Ingredients
□ 1¾ cups all-purpose flour
□ ½ cup whole wheat or graham flour
□ 1 tsp baking powder
□ ¼ tsp baking soda
□ ¼ tsp salt
□ ¼ cup (½ stick) butter or margarine, melted
□ ⅓ cup honey
□ 1 tsp vanilla extract
□ 1 egg yolk, lightly beaten
□ ¼ cup nonfat milk
□ 1 (8 oz) package Neufchatel or reduced-fat cream cheese
□ ¼ cup honey
□ 3 cups assorted sliced or whole fresh fruits
□ Toasted coconut or granola
□ Optional honey or chocolate syrup

Crust Directions
Step 1
Preheat oven to 375°F.

Step 2
In a large bowl, combine flours, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Mix well.

Step 3
In a small bowl, mix together melted butter, honey and vanilla. Stir into the flour mixture.

Step 4
Stir in egg yolk and milk.

Step 5
Form into a ball with hands.

Step 6
Place on a lightly greased pizza pan or baking sheet.

Step 7
With floured hands, press dough to form a 12-inch circle.

Step 8
Bake at 375°F for 12 to 15 minutes or until golden brown.

Step 9
Remove from pan. Cool on wire rack.

Topping Directions
In a small bowl, combine Neufchatel cheese and honey. Mix until well blended.

Serving Directions
Step 1
Spread topping onto crust to within ½ inch of edge.

Step 2
Arrange fruit over top.

Step 3
Sprinkle with toasted coconut and drizzle with honey, if desired.

Fig. 1. A 3D model of CPI (Intelligent Collector of Propolis) (Breyer, 2016)
Notes: A – case for stacking the collector; B – Intelligent Collector of Propolis; C – insert board for closing the hole in the case

Propolis is a sticky resinous substance collected from the buds, leaves and stems of wild plants and processed by bees, which has bactericidal properties and is used by bees to seal cracks in a hive, polish walls of wax cells and embalm corpses of enemies (mice, reptiles, etc.) (DSTU 4662, 2006). The sources of propolis are plants from which honey bees collect resin. However, not all plants that secrete resin are sources of propolis. The physical properties of plant resin, accessibility to bees, and anatomical features of a honey bee exoskeleton underlie the hypothesis of plant selection for propolis collection (Langenheim, 2003; Salatino and Salatino, M. L. F., 2017). In the mild climate zone Ukraine belongs to, honey bees collect plant resins mainly from Populus nigra L., Populus tremula L. and Betula pubescens L., which determines chemical and physical properties of the yield. Subsequently, bees bring plant resins to the nest and use them to seal cracks or to build their structures (Isidorov et al., 2016; Przybyłek and Karpiński, 2019).

Using the bees’ instincts to seal cracks in the nest, protect the nest from pests and the need to maintain the microclimate of the bee nest at the proper level, beekeepers collect propolis in industrial volumes mainly in two ways. The first one is to modify walls of hives and use collectors, and the second is to place nets (grids) over the honey bee nest (Breyer, 2016; Tsagkarakis et al., 2017).

Fig. 2. Green propolis obtained in Brazil (photo by the author, 2022)

In countries with a tropical climate, where the outside temperature resembles the microclimate of the bee nest, propolis collectors are placed on holes in the outer walls of hives (Fig. 1, 2).

Placement of this type of collector implies that products (honey, pollen) will not be taken from bee families. The presence of food in the nest helps to increase productivity of the bee family. Another important technological aspect is that propolis apiaries migrate to areas rich in plant sources of propolis. It should be noted that such a method as moving to propolis sources is not used in mild climate zones.

Today, according to the state register, there are 54,406 beekeeping households in Ukraine with 2,579,453 bee colonies. Since registration is voluntary, these figures are not final. There are two ways to collect propolis in Ukraine: the first is to clean the nest elements (frames, parts of the hive, etc.) with a beekeeper’s chisel; the second is to place elastic nets or plastic grids over the honey bee nest in the hives. The first method mentioned of extracting propolis is unproductive and outdated and yields in a small amount of propolis, which is mainly contaminated with wood splinters and parts of bee bodies. Such propolis is used for personal and technical needs. The second method, which uses special collection equipment, such as elastic nets and plastic grids, is more productive for big apiaries. At the same time, obtaining 300-500 nets or grids covered with propolis on a farm requires their cleaning. The lack of equipment to automate the process of nets or grids cleaning of propolis and the use of manual labor lead to higher product prices, lower quality and unprofitable production. The use of manual labor to clean propolis may be accompanied by a violation of sanitary and hygienic conditions due to the human factor.

Fig. 3. Experimental 3D model of a device for collecting propolis.
Notes: 1 – a set of gears; 2 – lower and upper pair of shafts, protrusions of which fit one-to-one; 3 – an electric motor; 4 – a hole for inserting nets with propolis; 5 – an outlet; 6 – an electric cable; 7 – a switch; 8 – a protective chamber; 9 – a power cable compartment; 10 – a metal frame

As part of our dissertation research on “Scientific and technical support of the process and equipment for propolis production” at the National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine in 2020-2023, we designed, manufactured and tested a device for cleaning propolis-coated elastic nets (Fig. 3).

Manufacture of the device and its introduction into production help to fill in gaps in the technology of obtaining high quality propolis.

To extract propolis using the device, beekeepers follow the sequence of actions:

• place elastic nets in hives to collect propolis (it is recommended to use nets made of ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA));
• place nets on the upper bars of frames after they are cleaned of wax residues and existing propolis;
• inspect bee colonies as is customary on the farm;
• after the bees cover nets with propolis, shift them so that an entire net is covered with propolis (approximately 20-30 calendar days, depending on availability of the plant base and propensity of the bee family to accumulate propolis);
• collect nets from bee colonies and roll for easy transportation and further cooling (Fig. 4, B);
• for high-quality cleaning of nets with propolis using the device, it is enough to cool nets at a temperature of +5°C for 60-90 minutes, depending on the type of propolis;
• insert the cooled nets into the cleaning device (Access the author’s accounts YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/QktpMJc-0hY?si=MOMb8R6w7LrkgJ2C).

Fig. 4. Propolis obtained at Ukrainian beekeeping farms using the new technology (photo by the author, 2021) Notes: Right – propolis purified from elastic nets using the device; Left – elastic nets covered with propolis obtained from beekeeping farms in Ukraine

After the cleaning is completed, nets are returned to the bee colonies, if necessary, and the obtained propolis is packed and stored for further use.

Nets in the device are cleaned mechanically. One net can be cleaned with the device 100 or more times without visible mechanical damage. The specially designed shafts of the device are pulled into the net and simultaneously bend it in a wave-like manner. During this bending, the propolis is shed in the lower tray. For comfortable work of the operator, the room temperature can be +20-22°C. In countries with tropical climates, it is possible to place the net cleaning device in honeycomb storages, where the temperature is always kept low, which will provide additional savings on room cooling. The propolis harvesting device can be used by beekeepers to clean 227 nets in one working day (eight hours). The developed device has been patented: patent No. 139736 “Device for collecting propolis” (UA). Details of the development and operation of the device were presented at the 47th Apimondia Congress (Istanbul) (PP-177).

For more detailed information on the operation of the device for cleaning nets from propolis and other research papers of the author, please use the link by QR code (Access the author’s account in the scientific social network ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Roman-Dvykaliuk).

Dvykaliuk Roman, Chairman of the Board of BeesAgro Controlled Pollination Association; PhD candidate of the National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine; Kyiv, Ukraine.
E-mail: Roman.Dvykaliuk@delta-sport.kiev.ua

References
DSTU 4662:2006 “Propolis (Bee Glue). Specifications” (2007). Kyiv: State Standards of Ukraine
Salatino, A., & Salatino, M. L. F. (2017). Why do honeybees exploit so few plant species as propolis sources. MOJ Food Processing & Technology, 4(5), 158–160. https://doi.org/10.15406/mojfpt.2017.04.00107
Langenheim, J. H., 2003. Plant Resins: Chemistry, Evolution, Ecology, and Ethnobotany. Timber Press., Portland,OR, USA.
Isidorov, V. A., Bakier, S., Pirożnikow, E., Zambrzycka, M., Swiecicka, I. Selective behaviour of honeybees in acquiring European propolis plant precursors. Journal of chemical ecology. 2016. Vol. 42(6), Р. 475–485. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10886-016-0708-9
Przybyłek, I., & Karpiński, T. M. (2019). Antibacterial properties of propolis. Molecules, 24(11), 2047. https://doi.org/10.3390/molecules24112047
Breyer, H. F. E., Breyer, E. D. H., & Cella, I. (2016). Produção e beneficiamento da própolis [Production and processing of propolis]. Boletim Didático, 1, 30. https://publicacoes.epagri.sc.gov.br/BD/article/view/405 [in Portuguese] Tsagkarakis, A. E., Katsikogianni, T., Gardikis, K., Katsenios, I., Spanidi, E., & Balotis, G. N. (2017). Comparison of Traps Collecting Propolis by Honey Bees. Advances in Entomology, 5(02), 68. 5. https://doi.org/10.4236/ae.2017.52006
Device for collecting propolis [Prystrii dlia zboru propolisu]: pat. 139736 Ukraine. № u 201910696; decl. 29.10.2019. publ. 10.01.2020. Bul. № 1. (in Ukrainian)

Laidlaw Bee Facility

Named after the “father of honey bee genetics” Dr. Harry H. Laidlaw Jr., the Bee Research Facility is a part of a larger, as I like to refer to it, Bee Complex located only a few miles away off of Central UC Davis Campus (West of Route 113 for those who might be familiar with the area). The Bee Complex is composed of the Bee Facility, UC Davis Bee Haven garden, a number of smaller research plots, several ancillary buildings for storage and most recently, a set of mobile trailers housing the Davis USDA Bee Lab. But as you know, it is the people that really make the program, and our program at UC Davis is a home to a number of researchers and extension specialists contributing to bettering bee health. This series aims to showcase all of the great work being done by the UC Davis Bee Program teams. But first, a little bit about our history!

The Bee Facility Apiary

While you have likely heard of the Bee Program at UC Davis, you probably don’t know that its impressive history began long before many of us reading this issue of Bee Culture were even born. It is my pleasure to take you on a brief journey of the establishment of the UC Bee Program, as it has been shared with me by the late Robbin Thorp and Eric Mussen (to read a more detailed history written by Kathy Keatley Garvey, please visit https://ucanr.edu/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=39191). Lastly, I will briefly introduce you to the current faculty members and their respective research and education programs, which we will expand on in the upcoming 2024 issues of Bee Culture. Many well-known and well-respected researchers and educators have conducted seminal works while at UC Davis. They helped make the UC Davis Bee Program what it is today and my current colleagues and I are eager to carry that legacy into the future. My hope is that you will enjoy reading this series as much as we are enjoying writing it for you.

The People: Early 1900s to Early 2010s
Let me take you back to the early 1900s (yes, I just said that, and yes it makes me feel old as well!), when George Haymaker Vansell (1892-1954) was a student at UC Davis. His interest in insect science led him to become the first instructor to teach an Entomology and Apiculture course at UC Davis from 1920 to 1931, highlighting the need for formal Entomology education. He was titled an Instructor in Entomology while also holding a position as a USDA employee at the Davis Experiment Station. Vansell was particularly interested in the field of plant-insect interactions, and has published a number of bulletins concerning honey bee forage. As avid beekeepers, most of you have probably heard at some point that honey bee colonies can suffer poisoning when foraging on California Buckeye (Aesculus californica). Vansell’s interest in this phenomenon resulted in several publications in which he discusses the symptoms of buckeye poisoning, and together with his colleagues, offers possible solutions for reducing damage to colonies. His work suggests that adult worker bees were usually not detrimentally affected; therefore, creating small colony units containing only adult workers and one frame of brood can lead to production of buckeye honey while simultaneously preserving some of the colony work force if the honey is extracted in a timely manner. Vansell and Todd also suggest that Italian x Carniolan hybrids faired a bit better during the production of the buckeye honey as compared to Italian x Caucasian hybrid colonies, but neither had successful recovery. Interestingly, throughout these research articles there is regular mention of the bears destroying colonies in the Sierra Nevada foothills, much like the beekeepers today still have to deal with these intruders. Prior to his sudden passing in 1954, Vansell had also completed research on fruit tree and seed crops pollination. A scholarship established in his honor has helped support many bee students in their fervent effort to advance the field of apiculture.

Around the same time period, Frank Edward Todd (1895-1969) served as the USDA apiculture research branch head at the USDA Pacific States Bee Culture Laboratory at UC Davis (1931-1942). He collaborated closely with Vansell on projects dealing with honey bee poisonous plants, and has advanced pollination of many crops including seed alfalfa, cantaloupes and tangerines. Perhaps most notably, he has reported observations of honey bee nectar collection on alfalfa and the, now well known, tripping mechanism of the alfalfa flower during attempted foraging by honey bees. While affiliated with the UC Davis Bee Biology Program, he modified the dead bee trap originally designed by Norman Gary, which is known as the “Todd Dead Bee Trap”, and has been used in research on effects of various chemicals on bee mortality. Another USDA apiculturist worth mentioning was Edward Lloyd Sechrist (1873-1953). While working in the USDA Office of Bee Culture, he collaborated with researchers at UC Davis Bee lab on several projects that have included honey gathering and daily colony weight changes due to nectar collection. His most notable contribution to the field of apiculture is the proposition for United States standards for honey in 1927.

You probably noticed that the first researchers conducting honey bee and pollination research at UC Davis were actually most directly associated with USDA. However, in 1931, UC Davis hired John Edward Eckert (1895-1975) as a Professor of Entomology and Apiculture, who also served as the Department Chairman from 1934 to 1946. Eckert is well known for studying the flight range of honey bees and he reported extensive observations on this topic including the observation that honey bees prefer to stay close to the apiary in search of forage, but will fly up to 8.5 miles to the food source if necessary. Honey bee resource constancy was also noted by him. Eckert (affectionately called Eck by his peers and stakeholders) was well respected among beekeepers as he supported their efforts to protect colonies from pesticides, and has completed research on potentially harmful pesticide effects on colonies. He is also credited with pioneering antibiotic use in honey bee colonies for management of bacterial diseases, and spent time in Australia and Europe researching various ectoparasitic mites on honey bees including Tracheal mites (Acarapis woodi). Very apropos to this article, Eckert spent decades as the editor of the California column in Gleanings in Bee Culture. Among his many extension publications is the first edition of the Beekeeping in California, Circular 100 from 1936, which has been updated over the years and is still used by many.

As mentioned before, the facility that is still being used by the Bee Program faculty, has been named in honor of Harry Hyde Laidlaw, Jr. (1907-2003) who joined UC Davis as a Professor of Apiculture in 1947. Laidlaw’s research studying mutations leading to differences in eye color, pigment-free blind drones, differences in wing length, hairlessness and resulting identification of underlying molecular and biochemical pathways, have earned him an unofficial title of “The Father of Honey Bee Genetics”. Arguably most impactful applied technology development, however, was the development of the first functional instrument for insemination of queen honey bees. This was made possible by Laidlaw’s study of the queen morphology, and subsequent realization that the only way the queen can be successfully instrumentally inseminated is if the valve-fold is held away from the median oviduct opening. His discovery has provided the means for successful bee breeding and has revolutionized the beekeeping industry. Northern California bee breeders still speak very fondly of Laidlaw. Speaking to his aptitude for innovation and leadership was his selection as the first Dean for Research in the College of Agriculture at UC Davis. He published several seminal queen rearing and bee breeding books, including my personal favorite Queen Rearing and Bee Breeding, written in collaboration with Robert Page, another alumni of our Bee Program. Lastly, in addition to the Bee Biology Facility being named after him, the Laidlaw family established an endowment in his name and in support of student research.

Robbin Thorp, Norm Gary, Larry Connor at the Bee Facility in February 2016

Fifteen years later, Norman E. Gary joined UC Davis as a Professor of Apiculture with special interest in studying honey bee foraging behavior and mating behavior of queens and drones. He was the first to identify queen mating pheromones, and to observe and describe aerial mating of queens and drones. During the medfly eradication efforts by California Department of Food and Agriculture, Gary began studying the impact of pesticide applications on honey bee health, which led to his design of the dead bee trap, later modified by Todd. Gary is also well known for his contributions to the film industry as he has been an adviser on sets of movies such as “Fried Green Tomatoes”, “My Girl” and “Candyman”, earning him the nickname “The Bee Wrangler”. He even has his own IMDb page. Gary has been retired since 1994, but he still occasionally visits the Bee Facility and even borrows bee colonies for small behavioral experiments. Much like his contemporaries Robbin Thorp and Eric Mussen were not, Gary is not very good at being “retired”, and has since published another one of my favorite book recommendations Honey Bee Hobbyist: The Care and Keeping of Bees (I have been lucky enough to have him sign my copy!).

Joining forces with Laidlaw and Gary, Ward Stanger (1913-2000), an extension apiculturist quickly became a champion for the beekeeping industry. In the late 1960s and early 1970s he published extension works discussing the beekeeping industry in California, and comparing the bee breeding and queen rearing efforts in Northern California versus southeastern Gulf States. Stanger understood the value of optimal nutrition to bee health and need for pesticide protection, readily urging the U.S. government to allow for forage access and stricter pesticide regulations. He has also published recommendations for supplemental feeding of colonies to increase their productivity, and a manual on how to remove honey bees from structures.

Christine Peng and Elina L. Niño, January 2020

In 1975, Christine Y. S. Peng joined the Entomology Department as the Professor of Apiculture specializing in insect physiology. I am sure that at this point many, if not all of you, are aware that antibiotics for management of honey bee bacterial diseases require a prescription from a veterinarian. But I bet you did not know that Peng was instrumental in selecting tylosin as a possible replacement antibiotic for oxytetracycline hydrochloride (Terramycin®) since Paenibacillus larvae started developing resistance to it. Peng has also made invaluable contributions in elucidating gamete physiology laying groundwork for successful cryopreservation of honey bee genetic material. Her research into honey bee nutritional needs has led to guidelines for seasonal feeding regimes, and her interest in parasitology has led her to explore varroa mite physiology and various management strategies.

I am pretty certain that Robert E. Page Jr. and his seminal works in honey bee genetics don’t need much of an introduction to the readers of Bee Culture. Page joined the Department of Entomology faculty in 1989 where he also served as the Department Chair. There is not enough space here to write about his many research accomplishments so I invite you to read some of the hundreds of scientific articles or the four books that he has published thus far. His published works report on fundamental discoveries in honey bee behavior particularly regulation of foraging behavior, population genetics and the evolution of complex social behavior. Despite all his achievements and accolades he remains a refreshingly approachable colleague. His passion for honey bees particularly shines through in one of his latest projects “The Art of the Bee” YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@artofthebee).

Sue Cobey, March 2018

The Bee Program can’t really be talked about without mentioning the contributions of Susan Cobey who was at UC Davis from 2007 to 2012. Cobey is a giant in the field of honey bee breeding and has worked tirelessly for decades to maintain and improve quality honey bee stock in close collaboration with the Northern California Bee Breeders. As a young eager doctoral student just discovering my interest in honey bee queen mating physiology, I deeply valued the opportunity to take the world-renowned Instrumental Insemination (II) course with Cobey while she was still working at UC Davis. Principles of II and many tips and tricks shared with me by Cobey are something I now share with the students in our own II courses. Her sustained efforts to improve the bee stock in the U.S. have led to the establishment of the New World Carniolan Breeding Stock that can be purchased from Northern California bee breeders.

Back in 2014, I joined the Department of Entomology and Nematology at UC Davis as the Extension Apiculturist, and to my delight I was able to spend a significant amount of time in the company of two great pollinator researchers and educators: Robbin W. Thorp (1933-2019) and Eric C. Mussen (1944-2022).

Thorp (To read more about R. W. Thorp, visit: https://ucanr.edu/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=30459) joined UC Davis as a Professor of Apiculture in 1964 and his research interests were in pollination behavior of honey bees particularly in almond production. Later on, he shifted his focus to non-Apis bees with emphasis on bee systematics, bee conservation and pollination of vernal pool plants. Bumblebee conservation efforts have been in large part inspired by Thorp’s research and he is cited as the main catalyst for successful petition for listing rusty patch bumblebee as an endangered species. Even though he retired in 1994, Thorp continued to come to work at the Bee Facility every day and continued to work on several projects. I have to specifically recommend two books he co-authored in his retirement: Bumble Bees of North America: An Identification Guide and California Bees and Blooms, a Guide for Gardeners and Naturalists. I am forever grateful to him for his guidance and advice, and for not minding me asking him a million questions while he was patiently identifying drawers-full of pinned bees for dozens of student and postdoc projects.

Eric Mussen – Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey

Similarly, I will forever harbor deep gratitude and appreciation for Eric C. Mussen (To read more about E. C. Mussen, visit: https://ucanr.edu/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=52399). He joined University of California Cooperative Extension in 1976 and quickly became a go-to person for the beekeeping industry in California. As he spent more time immersed within California beekeeping, many others such as government entities, non-profit organizations, commodity boards became reliant on him for scientific and practical information. In collaboration with other UC Davis bee researchers, he conducted applied studies immediately relevant for the contemporary beekeeping industry. Shortly before I came to the University, Mussen retired in 2014. I will always be grateful to him for introducing me to the California beekeeping community, for offering guidance, and persistent willingness to give advice while making sure I become fully integrated within the California beekeeping industry.

It was truly my great honor and privilege to learn directly from two great bee researchers and educators. There is absolutely no replacement for their innovation and ingenuity in tackling challenges plaguing bee health, and I only hope I can serve California stakeholders as well as they have. They are very missed!

The People: 2010s to Today
Currently, the Bee Program in the Department of Entomology and Nematology has three core faculty members charged with conducting research and formal and informal education on bee biology and health. Neal M. Williams joined the department in 2009 where he continues working on wild bee biology, native bee conservation and pollination biology. He is devoted to developing supplemental forage mixes to enhance nutrition of all bees in agricultural landscapes of California, as well as modeling potential risks and benefits to bees within California lands. Brian R. Johnson joined the department in 2012 with a strong background in bee behavior. At UC Davis, he continues to study the genetic basis of bee behavior, bee defenses, impact of number of stressors on bee health, spread of Apis mellifera scuttelata hybrids within California, and occasionally conducts projects involving other insects. Most recently, he has published a book Honey Bee Biology which is bound to become a staple reading for beekeepers and researchers alike, and his second book should be coming out soon, so keep an eye out for it. I joined the department as an extension apiculturist in 2014, and learned quickly that I still have much more to learn. California beekeeping is not for the faint of heart and I am really grateful for the super supportive California beekeepers whose backing has allowed me to develop my research and extension program to an advanced level. My team and I conduct research that is directly applicable to beekeepers, including varroa mite management, improved nutrition and enhanced crop pollination. Extension activities are done by all members of my team and they range from offering beekeeping courses and giving club presentations through the California Master Beekeeper Program, all the way to offering technical services such as bee testing and colony inspections through newly established UC Davis Bee Health Hub. Several other of our UC Davis colleagues conduct bee research and we often collaborate with Rachel Vannette and Santiago Ramirez, as well as the two new USDA Bee Researchers Arathi Seshadri and Julia Fine.

Thank you for letting me take you on this short, yet (you hopefully agree) impressive journey through the history of UC Davis Bee Program. Make sure you stay tuned for the next articles in this UC Davis series, and with the upcoming start of pollination season it seems only appropriate to continue with an article delving deeper into some of the bee health and crop pollination research being done in the E. L. Niño Bee Lab. “See you” next month!

Mrs. Root in her teens

Mrs. Susan Hall Root
By: Nina Bagley

Susan Hall was born in 1841 in Ely, Cambridgeshire, England. Her parents were Daniel and Mary Hall, both born in England. They had three children: Robert born in 1838, Susan born in 1841 and, after immigrating to America in 1848, Mary born in 1850. During 1815 and 1837, Ely was in general depression, an agricultural community with no work to be found. The townspeople had terrible living conditions and Ely laborers could no longer maintain themselves. The city of Ely’s population was growing more rapidly than it was in the surrounding countryside. Infectious diseases plagued the countryside, then another Cholera outbreak began in England in 1848. There was a heavy death rate, increasing mortality between 1841 and 1848. This might be one of the reasons why Susan’s father decided to embark on a journey to America with his family for better opportunities.

In 1848, Liverpool, England was the most significant immigration port in the world. Traveling from Ely, Cambridgeshire to Liverpool was 250 miles. Once arriving at the port, families waited in lines, sometimes for days just to get on a ship to sail to America. The journey could take forty to ninety days (about three months) with unfavorable winds and harsh weather.

When this occurred, passengers would often run short of food. Bread, biscuits and potatoes were provided by the shipping companies. The food was terrible and, at times, spoiled.

This was not a cruise ship. Passengers had about two square feet of space. It was dirty, with extraordinarily little ventilation, not to mention lice and rodents. It was a long, wearying journey for a young girl of eight, not knowing what the future would bring, leaving her homeland for an unfamiliar land.

Susan’s father decided to farm and raise his family in Medina County, Ohio. In the new homeland, the family prospers and became community members, attending church and farming their land. As a young girl, Susan had no idea that she would grow up to be a driving force in one man’s life or that that man would become a part of history in Medina, Ohio, the place her father would choose to bring his family to have a better life.

As a young girl, Susan had a schoolmate named Sara Root who was very fond of Susan. Sara felt that her friend Susan would make a good wife for her brother. Sara’s brother Amos Ives Root was away for the Winter in Westville, Ohio, on the river, staying with a relative while attending high school. Sara wrote to her brother saying she had found one of the sweetest girls in all the world as a wife for him.

It was a little embarrassing for Amos I. Root when the two first met, knowing that this schoolmate of his sister knew what she had written to him. It was true love at first sight for both.

A.I. Root wrote: “Her honest simplicity and childlike innocence impressed me from the very first; and, as a matter of course, we two proceeded to get acquainted; and I, for my part, I fear, carried out the program so well that the dear sister was a good many times forgotten and ‘left out in the cold’” (Gleanings in Bee Culture, 1923, pg. 58).

Amos would walk miles to Susan’s family’s farm in unbearable weather to spend a few hours in her company. He called on her once in the middle of the week and every Sunday night! Both Amos and Susan were attending school at the time. When visiting in those early days, staying late was much the fashion. Susan would politely tell Amos that her father went to considerable expense so she could attend a particular school for girls. She could not participate in her studies if he stayed so late, and how important it was for her to get a good night’s sleep. Amos was reluctant to go home at the proper time. Finally, Susan said one evening: “Sir, it is time for you to go home.”

Amos was offended and declared that if he went home, he would go and never return. Susan said, “All right. If you refuse to listen to the dictates of good common sense, it will probably be better for both of us that you should go away and never come back” (Gleanings in Bee Culture, Jan. 1923).

Susan was petite with a kind spirit who knew exactly who she was and what she desired. Having their first lover’s quarrel, Amos left with his head up high and a stern look to teach her that he, Amos I. Root, was not to be dictated to in that manner!

It was a dark night, and he was walking quickly. His temper was getting the best of him and flaring up, which it had done most of his life. Amos started reflecting on how he acted and started to slow down a bit. It was the voice of reason or remembrance of his good mother’s teachings. This is what his mother said: “Old Fellow, is it not possible you are taking offense at the wise words of the best friend you have on earth, and that, instead of being offended, you should recognize her as the one whose price is far above rubies?” (Gleanings in Bee Culture, Jan. 1923.)

Amos crossed the bridge, realizing his mistake. He felt a cold chill all over him, and he turned around, walking calmly back to Mr. Hall’s farm as he hurried up to the house he had just left. Above the front door was Susan’s window to her room. He picked up a pebble and gently tossed it up against her window. And the window went flying up just as he expected! He was always quite sure of himself, so this is what Amos I. Root said: “‘Sue, I humbly beg pardon. You were right, and I was wrong. Will you forgive me?’ Susan responded, ‘All right. Good night.’ And down went the window!” (Gleanings, Jan. 1923).

Amos thought she would come downstairs and give him a kiss of reconciliation; Susan planned nothing of the kind! It was a turning point in his life. Amos finally proposed that the two should be engaged. But Susan insisted that they both were too young to be getting married; Amos was 17 and Susan was 15. Kindly, she told Amos that he did not have the vitality for marriage. A.I. Root was sickly and frail as a child and as a man was not strong. She wanted to postpone marraige for a few years because she was not ready for marriage and wanted to complete her schooling.

A.I. Root would go off and find his way in the big wide world for the next couple of years, making a name for himself, giving lectures and expanding his mind to innovative ideas. He never let the idea go, knowing the two would marry one day. After his lecture tours were over. He returned to his father’s small farm in the woods where he lived as a young man.

Susan’s father feared that Amos could not make a living. Amos would prove him wrong. A.I. Root took a course in watch-repairing and, at twenty-one, started a watch-repairing shop under the pretentious name of A.I. Root & Co. He then proceeded to call on his true love, Miss Susan Hall. Susan’s father was humbled, and he approved them of their marriage.

Mr. and Mrs. Root after they were married.

Three noteworthy events took place in 1861. Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration on March 4, 1861. The Civil War started on April 9, 1861. And, A.I. Root and Susan Hall were married on September 29, 1861. Amos was twenty-one and Susan was nineteen years old.

As the sun rose that Autumn morning after Mr. and Mrs. Root married, they started with horses and carriage on a honeymoon trip. The two were by themselves. Amos put out his hand to Sue as he called her, and she looked smilingly up into his face while he spoke, “Sue, the agreement between us two that we have just entered into is the most sacred and solemn step in our lives. Let us fully consider the new relations that rest on the shoulders of both of us, and may God help us to bear with each other and to bear with patience the new responsibilities that are going to rest on us two. May we two, through thick and thin, for better or for worse, cling to each other.” It was a boyish speech, but it was honest.

Mrs. Susan Hall Root would become his support, “wise counselor” and confidante throughout their marriage, including her husband’s business affairs. Mrs. Root’s hard work and excellent management of the home helped A.I. Root to meet his obligations when they were starting out as a young couple. They would build a homestead and live in Medina, Ohio.

A.I. Root would become a very influential man in many ways, especially in the world of bees. By 1885, the Root name was recognized around the world. Modest and simple in taste, Mrs. Root always avoided publicity, preferring the background of a beautiful home life she had with her husband and children.

Mrs. Root would spend the next sixty years being there for her husband while being an attentive wife and mother, giving birth to five children in twenty years: Ernest R. Root, 1862; Maud E. Root, 1865; Constance M. Root, 1872; Carrie B. Root, 1878; and, having her youngest child at forty-one, Huber Hall Root, 1883. The two would cling together for better or worse, just as they promised one another.

In August 1865, a swarm of bees passed over the A.I. Root & Co. One of the employees of Mr. Root asked jokingly what would you give me if I caught the swarm? Mr. Root replied, a dollar securely boxed. The young man brought A.I. Root the bees, securely boxed, and collected his dollar; the rest is history.

The Root Factory.

A.I. Root founded his bee company in 1869 in his hometown of Medina, Ohio to manufacture beehives and beekeeping equipment. The company was shipping four railroad freight cars of beekeeping equipment everyday, things were going well! A.I. Root was working sixteen-hour days, which sometimes made it difficult to be around him. He started the magazine Gleanings in Bee Culture on January 1, 1873. The first edition of A.I. Root’s book ABC and XYZ of Bee Culture was published in 1879.

Mr. Root constantly worked and expected everyone around him to work just as hard! But that was impossible because Mr. Root was continually working and doing the work of five men until he would exhaust himself to the point that he made himself ill.

Mr. Root would say: “Had I gone on as an evil and angry spirit prompted me to do and not turn back to apologize to my dear wife, Sue, there would have been no A.I. Root Co. There would have been no five dear children brought up in the fear of the Lord, and there would, in all probability, have been no A.I. Root now dictating these words” (Gleanings in Bee Culture, Jan.1923).

Mrs. Root’s children, at some point, all worked for the family business. She was a devoted mother and the most meticulous housekeeper; dust and dirt were her enemies!

Mrs. Root’s daughter Candice Root Boyden authored an article in Gleanings about her mother. The title was “Mother”: “Sweet and modest as the violet of her nature England. Mother always kept herself in the background; only her husband and children, no matter how much credit they had accomplished, should go to her” (Gleanings in Bee Culture, Jan. 1, 1922).

Candice remembered how, as a small child, her mother spent most of her time in the kitchen preparing delicious, healthy foods for the family. Mrs. Root would spend many hours standing over a walnut table with drop leaves while she prepared the family meals. At the end of the table was a shallow drawer to put spoons, cutlery, and other kitchen items. But Mrs. Root would use the drawer for more important things. Neatly filled with toys, the drawer’s contents revealed her love and understanding of a child’s nature.

Mr. and Mrs. Root having a picnic.

The toys were not store-bought, as her daughter would say they were “Treasures, queer bits of metal and wood, an old steel puzzle made by Father, rubber balls, balls of string, little wooden boxes and a little shallow bowl carved from black walnut. But unselfishness, Mother’s dominant characteristic, is revealed in the fact that the drawer, within my recollection, never held anything to help Mother in her work and save her steps.” (Gleanings in Bee Culture, Jan. 1, 1922).

At the time, kitchens were compact, with all their cooking utensils and drawers close by to save the women steps in the kitchen. Mrs. Root was okay with the drawer, which was full of toys for the children. And she did not mind walking back and forth to the big pantry each time she needed something out of it. Mrs. Root often had very severe attacks of pleurisy throughout her life, weakening her heart. She was not a robust woman and sometimes did not have the energy to run around after the children, so the drawer kept their little hands busy and close to their mother.

Mrs. Root would fill a bowl with water and place it on the floor so the children could sail their boats. In the Winter, she would warm the water so their little hands would not get cold. She loved children and had a nurturing way with them.

Mrs. Root did not have the opportunity to attend college, but she took immense pleasure in her children and grandchildren attending college.

Mr. and Mrs. Root would not accompany their family to hotel dinners. They would not go to formal dinners or parties in their honor, but they loved simple picnics in the parks with family around them.

In 1901, A.I. Root built a cabin in the northern part of the Michigan woods and went there to live with his wife. In the forty years of married life, they would finally work side by side, enjoying each other’s companionship.

A.I. Root did not like wintry weather; the cold bothered him. So, a few years after they built their Michigan cabin, they would make another cabin in Florida, where they spent their Winters. Mrs. Root did not like calling it a cabin, so she called it their cottage.

The Roots in their 70s.

The fare from Cleveland, Ohio to Bradenton, Florida was $57.15 a tourist for a round-trip ticket for the Winter. The Roots loved going to their Florida cottage, but Mrs. Root was always overwhelmed with grief to leave all her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren every Winter.

In the early 1900s, they would spend their Summers in Michigan and Winters in Florida.

The Root Men: J.T. Calvert, Huber, Allen and Ernest Root.

Their sons, Ernest and Huber, were involved in the business of the A.I. Root Company along with their daughter Maude’s husband J.T. Calvert who was the bookkeeper. Around 1900, Ernest took over as editor for Gleanings and kept the bee part of the company going while Huber, more of an inventor like his father, experimented with beeswax. Under Huber’s guidance, the Root company started making candles at the request of the Catholic Church. The local priest was looking for better quality beeswax for their candles and a wick that burned longer. A.I. Root’s sons were carrying the torch for their father so he never had to worry about money again and could devote his time to Mrs. Root, the Congregational Church, family, bees and gardening.

Huber started the candles for the Catholic Church.

Mrs. Root, being in her seventies, enjoyed being outdoors, working in her garden in Florida, and enjoyed spending time with her husband. She enjoyed picking vegetables from her garden and sharing them with her family and neighbors.

Her children felt their mother was the most perfect and unselfish of anyone they had ever known. Mrs. Root captured the hearts around her. She had enough love to go around and was happy when she could help those that were needy, lonely, widowed or fatherless.

Her tender heart cared for the neighbor’s chickens, cats and dogs and ensured they were all fed and cared for. And if Mrs. Root felt a horse was being mistreated, she would not stand for it. This most definitely caused her misery.

A.I. Root wrote: “May I be pardoned for saying that the dear little woman has most faithfully kept her part of the pledge year in and year out? Oh! What would I give if I could truthfully say, ‘I have done as well, or even approximately as well?’” (Gleanings in Bee Culture, 1917, pg. 297).

Mrs. Root suddenly passed away on the evening of Tuesday, November 29, 1921 in Bradenton, Florida, where she and her husband had maintained a cottage for several years. The Roots had just returned to Florida a few weeks before her death. She was feeling exceptionally well and was particularly happy to visit her good friend for many years, Mrs. Ed Nettleton of Medina, who also vacationed in Bradenton, Florida, for the Winter.

Although the family knew it was coming for some time, her life was swiftly ended; the family felt it was due to her arteries being weak from pleurisy attacks over the years.

Mr. and Mrs. Root with a grandchild.

Mrs. Root’s aged husband was too feeble and was advised not to make the long trip back home with the body of his long-time companion.

Mrs. Root’s funeral was held at the home of Ernest Root, her son, on Friday, December 2, 1921, at the old homestead. Mrs. Root was eighty years old. Mr. and Mrs. Root had their sixtieth wedding anniversary a few weeks before her death. She left behind her husband, five children, eleven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. Mrs. Root was a Medina County, Ohio resident for over seventy years and a friend to all. Mrs. Root is buried in the Spring Grove Cemetery in Medina County, Ohio.

A few years later, Mr. Root caught pneumonia on his way home to Medina, Ohio from Bradenton, Florida. Being feeble, weak and bedridden for several days, the doctor was called, but Mr. Root, knowing it was time, looked at his son Ernest one last time, feeling at peace. He was ready to meet his maker and join his true love, Mrs. Susan Hall Root. A.I. Root took a deep breath and passed away on April 29, 1923, with his children by his side. A.I. Root is buried beside his wife in the Spring Grove Cemetery in Medina County, Ohio.

Ten to twenty percent of the people fleeing Europe in the 1800s did not survive. Not only did Mrs. Root survive, but she survived childbirth, raising five children, cooking and cleaning, washing and ironing in the mid-1800s, and tending to a husband who was constantly inventing and taking chances.

Mrs. Root’s children would have children, and their children would have children, and it has continued for five generations.

The A.I. Root Company is still in business today. The magazine is still being published but instead of Gleanings in Bee Culture it is called Bee Culture: The Magazine of American Beekeeping. Today, A.I. Root is the largest supplier of liturgical candles for Catholic churches. A hundred and fifty-four years later, Brad Root continues the family tradition like his father and grandfathers before him. He is the fifth generation of the Root family. So, the next time you light a Root Candle, think of Mrs. Susan Hall Root who was a friend to all.

I agree with A.I. Root that there would be no A.I. Root Co. if not for a tenacious young girl, Susan Hall Root!

“There is a great woman behind every great man.”

Nina Bagley
Ohio Queen Bee
Columbus, Ohio

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For the Love of Bees

Some of the ways backyard beekeepers benefit commercial operations and vice-versa
By: Ross Conrad

The beekeeping community is generally divided into two primary categories. There are commercial entrepreneurs and small-scale part-time backyard beekeeping enthusiasts. Commercial operators can be further broken down into full-time and part-time sideliners. It turns out that while all these groups all tend to have very different underlying motivations, they all share many similar types of knowledge and practices, and mutually support one another.

The Australian beekeepers studied rely heavily on meetings, events and conferences to keep up on the latest research. However, while knowledgeable speakers are valued, a lot of information exchanges take place between programs, out in the hallways where beekeepers share ideas and management practices.

The similarities among these different groups and how they interact with each other is the subject of a 2023 paper authored by Kirsten Martinus, associate professor of the School of Social Sciences at the University of Western Australia. The paper titled, ‘It’s a love interest’—Enthusiasts and regional industry cultures of practice, explores some of the similarities, differences and relationships between commercial and backyard beekeepers. While this study focused on a specific region of beekeepers in Western Australia, the information documented can be of benefit to beekeepers the world over due to the universality of the issues beekeepers face globally.

Dr. Martinus’ work suggests that commercial beekeepers and backyard honey bee enthusiasts both stand to benefit by cooperating and working together to share knowledge and information. As Dr. Martinus notes, “the findings point to the importance of informal non-firm actors in place-specific problem solving through a culture of exchange and mutual endeavor. This suggests that developing a regional industry culture of practice and entrepreneurship may support collaborations between hobbyists or enthusiasts and local business counterparts, which in turn will enhance regional competitiveness, identity and placemaking.” To put it simply, backyard beekeepers and commercial beekeepers can, and often do, support and benefit one another.

The Australian beekeepers studied shared a sense of local beekeeping tradition and long-time commitment, given that the majority use the Langstroth hive as opposed to alternative hive designs. For commercial operators, this was partly because other methods are not seen as commercially viable, due to the large capital investment in equipment required to change. It is also because some hive designs were not seen as authentic, as in the case of the Flow Hive.

Whether it’s a few hives in the backyard or thousands, beekeepers of all sizes love their bees.

Although much of the technology and management used in beekeeping is similar globally, this study acknowledges the importance of generalized regional variations depending on local weather, climate and whether colonies are located in urban, farmland or rural settings. ‘It’s a love interest’ notes that beekeeping “is an activity that requires both scientific and practical knowledge on bee behaviors, husbandry and hive care, as well as knowledge that is deeply embedded in ‘place’ such as weather, flowering times and places, and state and local laws around bee management and ownership.”

Commercial beekeepers are widely understood to be “regional assets” or “resources” that can help local beekeeping groups and shape new industry paths. Meanwhile backyard beekeepers have the luxury of being able to experiment and explore novel beekeeping techniques since their apicultural activities are decoupled from their livelihoods. The lines between commercial and backyard beekeepers often gets blurred however, such as when commercial operators retire and transition to part-time, when professionals mentor backyard beekeepers, and when commercial beekeepers receive fresh insights through informal exchanges with part-time enthusiasts.

A relatively low conversion rate from backyard to commercial beekeeper was observed. A backyard beekeeper’s commercial transition depends not only on “innovation but on willingness to upscale operations after acquiring skills and knowledge.” Some of the greatest barriers to commercializing a backyard operation are related to finances, liability and beekeeping competence. My own observation is that many commercial beekeepers get their start working for a commercial beekeeping operation. This allows them to get paid while they build the skill level they need to be successful on their own.

We beekeepers are free to practice an ever growing array of different types of beekeeping management with hives of various styles, different types of bees, and hard chemical, soft chemical or non-chemical treatment options just to name a few. We also adopt a wide variety of underlying motivations for engaging in beekeeping activities. Backyard beekeepers may enjoy the intellectual, educational and social aspects of beekeeping, while others may simply be looking to provide pollination for their gardens. Commercial beekeepers are primarily concerned with earning a living, managing colonies efficiently and reducing the physicality of their bee work. They were found to primarily work collaboratively on issues that address profitability and business viability.

The study found that the “novel and diverse local and technical know-how, personal experience, scientific and technical skills and occupational backgrounds, and social and work networks” that backyard beekeepers bring to their craft may offer commercial beekeepers an “external and complementary knowledge source”. The value of this contribution to the industry however, is not widely recognized. As one operator is quoted as saying, those in commercial beekeeping “think hobbyists don’t know anything, and hobbyists know they don’t want to do it on a big scale.”

The backyard beekeeping enthusiast plays an important role in improving community and social acceptance of beekeeping and helping to raise awareness of the importance of bee decline. They are more likely to get involved in honey bee related activities within their communities and this improves the industry’s profile overall by increasing social awareness of the industry and the plight of the bees. Their community engagement helps to strengthen society’s connection to beekeeping and the environment. This in turn can also help change local policies and laws that relate to beekeeping activities.

Dr. Martinus found that backyard beekeepers are generally less knowledgeable about bees and beekeeping than commercial operators, which may be why they are more willing to spend more time seeking and sharing knowledge. While backyard beekeepers tend to be quick to share know-how and experiences, commercial operators were found to generally be more protective of industry secrets and information.

Historically, a beekeepers commitment and profitability have been judged by asking questions like “How many hives do you run?” and “How long have you been keeping bees?” In the age of varroa and neonicotinoid pesticides, a new question is often used to quickly evaluate ones seriousness as a beekeeper: “What percentage of your colonies did you lose this Winter/year?”

Enthusiasts viewed the sharing of ideas and experiences as a way to enhance the beekeeping community. This process is facilitated through formal activities such as bee club and association meetings, classes and workshops and informally through mentorships. All this is in addition to more open access forms of accessing information through blogs, extension service and scientific websites, association or government newsletters and beekeeping journals and periodicals.

The primary focus of backyard beekeepers on basic beekeeping information makes sense given the steep learning curve necessary to get up to speed in bee culture. Less experienced beekeepers tend to be highly dependent on the knowledge of seasoned beekeepers and often adopt a “belief in the person”. The study notes that most enthusiasts felt “they received more information than they passed on, and that information was ‘unlocked’ through a gradual process of increased community status and credibility as they gained knowledge, experience and skill.” This process also impacts how a beekeeper is viewed within the wider beekeeping social network ‘because everyone knows everyone’.

All too often we beekeepers can be judgmental and seek to establish an ego driven pecking order and try to improve our status amongst our peers. A quick and dirty method many of the Australian beekeepers studied used to evaluate another’s commitment and profitability as a beekeeper is by assessing the number of years keeping bees (part-time) or the number of hives one manages (commercial). Of course, the use of such proxies to judge another’s seriousness as a beekeeper is fraught with error and can often be wildly mistaken, but they are commonly used nonetheless.

While keeping bees typically is an isolated activity, learning how to keep bees has a strong social component. This study documented the beekeeping community’s openness and willingness to share management techniques and has built into its ecosystem various opportunities for enthusiast-professional interactions at meetings, conferences and events, all of which serve to strengthen the overall beekeeping community. According to Dr. Martinus, “…hobbyists can be conceived as ‘apprentices’ engaged in legitimate peripheral participation where learning and mastery occurs through participation” in beekeeping. Furthermore, “…interactions between individuals produce a shared identity, related to both individual skill acquisition and an individuals’ existence within a certain context of and having competencies within the group.” Additionally, “…learning of practice then does not always occur in the same locality or in organized forms (e.g. work teams), but also informally through shared experience, passion or expertise and can occur across space and may include professionals, semi-professionals and hobbyists.”

The sharing of beekeeping information and techniques is facilitated by the fact that we are all working with the same insects and have a similar base of knowledge. There is a wide network of both formal and informal opportunities where individuals can connect with each other, allowing beekeepers to share and obtain meaning through the active process of learning by tackling similar problems and issues. Knowledge sharing between non-commercial and commercial groups allows for the exchange of perspectives which can be critical to figuring out what will work in one’s specific situation.

Dr. Martinus summarizes her work this way: “This research has found extensive direct and indirect interactions between hobbyists and operators, which have enhanced the value of hobbyist activities and have become channels for industry and community appropriation. As firm external knowledge sources, hobbyists did not fit current understandings of how user innovators might support industry. This finding perhaps reflects the low-tech character of beekeeping, which allows hobbyists to engage in non-profit markets alongside commercial ones. Hobbyists were both market competitors forcing operators into niche markets focused on tourist, mono-floral, high-value honey and collaborators involved in adapting global scientific or practical knowledge to the Western Australian context given the commercial focus on small process or technical/mechanical changes to improve productivity. Hobbyist activities were also of wider societal benefit, lifting community science levels, counteracting climate change, and changing industry’s operational context by changing policy and shifting societal images of bees and beekeeping.”

According to Dr. Martinus, the results of her study can be used to strengthen the beekeeping community in a couple ways: First is through “Better support for interactions between hobbyists and industry … for example funding or in-kind support to grow mentoring or internship schemes. These appear critical in the transfer of practice between the groups; it also provides a source of low cost labor for industry, and encourages responsible beekeeping amongst new hobbyist beekeepers as a means to address biosecurity threats.”

The second way her findings can strengthen the beekeeping industry is through “more appropriate policy in local governments – local laws on domestic keeping of animals particularly in urban areas, does often not adequately address beekeeping. This would recognize the importance of hobbyist beekeepers in the community (and bees in the environment). Related to this – the enactment of laws around urban beekeeping is often ad hoc, as local officials often do not understand bee behaviors and may be inclined to take an overly-cautious approach towards bees in urban areas in dispute resolution.”

Despite the huge diversity in practices and motivations among beekeepers, we all are dealing with many of the same issues from how to handle swarms, deal with foraging dearths, diseases, pests, queen issues, honey harvesting, timing of nectar flows, pesticide poisoning, etc. Ultimately, we are all in the same boat. By valuing and capitalizing on our differences rather than judging or denigrating them, we stand to create a stronger, more resilient beekeeping industry. A valuable lesson that is applicable not only to our industry, but many other areas of our lives as well.

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A Conversation with Kim Flottum, Part 2

Retired, Longtime Bee Culture Magazine Editor
By: James E. Tew

Last Month
Bee Culture readers, last month, Kim told us the story of his early years as editor of this magazine. Editor Jerry, the current manager of Bee Culture, stopped the first interview just after Kim introduced Charlie Gibbons, who was the White House beekeeper during the Obama administration years. This article, A Conversation with Kim Flottum (Part 2) picks up at that point…

Kim: When Michelle Obama said she wanted a garden out back, one of the people that worked there said, “If you’re going to have a garden, you got to have bees and I know a beekeeper who works here.”

They went and tapped on Charlie’s shoulder and said, “We need a beehive for the White House organic garden.” The elected people who lived in the White House had a dog and Charlie put the beehive where you would expect it – on the ground. Every time the dog came out, he would go sniff the entrance. I don’t know if the dog ever got stung, but people thought it was probably not a good idea, so they made an eight foot tower to put the beehive on top of by the organic garden. When Charlie went to work bees, he had to climb a stepladder, but that was okay.

I wasn’t the only person that got invited there to work with the bees. Quite a few of the commercial and business beekeepers in the U.S. also got to come and visit and look and talk. That worked well.

Then not long after I started, three, four, five years, I got an article from a guy in England, and it was, How We Stop Swarms in England. The article was very British, very, very British. I liked it. The information was basic, but the presentation and how he used words wasn’t basic at all. I published it and I got to know the author. The author’s name was Peter. You met Peter when you were there.

Jim: I did. Peter Smith.

Kim: Then I got invited to my first National Honey Show in London. I was the speaker. The way the room was set up, all the chairs in the back, empty space right in front of the stage, the stage up above, and the speaker was over here on the right, a screen, standard lecture hall. I was looking at it because I was going to be next. “Where’s the steps? How steep are they? Where’s my talk? Everything’s set up.” Peter was what? Nine feet tall?

Jim: Yes, he was a tall man.

Kim: This big, tall guy (Peter Smith) comes over there and, in British English, he says, “How do you do?” I looked up at him and he says, “You published an article of mine, thank you very much.” Kathy and I got to know Peter. When the meeting was over, he drove us around a little bit of the part of town we were in. Over the years we got invited to his place and to his meeting several times.

At that meeting, Peter introduced me to Jeremy Burbidge who runs Northern Bee Books. Now, I had an international publisher contact. He published books and he published a bee magazine. We put our heads together and it turns out we were a lot more alike than not – in terms of being a publisher and what people thought. We got along really well. I got to spread Bee Culture’s influence pretty much across England and that worked. He got to spread UK beekeeping across the U.S. and that worked well. I got to go over there a bunch of times.

He lives way north in England, but he has a Summer house as far south as you can get and still be in England and not have wet feet. That’s how far south he lives. He lived less than a couple miles from… who was that monk in England?

Interviewer: Brother Adam?

Kim: Yes, Brother Adam – at Buckfast Abbey. You could almost see it (Buckfast Abbey) from his place. He was a little bit west of there, but it was that close.

Anyway, coming back to the U.S., I still was doing a fair amount of traveling and speaking. Almost all of this is because nobody else wanted it. I’m just one of the available ones to do this, so I guess I had nothing else to do.

Jim: You were the president during some dark times in the Ohio State Beekeepers Association with Africanized bees and predaceous mite introductions.

Kim: Thank you. I was. Africanized bees and mite introductions were bad.

Jim: It was a difficult time to be an officer in a bee group.

Kim: I had a good experience with a reporter asking about Africanized bees. The first Africanized bees in the U.S. were still very new when I got a call from a reporter at the New York Times about Africanized Killer Bees in the U.S. I had talked to this reporter before which is why she called me because I’m the only beekeeper she knew. We talked and I tried to calm her down, and I think I did a little bit. The story that came out wasn’t outright panic, but it was, “Oh my God, are we going to die? Are we going to die?” sort of thing.

A while later, she had a story in the New York Times about Charlie Gibbons, the White House’s beekeeper. By the way, this is how I met Charlie. I said, “I got to get ahold of her (the New York Times reporter).” I called her up and she said, “I can’t tell you that it’s the president.” I said, “You owe me a story,” so, she gave me Charlie’s name. That was it, just his name. No address. No phone number. I went to my subscription person, and I said, “Do we, by any chance, have a subscriber living in the Washington, DC, Maryland area, named Charlie Gibbons?”
She looked and she said, “Yes, we do.” I said, “Do we have a phone number?” My subscription person replied, “Yes, we do.” I called him up. He’d taken the day off to go to the doctor. I called up and suddenly I’m talking to the president’s beekeeper. How cool is that? That’s how I met the White House’s beekeeper who I discussed earlier.

Jim: You did that because of the Bee Culture subscription contact?

Kim: Yes.

Jim: The subscription address and phone number?

Kim: Yes. That got me in a lot of doors over the years. That got me in doors for two reasons. People were scared of what I would say in the magazine. I’m glad they didn’t know that I was more scared than they were. I would never say anything, and that procedure worked fairly well.

Secondly, beekeeping events started to wind down, in terms of the industry settling down over Africanized honey bees and Varroa mites. The conflict over the honey board eased but then adulterated honey became a prominent national issue. To this day, that adulterated honey challenge hasn’t gone away at all. I’m glad I’m not in the middle of that honey war because that’s not going to go away.

I saw an ad just this week selling honey for a dollar per pound in a 50-gallon barrel. I need to say it wasn’t U.S. honey. It was foreign honey. That’s what U.S. honey producers are up against right now and that’s not going to get any better with inflation and all the things being what they’re going to be.

All things considered, I got out of this editor position at just about the right time in terms of domestic problems, and in terms of international problems. Personal problems? I never had any. A couple beekeepers, occasionally, would confront me with an issue, but by the time I wound down at Root, I had things where I wanted the magazine to be. I had the staff and I had the resources. I’ve made a lot of contacts over the years. Jim, I bet you I could go get a bee writer in twenty different countries today to write an article.

If there’s something going on in Bulgaria, I know the guy and I can say, I established those contacts, and that meant, when you want to know something, who do you know, then call Kim. That worked well and still works to a large degree.

Jim: You routinely had large meetings in Medina featuring well-known beekeeping authorities.

Kim: Well, yes, we usually had a good crowd. We did an Ohio state meeting there and we had monthly meetings and we had two beeyards, and we had a lot going on in the Medina yard because John Root (the President of the Root Company then) supported it. John Root was the last beekeeping administrator at the Root Company. Everything that I did bees, he was behind 100%. He would say, “Do you need a little more?”

Yes. We had a lot of club members. They were from not just Medina, they were from Northeast Ohio, the whole corner of Ohio. One of them was a guy named Jeff Ott, who lived up in the Cleveland area or someplace. He got to know me. We talked and then a little bit later he asked, do you need any articles on anything here or maybe someplace else? Pretty soon he was writing routinely for me. He had a day job and a situation where he could take a week off and go to Mexico and see what was going on with the bees there. He went to Colorado. He went to Mexico. He did a lot of traveling that I couldn’t or didn’t want to do.

Then he got a job in Colorado. When he moved there, he still wrote for me but that tapered off because his job got busy. A couple years later, about three or four years ago, he came back to visit his family who still lives here. He came into my office, and he said, “This is what I’m doing. How would you like to do a podcast?” I just looked at him and I said, “Well, what’s a podcast?” Because I had no idea. He took the time and the energy and the resources and taught me the basics of producing a podcast. The podcasts are named Beekeeping Today podcast and Honey Bee Obscura.

We figured it out between the two of us. He knew mostly all the things you can’t see it, the microphones and the headsets and the wires. He knew all the electronic stuff, and what was being recorded, how to get it recorded and transcribed and on the web. He knew all of that. It helped that he is an excellent beekeeper. I knew the beekeepers. I wasn’t sure what a microphone was when I started this project. He got me familiar with that. Now, I’m capable electronically. That’s about it. Capable.

Jim: Yes. I agree with you on that.

Kim: Between the two of us put together, he knew how, and I knew who. This project has been a success. I saw this building and growing. The magazine was doing fine. It was time for me to retire from the Root Company.

At the time, I was over 70 and I needed to sit down. I spent a year looking for someone to replace me. I found three people with whom I was comfortable. They were sharp, intelligent, articulate and nonconfrontational. None of them would have caused a problem. Jerry Hayes was selected. I didn’t even get the offer out of my mouth before he said, “Yes, I want it. When can I start?” He’s the Bee Culture editor now.

He just stepped right in. He came in and spent a year with me at the company. I was able to show him about a third of what I know. Looking back, I missed so much stuff when telling him how to get this job done. He’s had to learn the hard way, but now he’s in charge. Once in a while, I’ll offer an article or a piece of advice or something, but now he’s in charge.

Figure 3. An acknowledgment of Kim’s bee industry successes.

Kim: So, I’m still involved in the podcast, but I no longer travel to meetings. I haven’t been on an airplane in three years, and that’s just fine with me. In fact, I won’t even drive to a meeting. I’ll do Zoom if people want. I’ve got probably 200 talks on the computer behind me, and I pick a subject. I’m good to go in most cases.

Now I’m here at home and I’m going through this lung thing that’s causing me a bunch of problems. The medical theory is that it’s going to go away. They’re going to fix it, and I’m going to be back to normal. I’m not a betting man, but here I am – betting.

Jim: [laughs] I’m sure you are.

Kim: No other choice.

Jim: How old a man are you, Kim?

Kim: 76. Time flies.

Jim: Well, that’s not old.

Kim: Okay? Why doesn’t it feel that way?

Jim: Kim, you’ve given a good overview, but you can’t just list everything that happened. How many years did you work for the Root Company?

Kim: I started in 1986 and I quit in 2020. That would be 34 years.

Jim: You did videos, you taught short courses, you developed a pollinator garden. In fact, you had a dynamic pollinator garden layout. You even developed a second magazine.

Figure 2. Jim Tew and Kim Flottum capturing footage for a video session of the Kim & Jim beekeeping video series.

Kim: Yes. You and I, all things considered, have been so far ahead of the electronic distribution of material in this industry than anybody I can think of. We did the Kim and Jim Show, and we did instructional videos. The one thing you’ve done that I haven’t done is initiate a YouTube channel. That’s the only thing I haven’t done. We’ve done everything else. We’ve written stories and we’ve written books. Kathy, my coworker, and wife, went to a bunch of national meetings doing the – what do you call it?

Jim: “Facebook Live.”

Kim: Facebook Live. Right. We went to meetings and talked to all the vendors and two years later, the vendors still came up, when they’d see me and say, “When you did that Facebook video at the Federation meeting, people still talk about that, so you made a splash.” It was because I had good people around me that knew more than I do and good people around me who wanted to help. We accomplished a lot in this industry that I say carefully, maybe now some of the people are beginning to catch up with.

Jim: Yes. You don’t stay ahead if you don’t keep racing. Even so, after a while, the race has to end.

Kim: What else did we do?

Jim: Well Kim, you and I had a car wreck on the way to a bee meeting.

Kim: Yes. We did. Almost a really bad one.

Figure 5. Jim Tew and Kim Flottum at one of many, many bee meetings.

Jim: Yes. We were going to an Ohio Farm Bureau Commodity meeting, as I recall and, at 65 mph, we got broadsided, you and me. Kim, we missed that meeting. (It was not our fault. Chuckles.)

Kim: We’ve had a lot of calamities together, but I clearly remember that one.

Jim: There’s just so many things. You’ve mentioned Kathy several times. She’s been an excellent coworker and a supportive wife for a long time for you. She should certainly be acknowledged in your successes. She was an integral part of the evolution of Bee Culture, too. You mentioned earlier that you started a second magazine, Beekeeping, Your First Three Years.

Kim: Yes, Kathy was fundamental to the magazine and to my career. That second magazine lasted, I want to say, five or six years. It hit during an economic downturn period that I had nothing to do with nor the industry had anything to do with. Unfortunately, it had to be dropped. If you have a copy hidden somewhere, keep it because there aren’t any more.

Jim: It was a useful magazine that was enjoyable to read. Kim, you published a lot of books for the Root Company, and you published books that you authored.

Kim: Yes, I have. If you had told me in 1965, I was going to publish a book – any book, it’d take me 20 minutes to get up off the floor from laughing. I began to see the value of having not a permanent voice, but a voice that had almost all the facts in a book. Not everything, because tomorrow something’s going to change, and next week something else’s going to change. Most of what’s in my book was true ten years ago and twenty years ago, and it’ll be true 20 years from now and that’s what I wanted to produce.

One of the times I was with Dr. Morse, (Dr. Roger Morse, Beekeeping Professor, Cornell University) he had a big office with a big desk. He sat on one side of the desk and there was a bookshelf behind him that went almost to the ceiling. We were sitting chatting and he turned around and said, “You need a new one, ABC.” The current edition, at the time, was like 11 years old. It hadn’t been revised in a while.

John Root and his predecessors, his father and his father’s brother had a schedule where they edited about a third of ABC every three years. They picked the oldest stuff and replaced it and left the rest of it alone. Well, I hadn’t been there three years yet, so Roger said, “Let’s do this.” Do what I asked? “Let’s rewrite this book.” He did 75% of it all new. I did maybe 20%. Then he pulled in a lot of people, and I pulled in some people. Roger did a lot, and we came out with a new ABC, that was a hit and a half, but the cover looked just like the old ones.

A few years later, Shim (Dr. H. Shimanuki, USDA ARS bee scientist) came to me and he said, “Are you ever going to do this book again?” I said, “No, you are.” He said, “I’ll be back in a month with a draft.” He was pretty much on time getting it back to me. I looked at the cover and I said, we are never, ever going to put this traditional cover on ABC again. I had a picture of a beekeeper, standing out by a beehive. This new version was to have that color picture, a shiny cover. That’s the only one ever and probably the only one that will ever have a color cover.

Jim: [laughs]

Kim: Dr. Keith Delaplane (bee scientist, the University of Georgia) oversaw the editing of the current ABC, and he got ABC where I wanted it to be. He is a good scientist and a good beekeeper. He has good people working for him. He edited the ABC I wanted. I didn’t want a science textbook and I didn’t want a how-to-stop swarming book. I added a bunch of stuff from people that nobody knows or knew then. I think the last edition of ABC was pretty good.

Jim: Right, that last book was a good publication. It looked good.

Figure 4. The cover of Kim’s popular beekeeping text, The Backyard Beekeeper 4th Edition

Kim: Then among the other books I wrote, was Backyard Beekeeper, modeled after several, but not a lot, like several books already out there. Early this past Summer, I finished the fifth edition of Backyard Beekeeper, that’ll be out in February 2024. Then, there was another one, The Honey Handbook, and that just focused on how to get as much honey out of a bee as you can. The last one I did was, Common Sense Natural Beekeeping, which was taking everything that’s good for the bee and getting rid of everything that wasn’t good for the bee. It turned out to be mostly natural, but not quite common-sense beekeeping.

Jim: I don’t know. There must be one, but I don’t know who else has had five-issue updates of the same beekeeping book. You know, a book that wasn’t like ABC or the Hive and the Honey Bee. That’s impressive, Kim.

Kim: Yes. Now, the Beekeeping Today and Honey Bee Obscura podcast projects have been entertaining for me. We presently have generous sponsors for the productions and Jeff does a great job editing the audio and posting the segments on the web. I’m enjoying working on them.

Jim: Kim, this review has truly been an educational process for me. There’s no practical way to compress all your decades into a couple of simple magazine articles, but we surely tried. I have enjoyed listening to your experiences. Thanks for your time and memories.

Dr. James E. Tew
Emeritus Faculty, Entomology
The Ohio State University
tewbee2@gmail.com

Co-Host, Honey Bee
Obscura Podcast
www.honeybeeobscura.com

Click Here if you listened. We’d love to know what you think. There is even a spot for feedback!

Read along below!

Found in Translation

An Interview with Dr. Hongmei Li-Byarlay
Associate Professor and Project Director for Pollinator Health, Central State University, Ohio
By: Jay Evans, USDA Beltsville Bee Lab

Where are you from originally?
*I was born in Tianjin, China, and came to the U.S. to study for my Ph.D. in 2002.

How did you get interested in science?
*When I was a sixth-grader, I talked to my uncle and told him that I want to be a scientist! Maybe because I had read so many books on the weird creatures in the deep ocean and stories of UFOs.

Where did you go to school and what did you study?
*I went to Tianjin Normal University for my Bachelor’s degree in Biology and Education (dual degree). My senior project was on the effects of metal contamination on bacteria in garlic roots. Then, I went to Nan Kai University for my Master’s degree in Zoology. I studied micro-moths in Northern China and discovered four new species.
In 2002, I went to Purdue University in Indiana for my Ph.D. in Entomology and studied genetics and physiology of fruit flies with Dr. Barry Pittendrigh and Larry Murdock. In 2010, I started my postdoc training with Dr. Gene Robinson at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, studying behavioral genetics of honey bees. In 2013, I studied epigenetics and aging of honey bees with Drs. David Tarpy at NCSU and Olav Rueppell at UNC-Greensboro.

How did you start your career after school?
*In 2017, I got an offer from Central State University as a new Assistant Professor of Entomology. CSU had just gained their new status as a 1890 Land Grant Institution with USDA. I was very excited to start my own lab.

Which hot topics are you studying now?
*I am studying 1) the molecular and physiological mechanisms underlying the social behavior and ageing of honey bees, such as grooming behavior, aggression and foraging behavior, 2) active breeding efforts for selection of mite-resistant bees by selecting mite-biting stocks and 3) landscape ecology of pollinators and flowers.

Where have you traveled in your studies of bees and what was most memorable?
*I have traveled to China, Germany, Canada, Puerto Rico and many different states in the U.S. The most striking memories were observing and doing experiments with Apis cerana in China, and my trip to Puerto Rico to see and feel the gentle AHBs in reality. I really enjoyed interacting with all the hives there.

What are the biggest challenges facing beekeepers moving forward?
*The desire to find new solutions for mite management is so high, and there are many new ideas. I just hope we all think of new solutions by integrating the sustainability of our hives and our environment.

What gives you hope? What are the best recent discoveries in bee science?
*The government, bee scientists, beekeepers and non-profit organizations are all working together to find the best ways to help our bees, which showed the most love and funding support from the community.
Three of the most interesting discoveries from our lab are:
1)A new publication on Single-cell dissection of aggression in honey bee colonies. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-023-02090-0. We are all so excited to use a new sequencing technology to help us to understand bees in a deeper way.
2)Our lab’s new pub about RNA methylation and discovery of long non-coding RNAs underlying bee aggression https://bmcgenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12864-023-09411-4
3)We showed that the mandibles (mouthparts) are different between high mite-biting honey bee workers and current commercial colonies. I am also working on a new manuscript to show the striking comparison of mouthparts between two different species of Apis, in hopes this sheds light on mite defenses. https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2021.638308

Any advice for future scientists?
*Stay curious and ask questions!

What are your hobbies and other interests beyond bees and science?
*I like running, reading with my kids, hiking and camping in national parks, and meditation.

Marinade Ingredients
□ ½ cup honey
□ ½ cup olive oil
□ ⅓ cup soy sauce
□ ⅓ cup lemon juice
□ ¼ cup Worcester sauce
□ ½ tsp salt
□ ½ tsp pepper

Meat Ingredients
□ 2½ to 3 pounds thinly cut beef strips

Seasoning Ingredients
□ ¼ cup of your favorite dry rub seasoning (Holy Voodoo Meat Church was the seasoning I used)
Note: Adjust the amount of seasoning to your preference

Directions
Step 1
Mix the marinade ingredients together in a small bowl.

Step 2
Separate the meat strips and place in a large bowl.

Step 3
Mix the marinade with the beef strips. Cover and
refrigerated for 3 to 24 hours.

Step 4
Take the meat strips out of marinade, separate and lay on a large tray.

Step 5
Sprinkle the seasoning on one side, turn the pieces over and sprinkle seasoning on the other side.

Step 6
Elevate the grates on your smoker grill approximately 1 inch. (I use other extra grates to get the elevation so the meat is not on the actual grill grates.)

Step 7
Place meat on the grates and cook on low for 2½ to 3 hours. Turn halfway through.

Enjoy this great snack with your friends and family over the holidays!

Jerry: Dr. Keith Delaplane, I remember the first time I met you long ago, I was driving with Nick Dadant down to see you. I read about you and had seen your picture. As I was parking the car, I saw you walking across the parking lot. I jumped out and said, “Dr. Delaplane, I presume? Since then, we have worked together many times, experienced many things and it has been good over the years.

K: It has Jerry, and from the years perspective, you and I have seen a lot over the years.

J: For Bee Culture readers, I think about what you have done, how you have conducted yourself and it has been exemplary. We all have to start somewhere, so where did you grow up and how did that land you in entomology and bees?

K: That is a good question and one I think about a lot because I have enjoyed my life and my career. As you go through life and experience things, you learn more and more and are reminded more and more that you didn’t get here on your own merits. You stand on the shoulders of your family, friends, communities and colleagues every step of the way. You become aware and grateful. I am forever grateful for my upbringing in North Central Indiana growing up on a farm. My dad and his dad were row crop farmers – corn, soybeans and hogs. It’s a great way to grow up.

J: So you were outside a lot. Were you naturally interested in insects on a flower or a fly in the hog trough?

K: My ticket into entomology and the whole natural world was through honey bees and beekeeping. So, my dad was a farmer, we weren’t plugged into ecology; the idea of ecology was new in the 1960’s and ‘70’s, wasn’t it? Farming had an uneasy relationship with ecology and the natural world. We thought we were partnering with nature but it was different than ecology with plowing, using synthetic pesticides and incorporating fertilizers and all that stuff that today. We know exacts a toll on the environment. I was not really ecologically minded as a kid growing up. I was agriculturally minded.

J: Its all about production, isn’t it?

K: It is! It’s all about production, profits and maximizing efficiency to extract the most we can out of the acreage that we had. In my career though I have seen that shift, a good and real shift which is still occurring today toward farming with ecological principles.

To answer your original question, I was interested in nature and insects. Honey bees fit right into that ecological paradigm and they are a natural bridge into entomology and biology and that is the path I followed. Beekeeping was in my family, my grandfather had bees. It was not unusual back then; most farming families kept a few bees. My father used to help him, but he never really took to it.

Then, when I was a young teenager, my parents gave me a beginning beekeeping kit. At the time I thought it was pretty random, I mean, beekeeping as a hobby? It was pretty rare and thought of as an oddball hobby.

J: But it wasn’t hogs and cattle, right?

K: No, and in fact it became a source of contention at times when my father and I had different plans on how I should spend my Saturday (chuckles). I wanted to work on my bees while he wanted me to help on the farm. Not to detract from my parents’ support of my beekeeping, they paid for all my beekeeping supplies and let me do it.

J: Did you learn on your own or did you have a mentor? It was easier back then, you could put your bees in a box in the Spring then go fishing the rest of the year.

K: Yes it was so much easier then, you only had to check on them a few times then take the honey off. It was a Golden Age! Well, I read all the books, I read the classics like ABC and XYZ of Bee Culture, Hive and the Honey Bee, First Lessons in Beekeeping by the Dadant Family and all its successive editions. I did have a mentor named Mr. Paul Champ. He had 300 hives and was able to make a living on it. So once in a while, when my family was out and about, we’d bring our empty quart jar and he’d fill it up. I remember he kept this big honey storage tank right in his kitchen next to the refrigerator. So he was a natural choice to answer my questions. He made house calls! He was with me the first time I saw a queen. I remember the thrill of seeing that queen! It was real – not a mystery – and in my box of bees! I will never forget that thrill.

Those memories are ancient to me now but they go back to my childhood. That rich smell, that scent is unmatchable by anything else.

J: That smell of aster and goldenrod in the Fall…

K: Yes, that pungency and the fascination in the apiary. Beekeeping is so remarkable at every level and I was thrilled with that as a young person. I had a grasp on nature that my peers did not, so they tended to gravitate to our farm. Beekeeping was so interesting to them.

J: Were you a member of 4-H or FFA?

K: Strangely, no, my father and his family were rather insular. We were mostly on our own. As I pursued through my life and career and I became involved in agriculture and extension, they didn’t really understand what I was doing but they supported me regardless.

J: What was it that you wanted to learn and discover that took you to Purdue and LSU?

K: It’s a beautiful story, Jerry. I married early; in fact, I was married by my last semester as an undergraduate at Purdue. I didn’t have a firm career path in mind. I majored in Animal Science, which again is an agricultural major. So once again, I didn’t know in which world I belonged. I had some ambitions of Veterinary College, but I didn’t have the grades for it. Then, I took a class from a very kind and insightful professor named Dr. Wallace Denton in my last semester in “Marriage and Family Counseling”. Imagine that, it’s not even an agricultural topic! He asked me what I wanted to do with my life. I didn’t know, so he made an appointment with me to talk about it. When we met, he asked me what my interests were. I looked down and mumbled, “Well I like keeping honey bees…” I was a little embarrassed because it was an unusual interest. “Well then,” he said, “you should enroll in graduate school and earn a degree in Entomology!”

So, I threw my hat in the ring and lucked out with LSU. My wife and I packed up our things and moved to Baton Rouge, LA. I thought about that story a lot through my career.

Adults don’t think about their influence on kids; it’s a fine line between meddling and giving guidance. I learned as a father that a tension runs, wondering if you are pushing too far. When do you push and when do you hold back? In 20 minutes, he altered the course of my life!

J: You have certainly had good guidance in your life.

K: Yes, I am very grateful, in fact I have an addendum to that story. I knew his daughter. She lived and grew up in West Lafayette. Fast forward a decade later and we ran into her here in Athens, GA. She is the life of the party here, she’s a local musician. Her parents had multiple occasions to visit her, so I have had many opportunities to tell him how important he has been in my life and that I was very grateful.

J: At LSU, is that where the light came on?

K: Yes, once I got to LSU, everything clicked for me. It was a “Eureka” moment for me. I loved my experience at LSU and at the USDA Lab. My major professor, Dr. John Harbo is a well-known researcher in honey bee breeding and genetics. I was in school with Tom Rinderer, Bob Denko, Anita Collins and others. It was a golden time in my career.

The Department of Entomology at LSU was strong and I had great professors. That, Jerry, is when I realized that honey bees are more than just agriculture, and biology is more than agriculture and where honey bees fit into just about everything. If I had to do it all over again, I would still stick with Biology.

J: So from there you went to University of GA?

K: Yes, so it was rather word of mouth, but John Harbo called me and said they had an opening. So, I applied for the job and to my ever-living amazement, they interviewed me and offered me the job.

I may have been the last of the generation in which I moved from earning my Ph.D. straight to a tenure track position in a university. Now, students have to get one or a series of jobs as a post doc before they land a faculty position.

I have a multiple appointment in extension and research. I’ve had some teaching appointments off and on but mostly I have been in the field, the laboratory and in direct contact with beekeepers. It was good.

I have written many times that honey bees are a window to the world and it is a good metaphor. They bridge so many domains of human activity. I can’t think of any animal or any field of agriculture or a hobby that bridges so many separate spheres of human activity. Honey bees are remarkable and I am honored and pleased to work with them.

J: When you received your tenure track position, what went through your mind? What was your goal?

K: I realized that I had been treated well and given special privileges and opportunities, so, “Don’t blow it, Keith!” (chuckles). I have never been one to give myself the benefit of the doubt, and have always had self-doubts, so I was motivated by fear. I applied myself and went through the steps I had been taught to do research and “pretended” to be a good researcher. I figured, if I worked on it, I would eventually become a good researcher. You go through mental gymnastics and after a while it sticks. It’s hard for me to be prideful.

J: That is certainly a motivator! How long were you at UGA and how many students did you have?

K: I was at UGA for 33 years and had seven graduate students under my direction and sat on 15 committees. I also had two post docs. I’m grateful to watch a young mind advance from an elementary mind to one who understand and has skills maybe above your own.

J: But that is the goal, isn’t it?

K: It is the goal! An economy of justice occurs but as you become older, you are happier with that arrangement. I’m happy that they get the glory they deserve, you want to give of yourself to give them that recognition. The saying goes, “youth is wasted on the young”, and while I appreciate the humor it is not exactly true. As you learn life’s lessons and you are managing your own interior life, you become better at contextualizing your own ego. Having an ego is important, but your opinion is not the only one and may not be correct. You rarely know the entire story. That is part of the challenge. This is certainly true with managing honey bees. Beekeeping and beekeepers are interesting because they are so diverse in their understanding.

J: I wish someone would invest say, $50,000 to study the profile of beekeepers. That would be very interesting.

K: I am authentically curious about that. Are goat farmers or gardeners like that or are we a unique creature? Beekeepers are an interesting slice of humanity. We are somewhat self-selecting because we like nature but otherwise we are all over the board with social skills, income level, religious and political views, and education. This makes it difficult to navigate a bee meeting. (laughs)

J: Tell me, what has been your biggest success and a failure that you regret?

K: Well, I was inspired the first few months on the job which is probably typical, but I happened upon the good fortune of serendipity to have a desire to record inspections in the yard for extension purposes. The producer was on staff at UGA and an affiliate with the local public broadcasting station. He saw the value in my recordings and published it for a three year TV show. That really put me on the map and enabled me to travel more for talks and demonstrations. I was invited to speak all over the country, in fact the world. This helped with my early academic promotions.

Next, I teamed up with Dr. Mike Hood at Clemson University. He and I were the closest colleagues with a shared appointment in honey bees in the USA as the two universities are only 60 miles apart. We collaborated a lot. We worked on Varroa mite IPM and published the first economic threshold for Varroa mites which was badly needed. We also ran a series of studies using non-chemical techniques to control Varroa. This occupied about 10 years of the middle of my career.

Unfortunately though, it never became overly successful. This falls in the category of a failure. I think we are overly optimistic to think that bees can develop a true resistance to Varroa mites and the pathogens that result from their damage to the bees. We can produce honey bees with some hygienic traits to remove Varroa mites from the colony, but we are using defense mechanisms that were co-opted to defend the bee from something else, for instance, chalkbrood was the first genetic trait found, in which bees would remove infected mummies from the hive, and the detection and removal of pupae infected with AFB. The overwhelming weight of the data have not come up with a ringing solution for Varroa mite control through genetic resistance.

J: When a queen is mating with 14-20 drones, you don’t know the ancestry of the drones or the queen.

K: True! Traditional animal husbandry doesn’t apply with honey bees; it is much more difficult to think in those terms. Honey bees have multiple mating, how it uses genetics to advance the colony is complicated.

That is why I am so interested in polyandry (multiple mating) which is now the focus of my research. It is successful and provides very basic research. It is going to benefit the fundamentals of science. Also, some of my students and I have conducted a great deal of research on blueberry pollination. It is easy to convert that basic science to deliverables that will help growers. You can use it to adjust the number of colonies needed in the orchard, for example.

Science is self-adjusting, some of it will stand the test of time, while some will fade away.

J: Welcome to life, eh?

K: Yes, science is not a mechanism for finding answers to solve life problems reliably, but it is the best mechanism humanity has and is a necessary part of the process. Some studies fail and are never reported, thus repeated over and over.

J: Would you please provide some advice to BC readers?

K: If you dig into honey bee biology and appreciate the organism, you will enjoy it even more. Reading and finding clues to keep honey bees healthy will give you more pleasure, improve colony health and increase your profit line. Honey bees are a bottomless pit of wonder, curiosity and amazement.

I am working on a book which will be out next year, called Honey Bee Social Evolution, published by John Hopkins Press. I wrote about the similarities between different organisms and the honey bee colony as a unit. They all have the same dynamics. Also read Hilda M. Ransome’s book, The Sacred Bee in Ancient Times and Folklore. It was written in the 1930’s but it is a classic. She wrote about how honey bees have been used worldwide in literature, religion and poetry for centuries. There is no end to this insect and what it can give you.

Friends know James (Jim) Thompson as a beekeeper, EAS Master Beekeeper, Honey Judge, former Apiary Inspector, Chevy SSR (convertible truck with a super charged Corvette engine!), historian, cat lover, philatelist and collector of all things beekeeping, but they may not know his roots and how his star studded journey guided him to the knowledge he enjoys today.

As we sit in his round house for which he designed the basement, he showed me his immense collection of beekeeping equipment – smokers, hive tools, dove tailed hives, belt buckles and honey themed bottle caps, letters, postcards and cartoons. He explained his passion for beekeeping and how he began his sweet life in beekeeping.

Q: How and when did you become interested in beekeeping, Jim?
Jim: I have been interested in beekeeping since I was two years old when I removed the lids of a beehive at my uncle’s farm and stuck my head into it. He lived in Stockport, Iowa, which is very close to Hamilton, IL, where Dadant is headquartered. My uncle had some of Dadant’s early bee hives. I wasn’t afraid of them at all! I was curious to see what they were doing! My uncle taught me about beekeeping, then I acquired his when he passed away. I also liked working on cars. As a young teenager, I bought a Model A car and spent a lot of money putting a V-8 engine in it.

Q: What did you do next?
I joined the Army and was assigned to be an aircraft mechanic in the Transportation Unit. I repaired and restored downed airplanes so that they could be flown again. I was multi-engine rated. A week into the Army my dad was killed. He owned a construction company in Ames, Iowa. I was given a three day pass to visit my family. One of my uncles took over the company and sold my Model A for $100.

For 18 months in 1963, I was stationed in Alaska and in my free time on the Ski Patrol patrolling the slopes. I was rated “Black Diamond” which is the highest grade for skiers. We were at Fort Wainwright in Fairbanks where some U-2 Spy planes were stationed.

Q: Where did you go to college?
I grew up in Ames, Iowa so I went to college at Iowa State University and majored in Industrial Arts. The Army paid my tuition, but I had to work to pay for other expenses. I worked in a cafeteria loading dishes in the dishwasher. I knew I was doing okay as it took three people to unload it in the time that it took me to load it (laughs).

Q: What was your first job?
Wooster City Schools recruited me to teach Industrial Arts. Soon, I was assigned to work in OWE (Occupational Work Experience) with students who had problems adhering to the school’s program. They needed a more structured curriculum and a firm hand… I was it! (Chuckles) I trained them to excel in mathematics, English and work related occupations. I had to obtain certifications in the Summers to teach them English, math and history. They had me half day for every subject. It must have worked because the dropout rate was less than 2%.

Q: How long did you teach in Wooster City Schools?
33 years. I taught OWE for 19-20 years. Some students still contact me or remember me when they see me somewhere.

Q: You were in Wooster when all the Greats were here in Ohio. That must have been wonderful to be with them all.
Yes, Dr.’s James Tew, Larry Connor, Tom Sanford, Walter Rothenbuhler as well as Vic Thompson and Tom Ross were here. I became friends with many of them. It was a great time to be in Ohio! I took Larry Connor’s mail order class on beekeeping. He was the Extension Apiarist at OSU at the time.

In 1985, Dr. Rothenbuler invited Eva Crane to visit. What a thrill that was!

Q: You were a County Apiary Inspector too. What was it like being an Inspector back then?
I was the Wayne County Apiary Inspector for 17 years as well as the Holmes County Inspector for two of them. I used to have about 80 colonies. Some of them were infected with AFB so I became an Inspector to figure out where it was coming from. During my inspection years, I met and worked with the people at ATI (Agricultural Technical Institute) and the ones that associated with the beekeeping program, for example: John Chalk, Jim Tew, Mark Headings, Malcolm Tom Sanford, Tom Ross, Sherry Ferrell, Paul Jackson, John Root, David Heilman and others. We had to burn a lot of hives as AFB was everywhere. We were able to get the infection rate down to 2%.

Q: What advice do you have for beekeepers and County Apiary Inspectors regarding the Apiary Program?
You have to keep good records. You have to be able to trace back where the infected hives originated and where they were moved. Know who had problems with it and where the apiaries were located. Treat beekeepers with respect and teach them good beekeeping skills. No one ever refused us because we were helping them control AFB in their areas. We had good rapport with beekeepers.

You have to realize that everyone is going to have AFB in an apiary at one point. You have to know how to diagnose and burn it as soon as possible and you have to be out in the field working. Remember that the bee equipment belongs to the beekeeper.

Q: You were president of OSBA and are still their historian. When were you president?
I was president in 1985-86 for two terms. I was president before John Grafton’s first run as president (he was president two different times).

I still consider myself as OSBA’s Historian. I became an EAS Certified Master Beekeeper in 1994.

OSBA had some strong active members that moved it forward. They started the Ohio Honey Festival which originated in Lebanon then it was moved to Oxford in Hamilton County. The Honeyfest was started by Arnold Crabtree and the Conrads at Lithopolis (outside of Columbus, OH). The Ohio State Fair was the major center to educate people about honey bees, beekeeping and bee products. Half of the hall would house eight exhibits. The major intent was to sell honey at the fair. The Casdorphs (David and Alta) were the main exhibitors and had one entire section. The Conrads (Barry and Carmen) had another huge display further down the hall. It used to take 12 hours to judge all the honey! Florence Beathard would stay and keep me company as I would be there long into the night. At that time, 10 jars had to be judged for each individual display. Finally, Zale Maxwell allowed only three jars to be judged per entry. That really helped!

Q: Who were some of the Beekeepers and Bee Researchers who influenced you?
OH, so many! Arnold Murray, Arthur Korody from the Mansfield area gave me a lead on an old Root foundation Mill, which is in the OARDC Beekeeping Museum. Tom Ross introduced the Ross Rounds – they were tan then brown, but at first they were translucent. Tom was on ATI Advisory Committee at the same as me.

Jim Tew started me on honey judging in 1983 when he had to leave for a trip. He loaned me the equipment. Well, it stuck to me so I am still judging today! We used the Lovibond color grade, polariscope and refractometer. We still enjoy judging today!

Q: Tell me more about honey judging. How do you prefer to judge honey?
Well, in the laboratory we used a pfund color grader. The National Honey Board uses the color of honey to classify the honey, not to grade it. Honey should not be graded on its flavor because everyone has a different sense of taste. Instead, it should be graded on quality. I developed a transparent color grader which I give to those who finish the apprenticeship in Ohio.

Q: You have shown me your marvelous collection of beekeeping equipment. Do you have some that you are still looking for?
I just bought a Serbian hive tool, which I have been looking for five years. I am still looking for an Excaliber hive tool, made by Jim Fisher of Bee Quick, it was made of stainless steel and has a beveled type handle. People don’t keep things anymore; non-beekeepers don’t realize the value of these old tools and the history behind them.

Q: How long have you been collecting beekeeping equipment and memorabilia?
Well at least since the 1990’s.

Q: What advice can you offer to new beekeepers?

• Find a beekeeping club, or several that you like which provides good education and experience. That is so important to understand what we need to do to keep our bees healthy. Keep going to the meetings because you will never stop learning.
• Register your apiaries and go through the hives with the Inspector. You will learn a lot from them.
• Look for evidence of a queen.
• Know your diseases (and pests), symptoms and how to manage them.
• For Varroa mites, sample and test!
• Open your hives when needed to check on the health of the colonies. The frequency varies upon the season, location of colonies, amount of sun they are receiving and the reason for wanting to inspect them. About every three weeks is a good rule of thumb.

Figure 1. Erin Rupp of Pollinate Minnesota, Anne Turnham (center) and Ana Heck, formerly of University of Minnesota Bee Squad, now Michigan State University Extension educator for Apiculture ready for a day of honey bee outreach.

This year we decided to interview beekeeper Anne Turnham. Even though she doesn’t like to talk about herself and would have rather been on a walk with her best friend and golden retriever Birdie, we figured we’d get her out of her comfort zone because we think that you all will find her story interesting. It’s hard to make a living with bees, but Anne has found really creative ways to center her love for bees in her life and career. Besides keeping her own colonies, she started and runs her own honey label business and works for the UMN Bee Lab’s Bee Squad doing graphics, visual outreach and educational videos.

Q: What first got you hooked on honey bees?
A(nswer/nne): It was when CCD was making the news. I wanted to find out more and just understand what was going on. I took a class, which was mostly inside, but we did get to go outside into an apiary and stand next to the bees. I found it so fascinating that I decided to become a beekeeper by the end of the weekend.

Q: Were you afraid of bees at all when you first started?
A: No. I’d worked with cockroaches in a past job, so bees were less scary. I have a background in Biology and Chemistry and have always loved nature and understanding nature. So, once I decided to get into beekeeping, I devoured every book and class about bees that I could get my hands on. If I was going to do it, I wanted to do right by my bees. Then, in return, my honey bees became this way for me to connect with nature while being at home with my three kids.

Q: What have you learned from the bees over your years of beekeeping?
A: How connected we are to the health of habitat. Bees are such a direct window into what is happening in the environment. They tell you if the environment is healthy. With hive loss, I could directly trace that onto the landscape. Through bees, I learned how closely we are connected to habitat, and how important it is to plant for bees.

Q: Okay so you run your own honey label business and you do the graphics for all the Bee Lab’s educational materials. How did you go from biology to design?
A: I’m self-taught. Learning graphic design was a means to do what I wanted to do. And what I wanted to do was to help bees and beekeepers. After I fell in love with bees, I fell in love with the beekeeper community. They care about insects, these tiny little insects, which just is a testament to how much they care about the world and all living things.

Q: Tell us a bit more about your honey label business*.
A: I started making honey labels for my own honey that I produced along with two of my friends with whom I shared an apiary. I learned Photoshop. Then I put a little blog out with some designs for my friends, but I did not anticipate that it would turn into a business. But there was a need, and people found out. Honey producers are really proud of their honey and they were looking for labels that reflected their pride and their unique businesses. My first order was actually from California. Someone put my designs on a bigger blog, and then suddenly I was getting a ton of customers!

Q: You work for the UMN Bee Lab doing visual education and science communication. What’s your philosophy or goal with this type of work?
A: I tried to volunteer for the squad because I thought they were the coolest. But instead they hired me as a beekeeper. As time went on I started doing more and more graphics work for the team. My first project was designing the labels and instructions for our Varroa Mite Testing Kit.

As to what my goal is, my goal is to help scientists and pollinator educators put content out in the world that will help bees and in turn help the health of the planet.

Q: You have a special talent for turning complex information into very accessible visual descriptions. What happens in your head when you start thinking about how to communicate a given topic visually?
A: I listen a lot and let things percolate before jumping in. My husband David calls it “cluing it.” I always win at the game Clue because I take copious notes and never miss a detail. It’s not that I’m competitive. It’s more like I want to fix a puzzle. I use my “cluing it” energy to puzzle out how to visualize a concept. I ask a million questions because I want to hear the way [other people] understand things. Another important part of my process is going for long walks. My mind needs to wander.

Q: What are infographics and why are they an important communication tool?
A: Infographics are basically simple illustrations, typically one or two colors paired with text to give you a snapshot of what a longer text is about. They support neurodiverse learners because they cue into what the content is going to be about, giving you a way to digest information or even decide if you want to dig in further. It’s a different way of skimming information you want to learn.

Q: Do you think of yourself as an artist?
A: More like a translator.

Q: Thanks Anne! We’re going to go ahead and call you an artist anyway! We appreciate your sharing the ways in which you support honey bees and the ways in which they support you back!

For more information:
https://beelab.umn.edu/manuals
https://anneturnham.myportfolio.com/work

*A note from the authors: Anne is currently not taking new honey label customers in order to meet the needs of her current clients!

(Below) Figure 2. A graphic imagined and designed by Anne Turnham for the University of Minnesota Beekeeping in Northern Climates manual.

Click Here if you listened. We’d love to know what you think. There is even a spot for feedback!

Read along below!

James E. Tew & Kim Flottum. Photo Credit: Honey Bee Obscura podcast (https://www.honeybeeobscura.com/)

A Conversation with Kim Flottum, Part 1

Retired, Longtime Bee Culture Magazine Editor
By: James E. Tew

We’ve grown old together
Readers, I’ve been friends and have worked with Kim Flottum, former Bee Culture editor for nearly forty years. He began his responsibilities at Bee Culture Magazine in 1986. I was still a kid of 38 when Kim took the job in Medina, Ohio. Over the many ensuing years, for better or worse, Kim accepted more than 300 of my articles. We attended innumerable bee meetings and we produced electronic projects. We put together slide-deck programs and now, with the help of Jeff Ott, Kim and I present podcasts on various topics every week. I could not think of anyone more appropriate for an in-depth conversation. Ours has been a long, long trek. What follows is Kim’s view of that historical pathway.

Kim: I grew up in Central Wisconsin in the 1950’s. I played some high school football and I worked in a grocery store. I had a good childhood with many memories. College became an option so I attended the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire for a while and then I transferred to the University of Wisconsin at Madison where I studied horticulture and entomology. I landed a contract job working for an entomologist there. After a few years, the funding for that assistant position ran out and I had to find another job. The USDA Agricultural Research Service, Honey Bee Research Lab headed by Dr. Eric Erickson was on the fourth floor of the building where I had been working.
Dr. Erickson and I were talking in the break room one day, and he said, “Do you know anybody that can do this, this, and this?” I said, “Yes – me.” He said, “Well I need somebody that can grow soybeans, and look at pollination, and look at bees and work bees,” and do all this crazy stuff. “Yes, me.” I needed a job, he needed an employee, so I just moved two floors up and I was there for four years. Go figure.

Jim: Were you going to school all this time? Were you taking other classes?

Kim: Yes, I graduated before I finished working for Eric. I worked for Erickson for four years, doing things I would’ve never imagined doing, and at the end of four years I was funded by a grant. I was totally supported by that grant; Eric needed a grad student.

At the end of four years the grant ended, and Dr. Erickson said, “Well folks we’re packing up. We’re moving the lab to Arizona. Been fun working here, bye.” “Well okay.” I moved to Connecticut, where I knew some people, and I got a job working in a greenhouse, and then I got a job working on a farm. I was raising a couple hundred acres of vegetables, and fruit, and the like. I had apple orchards and sweet corn – all sorts of things.

While I was there, I decided to get involved with the Connecticut State Beekeepers Association. Suddenly I was a Connecticut beekeeper, and I went to my first bee meeting. Soon thereafter, the group needed a president, and I took on the job.

Jim: My goodness – that was fast.

Kim: They had taken the Penwalt Chemical Company to court, and they had won the case. Connecticut took the controversial pesticide Penncap-M off the market. Legal fees, for the court case, were $40,000. I was the president of the beekeeping group, and if you know how a business is run, the president ultimately is responsible for the bill unless there’s something set up to protect him. I turned around and there was nobody there to protect me.

For about a year I campaigned across New England, from Maine to Florida, and to Illinois, telling our story. “We got Penncap-M off the market, you can, too. Here’s how you do it. Form a coalition, pay one lawyer.” In less than a year, I raised the $40,000.

When I was the president of Connecticut Beekeepers, the president is also the EAS (Eastern Apiculture Society) delegate. Suddenly I was on the board of EAS, I went to the first EAS meeting and John Root, from Bee Culture, was there. He was on the EAS board, too. I had never even seen the magazine Bee Culture. I didn’t know about The A.I. Root Company. I had never bought a piece of beekeeping equipment in my life.

We got to talking a little bit, and he said, “I’ll send you a copy of our magazine.” He sent me a magazine, and I looked at it. I talked to bee people in Connecticut. As far as they were concerned, this magazine was the cream of the crop in beekeeping literature. The next time I went back to an EAS board meeting, John said, “What’d you think of the magazine?” I said, “I can see some things that I would probably alter a little bit, maybe change, whatever, but it’s got good information and it’s got good people reading it and writing for it.”

He said, “How’d you like to run it?” I said, “Let me think about that.” Three months later I took the job, and I moved to Ohio. Here I am, all these years later.

Jim: That’s a lot of information in a hurry, Kim. Good heavens. I thought that you worked for Erickson for four years.

Kim: I did.

Jim: During that time, you didn’t buy bee equipment or get involved with the equipment?

Kim: I didn’t have to. I was living in an apartment in downtown Madison, Wisconsin and I went to work every day and there were 300 or 400 beehives right in the middle of the city of Madison on a university experimental farm. I had all the bees I wanted, all the equipment I wanted, all the honey I wanted, I had everything I wanted. At the end of the day, I left it all there, and went home.

Jim: How did you learn beekeeping, from Erickson or from the staff there?

Kim: I had a guy named Dave Severson who was a graduate student in honey bee management. He taught me the craft. There was a guy there whose name I can’t remember at the moment, who did nothing his whole life except instrumentally inseminate queens. I learned that technique from him.

Then I had a guy there who could fix anything that could break – absolutely anything that could break. When I broke something, I took it to him, and he showed me how to fix it. Then I had another guy there who knew every plant that bees visited on every continent on earth.

I got to know a lot of the plant stuff on pollination and then we started planting pollinator gardens and we started looking at soil amendments for pollinator gardens and all the things that can affect a pollinator plant. We did that work for four years.

Another big project I accomplished was Penncap-M. It was still killing bees almost everywhere, but nobody had any really good numbers. For an entire Summer I owned a sweetcorn field, and I would be out there at 5:30 in the morning.

I had this specific path; it was a four-acre field, and I had this path walking through the cornfield. Every 40 feet or so, there was a stick in the ground. That was a plant that I looked at. How many bees are on this plant? What time was it? I did that all until the end of pollen shed. I did that for two years. By the end of two years, I could tell you how many bees would be on how many plants at what time of day. That caught a lot of attention. Then Eric had this thing about pollinating soybeans, and he said, “Can bees pollinate soybeans?” I said, “Why wouldn’t they?”

I found out why they would, and again, it was the same thing. It had to do with soil amendments, time of day, variety of soybean and the size of the bee population. We nailed that right down. The paper’s still out there. I’m still cited for that paper, believe it or not. We didn’t solve that problem, but we gave it a lot of ammunition. He said two things. He said, “This isn’t going to get me anywhere with USDA, but it’s been fun.” When I finished that corn experiment, that pretty much proved that spraying – What’s that chemical?

Jim: Penncap-M.

Kim: Yes, that’s it. Spraying Penncap-M at a certain time of day would kill every bee within 20 miles. If you waited three or four hours, it was all gone, and the bees visited and almost none of them died. The first talk I ever gave to a group of growers was how to use Penncap-M. I went in there with bulletproof armor on.

Jim: That was a gutsy move, Kim, though. Those were contentious times. Encapsulation was thought to be a safe way to use methyl parathion, encapsulated. It was driving bees crazy.

Kim: I gave a couple talks and nobody threw anything at me, interestingly. So, I was in Connecticut and participating in EAS, but I had to move to Ohio. I was here at Root, I don’t know, maybe an hour and a half and the Medina Beekeepers Association basically stole me and said, “You get to be on our board of directors.” Mark Bruner, the guy who had been editor before me, had gone to a couple of their meetings. I don’t know if you remember Larry Goltz, who was Bee Culture editor before Bruner.

Jim: I do.

Kim: Then there was Larry Goltz for 10 years before Bruner. For ten years, Larry Goltz edited the magazine.

Jim: How many editors have there been at Bee Culture?

Kim: I must give you a fuzzy answer because A.I. Root was the first one. Then it was A.I. and his son, and they were doing it together and then it was his son and his brother, and they were doing it together. Then they got a couple people who were working on the magazine just day-to-day on stuff and they’re all working together. Who’s the editor? There’s a name there, but there’s five names under it. I can say there’s been several, but many of them have been family.

Kim: Often it was the BC secretary who answered the phone. Often it was the lady who took the photographs and answered the phone. Sometimes it was the advertising manager who took the call. It wasn’t that there was somebody way up here, there was a whole bunch of people right in here. Depending on who it was, some of them would never take a call and some of them would take every call they could get.

Jim: This editorship history is overwhelming. All things considered up to this point, no doubt about it, you’re the longest serving editor.

Kim: Correct.

Jim: We can say that for sure. Then of course, after you, just to mention it in this article, Jerry Hayes is now the editor.

Figure 1. Peter Kim Flottum, former editor of Bee Culture beekeeping magazine and longtime friend.

Kim: All right, when all is said and done in Connecticut and John had hired me, I’d been to Medina to interview, he hired me, and he said, “Go.” We moved to Medina and rented an apartment for a little bit and then bought a house. The first day on the job, all the people at the work company came in and looked at me the way they do with new people. I didn’t know them, they didn’t know me, but it worked out all right.

I was in my chair, I don’t know, maybe a minute and a half, and the phone rang. It was one of the writers for the magazine that I didn’t know because I hadn’t read the magazine yet, who wanted to know when his article was due and thinking fast on my feet, I said, “The same day as last month.” He said, “Okay.” So, I got away with it. [laughter]

It took a while to get used to how the beekeeping industry and the Root Company interacted, and by then the Root Company was phasing way down in beekeeping supplies. They were still making some equipment, but production was headed in one downward direction. I took a look at that, and I took a look at the other manufacturers in the industry. I said, “Okay, I can see my future is not selling equipment from the Root Company. It is selling other people’s equipment to beekeepers.” That was the way I started.

When I moved there, the magazine didn’t have data at the time, the magazine didn’t have a person handling advertising. Somebody would call up and say, “I have an ad for the next month’s issue,” and the person who answered the phone says, “Okay, I’ll give the message to what’s her name and she’ll call you back.” That’s not service with a smile in my opinion. I hired a person to sell advertising due to people who were selling to beekeepers.

That turned out to be a very good choice to make because I got, “Oh, good.” I found a person who didn’t know anything about beekeeping, which was actually good because she had to ask what things were when an advertiser took something for granted. She didn’t know beekeeping specifics so she asked specific questions and it worked out well. We got advertising going and I took a look at the writers and the second big thing I did was do a reader survey.

Kim: We had about 9,000 subscribers at the time, and I picked out a third of them, 3,000. I put together a two-page survey of, “Who are you, how many bees, how long keeping bees, how old are you, where do you live, what do you like, what don’t you like? Reader survey.” I got replies back, and I took about a month to collate it. I found out that we were doing a lot of things that people couldn’t care less about, and we weren’t doing some things that people really wanted to know more about.

Once I gathered all the data and had some ideas of things to leave, things to change and things to get rid of, I summarized it for the writers. I told them, “These are the directions I think we should be going because this is what the readers want. Less here, more there, new here. Get rid of the old there.” The writers began to slowly change. Some, of course, would never change. Richard Taylor, a popular writer at the time, would never change, and I’m really glad he didn’t.

I’ll tell you a quick story about Richard Taylor. I went to his house several times because he lived in Ithaca, New York, where Roger Morris lived. Roger Morris, at Cornell, was my scientific stalwart in beekeeping information. He was the scientist that I had on call any time I wanted. I would go see Roger or some such trip, and then I would go to Richard’s.

I went to Richard’s house one day and he said, “You’re just in time. We’re going to go look at a beeyard.” I loaded into his model “T” Jeep, something really old, headed out to the beeyard, went down a highway, went down a dirt road, went down a track in the woods, went down so you could almost see through the trees, and came to the beeyard. It was out in the middle of absolutely nowhere.

There were about eight or nine colonies sitting in a semi-circle right in front of us, maybe 20 yards. He said, “Look at that yard.” He said, “I’ve died and gone to heaven.” This is where heaven is and he started to get out of the vehicle and he said, “Oh, look!” One of the colonies was starting to swarm and it was pouring out swarming bees. By the time he got close, the swarm was outside the hive and he did this – “I got the queen.” With his fingers, he pulled her right out of the air. Can you believe it?

Jim: Oh wow. He captured her out of the air?

Kim: I just sat there, and my mouth opened and I said, “How the hell do you do that?” He said, “Not most of the time.” [laughs]

Jim: Oh my.

Jim: As the years have passed, you have grown to look like Richard Taylor more and more.

Kim: Kind of, yes. Anyway, I got two, and then after four or five issues, maybe six issues had been out. I started in March. My first issue was May 1986.

Jim: So, your introductory period was March to May of ‘86.

Kim: By then, people were calling me up, “We’ve got a meeting coming up, would you like to speak?” My first thought was, “What do I speak about? I don’t know anything.” I knew research from the USDA bee lab, I could draw on that. I also had good information from the reader’s survey so I could share that with the people that were listening and that worked pretty well. People liked the reader survey information. Where did they fit in with all the rest of the people that were reading the magazine? Of course, when I was done, I would do a real quick reader survey up there.

“Okay, what do you want more or less of?” I got some really good firsthand information from people sitting right in front of me, that took me into Winter. The first year I went to the American Honey Producers Association because I don’t think I was quite in Ohio yet, Richard Adee knocked on my door. He wanted a piece of this magazine because, he had some – or the American Honey Producers had – I say this carefully – political agendas that they wanted to work with and yes, of course, I was the voice. I was one of the big voices. They had several, maybe a thousand members, something like that. I had several thousand subscribers. Pretty soon I got to know Richard and his son. What’s his name, oh yes, – Bret?

Kim: I went to the Adee’s out in North Dakota a couple times. There’s a lot of bees and beekeepers. I got to know more of the big commercial guys. I was probably overly influenced with commercial beekeeping agendas more than sideliner hobbyists and not long after I was there, the noise on the National Honey Board started, a lot of people wanted it and the people that wanted it were mostly commercial retail and packers.

The people that didn’t want it were most commercial, wholesale bulk, and the way they looked at it, I’m not going to say all of them or any of them, but the way they looked at it was: the way the honey board was set up was to market honey to people, not barrels of honey to other beekeepers. That rift lasted quite a while in the beekeeping world, but they got the Honey Board passed and funded and all those things. The issues moved into the magazine by the new year, I think right around the new year, then the magazine had been taking on some, what do you call it? Some changes in terms of stuff it was made of. The name of the magazine changed from “Gleanings in Bee Culture” to a simpler “Bee Culture.” The magazine paper changed to better quality, color print and photos were added, the total number of pages increased – those sorts of things.

It stepped up to – I say this carefully – it was about the same quality in terms of looking at it and reading it as the American Bee Journal (ABJ) and that turned a page in my book. I’d caught up to the industry leader because when I came, ABJ was top of the heap and data was top of the heap.

Then I started doing some things. I don’t know if it was the second, maybe it was the third year I was there, the Root Company went through a major digital birth. They brought in a company from I don’t know where. Forty people descended on my office one day and when I was done, I had Catch The Buzz and I had email and I had more emails. I had everything digital you could possibly imagine.

We were first by a long shot with Catch The Buzz, and that caught a lot of attention. Every day you’d get an email from Kim Flottum of Bee Culture Magazine telling you something you needed to know to be a better beekeeper. That was a hit. Then it dawned on me after some amount of time, “I bet you, we could sell advertising on that”, and sure enough you could. That increased our income. By the second or third year of Catch The Buzz, our subscriber base was about equal to ABJ’s.

Jim: That’s interesting.

Kim: Then, I was still on the board of EAS when I came from Connecticut. Dr. Dewey Caron was chairman. He had been chairman for 10 years. Dewey was chairman when I left Connecticut. Since I was now located in Ohio, my status as a director from Connecticut ended but he appointed me to stay on for about three years as membership chairman. My job was to use the magazine to encourage people to join EAS, come to the meetings, those sorts of things.

After his 10th year – the EAS board liked Dewey a lot – after ten years, he said, “I think I’m done.” They needed a new chairman, and everybody just looked at me. “You know everybody, you know everything, you go everywhere, we pick you.” Suddenly, I was chairman of The Eastern Apicultural Society.

Jim: Chairman of EAS, a major beekeeping organization. That was impressive growth, Kim.

Kim: I’d been going to EAS meetings probably five or six years. Four or five. Anyway, so I was really familiar with how meetings were set up, how chair people were picked, electing officers. I had two jobs. One of them was to get new members but the other one was to figure out how – EAS was confused. There were a lot of people trying to help run it and not having monumental success. Dewey and I cleaned house and reduced the confusion, more or less. Then, Dewey and Anne Harmon and I put our heads together and we came up with a permanent way to run a meeting, from picking the president two years down the road, to the closing words at the end of the meeting. We made a, what do you call it? A schedule, whatever.

Jim: Kim, do you mean a “template”?

Kim: Yes. A template – that people could use. These templates could vary. Sometimes the meeting location caused a concern, whatever, but it worked out well and EAS really prospered. That’s about when you and I got involved, in ‘95.

Jim: The Year of the Hive, 1995. Wooster, Ohio.

Kim: We had that adventure. I’ll tell you, basically for two years, you and your staff, Sherry Ferrell and Dave Heilman and I lived together in a lot of ways.

Jim: Yes, getting ready for that huge event.

Kim: For me, it was a really good two years. It still is a good two years for me. I enjoyed the meeting, I enjoyed the company, everything. The only thing I wish I had was an air conditioner. [laughs]

Jim: Yes, it was hot, that late Summer. That was the Eastern Apicultural Society meeting in 1995 to Wooster, Ohio. It was Summer and it was hot.

Kim: We got that taken care of. I stayed on as chairman, people moved on. Then other people started listening to what we were saying in the magazine. I was getting people who had not written for the beekeeping industry, government people and industry people in terms of manufacturers. Some of my writers moved up in notch rather than just how to stop a swarm. We got some of that going in there. That got some of the commercial people going in terms of what can we do bigger with the feds, with all of that. Things started to build that way.

At the same time, because of that input and because our circulation was growing and our advertisers were being successful in the magazine, suddenly I was invited to lots of places, lots and lots of places. I was going to little town halls in wherever Michigan and I was going to the capital of the United States. I got to go to the White House a bunch of times.

Jim: Oh wow!

Kim: The White House beekeeper invited me there several times. I didn’t get to visit with the people who lived there but I got to visit with all the people who worked there. The cooks and the gardeners and the people who took care of the organic garden. The DC beekeepers had a couple of meetings right on the White House lawn, and I got to speak there. Can you imagine that? Speaking on the White House lawn.

Jim: No, I cannot imagine that Kim.

Kim: I got to do it. Those sorts of things came. Then I brought Charlie Gibbons, the White House beekeeper, to Medina. Participants were standing out on the sidewalk at the Root Company, with the doors open, to listen to him. The room was packed. It was probably the biggest bee meeting ever in Medina, Ohio. Charlie was happy and I was happy, and it worked out really well. He stuck around until the bees left the White House and then he retired. In addition, he worked at the White House. He was a carpenter.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of this interview in the January 2024 issue of Bee Culture Magazine.

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Found in Translation

An Egg-Level View of Drone Production
By: Jay Evans, USDA Beltsville Bee Lab

Honey bee males, or drones, are belittled but key members of the colony. They also form a test case for one of the most fundamental questions in animals and plants. When there is a distinction between males and females, how does that come about? In bees, as in many other species, development into males or females is not black and white. There are proteins (or in cases like our own species, entire chromosomes) that help set the stage for a cascade of events that determines sex. Most of the time, a single trigger, or ‘sex-determining factor’, starts the male and female cascades, and these cascades generally result in physically different males and females. Both that trigger and the resulting cascade differ across the tree of life, and it is hard to point to common sex-determining factors across the insects, let alone the cascades that generate distinct males and females more generally. Thus, it was a really big deal 20 years ago when a research group in Germany led by Martin Beye won the race to find a plausible sex-determining factor for honey bees (M. Beye, M. Hasselmann, M. K. Fondrk, R. E. Page, S.W. Omholt, 2003. The gene csd is the primary signal for sexual development in the honey bee and encodes an SR-type protein Cell 114, 419–429, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0092-8674(03)00606-8). Just this month, that same group closed the circle by demonstrating the key mechanisms by which this factor kicks off drone versus female production in bees… but first some background.

It is staggering to realize that a European priest, Johann Dzierzon, accurately described the process that leads to male honey bees 180 years ago. He was able to show, experimentally, that queens which had been prevented from mating were exclusively drone layers. Genes were not a thing then, let alone sex-determining genes, but genetics was soon to be a field, and there is evidence that Dzierzon’s insights and experiments helped trigger the appreciation for how genetic variation leads to the diversity we see within species. Dzierzon’s passions included how worker bee body colors reflected both queens and their mates and his careful work likely planted seeds in the mind of fellow priest and apiarist Gregor Mendel, who was starting to conduct the pea breeding experiments that defined his own legacy. A nice recent review by Gene Kritsky builds the case for Mendel’s likely exposure to Dzierzon’s thinking in science circles of the 1850’s and 60’s (Kritsky, G. Bees and Peas: How apiology influenced Gregor Mendel’s research. 2023. American Entomologist, 69, 40-45, doi:10.1093/ae/tmad025). Mendel did not formally acknowledge the assist, and it is unclear whether he would have reached the same conclusions and experiments solo. What is certain is that Dzierzon got pretty much everything correct about honey bee reproduction, marveling at queen nuptial flights and the abilities of queens to take or leave sperm from those flights as they nurtured their developing eggs, “The power of the fertile queen, accordingly, to lay worker or drone eggs at pleasure is rendered very easy of explanation by the fact that the drone eggs require no impregnation, but bring the germ of life with them out of the ovary; whilst otherwise it would be inexplicable and incredible. Thus the queen has it in her power to deposit an egg just as it comes from the ovary, and as the unfecundated mothers lay it; or by the action of the seminal receptacle, past which it must glide, to invest it with a higher degree, a higher potency, of fertility and awaken in it the germ of a more perfect being, namely a queen or a worker bee.”

So, how does recent research close the deal for honey bee sex determination? It was evident that the complementary sex determination (csd) gene identified by Beye and colleagues had a highly variable stretch that shows maybe 20 sequence variants in a given population and 100 overall in the species. If diploid female bees are many hundred-fold more frequent than diploid males (which are generally removed by their sisters during development), a gene with this amount of variation fits the bill as the trigger for sex, but how does it all work? Marianne Otte and colleagues from the Beye lab used several genetic tricks to show that a mismatch for this one gene between two chromosomes is both necessary and sufficient to generate female bees. They used ‘CRISPR’ gene editing of fertilized eggs to nullify sections of that variable region. When this happened, bees that would have developed into females were male. They also inserted a polymorphism into drone-layer queens and those queens then produced viable females. Basically, matches for a tiny region of this one protein were sufficient to bind the protein in ways that changed its effects on the next proteins in the cascade and altered the sex of these bees (see graphic). If one of those amino acids was mismatched between the two gene copies, the resulting poor binding led to a female cascade. That’s a simple mechanism for letting a single gene impact sex determination.

While csd appears to be unique to certain insects with haploid males (bees, wasps, ants in particular), it shows a historical similarity to ‘transformer’ proteins, which are known as key actors in insects with diploid males and females and sex chromosomes (i.e., with sex determination that is more like our own). How the leap was made from traditional sex chromosomes to species with haploid males is another mystery. In a practical sense, researchers are rapidly determining variation at csd across populations at all sizes. There is a cost to colonies when queens are mated to males with matching csd alleles. Even though many such ‘diploid males’ are purged early in development the initial effort to raise them, and patchy brood patterns, can both weigh colonies down. Knowing the exact mechanism by which variation works at this locus allows for accurate screens of breeding stock and larger commercial apiaries to see where adding fresh genes might improve productivity. It’s also really neat to think that every cell of a worker bee (or queen) in your colony carries a tiny genetic difference at one of the thousands of her proteins that defines her life.

Ingredients
□ 2½ cups self-rising cornmeal
□ ½ tsp salt
□ ¼ cup vegetable oil
□ ½ cup creamed corn
□ 1⅓ cup buttermilk
□ ¼ cup honey
□ 1 egg
□ 1 tbsp vegetable oil (for skillet)
□ Honey and Butter for serving

Zankopedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Directions
Step 1
Preheat oven to 450°F.

Step 2
Swirl the 1 tbsp vegetable oil in a cast iron skillet. Place in the over to heat. Watch that it doesn’t start to smoke!

Step 3
Mix the cornmeal and salt in a large bowl.

Step 4
In a second bowl, combine the vegetable oil, creamed corn, buttermilk, honey and egg.

Step 5
Stir the wet ingredients with the dry until just combined. Batter will be lumpy, don’t over mix!

Step 6
Open the oven and drop a tsp of batter into the hot skillet to make sure it is heated enough to sizzle.

Step 7
Once heated enough, carefully pour the batter into the skillet.

Step 8
Bake for 20-25 minutes until set and golden brown.

Step 9
Cut into slices and serve with additional honey and butter.

Tip
Add 4 pieces of chopped bacon to the batter for a special treat!

“Assigning myself to one branch of agriculture—beekeeping, I devoted my whole life, all my thoughts, all my attention to it.” —Petro Ivanovych Prokopovych

Ukraine is a beekeeping nation and so it is apt that the Father of the Hive hails from there. Petro Prokopovych is recognized worldwide as the founder of commercial beekeeping and inventor of the first moveable hive frame (Prokopovych called these frames sleeves). The wide adoption and commercialization of the Langstroth Hive via U.S. Patent Number 9300 on October 5, 1852 drove Prokopovych’s Hive into obscurity, or did it? A brief history sketch is needed to understand how long beekeeping has been practiced here.

Ukraine began as a nation under the name Kyivan Rus whose lands stretched from the Baltic Sea down to the Black Sea. Kyivan Rus was a regional power from the ninth to the 12th century and its influence rose mainly due to its strategic location for trade and defense on the banks of the Dnipro River. Two of Kyivan Rus’s top commodities for trade were honey and beeswax. Kyiv’s entire history is aligned with that of honey and beeswax. In Ukrainian, the word for honey is “Med” and it is assumed that the drink that the Vikings and many others loved so much, mead, is derived from that Old Slavonic word. Yaroslav the Wise (11th century) developed a system of law and codes which became known as Pravda of Yaroslav (Truth of Yaroslav) (The full text of the code in English can be read here: https://web.archive.org/web/20220217103027/, http://web.grinnell.edu/individuals/kaiser/exrp.html). Bees are mentioned in at least seven chapters of this ancient code of law. Many monasteries in Kyivan Rus including the Kyiv Pecehersk Lavra (founded 1051 A.D.) also have their own apiaries. Beekeeping has consistently been practiced on the grounds of the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra for nine hundred and seventy-two years. Truly, Ukraine is a nation partially founded on beekeeping.

Petro Prokopovych was born in Mytchenky, a small village in Northern Ukraine (a region that now directly borders Russia) on June 29, 1775 about the time that U.S. colonies were preparing for the Revolutionary War. His father was an Orthodox priest of Cossack origin. One must understand that the Cossacks considered themselves free men and were not part of the serf system under the ruling Russian Empire. Serfs in Russia were much like slaves in the U.S. in that they could be bought, sold and traded. Cossacks were military men for the most part and often served in the armies of Russia due to their unique fighting and organizational abilities. Petro Prokopovych first attended the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (established 1615 as an Orthodox Christian School of Theology). Students from all over Eastern Europe and Greece attended the academy. Here, Petro learned French, German, Greek, Latin and Russian. Upon graduation, there were not many opportunities for the graduates due to a rampant campaign of Russification under Empress Catherine.

Cossacks almost always turned to military duty when other opportunities did not exist and thus this is what Petro did under the guidance of his parents. Petro entered the Pereyslav Regiment (originally formed by Ukrainian Hetman but now under Russian rule) and graduated within two years from their military school. He participated in the construction of Odesa and its port before his regiment was sent to quell the Warsaw Uprising (1794) under Count (General) Alexander Suvorov. General Suvorov had allowed his troops to plunder and loot Warsaw upon their success. Petro was a peace and nature loving person so this brutality had to have affected him, but he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant. In 1798, Petro resigned from the military and tried to return home. His father was not willing to allow him to stay because he considered it an embarrassment that his son had resigned from such a successful military career. This is the event that led Petro to beekeeping.

Petro went to stay with his younger brother who had a small apiary in 1799, not far from his native home. He spent that year studying the bees and their behavior. The following year, he purchased a small plot of land with 37 beehives. His first year started well but ended in tragedy when his farm burned down destroying some of the beehives. Discouraged but not deterred, he spent the following year digging log dugouts for the bees. Log hives were the most common way of keeping bees in those times and in some places in Ukraine and Belarus, this practice is still adhered to. In another eight years, his apiary totaled 580 beehives. No literature on beekeeping satisfied Petro, especially when it came to queens. His knowledge was already gaining respect as in his ninth year the Moscow Zemledelchesskaya Gazette wrote, “Mr. Prokopovych, we can say, is the only connoisseur of bees in our time, not only in our country, but even in the whole of Europe, whose remarks and sayings about these insects have no equal in terms of completeness, simplicity and truthfulness. Yet, in the West, Prokopovych is barely even referred to despite having written over 70 articles in various European languages.

For seven years, Petro Prokopovych worked on designs for beehives that were more friendly to the bees as he was troubled within his soul with having to destroy the bees for their honey. Finally, in 1814, his design was complete, and thus the Prokopovych Hive was introduced. This was the first moveable frame hive designed and used worldwide. Petro called his frames “sleeves” when he introduced the invention. Simultaneously, Petro also designed the first Queen Excluder which was placed in his new invention. A. I. Root himself praised Prokopvych’s hive stating, “His shop frame has much in common with the modern sectional frame with cutouts for the passage of bees, the walls of his hive are tied in a lock. He used methods that were far ahead of his time. Some beekeepers believed that Jeron invented the movable frame (Germany) in 1845, but, without a doubt, the latter had no right to this glory.”

Petro Prokopovych, generous soul that he was, opened the first beekeeping school in Ukraine (then under the Russian Empire) in 1827 in his native village of Mytchenko. School lasted for two years with practical knowledge in the first year to include tools, carpentry, reading, writing and the honey bee life cycle. In the second year, students practiced hands-on beekeeping. Most of the pupils were serfs from Ukraine, Belarus, Bashkiria and Georgia as well as foreign students from Germany, Poland, Italy and Czechoslavkia. Students studied in groups in their own native language. Prokopovych insisted on spiritual education and students were held to a Christian moral code by taking an oath. He sought to make good people out of his students to include respect for nature, man and God. Petro used the Joseph Lancaster Method of Education (Monitorial System) with its motto being, “He who teaches, learns.” Top students were responsible for teaching their fellow students. The school operated successfully for 53 years and graduated over 700 students.

Petro’s students clearly disseminated the information they learned from him as they returned to their home countries. John S. Harbison’s innovative “California Hive” built in 1857-1858 basically resembles Prokopovych’s Hive with the exception of the top frames built for honeycomb. Lorenzo Langstroth surely must have been familiar with the Prokopovych Hive even though he is credited with “bee space”, maybe he is just credited with the naming of it. Prokopovych surely understood bee space based on the spacing of the sleeves (frames) in his hive. A thorough examination of Prokopovych’s writings that still exist would have to be explored. Both Harbison and Langstroth were from Philadelphia which had a large German speaking population. Thus, it is possible that Prokopovych’s students or knowledge traveled the Atlantic and his expertise found its way to them.

Translation
a – Board with slats
b – frames on board with slats
B – Prokopovych frames

Prokopovych died at 75 years of age in 1850, just as American beekeeping was becoming more industrialized. In Ukraine, they call Prokopvych the father of “rational beekeeping”. He is well revered with several museums, institutes and memorials dedicated to his legacy. Petro’s son named Stepan Velykdan increased Prokopovych’s apiary to be the largest in Europe with allegedly over 12,000 beehives. Petro had married a peasant woman (Borovyk) and was not allowed to pass his surname to Stepan because of Russian Imperial laws. Stepan was proud of the Ukrainian heritage his father had passed to him including keeping and maintaining the Ukrainian language. The great poet of Ukraine, Taras Shevchenko, is said to have visited Petro and may even have based characters in his story “The Twins” on that meeting. Here in Ukraine, his legacy lives on as does the beekeeping industry that keeps this nation’s rural and urban economy rolling while at war. In Slovenia, the beehives in the bee houses look like a modified Prokopovych Hive. So, now when you think of Ukraine, don’t think so much about war but what this nation’s people and its impact on the hobby and business of beekeeping. Please remember this humble and kind man, Petro Prokopovych, and his contribution to an ancient form of husbandry that so many of us know and love.

“…So that the most intelligent people by nature, who differ from others in kindness, intelligence, diligence, perseverance and natural inclination to bees, were chosen for the supervisor of bee farms. The choice of such human qualities is very difficult, but it depends on God all further success.” —Petro Prokopovych

References:
В.Г КОРЧЕМНИЙ: До 220 – річчя з дня народження П.І. прокоповича ПРОКОПОВИЧ ПЕТРО ІВАНОВИЧ Тернопіль, “Поліграфіст”, 1995 (V. G. KORCHEMNY To the 220th anniversary of the birth of P.I. Prokopovich PETRO IVANOVYCH PROKOPOVYCH Ternopil, “Polygraphist”, 1995)
https://nashi.engineeringweek.org.ua/english/story/prokopovich.php
https://we.org.ua/kultura/narodni-remesla/istoriya-vynajdennya-vulyka-ukrayintsem-petrom-prokopovychem/#imageclose-4498 (In Ukrainian)
https://beeprofessor.com/petro-prokopovych/