived on some property and somebody had abandoned bees. Bees there years before. Hadn't been in them in years, and he had 3 living colonies, and we went through them. He'd never been in bees before. That's the most popular video I have. Favorite video, you know, just catches for them, just some different experiences. Really, some of my favorite videos have been like Greg Burns and Mike Berry came down last summer in 2022, and they spent a day with me, and we had a good time with that. But we're just sharing experiences I've got a lot of videos I like and a lot that I think— it's amazing, Lars— some of the ones I think aren't going to do very good that I think that I just hate end up doing well, and others that I just, you know, I put a lot of effort and work into don't do as well. So it's hard to really pin down what the magic is to be successful.

That's the most annoying thing, isn't it? Like, you'll see if you go and subscribe to Bruce's channel, Bruce's Bees, you'll see from the videos the amount of effort that goes into editing them. And if you edit video You understand and you can see the effort. It must take you hours and hours to do it. But you do— when you're doing the videos, you think, oh, this is going to be a good video, and you try and capture people's attention, bring them on a big journey, and then you upload it and people are just like, yeah, whatever. Yeah, that's right. It's annoying, isn't it?

Even the most recent one I did, it's getting quite a few views, but I looked at the watch time. People watch it for like 2 minutes and it's like a 9-minute video. So I'm thinking, man, it's doing great. And I looked at that, which I appreciate any click, But I don't know, yeah, what it takes to hold people on sometimes. But it's, it's just I'm trying to get better, better at beekeeping, better at YouTube, and just, just better overall. So that's what we're all doing, right?

Yeah, that's it. If you can get a little bit better each year and not make too many of the same mistakes again and again, you're definitely on the right track. So thanks, Bruce, really appreciate it. See you on the channel. Nice to meet you. So what I love so much about the North American Honeybee Expo is that they bring absolutely everything with them. What I've got behind me here is a full honey extraction cabin, and they just brought it full of Cowan manufacturing equipment. Let's get inside, take a look. So when you go inside here, you've got a little step going up, and then you've got an uncapping machine directly in front of you there. Look how nice the walls are though— stainless steel on the ceiling, wipe-down plastic walls. Uncapping machine there, capping screw press underneath.

Oh, that's good.

All of that honey is going to drain down into the capping screw press. And then look how cool this is, you've got all of the pumps lined up. So you've got the pump going into there, big honey extractor over this side. And again, everything here is designed to be as small as it can possibly be in here. Love this honey extractor, that is super, super cool. And then you can see you've got the pump that pumps it all the way back to there, out into this tray down in the corner, and then I think it pumps it outside the unit. Really, really cool and nice that they bring such big pieces of kit along to this show. So I've just been wandering around at the expo, and behind me here we've got Whiskey Trail Bees, and they've got some really, really cool products, like products that I've never ever seen before. They've got their EZ Drone Wrangler or Easy Drone Wrangler. They've got pollen substitute, but they've got some really cool things for collecting nurse bees and being able to find your queen. So I'll flip the camera around and I'll show you exactly what it is. So this device here goes on the front of the hive and it's basically for collecting drones for artificial insemination, completely designed by Whiskey Trail Bees. The idea being that the drones will come out, they'll fly, they'll defecate at a certain time in the day, And then when they come back in, they go back through a specific entrance, and this goes up and down. And basically what you get at the end of the day is you can open up this little cage here, and you have got a box full of nice clean drones to use for artificial insemination. It's brilliant just seeing kind of the manufacturers here, people who have designed and developed their own products, and they're just so passionate about it, and they want to kind of bring them to the show, show people what they're like, obviously sell them as well. And if they find a problem They're just happy to develop a solution to make it work. So then the next product that I've seen at Whiskey Trail Bees is a unit for collecting nurse bees in order to do your varroa shakes, and you can also use it to try and find your queen as well.

Okay, so this is for doing your mite wash or even finding your queen. You're going to take a hatching frame of brood, shake it in, and what you're looking for is nurse bees in a treatment for your, for your mite wash. to make sure you don't have to treat. You're going to take— because nurse bees crawl, they're going to crawl down into this black cup. And once you get this cup full, you screw it off, you put your half cup into the mite wash, then you dump the remaining amount into your hive. If you have the queen, if you happen to shake the queen, you dump her back into the hive.

So that Queen Saver there is $100, but I think it's a really nice Neat invention, really handy to have around the apiary, especially if you've got a colony where you can't find that queen, but really good for gathering nurse bees in order to do your varroa mite washes. You only need one of them. I think it's a really good bargain. Right, so take 7. I think I keep on getting stuff completely wrong. I've just done a video with Bob Binney and it didn't record. I've just done one with Mr. Ed and Richard and it didn't record, and I'm really annoyed and feel physically sick because I'm gonna have to go up to them again and ask them now and say, please, can we do that really annoying interview that I did with you again because the camera didn't record? But we've got Richard here so we can do that again. Hi Richard, good to see you.

Yeah, we'll get this video now.

How's it going? Are you enjoying yourself so far?

I was gonna ask the same for you. I just— it's like kind of overwhelming because I came here Wednesday afternoon and when before everything's got to get set up. You can't really quantify the size of things because there's partitions between every 50 meters. When I say that, I mean it though. But when I was here Wednesday, this place is so big. It's like 3 or 4 football pitches together, maybe 3 football pitches together. But yeah, it's overwhelming. We're not— the public aren't actually in yet, so we're now— we're just surrounded by vendors who we kind of know a lot of because we've met them. I know a few of them from last year, so it's really good. That's the best thing about this conference is everyone's so friendly, and wherever you go, it's Like the chat, the share stuff. It's really good. And you're going to— and obviously you haven't been here before, but you're going to experience that kind of family, and it is family. And you'll start to learn who's who and what does what. But there's so many great products here, and they've all been kind of not handpicked, but Cayman doesn't like people that bullshit. And he likes to have real vendors that are interested in explaining things to the public so you can learn a huge amount. But it's all about just different perspectives, different different ideas, and there's some great gear. I mean, as I said before in our previous one I did in video, you can buy 20 boxes all the same, but they're all slightly different to the people that supply them. And that's what everyone gives you choices, gives you different ideas.

So I am genuinely overwhelmed by the scale of it here, not just like inside, which is vast, but outside as well. The hotel and just everything.

You've seen the parking lot and there's like gates to let 25, 30 cars in at once and stuff like that. I just couldn't believe the volume. This is apparently the 5th or the 6th largest expo center in America, I think. So it's big, and they built it for people, you know. Oh, it's massive.

What we should do at this point though is give a shout out to Cowan Manufacturing because we have just piggybacked my tripod on top of one of their absolutely huge uncapping machines. It looks really, really good, doesn't it? Yeah, I'll flip the camera around and I will give you a show of that machinery there and a little shout out to them because I didn't ask.

Because Cowan are kind of the, kind of like we'd say kind of Rolls-Royce of the American extraction kit if you're professional. So I think they brought their equipment here, which is really good because it gives amateurs who are going into professional. So it does give people a really good idea when they're maybe looking at transitioning to a bigger amount of hives, what the equipment they could use to make things quicker. quicker. And I mean, we know other big beekeepers are like in Stepper. For instance, he has Cowan. Um, Bob Binney, I think, has got some Cowan gear. It's like really great kit, but it's just rugged. It's like built to last. So yeah.

What's really nice about it here is seeing the kit is like, it's manufactured in the USA, isn't it?

Yes.

In the UK, everything's pretty much imported, isn't it?

From Europe somewhere.

Yeah, heavy manufacturing or China or Ukraine. But over here, everything is American-made. Really, really good. Bigger, bigger and better. And I'm not going to do the accent. I don't want to. I don't want to lose any more subscribers. Richard, thank you. No problem. We'll catch up further away. Thanks for being on the video for take two. So there's another amazing product here. Have you ever come across a swarm that is up in the trees and you just cannot get anywhere near it? You can't get a ladder to it because it's just not safe. How do you get that swarm down? We have got the answer here at the North American Honeybee.

Okay, the bees just came off of a hive swarm with the comb on there. So what you do is you just take the same old frame that has comb on it, you attach it to the Swarm Reacher, and then you can extend the pole all the way up. It'll go up as high as 24 feet. And once the bees are on there, Queen is on there, you just bring it down, put it in the box, and the bees all follow down. It saves you from getting on a ladder and breaking your neck. This is the gadget, injection molding, and it has a universal thread on it on the back that I use a little painter's tape to make it really firm. You buy this? It can be an old mop handle, a painter's pole or a window washer pole.

So there we go, what a cool invention, really cheap as well. They've just done the injection molding, they're $10 each, and you just add the handle yourself. But I've never seen such a really cool innovative way to actually catch a swarm without going up a really dangerous ladder. Right, if you squeeze in and just make sure that you're just always in the shot, it will move around. Okay, so definitely recording and definitely got audio. Right, okay, it appears that I am back with Bob Binney because what is it, like a 6-minute interview you did before, I forgot to turn the audio on and I forgot to turn the video on, so I'm so sorry.

Oh, that's our kind of trick, Seth.

Oh yes, sir. That's Seth in the background there. He was filming before and we're going to blame, we're going to blame Seth for that, I think. And then Seth is going to come on afterwards, but we are back. So you wouldn't have seen any of the first one, so we need to do it again. So Bob Binney, thank you so much for kind of coming on camera today. Really nice to meet you. As I said in the previous video, watch I kind of went over to Bob and said, oh, can we just do a quick 2-minute video? And he said, absolutely, but we need to make sure we're doing it in front of the Blue Ridge Honey Company sign. I love the aggressive marketing, it's brilliant. And what did we grab before? We grabbed one of these, didn't we? Oh no, here, grab that one. We grabbed one of these before. Look at this, massive big blocks of wax, perfect sheen on the side. So tell me about this wax, Bob. Oh, it's—

we're selling 15-pound blocks for £8.75 a pound. I don't know how that would calculate into UK dollars or pounds, I suppose. But beeswax is expensive, as you know. It's very valuable. We sell a lot of it. We actually buy thousands of pounds from other beekeepers and clean it up. This, this wax actually isn't our wax. We got this from New York State.

Okay.

From a beekeeper we buy honey from, and he brought me a pallet of wax and we remelted it into 15-pound blocks. Blocks, and as you can see, it's nice stuff.

Yeah, it's brilliant, and it's so different from what you get in the UK. Like, I've seen a few different things here, but one of the ones is big massive stacks of beeswax here.

Okay, so now I need to ask you, what's different about this than what you could get in the UK?

So I think in terms of like the quality, like, it's similar, like it's very good quality. You can see the sheen on it. But in the UK, I just don't know, you'd go to— I'll tell you what you'd get in the UK is you would get something maybe an 8th of the size of that.

Oh, okay.

And that's what they would sell, not big huge slabs. Everything's just mega-sized.

Well, let me tell you what I think's going to happen here. Out of everything in this booth, all this stuff around us, I think this is what's going to be gone first.

I agree.

Yeah, because people are— they need beeswax for making candles. They don't know where to buy blocks. And I expect this stuff to move out of here quickly.

That'd be good.

It's one of the heaviest things out here.

Yeah, yeah, we don't want to take it home.

So out of everything here then, what's like your number one selling product? You think the wax is going to go first, but what's your best product that you've got?

Well, the wax will go first because we've only got one pallet of it. What really sells the best are those HDO lids and bottoms. I don't know if you've seen how we make those.

No, no.

HDO stands for high-density overlay.

Okay.

It's really a special plywood. I think it's probably the best plywood on the planet for beekeepers. I don't know if they have it in the UK. It's made out of Douglas fir, which is a very good wood for building, and they use special glue and they heat, they press it under heat, and it's just, it doesn't warp, it doesn't delaminate. You can throw it in a puddle of water and leave it there for years and it'll just stay there, and it's really good plywood.

Even in the UK, do you reckon? Because the UK is 90% rain. It does not stop raining in the UK.

Right, it would be really good for you. Yeah, and over here it's often used for cement form boards, like building bridges and things like that. But it's twice as much as normal plywood. But anyway, that product, we're going to sell a lot of that.

Excellent. And I know you've got a lot of fans in the UK, and like my business partner Richard Stevens is your absolute number one fan, so you just got to give a quick shout out to Richard.

Yeah, thank you for watching.

Yeah, but finally then, Bob, thank you for doing it again. I'm sorry I got it wrong the first time around. What is the best thing about the North American Honeybee Expo?

Well, this vendor show, honestly. I've been to a lot of expos in the United States. I've not been to Apimondia. Have you ever been to Apimondia? No. Okay, I know that's very big, but I think this event is probably the biggest this country has seen other than Apimondia. And of course, this vendor show is just massive compared to anything else in the country. There's supposed to be about 140 vendors here, and as you can see, many of them are quite Quite large. These extractors over here, Cal, and that there's there's three or four hundred thousand dollars of extractors right over there. He'll go down there. He brought six semi loads of extractors and stuff. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff going to flow through here in the next few days. That's really hopefully our stuff will be some of it.

Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure it will sell very very quickly. Bob, I know you're a very busy man. I'll let you go. Thank you so much for doing that.

Pleasure to meet you.

Yeah, pleasure to meet you.

I watch your videos too, so it's nice to see. Nice to speak to you in person.

Yeah, yeah, you too.

I hope you have a good show.

Excellent, thank you, Bob. Right, so when we did the original interview with Bob, Seth was filming, and I'm gonna— I'm not really gonna blame Seth. It was probably my fault because I'm using like a new piece of equipment here, this is the Osmo Pocket 3, and I just— it wasn't working very well, was it? So Seth, you work for Bob Binney.

The Bob Binney.

The Bob Binney, how cool is that?

Oh, it's pretty neat. I didn't really get the magnitude of it when I started working for him until I came to a Hive Life, you know, or a bee conference or two. And then it kind of was like, oh wow, I've got a special opportunity here. And then I started working with him, you know, for 2 or 3 years and got to hear all the bee knowledge and the stories and everything. And it's just what a, you know, golden opportunity to be able to take advantage of.

Oh, it's, you know, you are so lucky. Like, I'm genuinely jealous because what I love to do is like try and learn about beekeeping and Like just get better at it, and there's no one better than Bob. No, not alive today.

He's the one guy I can. He's probably one of the most knowledgeable, knowledgeable beekeepers on the planet today. Yeah.

So what we're doing at the moment, Bob is literally just behind us there. Does he need to speak to you?

He can do if you want. No, I don't think so. I think we're good.

So you might just see him going over the back. So what we were doing there is being really nice to Bob, and we were saying, "The best is amazing." He is genuinely the best. But now we're going to get the inside scoop. So you're going to dish the dirt, aren't you? What are you going to say?

I mean, Bob's— there's not really much to say. Bob's one of the nicest people you'll ever meet, and he's genuine about it. He doesn't really ever get angry, and when he is angry, he's not even angry. So it's like he's a rare bird, and he's one of the, you know—

Do you need to speak to him? It's fine. We can cut in and cut out if you need to speak. Oh, you need Seth to do stuff?

No, no, I have a chore. You go ahead.

Oh, okay. Okay.

We'll finish pretty quickly. Yeah. I loaded that question up specifically because I knew there was nothing that was going to be said about it. That was really, really good, isn't it? But thank you for being on, Seth. I really appreciate it. Absolutely, man.

It's good to meet you. Yeah, we'll catch up and do something, you know, walk around or, you know, say yeah. But anyway, all right, that'll be cool.

We're done. So there we go. That is day 1 complete at the Honeybee Expo. Absolutely shattered, but what a brilliant day. I bought myself some really cool things. I've been given a lot of cool freebies as well. I've met some amazing people, and I'm ready to go and do it again tomorrow. First off, though, we're going out for a barbecue meal with all of the other—I hate the word—but VIPs. Apparently, that's what I am—VIP—and we're going out for a barbecue meal. So I'm really excited about that. I'm also very, very hungry as well. So I'll go out and have my dinner, get showered, another night's sleep, and then straight back at it tomorrow for day two of the North American Honeybee. So we're on to day 2 of the North American Honeybee Expo. Really struggling with jet lag, absolutely shattered in the evenings and then waking up at 4 o'clock in the morning. But I'm really excited to go over there and see what's happening today. I'm looking forward to watching Richard's speech on the Asian hornet and the doom mongering that's going to be taking place. Not sure everyone's going to be ready for how negative that speech is, but it's going to be a really interesting speech from someone who knows what he's talking about in terms of the impact from Asian hornets. One specifically for me, for the UK, in terms of the impact that it's going to have on us in the UK for the next year. So really looking forward to seeing that one. Obviously looking forward to meeting many more people across the day, and I can't wait to go around the vendor hall again and just see all of the cool beekeeping innovations that people have brought to the show. So I have very kindly been given VIP access into the Honey Show. It's quite strict here and you're not really allowed in, but they have very kindly let me in. So I'm just going to give you a sneak peek of what is in this hall here. You can see behind me lots of different exhibitions, over 1,000 single exhibitions in the Honey Show. Let's have a look and see what they've got. Love the uniqueness of some of these items. That is absolutely beautiful. Definitely not going to touch anything, but really loving the look of that. Wish I could take that home. How cute is this little guy in his beekeeper's veil? Really, really sweet. Oh, I'm loving this as well. It's kind of some sort of Laser engraved or some different sort of engraving on a Langstroth box, really beautiful. And then we get into the real serious business, look at all these honeys. Absolutely every single honey you can imagine, look how light that one is there, right next to some buckwheat. I love that you've got all of the different colours of honey but then you've got little bits of information next to them as well. Over here, various different types of mead. So over in this corner as well, we've got a honey cocktail recipe, and they put all of the information down there. So look, you've got a wild beach plum vinegar, and then over there you've got a cocktail, loads of different honey liqueurs, all various ways of upselling and making your honey product a little bit more valuable. So some of the bits here, you need to keep them refrigerated until the tasting or the testing. Little fridge on site just for that purpose. So look at this— honey cookies, honey cakes, honey sweetened s'mores. I really want to come back and taste some of these things. Well, I've never seen that before— honey garlic, honey spiced peaches, a variety of honey jams and jellies. Oh, now this is a little bit of me— lots and lots of different barbecue sauces. And then all of these honey condiments as well. So then for people who can't handle the heat, you've got your non-spicy honey condiments as well. Love the presentation of these, they really do look beautiful. So these exhibits here are all candy made from honey. Look at that one there, the Easy Beasy peanut butter candy. That looks amazing. So this one here, you've got 3 ingredients used to make a plain honey cake. You're not allowed any additional ingredients, it has to be to the Exact recipe, but look at the different sizes, different shapes. Really, really nice. And then finally we've got some flavoured creamed honey. I'm definitely going to try some of this when I get back. I really like the idea of a cinnamon creamed honey. So there we go, a look inside of the Honey Show at the North American Honeybee Expo. I've got to get out now because there's some serious honey testing going on in here, but the guys have been so good letting me in. Massive thank you to everyone involved. Really, really good fun.

Thank you.

So I've got to be quiet back here because there's a show that's just about to start. I thought I'd give you a little sneak peek inside the auditorium to show you just how massive it is and how many seats there are. So take a look at that. That'll be filled, no doubt, for Richard's speech later on today. Bob Binney had people queuing out of the aisles earlier. Absolutely huge auditoriums, big screens, full AV setup. It really is something else. So how cool is this one? I'm at the Hidden Hollow Honey Company, and they've got these Freestanding gravity stands made of stainless steel for $149, shipping included, it says there as well. But have a look at these, these are really, really cool. So these are little gravity stands, they're made with stainless steel so they're never ever going to rot. But all you do is you just put your wood in place in between. You can use a 4x2 or you can use a 6x2, and then the way that the legs or the sides are angled in is just a natural Gravity stand. Absolutely love this idea. And look, if I zoom out a little bit, look how many hives are actually on that one stand there at the back. You've got probably get eight hives on a single stand, and all you're paying for there is the six by two that's going to go in there completely held together by gravity. I wish they had these in the UK. That is a really, really cool idea. Right, so in the USA, they do not mess around, and they have brought live weapons to shoot varroa mites off the back of bees. So I'm gonna have a go, and this is gonna be so much fun. So here we go. This is the live weapon that I'm talking about. I'm gonna fire it, and I'm definitely gonna hit that varroa mite on the first hit. What have I got to do? There's a varroa mite, and what's that, like a bottle of whiskey or something? Right, okay. And then what's the— what's the sight like on this? Do I need to aim for it a little bit higher, a little bit lower? Spray, spray, baby. Spray, spray. I love it. Right, okay, okay, right, it's a spray and pray. Ready? Let's go. That shows that I'm not very good. Have I got to load it? Yeah, you can cock it forward and back. You can tell I'm from the UK. Go on, you show me how to do that. There we go. Right, so that didn't go very well. We don't have guns in the UK. Right, here we go. So there we go, it's as easy as that. If you want to kill varroa mites, you come to the North American Honeybee Expo. Boat and you take one of those guns and you just kill them. It really is that simple. But how much fun was that? And that was genuinely my first shot, and I did— I took out 2 of them, didn't I, in one? Is that the first person to do that this week? Of course it is. Of course it is. Of course it definitely wasn't. Of course it is. So I just love it here. There literally is a solution for absolutely everything at this show. And one of the things that I found here, it's like an IBC but it is made for the wine industry, and they're repurposing it for the beaky But if you take a look at this here, it's like a squat IBC, but it's made from food-grade virgin plastic, and you can use it as a honey storage tank, but you can also connect a valve downstairs there, which means that you're able to decant your honey from it. But the thing that I really like here is the wide neck directly on the top. What I would use that for is creating my own sugar syrup. Nice squat tank there. You'll be able to get your mixer in, big stainless steel mixer in there, dump loads of cold water in it, loads of sugar, give it a good mix, and then you've got a purpose-made syrup mixing tank. So I want to see more of this in the UK— competitions and freebies. I'm at Premier Bee Products, and all you have to do to enter to win a block of wax, a big massive £35 block of wax, is just put your name in the bucket there and they'll pick out a winner and someone wins a £35 block of wax. What would have been even better is just doing like an absolutely massive block of wax and weighing it and getting people to guess the weight. I reckon probably gonna be about £35, that one there. But there we go, enter to win a block of wax. So not only are companies giving away loads of free things to advertise their companies, but this company here, they're giving away pink fully molded frames for breast cancer awareness. Absolutely amazing. So that company there, Acorn Beekeeping Equipment, top quality Langstroth fully moulded frames. I've got some very similar ones to this at home, but I've definitely not got a pink one. This is going to go into pride of place in my apiary. But remember that name, Acorn Beekeeping Equipment, for breast cancer awareness. So I thought this was a really cool idea. They've got a board here where you can put a pin to, uh, kind of say where you've come from. And I came over here and look, it's just a big board. of the USA, but then on the other side you can choose where you live. So I'm going to put my pin on and put Wales on the map. Right, I'm going to put my pin on. Apparently I'm the only person here from the United Kingdom. You can see I've already put the pin in. This is the second take of the video, but there we go, Wales is officially on the map. So just wandering around the show, I found Adam Hickman from Sting Stopper Foxhound Bee Company, and he just looked at me putting my pin on the map behind us, trying to put Wales on the map. And apparently you lived in— was it Conway for 3 3 years? 3 months?

I was there for 3 months.

I worked there. I worked in the castle. If you know the castle. I do. I do.

I worked in the castle hotel in their kitchen.

Oh, amazing. I love Conway Castle. I was going to say to you as well, my brother lives in Conway, so nice to see someone who's been to Wales. Did you like it there?

I loved it. I've been back since. Took my wife. She loved it. I was telling you that Wales is completely underrated. I love it. It's just hard to get to sometimes.

It's hard to get to, and like a lot of people in the US don't know what Wales is. say you live in Wales and they say, where's that? And they're like, I've been to London. I've been to London, yeah. And they don't ever get over to Wales.

I'm like, oh, you have to, especially the north side where you're from.

Yeah, it's beautiful. It's lovely. Yeah, nice to meet you, Adam.

Yeah, you too. Cheers.

Right, so I finally managed to track down the main man, Cayman Reynolds. Before I kind of just try and get into my head how difficult it must have been to arrange this beekeeping show, thanks for the invite, much appreciated. Good to see you.

Hey, thanks so much for coming. You've come a long way And, you know, we've seen a lot of your videos and different things over the years, and so it's really, really weird feeling to actually see you in person now.

It's exactly the same. I feel the same. But I know we should be talking about beekeeping here, but as people will know, like, my background is in project management, and Cayman has single-handedly, like, the top man, managed a mega project. Like, how have you coped with that? How difficult has it been? Like, tell me about the last 6 months.

I've just given everything that I have and stuff that I didn't know that I have to pull it off. Yeah. You know, we're— we never read any books on how to do this. We're just beekeepers. That's what I always just wanted to be, you know, smokers, hive tools. But we also realized that there was a need, and our YouTube said, hey, you know, we'd like to do a small meet and greet. And it just kept growing and kept growing. And so we've just tried to provide a service. You sell products and different things, honey and all that stuff, and you just try to sell satisfy the customer. And so we're trying to learn and get better, and we love beekeepers. I've always wanted to go to a big trade show like this so I can see what the world of beekeeping has to offer me. And I think everybody else in beekeeping wants the same. So we've just— we have given everything that we have. I mean, I think I've taken 2 days off in the last 3 or 4 months.

And I bet you were still picking up the phone and emails and stuff during that time.

I do love it though, you know. I absolutely love the beekeeping industry, so for me this is so much fun.

Cayman, I have so much respect. Like, I genuinely cannot comprehend how much work's gone into it. But what I'll say is like the way that you kind of deal with yourself and the community that you've built, like every single person that I've spoken to here is so passionate about beekeeping, but they're so passionate about what you do. Like, they follow you because Because you're like a really nice guy, really down to earth, and you do— what you've done is amazing. You have the ability to bring these people together, and I just, I have to kind of take my hat off to you. Really, really impressed.

Thank you. It's not always easy. Whenever you're working with a B-club or any people in general, there's going to be some things that maybe are a little bit hard to deal with, but that's just part of running one of these events. We want to be bridge builders. We want to be beneficial to the community of beekeeping. That means we're going to have to deal with some interesting circumstances from time to time, but that's part of the job description. And so we try to handle that as gracefully as possible and understand that we can— if we stop so we don't have to deal with that anymore, well, then this all ends. And, you know, to us, it's worth dealing with that. And, you know, we're not perfect either. Like, we're fixing to switch one of the rooms up, you know. So for those of you who are watching, think this is flawlessly run, I just accidentally double-booked the commercial beekeeping talk over when the honey show is going to be announced.

Oh no.

So I have to switch the rooms up a little bit, and I've got to explain to people, nope, it's over here. And so we're still learning, and that's the way it is for new beekeepers. And I think that the best thing that's helped me be able to do this is as I have been a new beekeeper at one point, and then I've, like you, have become an educator for new beekeepers and people who are on their way to becoming successful by however they define that, you have to be patient with these people. I needed people to be patient with me back in the day. So we want to be patient with the people just coming into this conference, just as they're patient with us as we make some mistakes like this. And I love beekeepers because 95% of them are wonderful people to hang out with, and so that's why this is so fun. They're just excited to be here and talk with each other and to meet guys like you, and a couple of them want to meet me, so— and I want to meet a lot of them. And heck, some of these people I've known for years, and what an honor it is to get to spend a handful of days with such a wonderful crowd of beekeepers. I mean, I just love this.

It's been absolutely Absolutely brilliant. I'm not going to take any more of Cayman's time because there's like a trail of people following him around. He's not got any spare seconds. But thank you so much for all of your hospitality flying me over here, hotels, lovely barbecue last night. I'm having the time of my life. Thanks very much, Cayman.

Ah, it won't be the last time. We'll see you in the next video.

Definitely. Cheers, Cayman. Right, so Mike Menino has just approached me to give me some of his amazing honey. How nice is that? So it's Big Mike's Raw Honey. I'm going to take that back home. But thanks, Mike. So where's This comes from your bees? Is it just like a wildflower?

Yeah, in New Hampshire.

In New Hampshire? How far away is New Hampshire from here?

About 20 hours in the car.

Wow, 20 hours, that's huge.

It's 15 hours of driving and then pit stops with the ladies.

Yeah, oh, very nice. I love that you call it— it's called raw honey. If you did that in the UK, you'd have food trading standards on your back saying you can't call it raw honey, but it's okay in the USA. Yeah, I'm gonna taste it. Is Is that okay?

Sure.

Oh, it's nice, nice texture. Oh wow, really nice.

Do you get a berry flavor at the end?

Yeah, it's—

you know what, it's, it's similar to— we have a honey called lime honey from lime trees, and it's kind of got like a little hint of that. It's really nice. So do you know what they forage on to get this?

We have basswood, locusts, you know, big trees, you know, wild berries everywhere.

It's really nice. There's almost a bit of licorice. Can you taste?

I have some that have an orangey taste afterwards, some that have a berry taste. This is the first year I did my hives each yard separately. spun them out, so I was able to tell. I never realized there was that much difference because I always blended it.

Oh, it's nice, isn't it, to do it separately like that? Mike, I've got a very sticky hand now, but thank you so much for that. Really appreciate it. I'll take that back home and I'll have that on my breakfast. Thank you.

I will try to catch another one of your Q&As if I'm home during the day.

I know, someone else said that, that they're at really inconvenient times. Is it like—

I watch them, but I can't participate. No, I did participate One day when you will.

Yeah, I'll have to do one at like midnight or something UK time, and then it'll be right for you. But nice one. Cheers, Mike. Pleasure. Thanks very much. Take care. So we've got Frederick Dunn, absolute YouTube legend, here. We have just been discussing lenses. So I'm trying to do something a little bit different with everyone, and we've just been talking about my new lens, haven't we? The Laowa 24mm. Yeah, I love your channel. It's great. You've got so many views on your channel. What are like— how do you get so many views?

I think that that's not a mystery. People view what's interesting to them. And actually, there is something to that. Google controls how views are presented to future viewers, right? So, and I've tested that out because I have more than one channel. I have a channel that like nobody pays attention to.

Secret channel.

Called Fred's Fine Product Reviews. Little plug. Yeah, it's not monetized because it has such low subscriptions.

Okay.

However, I can put an identical video, same content, same title, yeah, same everything on that channel, put the same video on my channel, the Frederick Dunn channel, yeah, launch them at the same time, and one of them won't even show up in the search.

That's crazy, isn't it?

Google controls what gets in front of the eyes of free, you know, viewers.

So, so why do you think it likes the Frederick Dunn channel so The Frederick Dunn channel, I think it really is about algorithms. Okay.

Engagement, of course, with viewers, and then the click-through rates. So you'll see that in analytics on a video. So that means someone looked at the thumbnail, they read the title, they clicked on it, and stayed with it.

Okay.

And this is why clickbaity kind of images and stuff don't really work for the algorithm.

Yeah.

Because if they click it, realize it's not about the title, or what was presented in the thumbnail, they'll disengage. So to increase viewership, we need first of all the click, the stay, the view, and then recommended videos by the same channel.

Okay.

There's the other end of it. Remember that Google wants you to spend a lot of time looking at YouTube.

Yeah.

So the more frequently you present Usable video sequences. In other words, don't just fluff it, right? Because some people think I just need to launch videos all the time, that becomes white noise.

I've definitely been guilty of that, yeah.

Okay, so it's kind of the middle ground, quality content presented at the right time of day, put in front of the right viewer that stays engaged. The more that happens, the more you get recommended views. So when you look at analytics on your channel, you'll see the viewer sources come from recommended views, searches, subscriber base. Here's what's interesting. I have a very small percentage of views from actual subscribers. 70% of my channel and video views are from non-subscribers.

Wow, that's really interesting.

So it is. And the other thing is, if you look at, like, if we look looked at each other's videos.

Yeah.

You might think that the recent video, maybe your video would get more views.

Yeah.

Maybe it gets 10,000 views in 5 days or something. Well, I might have a video up that gets 3,400 views.

Yeah.

That starts to look like the channel would be more popular.

Right.

But it's across every video you've ever published.

Oh yeah.

So these are perennial posts and that's kind of how people need to think about it. The video that you put up right now shouldn't be fast food. Yeah, right. So you should put up something that might have some lasting value, okay? And then people are still watching videos that you produced 5 years ago. And now if you've got over 1,000 videos, then it becomes a collective viewership that's more important.

Oh, it's some brilliant advice. One of the things that I love watching on your videos, and you don't see many people doing this, is like using the Flow Hive. So in the UK, People hate the Flow Hive. They say it is rubbish, it is useless, it sets in the frames, it's a complete scam. And then I say to people, oh, have you used it? And they say, no, that's just what somebody else told me.

Right.

So I bought one and it's like my favourite hive. And it's not for commercial beekeepers, but if I was going to keep a beehive in my garden, right, one or two beehives, I'd have a Flow Hive.

Sure.

Because it's just so much fun, isn't it? And you can get everybody involved in it. So the other thing that I love about as well as the live streams. You've really kind of pioneered the live streams, haven't you? You do them regularly and you get people really engaging with them so much.

I do some live streams. I do one a month now.

Oh, one a month. I think that's really good.

The last Friday of every month.

The last Friday of every month. Yeah, excellent. Well, I really appreciate that, Fred. You've given me some really good tips and advice there. Are you having a good time at the show?

Yeah, well, I'm glad I ran into you here actually because I was glad I've watched your channel Amazing. Which is, I don't mean to say this, you know, in a huge complimentary way, but I don't have a lot of time to watch videos.

Okay.

So here's an example. For some reason, Google and YouTube want your videos in my feed.

Oh, very nice.

So then that's what leads me to look at your thumbnail, see if it's something I might be able to give 5 minutes to a video in a day because I'm back to back 7 days a week.

Wow.

And so you've got a really good channel. So I'm glad to run into you here and surprised to see you here, because here we are after all in Louisville, Kentucky.

I know it's a long, a long way from home, but I'm really glad to see you. Thank you so much for taking the time to be on the video.

Absolutely. And, uh, take care, have a good day. Yeah, same to you.

So yet another beekeeping innovation and invention that's on display at the National Honeybee Expo. I'm here at the Keeper's Hive, which is a Langstroth beehive without actually having to lift up the supers to get inside to do How amazing is that? I'm going to hand you over to David McNeely, who's going to show you this hive, but it is genuinely revolutionary, great for anybody who doesn't want to lift their supers.

So, I'm Dave with the Keeper's Hive. Basically, this is an 8-frame single brood chamber hive. It uses a standard 10-frame Langstroth box that's modified to hold 8 frames. Part of that is to come up with this weight-bearing system on the end that lets you stack nucs as supers. But essentially what we've done is, you can see there's an observation window, and then we have these frame guards. So to get into your brood chamber, you just lift this open, remove those pieces. The frames sit on top of the box rather than down inside of it, and these frame guards cover up the ends. Okay. So we've basically prevented the bees from being able to walk on the ends of the frame guards. And because we keep those clean, to do your inspection, you take out a couple frames. And you can actually slide these out from underneath. And so if you're familiar with single brood chamber management, you'll kind of get why that's cool. You know, one other thing that we've done with this hive that's really interesting, if you're, if you're a hobbyist beekeeper and you hate when your bees swarm and you don't want to multiply your hives every year, another cool thing you can do is called the Demery method for swarm control. So let's say swarm season is coming on, you've got a couple nucs up here, Once this starts to fill up with brood, take 3 or 4 frames of brood out from the brood chamber, move them up to this box, and then move 3 or 4 empty frames back down. As long as you keep your queen down here beneath the excluder, you'll just keep giving her room to lay, and it's very effective for preventing swarming. One reason a lot of people don't know it and don't use it is because with a traditional hive, it's a lot of box manipulation and keeping track of frames. Because you're working in a smaller space and with fewer frames, it's a lot easier. So, Fewer frames, smaller boxes, and less lifting. It's a lot simpler to do here. So yeah, you know, when you go to harvest honey, you'll have to lift nucs instead of 8 or 10 frame supers.

So it's a double whammy at the Keepers Hive. We've just looked at that there, which is the no-lift Langstroth, Langstroth without the lift. But just next to it, there is a double version of it that is designed specifically for rearing queens, and you can use it as a starter finisher. Definitely gonna have a look at this one.

Hey, this is George from The Keeper's Hive. Right over here we have a 2-queen keeper hive. It's basically similar to the 1-queen, but you're running 2 colonies. So you have 1 colony on 1 side and a single 8-frame deep brood chamber, and your 1 colony on the other side. So you have the benefit of putting 2 colonies in 1 box. The neat thing about this hive is you can use it for queen rearing. So instead of the queen excluder, you're gonna take the queen queen excluder out and you're going to use a cloak board. So you're going to have a queen-right starter finisher to make awesome cells. The really awesome thing about it is when you're making the queen— when you're making the queen cells and you put the divider in to make the top queenless, you can go back into the hive underneath the cloak board and physically shake all the nurse bees from in the brood chamber up into the queenless part of the hive on Both sides. So you can basically get a huge number of nurse bees into that top box to raise your grafts. 24 hours later, after your population's queenless, you can come back in underneath the cloak board and pull your frame that you're going to graft from. So you don't have to go to another hive to find your grafting material. Grafting material's right there. You pull it out while the top of that hive is still queenless because the divider's still in. You put your grafts up top here, 24 hours later you pull the divider out and you have your queen right starter finisher. So everything that you need, your grafting material, your nurse bees, are all in one hive and you make awesome queen cells, 45 to 60 queen cells a round.

So I've just polished off a plate of Kentucky Fried Chicken, which was very nice indeed, but where the food hall is here, they've got what's called a silent auction and there's so many things that have been entered into. It's absolutely crazy. Now I'm not sure whether they've been entered and it's being like held for charity, but there's tons and tons of listings here, tons of items. I'm gonna go around and have a look, but I think what a brilliant idea— silent auction. I'd love to see how much some of these actually go for, but there's some really, really cool products here. So the idea is the product gets put down on the table and then there's just a sheet next to it and you just put your name and your number or your email address and what your bid is, and then someone can come along and trump you. Probably best just to come like 5 minutes before the end and do it. But some really, really nice things here. Like, look at that lovely little hamper. How much is that going for? That's going for $110. This one here, a fractal burned red cedar medium super, that's going for $80. How cool is that? You can see, like, walking through, all these people are going, having a look at all of these different listings. I'd definitely get here at the end though. You've got to do this at the end, haven't you, and just gazump everyone last minute. But look at the stuff, like, how cool is that? What is that, a bee on a bike? Love that. Ranges from really standard products, got some Hive Alive fondant there, to like some barbecue gift sets, to some really, really cool honeybees. Nice travel observation hive there, a Bee Smart robbing screen, a couple of pairs of ties. How cool is that? I think it's just such a really, really good idea. I love it. While I'm here, I should probably show you the food. Really nice food. Kentucky Fried Chicken— or no, wait, Southern Fried Chicken, I guess it is. I don't think you can call it KFC, but it was very tasty. And you can see, just look at the size of this place. Loads of tables. I didn't have any issue finding a table. All of those food vendors over there— it's about 3 o'clock in the afternoon now, so it's quieting down a bit, but it was rammed in here before. So now I'm going back into the vendor show to see if I can find some new things. So every single stall that I walk past, there's something brand new, something revolutionary. And I've just stumbled across a creaming unit, the new Super Smooth Standard, that creams honey in 1 minute flat. It's amazing, isn't it? So I'm gonna turn the camera around now. I'm gonna show you how cool it is.

Good.

So you're gonna put your liquid honey here, either melted down honey or freshly extracted. You can put 10% of prior cream honey. You're gonna let it mix 1 minute. Once the machine is full, empty everything out. Send that to the refrigerator, 36 Fahrenheit or 4 Celsius, 24 hours. Bring it back. Put it in the machine. The second time is going to be continuous flow. So what goes in comes out, and you can jar right from the machine or send it to a filler. Yeah, I'll have 2 pumps. I'll have one pump pumping in, and I'll have another pump pumping out, so it's hands-free. We actually use a 3-step process when we don't use any starter. So I pour our honey in, let it come out right away, repeat that 3 times, and the refrigerator, and then it's going to be ready for shelves. So what we do on Monday hits the shelves on Thursday.

So I've got a little sample of the honey there, and I can see already from that it's like really nice and white and creamy, no crystallization on it at all. Probably be rude if I didn't taste it. Not only delicious, but without a doubt the smoothest, creamiest honey I've ever tasted. Creamiest honey I've ever tasted. I know that sounds like an advert. Genuinely, that is quite incredible. Like, it is perfectly smooth, isn't it? This this is great. I'm getting more samples now. So you've got maple. So is that maple syrup? Maple syrup. Yeah. Okay. We'll do more. Oh wow! I make creamed honey at home in like a big churner, and it's it is smooth, but it's not as smooth as that.

It's very the. It will stay up like this in store shelves for over two years.

Yeah. It's like if Very soft still. Yeah, brilliant. There you go. I know it's quite expensive, but if you want the very best, you've got to pay money for the product. So there we go. Look it up. Cream Pal. That is a very, very interesting way to make creamed honey. You're gonna have to get this in the UK. This is super, super cool. So how fun is this? I am with Randy McCaffrey, the Dirt Rooster, and he's got his very own little booth. And I'm trying to get everyone up here. I, uh, I'm doing a video with Bob Binney the other Oh yeah. And didn't record it properly. And then I did one with Mr. Ed and didn't record it properly. So hopefully we've got that one set up.

Well, this one's gonna go good.

Yeah, but thank you so much for—

Mr. Ed was the problem there.

Oh well, he was, he was saying that we had to do about 8 retakes with Mr. Ed, and it was so embarrassing. I was like, please, can we do another one? And he was just laughing and smiling. Yeah, but thank you so much for being a part of this channel.

Lawrence, thank you for inviting me in.

Yeah, big inspiration for me. I love your videos.

Appreciate it.

Swarm catching, that's the thing that you are the man for, aren't you? Swarm catching and cutting.

Cutouts and swarm catches, yeah.

And how do you get like, how many calls a day do you get when swarm season for people coming in and getting swarms?

In the height of the season, it's not uncommon to get 7 or 8 calls a day.

Wow, 7 or 8 calls a day. Do you go to them all?

No, no, I can't. I pawn them off on other people, the ones I can't get to.

And then how many people do you think ring you up And it's just bumblebee nests or something, or wasps or yellow jackets.

That happens 30, 40 times a year where it's bumblebees or yellow jackets. We don't have a lot of yellow jackets deep south where I am. We have southern yellow jackets, but further north they have German yellow jackets and other varieties. So deep south like that, we don't get a lot of yellow jacket calls, but the ones we get are pretty nasty.

Yeah, and it's the German yellow jackets that are the ones that are the The horrible ones.

The southern yellow jackets are the bad ones. The German yellow jackets are fairly mild.

Oh, see, I think in the UK it's the German ones that are bad. You've probably got like killer US ones that are super bad, haven't you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. What do you think's been like— what do you think's made your channel such a big success? Like, it's huge, it gets watched, it gets millions of views. Like, what's your secret?

I think a lot of it is storytelling. Some of it is that we were early on in the beekeeping community and YouTube. There were only 2 or 3 beekeepers on YouTube when we started, so we had kind of had a jump start on everybody. Some of it is sensationalism. We do a lot of big cutouts and big swarm catches and things like that, but we do a lot of teaching, a lot of encouraging. We just have a good time, keep it fun, keep it light.

You definitely do, and it's the cutouts and the swarm ones that I really love watching because Especially for someone who's never kept bees or kind of never really— they don't want to be near a bee because they're afraid of it being stung. And then you're covered in so many of them with like no protection. But do you get stung a lot when you do it?

I do get stung a lot. Yeah, I don't let on how much I get stung because I get stung a lot more. You know, a lot of times you'll see me picking a stinger out and I just go back to work. But if people knew how much I got stung— because I get comments all the time, you're gonna die.

But that's part of it, isn't it? Like, you're comfortable with the veil on because that's the video, isn't it? Doing it without the gear.

Well, part of it is that I'm working in dark areas usually. I'm usually indoors, up in somebody's wall or soffit or something like that. It's kind of hard to see through a veil anyway, as you already know. Even in broad daylight, if you're hunting eggs or queens or whatever, it's so much easier to see with the naked eye. And if you're comfortable working with no protection on, go for it. Most people won't, which is fine. There are times that I have to suit up, but most of the time I like working suitless. We're in a hot area, subtropical climate, I guess. I'm a big boy, it's hot, bee suits are hot, so if I can go without a suit on, I absolutely will.

Excellent. And we're at the North American Honey Bee Expo. What do you think of it?

Incredible turnout. The vendors, wow. Yeah, every— everybody that has been before has come twice as big and twice as nice. More equipment, nicer equipment, nicer setups.

What, what I love with it here is you've got like mega machinery, like machinery that we've never seen in the UK.

Like Cowan's extracting line over there.

You see it, but then you've got And then you've got someone who has got a problem in their own apiary and they've developed like a little mini solution and they brought it here and they're selling it. And you just think, I love that range from the absolutely extreme to just people fixing problems.

Kind of, you've got everything from a $200,000 line to somebody hand forging hive tools.

Yeah, exactly. And everyone is so friendly and accommodating and it's just great. What I love is that there's all the talks on and then the talks finish And then it's just like, oh, it's a tidal surge in and a tidal surge out.

It's brilliant, isn't it?

Oh, but thank you so much. I really appreciate you like taking the time to have a chat. You're a massive inspiration. Keep up the good work.

I appreciate it.

Thank you. Brilliant. Thank you.

Now you want to try it with the recording?

So I'm so, so embarrassed. No, no, start fresh.

Start fresh.

But we can start fresh with me saying how embarrassed I am that I've done It again. Yeah, I'll bring you in.

It's your video, do whatever you want.

Call me when you need me. So I am so, so embarrassed. I've just filmed a probably a 10-minute video with Yappy the Bee Man, and we laughed and we joked about all of the bad edits that I did yesterday and the fact that I didn't hit the record button. And we got to the end and I went to turn it off and I hadn't recorded it again. So amazingly, everyone here is willing to just do numerous videos with me, and he's stayed on, so we're going to do the video again. We're going to talk again. Yappy, if you come in here now, everybody will know this guy from his amazing YouTube channel, Yappy the Bee Man. What were we talking about? We did take 2.

All right, yeah, take 2. I believe we started out with the amazing, unbelievable size of this conference. This is the biggest thing that I've been to in a bee conference ever. Cayman has absolutely just nailed it with The relationships between the beekeepers, the information he's putting out, having the vendors here to provide the great deals and the equipment for everybody. Oh man, absolutely off the chain.

It really is. It's just, it's just prompted me because there was a little bit before that which was we were speaking in length about you photobombing Mr. Ed yesterday when I was failing again with my AV technology, and we were talking about that and it wasn't even recorded. I just can't believe how embarrassed I am and how willing all of these YouTubers are to give me a 3rd and a 4th chance. Right, I'm gonna have to promise not to do it again. We're definitely recording now though, aren't we?

Yeah, I'm seeing the numbers turn, so I think we're good. But that's the joy of this. As, as a creator myself, I understand that you have to sometimes— well, I could have done that just a little bit better or tweaked it a little bit better. So you definitely got to give love to somebody who's come all all this way just to spend a few minutes with me to share with you guys.

It really— I, I do appreciate it so much. Like, I'm a massive fan of your channel, and if for anybody who's not seen Yappy, like, get on there. I know you will have done because he's got a massive, massive following, 20 times bigger than mine. But his biggest video without a doubt is your mega swarm video, isn't it? Tell me about the mega swarm video. Like, how did you film it? It's just— oh, it's astonishing.

I've never told anybody this story, so So you guys are the first to actually hear the truth about the reality of this video that I created. I had— I got a phone call about a big swarm in a tree. I get there and there's just a huge amount, 5 to 7 pounds of bees. So I'm thinking, I don't have a ladder, I don't really have a whole lot of anything with me, don't even have any of my cameras. But I backed my truck up under there and I put a tarp on the truck, don't want to scratch it. And, you know, just basically opened it up. I had— I was looking at it and I said, I want to test their temperament. So I'd reached up and kind of touched them. And everybody that doesn't understand beekeeping knows that that's not really strange, but non-beekeepers think it's crazy.

Yeah.

But as I was doing my little normal, I happened to take a little bit of bees out and they were great. And I looked back at that spot and there was the queen.

Wow.

And I mean, just as quick as anything, I reach up and I get her. I'm like, holy cow, this doesn't happen. So I, you know, I'm fumbling through. I've got no cameras. I'm shooting with my cell phone, not thinking a whole lot about really the quality of the video, just something to share. And we got done, hit stop on them, and uploaded it straight to YouTube. Next thing I know, it just, it took off. I mean, it was just a blessing.

It really is. So it is a long-form video, it's not a short, and it's got, you say, 33 million views. So we're playing a little game here. Not many people will know how much money you might earn from 33 million views. If you want to have a guess, stick it in the comments. That is a little trick I learned from Yappy, which is get people to put something in the comments. I bet you cannot guess how much it is. And let's say it's maybe over a couple of hundred dollars, yeah?

Well, yeah, it was— let's see, it was enough to where I could put a full tank of gas in my car and still buy a sandwich.

I noticed the change after that video, which was it wasn't being recorded on camera phones, it was like brand new lenses, and it was very, very professional. And you do, you take it seriously, don't you? After like very good equipment, everything's like choreographed.

You get to a point where you have to up the game. Every video we create is always going to be our next best video for you, the viewers. So I've improved a lot of that equipment, editing software, computers, trying to create better storylines.

So Gord, tell me finally about one thing that you've tried to film and you think, right, this is going to be the next big thing, and maybe it didn't go to plan. Because I always get that. I think this is going to be my best video ever and it's rubbish. And then I do a rubbish video and then people like it.

Yeah, and my next video is going to be my best video.

Okay.

Whether you like it or not, that's going to be the deciding factor on whether I get to buy another camera or at least put more gas in my truck.

Yeah.

But for me, they're always the best. You guys will have to decide.

Definitely. So finally then, North American Honeybee Expo, like, what's your favorite thing about being here?

Cayman has tried to create an event, an atmosphere of family, of relationships between both the beekeepers, the vendors, the people that are speaking, and every time I've been to one of his conferences, he's nailed it every time. This is all of that but on a a bigger scale than I could never have imagined. And if it's this big now, I can't, I, I can't even imagine what it'll be 5 years from now. This is beautiful.

It's amazing, isn't it? I have nothing but respect for him for like pulling this together in like what is a relatively short amount of time, isn't it? But you hit the nail on the head. It feels like a big family, doesn't it? People come up to you and like everyone who's everyone is here in terms of like vendors, but it ranges from like the biggest vendors like power manufacturing down to people who have just developed a little idea in their backyard and they brought it here. Yeah, and there's some of the best ideas. Like, I'm just constantly going around finding new things, constantly going around filming YouTubers forgetting to press the record button. We've definitely done it this time though. We've got 7 minutes. Yapi, much appreciated. Thank you for the system.

Thank you. And hit that like button, guys, because he's forgot to say it, so I get, I get to close it out.

There we go. All right.

See you.

Whose dog? Whose dog is that? Your dog?

That's my mother-in-law's dog.

Does she want to sit on a lap or something?

No, she'll be all right.

Brilliant. So, Jose.

Yes.

Good to see you. I've been coming back, stopping, going every time, and this man is fully busy every time. Hats, selling t-shirts.

Yeah, all a bunch of good stuff.

What's it like to be at the North American Honeybee Expo?

You know, dude, honestly, I mean, it's a lot to take in, right? It's a lot to take A lot of people go around meeting, you know, people that watch us. You know, that's, that's a cool feeling. You know, it's just the networking of this whole thing is really awesome.

I'm so jealous of you. 2 reasons why I'm massively jealous of you. One—

Is it my hair?

Yeah, I'm jealous. 3 reasons why. Look at us with our amazing hat hair.

Yeah.

Put our hats back on sensible. Like, 3 reasons. One, the hair. 2, the bee sting video.

Oh yeah.

Serious video.

Yeah.

And then the 3rd one is the weather, because you've got California weather and in Wales it just rains all the time.

Oh really?

All the time. Yeah.

So what are— is that, is that something that you feel is like a big challenge for you, is just adapting with the weather?

That too. It's just a bit depressing.

Really? Oh, I get what you're saying.

In the winter you dream about the Yeah. And then in the summer it rains, and it doesn't erase your memory each year that it just rains all the time.

Yeah.

And then I look at your videos and it's sunny, and it's like, oh, we're going to the almond pollination, and you're doing your queen.

You know what I love about your channel, right? So if you guys— well, obviously you're watching this, so you're— you watch his content— is that it's no nonsense, right? And that's a great approach. Maybe I need to do that. A little more because yours are brilliant. I just show the good stuff.

Oh, is it sugarcoated?

It's all sugarcoated, you know. When people think California, they think sunshine. Yeah, they think beaches. But we're actually in the little valley that's an oven. It's 115 degrees. Trying to raise queens in that type of environment is really challenging. But, uh, I mean, if you guys Haven't already checked out the channel, the California Beekeeper. Drop comments on anything. I mean, this guy is pretty knowledgeable on on everything that he does. So it's like collaborations like this are really what like unifies the industry, right? Events like this brilliant. It's shooting ideas is what I love. I love to. I love to hear what's going on with Richard. Yeah. You know, or with. Bruce's bees over there in Alabama, guys in Ohio. So it's really cool to kind of hear everyone's challenge right throughout the country and world.

You say about the ideas I went to, you know, I didn't know like people got sponsored here, do they? So we were like, you got sponsored by someone? I don't think it's on our badges, is it? But I was sponsored by Hilco. So I went over to them and said, oh, thanks so much for sponsoring me, really appreciate it. And you know, they've got like the little trolleys.

I have one back here That Maximus has. I don't know if I should be saying this.

No, no, go on, go on. He's been right.

So yeah, like a skateboard.

So this is on to my next thing here. So I said to them, why don't we? I'll sit on it and they can push me along and I'll just do some like videos for this video here. And I just thought, oh, thanks for thanks for like sponsoring me. Yeah. And the look he gave me was like, no, we're not doing that. Yeah. Deadpan. I said, okay. I thought it would be. I thought it would be fun. Yeah. I think I think he might have thought. I would have fallen off. Yeah, and then I would have sued him.

Yeah, you would. It would have not been Hilco, it would have been Laurenco.

But your videos, I love the queen rearing. How many queens do you rear each year?

We run 4,000 nucs. Yeah, uh, last year we produced 15,000 queens.

Wow.

So we produce it like— I sell a lot of queens. We sold about 7,000 queens last year, but we bring a lot from Europe. Because the weather's so rubbish here. So I did maybe like 500 or 600 queens in the UK, and 500 or 600 queens is hard work. And you just— how many? 15,000?

15,000.

Wow. And you sold all of those?

We sold all of them, yeah. And we keep around 400 to 500 for ourselves to winterize and do, you know, micro adjustments for our own apiary. Yeah, because I mean, we— early queens for us with California, uh, we sell We sell starting April.

Okay.

We start pushing queens out.

Yeah.

But we can't even get our hands on our own queens. So we're always dropping queen cells. That's how we introduce and grow our apiary.

And could you sell more than 15,000? Is the demand strong or is that—

The demand is strong. But you know, I think what's one of the things that we get a lot of people that come into the industry, I think it's really important to If you wouldn't put it in your apiary, I think it's one of the things that we live by. If it wouldn't go in my apiary, I try not to— we just don't push it out.

It's good, isn't it? And customer service like that, people remember and they come back again and again.

Yeah, so I think that's what we revolve our, you know, and I think it's for any industry, it doesn't matter. Customer service and just that passion, right? The passion that you put into your product.

Oh, definitely. So people love it.

What is your favorite part about queen production?

Oh, I love— my favorite part about queen production is, it's an easy one, yeah, is you make the queens, and I like the process of making the queens, but it's once it's in the cage, yeah, and I send it out to a customer, and then they come back to me like 12 weeks later and they say, I used to go into my apiary and my bees would kill me, and they said, I go in there now and I don't— I wouldn't even have to wear a veil.

That's a cool feeling, isn't it? Yeah, it's rewarding. It's rewarding because that's like all of your work, right? And a lot of people have this assumption that it's just, oh, I'm gonna breed from that one because it looks really good. You know, it's all— it takes time breaking down daughters, breaking down genetics, traits. It's, uh, you know, it's guys like Corey Stevens Stevens that does phenomenal work. Uh, got Shabu right next door, Two Rivers. If you haven't checked them out, he's great.

Yeah.

Um, so it's just the whole industry, there's a lot of guys that have a lot of passion, and I'm excited to see like just all these guys coming up that, you know, actually commercial beekeepers in California— oh, everywhere really— are a little on the grumpy side. Sorry guys, if you watching this, but I'm just being honest. And it's nice to see, you know, guys that are willing to be— just share, bounce off ideas, because we're all in it together, really. Definitely. Have you heard of that Tropi mite? No. Was it the AAA laps mite? Oh, AAA laps.

Yeah, tiny, aren't they? Have you ever seen them, like, not in a hive but in a sample?

Yeah. Yeah, Dr. Samuel Ramsey did a phenomenal presentation on it, and if you guys don't know about it, go check out that video. I don't know if you can drop a link.

Yeah, yeah, we can stick a link in. I'll get a link.

Yeah, Samuel Ramsey does a great one. He's been doing a lot of research in Asia on it. I think he's going back to do some more research, and yeah, it's kind of scary.

Kind of scary. Definitely scary if they come over here. Right, Jose, I'll let you get back to it. I've been going back and forth, and Jose is like the busiest man here selling caps and mugs and everything. Super busy, but thank you.

No, thanks, Lawrence, man. Appreciate it.

Finally, finally. All right, until next time. Yes, it's good, man.

All right, man, rock and roll.

Right, so you might wonder what is actually going on here. I am actually being pushed along on a Hilco trolley through the Bee Expo, and I went up to the Hilco owners and they very kindly sponsored me to, to come come to the North American Honeybee Expo, and we nearly just driven into someone there. And I said, would you mind like pushing me around on a trolley? And I don't think they were overly keen, so I found somebody else. What was your Twitter handle again? Hamburg Honey on Twitter. Who follow me on Twitter, they've decided that they will push me around. So we're having a wander around the expo, which is fine. So if we go left up here, because I think people are watching it and thinking, what is this guy doing? But we're at the end of the second day of the Bee Expo. I've embarrassed myself massively again. We can, we can go a little bit faster if you want. I don't mind. We can go a little bit faster. I massively embarrassed myself again, so I did an interview with the Happy Bee Man and didn't hit the record button again. But apart from that, it wasn't quite as bad as yesterday, and I think the audio's worked out a little bit better today as well. But I've been going around and buying loads of things today, so I found a creaming machine that cost $30,000, but it's a pressurized creaming machine and it was literally brilliant. Best creamed honey I've ever tasted. I found out that all of the hats in the USA actually fit me, which is great because in the UK no hats fit me. So I've been buying loads of stuff there. We're just getting up to Hilco now and they're gonna, they're gonna love this because I'm just kind of like going through on a trolley. I've got people saying hello there. Everyone's looking thinking, what is this What is this absolutely crazy UK guy doing? But he is being pushed through the North American Honeybee Expo on a Hilco trolley. So what else we've got to say? I went to get some food at the end and all the places are closed down, and the empanada ladies, 2 ladies there, gave me some amazing beef and chicken empanadas. So that's what I've got for my dinner today. And then to kind of finish, we're going to the, the end there where we're going to put the trolley away. To finish, we've still got another whole day. I love the fact that the expos here are not just a six-hour job, but it is a full three-day expo, and every day seems to get like a little bit better. And I've even got a different color gilet for for the next day, which is a blue one as well. But massive thanks to Hilco. Like they they sponsored me. They paid money for me to be here. I really really appreciate it, and we're going to put their trolley back now. Right, so I finally tracked down Cayman again. It is very, very difficult, but we need to give him here an Ultra Wear suit from BB Wear, kindly gifted by James at BB Wear. Look at that, branded up. But here we go, let's grab Cayman and give him the bee suit. Right, so Cayman, an Ultra BB Wear suit, so British beekeeping. It is protecting you from Asian hornets so they cannot sting through. So this isn't a cheap suit, this is a $600 suit.

Really?

Yeah, and it is perfect for any hot weather. So the air will go through. As long as, as long as Cayman's in the camera, it's fine. But it's branded up, there you go, Bee Expo. You've got your branding on there. Yeah, they can't get through it. But the best thing is like the bees can't sting you through it, but when it's hot, you know, a hot day, you can still wear your bee suit and you just, the air just goes straight through it.

Well, if you guys can see, How big the holes are in that right there. That's going to allow more ventilation through there than if they're a tighter weave. It's really still a thick gauge mesh though.

5mm. It's got like a wound spring inside it. You can see it's like bounces back when you squeeze it.

I'm excited to give it a shot. I really appreciate that, Laurence.

No worries.

And thanks to BB Wear. Appreciate that.

Good man. Cheers, Cayman. I'll leave you to it.

All right. See you in the next video.

Why don't we do this in the UK? They're doing a honey swap. People bring little containers of their own honey, leave it in a room, and then you just swap it with other people. You can go away with a massive haul of loads of different types of honey. Really, really cool.

When you have liquid in a circle, it forms a meniscus.

You got a little concave bit, the edge of the meniscus. Should be at the top of the field here. So as I was walking into the bee expo today, I saw this really cool statue and I just thought, what a great idea to go and get a bee suit or a veil and put it on the statue. So I'm hoping that there's no police around. I'll probably get arrested for this in the USA. But then I also saw some licensed beekeeping suits as well and thought, this is absolutely perfect opportunity to get a licensed bee suit on a cool statue outside the North American Honeybee Expo. So luckily there was no police around there, we didn't get arrested. We got lots and lots of very funny looks though. Apparently it's not the done thing to dress up the very important statues in licensed beekeeping wear, but I thought it was pretty cool anyway. So the show's winding down now. Everyone's getting all of the stuff that they bought over the last few days, getting it into their trolleys, taking it out to their trucks— their absolute mega trucks— and you can see that it's just getting a lot quieter in here now. But what a brilliant few days. Like, massive, massive thank you to Cayman for bringing me out here, you know, paying for my flights, paying for my hotel, taking us for dinner. You've got people over there talking about AFB vaccines, giving me shout outs. I've had the absolute best time. It really has been so good. Personal highlights, probably finding hats that fit, people giving away free stuff. Love the pink frames. I've got 6 pink frames that I'm going to do something very, very special with. But come on, the number one thing has got to be meeting all of the brilliant people out here at the North American Honeybee Expo. You know what, I hope I can come back again because I've had the best time of my life.