- Montana Ag Live is made possible by, the Montana Department of Agriculture, the MSU Extension Service, the MSU Ag Experiment Stations of the College of Agriculture, the Montana Wheat and Barley Committee, the Montana Bankers Association Cashman Nursery & Landscaping the Gallatin Gardeners Club and the Rocky Mountain Certified Crop Adviser Program.

(upbeat guitar music) - Good evening, you are tuned to Montana Ag Live originating tonight from the studios of KUSM, on the very dynamic campus of Montana State University, and also from our homes and offices across the beautiful state that we call home.

I'm Jack Riesselman, retired Professor of Plant Pathology.

I'll be your host this evening.

For those of you who have watched the program in the past you know how it works, you provide the questions and we do the best to provide the answers.

And without those questions this program can be pretty dull.

So don't be bashful, send those questions in.

Tonight is going to be kind of an interesting night.

We're going to feature honeybees and bee and honey production tonight.

But before we get into that, I'd like to introduce the panel.

Here in the studio with me tonight, social distancing yet, is Dave Bombauer.

Dave is manager of the Plant Growth Center here on campus and he's also a very, very knowledgeable horticulturalist.

So if you have horticultural questions tonight, plant questions, houseplant, whatever, don't be bashful phone them in, and we'll get an answer to you.

Joining us for Power, Montana is Mark Jensen.

Mark is our special guest this evening.

We'll get back to Mark and a little bit, and he'll tell you about what he does.

Also, we have Eric Velasco.

Eric is an Ag economist.

So if you have any questions regarding the economics of agricultural production, Hey, here's a great chance to ask him.

And of course, Michelle Flenniken, Michelle's been here before, her specialty is healthy bees.

And if you wanted to learn about bees tonight and whether or not they are healthy, it's a good chance to ask the question.

And you're probably all wondering what we're doing.

Sitting here with a Bobcat beer, which by the way is really quite tasty.

Mark Jensen was Smoot Honey Company provides the honey that goes into Bobcat beer.

And we're going to let Mark tell us a little bit about what he does with the Beekeepers Association, his own business, and a little bit about the honey that goes into this delicious beer.

So Mark, it's all yours for a couple seconds.

Well, thanks Jack.

Well, Smoot Honey Company, I guess we'll start with Bobcat beer there.

It's a product of Jeremiah Johnson Brewing in Great Falls, Montana.

And they use our honey as the local ingredients in their beer and all the ingredients in that beer are local.

And so we provide honey to Jeremiah for the Bobcat beer, among other beers that they produce.

And so we are a family-owned beekeeping operation, honey-producing operation here in Power, Montana, just north of Great Falls, about a half an hour on I-15, we run about 5,500 colonies of bees and our honey production, we average about 105 pounds per hive, for the last 50 odd years that we've been here in Montana.

- That's a lot of honey and who takes care of 5,500 hives, that's what I'd like to know.

- Well, we're actually a pretty small operation commercially anymore.

It's a sustainable number of colonies for us and we can make it work in our territory and we're successful at doing it.

So, but a lot of commercial beekeepers across the country and across the state, are 10,000 colonies or more.

The largest beekeeper in the in the world, in the United States, they run in the ballpark of 80,000 colonies.

And so we're comparatively speaking, we're quite small, but again, it's a sustainable number for us and we're able to make things work using that number of colonies.

- Yeah, and I think the audience would probably like to know that Montana is a well-known state for honey production.

And if I'm not mistaken I think we're running fifth nationally in honey production.

Is that correct?

- Yeah, that's true.

Montana usually ranks in the top seven or so of production.

Usually we're in the top four or five, North Dakota almost always defeats us in poundage, but North Dakota has more hives that go to that state in the summertime, than we do here in Montana.

Lots of times we'll lose the overall poundage battle, but we'll win the pounds per colony battle, here in Montana.

So we're a real good honey production state of fine quality table-grade honey that we produce here in Montana, Jack.

- Okay, thank you.

Let's change tune a little bit.

This question came in last week and Dave, I'm going to let you have this one.

It came in from Lakeside.

They want to plant cherries, they want to know, is it better to plant cherries in the spring or in the fall?

- Oh the spring, definitely, now's a good time to do it.

Okay, and if you can get ahold of bare root trees, all the better.

There are easier to plant and they take off pretty fast, but yeah, now's the time.

- The key is keep them well-watered.

- Yes, especially the- - The first few years.

- First couple years.

- Yeah, okay.

Michelle from Dillon, this came in from Facebook.

They saw that we were having honey on the agenda tonight, they would like to know are honeybee numbers still collapsing and if so, is it due to the collapse disease that And Mark, you can jump in both you guys can get into this one.

- Yeah, so unfortunately in the US we've had high annual losses of honeybee colonies that have averaged around 38% over the last 10 years.

But something that the media gets wrong often is that colony collapse disorder is a specific syndrome that's not responsible for all the losses.

It's only responsible for about 5-8% of those.

And there were many factors involved in colony losses and that includes queen failure, agrochemical exposure, pathogens, particularly the Varroa destructor mite is a really big enemy for beekeeping operations.

But in light of that pressure, this high losses, beekeepers across the US have done an excellent job maintaining the pollination force.

So they split their colonies often and maintain the overall number of colonies at over 2.5 million colonies in the US.

And so in spite of this high annual losses, the overall number of colonies each year has been maintained by a really expert professional beekeepers.

- Mark do you got anything to add?

- Yeah, Michelle's right.

And she did mention that beekeepers have had to split their colonies a lot in the last 10 to 15 years, because of the different collapses and things which is a lot of work and it's expensive and it's real slow to get that built up.

And, in order to have enough bees to do the whole pollination and just to make any production too.

And in part, because of that, honey production levels have dropped in the United States over the last 20 years or so, among other factors.

But yeah, Michelle has some good points there.

- Hey Mark, do you have a idea of like, of all the honey that's consumed in the US, how much of it's domestic and how much of it's imported and where does the imported honey come from?

- It's roughly a fourth of the production, excuse me, roughly a fourth of the honey that's consumed in the United States is domestically produced.

And that used to be, Oh within the last 10 to 15 years, it used to be we would produce about three quarters of the amount of honey that was consumed in the United States.

And from varying reasons, foraged or lack thereof, climate change, weather, Varroa destructor mite, all the different things that are pressures on beekeepers.

But yeah, so the United States is a net importer of honey.

And a lot of that honey comes from, well, obviously overseas, but it used to be there was a lot of honey that came from China.

And since the year 2000 there's been an, the industry has had a dump order on the country of China, which helps to level the price field, and so domestic producers don't have to sell their honey for below the cost of production.

And so now there are a lot of other countries that are importing honey into the United States, both legit honey and not-so-legit honey.

A lot of the honey that comes into the United States, from other countries is actually Chinese honey.

And so there are a number of different countries that do send legitimate honey.

Canada sends good honey to the United States, Argentina is a country that imports a lot of honey into the United States, India, Vietnam.

Those countries are some, just a small handful.

- Wow.

- A huge industry.

I didn't realize.

I have noticed that honey has become more expensive the last few years than it was say eight or 10 years ago.

And I suspect that's probably one of the reasons why, is that we're importing more of it, is that correct?

- Nah... - Okay.

- Maybe that's an answer for Eric.

I would say that that's not quite true, because the imports are coming in quite cheap relative to, yeah and so.

- As a less expert, beekeeper, only keeping bees for about 10 years, I say it's a lot of work to get that honey out.

So I'm always surprised, like, wow, it's really this cheap actually, it's a fair bit of work to maintain those bees and get the honey every year.

- All right, let's run over to Eric.

Eric, this question is from Billings.

This person has seen where corn prices have spiked to around 750 to 780 a bushel.

Why has not wheat followed as readily as corn?

Do you have an answer for that?

- Yeah, that's a good, that's an insightful question, because usually wheat and corn kind of follow each other, if you look at them over time.

Corn prices going up usually means wheat prices follow.

But I think one of the drivers behind the corn and soybean, really both of them have gone up quite a bit, if you will recall a couple of years ago.

And so, Mark was just talking about imports from China.

We exported a lot of soybeans to China, and then when they placed tariffs on them, a lot of those soy beans didn't go to China.

And so, we really saw those prices go down quite a bit since then, we've heard of a lot more orders, kind of a stalling of some of those tariffs.

And so a lot of those exports have gone over to China and a lot of the operations in the Midwest, who grows soybeans, they also grow corn, and so a lot of them have put off growing soybeans for for awhile.

And now we're seeing a lot of soybean acreage, in response to those opening markets.

And what that means then is that corn acreage is down quite a bit.

So yeah, corn prices have really rallied.

Soybean prices have really rallied, but fortunately the wheat market has seen very little of benefit from those.

- Okay, thank you.

Interesting question from Sheridan, we'll direct this to Mark, it's from Amy and she wants to know whether or not you ever get stung when you're working with bees, and does it hurt.

(all laugh) - Never.

- Well, yeah, never, I've not ever been stung once.

(all laugh) No, not once.

So yeah, I have been stung quite a lot.

In fact, that's probably the most asked question that I get, but yeah, it's a daily occurrence and it's just something that's kind of, I guess it's kind of like if you're a carpenter and you hit your thumb with a nail, it's just, an occupational hazard.

And so you try not to get stung because you don't want the bees to be mad at you because every time the bee stings you, then that's one less field force bee, for example, or one less to make, for honey production.

But they do that, because they're defending their hive and they don't want to in there, of course, but we smoke them and try to keep from getting stung.

I get stung fairly frequently.

- Okay, out of curiosity, I've been told that if you get stung over time, you develop kind of a immunity toward the venom, is that correct?

Or does it hurt the same every time?

- (laughs) No, it doesn't hurt the same every time I'm by no means a medical professional.

However, yeah, some people do take sting therapy and you can build up an immunity, so to it's pretty rare that folks are allergic allergic to bee stings.

I mean, if you get stung by a bee on the arm, for example, or in your eye, your eye's gonna swell up, and you're going to have a lump on your arm and that's gonna last for two or three days, that's not an unusual reaction.

It's when you have an anaphylaxis-type reaction that you need to be quite concerned, when you can't breathe and that's very rare, you're more likely to be struck by lightning than you are to be harmed by a bee sting, other than just a superficial.

- Okay, all right, thank you.

Taking our phone calls tonight, you can call Nancy Blake or Bruce Lobel.

They're taking the phone questions and they relay them to me via technology called Slack.

And they show up in this little computer in front of me.

And one of those questions that's come in this evening is from Missoula and they see honeybees in town, but there are no nearby hives.

How far do honeybees forage away from the hive?

Have add it, guys.

- So I think it's a little over two and a half miles.

And then of course if they need to go farther, they will.

And one cool thing about honeybees foraging is that they actually convey directionality and distance to the floral resource via this waggle dance that you can YouTube later.

There's a lot of great videos on it, but then the bee's in the box that are all mostly females will convince her half-sisters to follow her to that same floral resource.

So a group of bees will, particularly forage on one lilac bush or canola field, for example, or some cherry trees, but about two and a half miles.

But closer if the forage is closer.

Mark, do you have anything to add there?

- Yeah, that's pretty accurate.

We usually figure it's either three inches or three miles if you're gonna move bees.

So if you move the bees less than three miles today, they'll go back to where they used to be tomorrow.

But yeah, generally speaking, the bees will forage within the three mile range, unless times are pretty tough, if it's real dry out and there's nothing to forage on in the near area.

Now they've been known to go 10, 12 miles to find forage, when times have been tough, or drought-type situation.

But it also, it goes like you said, what they prefer.

If there's a canola field down the road, we get calls sometimes, well the bees aren't in my tomatoes, or the bees aren't pollinating my squash.

Well it's because there's an alfalfa field, half a mile away, they like that better.

And so that's yeah, Michelle's got it right.

- Okay, you mentioned alfalfa.

We have a question here for Eric, and this is an interesting one.

It comes here from Bozeman, they would like to know if it's more profitable in the Gallatin Valley to grow alfalfa or spring wheat, your opinion.

(laughs) - Well, I mean, spring wheat prices are decent right now, but you know, they can be pretty volatile.

Gosh, it really depends on what kind of soil you have and what kind of markets you have access to, obviously that hay, you're gonna be selling more locally.

And then the spring wheat, you're just gonna look to tie in to some larger markets.

So I kind of look for your infrastructure.

I mean, yeah, I see, at least around here, I see a lot more hay than a spring wheat.

- Okay.

This question has come in, a couple of times from Bozeman.

We don't have an entomologist tonight, but I think between all of us, we could come up with an answer.

This person lives on a north slope at 5,800 feet.

And they would like to know when they should put out yellow jacket traps.

And I'm gonna to say probably when you first start to see yellow jackets.

Does anybody want to disagree with that?

- No, that seems reasonable.

- How about the bee experts?

- That seems good to me too.

And actually, incidentally, we sometimes have to put them at the beeyard because those yellow jackets will try to come into our bee colonies and we don't like that either.

But yeah, I would say when you see them.

- And the question from Valier, I would like to know Mark, do you have problems with bears getting into your hives any place.

- (laughs) Yes, yeah, we do.

And traditionally we would have trouble with black bears and now we also have fun with grizzly bears.

And so we were able to help mitigate that with electric fencing and fish and game has been very helpful, with us in the Buller/Conrad area and with helping us fence things, and so the bees don't get destroyed.

Grizzly bears don't treat them very nice, or neither do black bears for that matter.

- Okay, just out of curiosity.

I've had golden retrievers that have been stung when they've been trying to play with bees on various different houseplants or garden plants.

And they have a response a lot of times where they have a little paralysis for a short period of time.

Why does that not happen with bears?

If they get into a hive, they really probably get stung a lot.

It doesn't seem to affect them.

- That's a real good question.

And I guess I don't have a good answer to that, but I have always marveled at that myself, because yeah, they have got to just get punished.

And so I don't know if it's just because they have a tougher hide or I think it's a risk/reward thing, to be honest.

And so it's worth getting stung that much, in order to get the protein reward.

You know, the stereotype is the bears are going to eat honey but we've found over the years that they are actually going eat brood and they're getting that protein from eating the actual insects themselves, in the larva.

And so, they do get some honey in there too, but they're mostly after the brood, has been our experience.

- Hey Mark, you kind of mentioned Fish, and their help, and I think maybe the viewership might be interested, because I mean, your industry's fairly well-regulated by Montana Department of Ag and there's a state entomologist and your hives are registered.

I mean, it's not quite like livestock, you don't brand them all, but I mean, I always thought that was pretty fascinating.

This relationship between Department of Ag and the commercial beekeeper sector and also with hobbyist beekeepers - Sure, well, yeah, we do have a good relationship with the Department of Ag and then with Fish and Game as well.

And, bears, as most livestock folks can tell you, can be a real problem.

And so we try as an industry to work with landowners, farmers, ranchers and then the Fish and Game folks as well, because the bears are just trying to earn a living, but so are we, and there's always that gray area of who should win, I guess, but yeah, we try and work with everybody as best we can and we don't want bears to be destroyed, but we also don't want our colonies to be destroyed either.

So we try and work with everybody as best we can, as an industry.

- Okay, thank you from Forsyth.

This is an interesting question.

It's kind of analysis.

Eric, there are subsidies for sugar beet producers.

Are there any subsidies for honey?

They're both seem to be sugar-based.

- Well, I'd be curious to hear Mark's comments on this, but as far as I know there isn't.

The one program that was recently implemented, through the farm bill is a disaster program for beekeepers.

If they experience losses, it's called ELAP and it's managed through the Farm Service Agency.

And as I understand it, that's meant to be as somewhat of a safety net, although I'm not aware of any direct subsidies, like with sugar beets, for honey.

- Okay, thank you.

Mark, you want to add anything to that?

- Yeah, Eric's right.

Yeah, we don't have subsidies.

We do have access to ELAP, which is the Emergency Livestock Assistance Program.

And so we have, Oh goodness, I'm not sure what the pool of money is available to us, but in the last farm bill beekeepers are able to get a lot more assistance if we have crashes, there's different reasons to be eligible for the ELAP program, whether it's drought, whether it's they were eaten by bears, whether you were washed away in a flood, there's lots of different reasons to be eligible for that program.

But yeah, that's basically our only safety net as an industry.

- Okay, thank you.

Dave, this question came in from Helena.

They have a large compost pile that they've saved the compost for three or four years.

They think it's ready to use.

How much should they use in a garden?

Do you want to quote that on a square foot or give them an indication of how much?

- Sure, well, you can test to see if your compost is ready by getting a five gallon bucket and you can probably have to sift out some of the big chunks and then putting a little bit of moisture in there and then see if it heats up in the next few days.

So if it reheats what the additional moisture then it's not quite ready.

And I still use compost, that's not quite ready, but I'll put it in the fall and kind of let it finish off then.

And so kind of a rule of thumb, our colleagues at Utah State University figured out if you want to maintain the organic matter in your garden or farm soil, you would add approximately an inch of compost a year.

And if you're gardening there's really no reason to turn that compost very deep.

So maybe in the top four, six inches is plenty.

So if you're roto-tilling your garden you could apply the compost, put an inch down.

If you want to build organic matter you might want to use a little more up to two inches.

You can overdo it.

One of the things we're concerned about with compost, it depends on what your feedstocks are.

So if you have a lot of manure-based compost you might be adding some salts.

You might be overdoing phosphorus or potassium, depending on the source of the manure, but it's not common.

That's, I mean you can send your compost off and have it tested.

It's a different test than a soil test, as far as if you're interested in what the nutrient load of that compost is.

But so yeah, an inch is a good place to start, turn it in four to six inches down, and then you should be at least maintaining your current organic matter level.

- All right, sounds like a good answer to me.

Interesting question that came in from Facebook.

We have an eight year old viewer and thank you for watching, named Breed, and Michelle he would like to know when a queen honeybee dies how do you get a new queen?

- Yeah, that's a great question.

And so when the queen bee dies, the queen bee, first of all it's important to know she releases a pheromone, called queen pheromone and that's how the colony knows she's there.

If that pheromone level dips, the colony already has eggs and they can rear those eggs into a new queen bee.

Another thing is, is that if the colony is getting really big and the colony needs to swarm, and that's when half of the colony leaves with the old queen they start to rear new queens before the old queen leaves.

Because of course she's the only one that lays an egg and she'll lay, they'll coax her to lay an egg in a honeycomb, that's like the size of an unshelled peanut and she'll lay the egg there.

And then this is a good commercial for eating nutritious food, because by the food that they feed her.

The developing egg will have more protein and be more nutritious.

And then that egg will develop into a queen bee, which is about one and a half times the size of our half sisters.

And the they'll usually make a couple of queen cells, when those queen cells emerge, they'll fight, and the winner becomes the queen of the new colony.

And so that's how they rear a new queen bee.

- Okay, thank you.

I learned something from that, I did not know.

From Hinsdale and thank you for calling.

And I think this is the first question.

We actually have two from Hinsdale.

First time they've had a caller from there inquire and this person would like to know what can farmers do to reduce pesticide use that harms bees?

And that's an excellent question, Michelle and Mark, you guys want to jump into that?

- So maybe I can start.

And so one of the things that they can do is spray in the night or evening times.

A lot of that times that gives us pesticide or insecticide, which are the worst for bees, of course, since bees are insects, insecticides are the worst problem, gives it time to dry, and so you have reduced contact exposure.

Also in general, just using less of it, only using it when integrated pest management strategies suggest that you do use it.

For example, I also work with potato growers and they get aphids, but they know that some of the viruses that are transmitted by those aphids are transmitted just on that first bite.

So there's no need to spray your aphids with insecticides to reduce virus transmission.

And so farmers and growers really know their crops, well.

Of course, insecticides and pesticides are also expensive inputs.

And so using the least of those that they can is the goal for the overall growers, and then it's good for the beekeepers using less and using them at the right times a day.

Mark, do you have anything to add?

- You pretty much nailed it, yeah, that's right.

Michelle did a nice job on that one.

But yeah, night application is just really important for bees.

And so, like you say, so they don't get out there and don't get a direct hit.

- Is there a notification program if I'm a producer and I know I need to have the crop duster come and spray for insects that I could call Department of Ag and they would notify beekeepers in the area.

Is there anything, any kind of a program set up that you would get an alert saying, Oh, you know our colonies over by Conrad are gonna get treated, or there's gonna be fields near our colonies, you could close them up or... - Yeah, I believe you can contact the state.

Also, if you have your, in our area here, our applicators are real good about giving us a call and producers as well that, Hey, we've got grasshoppers here and your beeyard is not too far from there.

When can we apply this, or we're going to be doing it this week, that sort of thing what do we need to know to help keep you guys safe?

And so, yeah, it's good just to have a good rapport with your applicators and you can still also contact the states for that information too, I believe, yes.

- Good points, guys.

Here's the one that I- - Yeah, so it's different here in Montana, where, as Mark was saying, it's more like locally regulated and locally understood.

I started researching bees in California where there, David, it's by law mandated and has to be notified within, before spray and beekeepers are officially alerted by the state system.

But in Montana, we don't have that kind of regulatory oversight over pesticide use.

- Okay, while we're on the issue of bees, and this one I'm curious about it came in from Bozeman.

Mark, how many bees are there in a commercial hive?

And they say, roughly.

- Roughly, well, it's roughly 3,500 bees per pound.

And so a good, strong commercial hive, at that peak of production time say the late part of July, so you'll have 10 to 12 pounds of bees in a good quality hive, and so do the math on that, 4 350,000 bees per hive, approximate.

- Okay, from Powell, Wyoming, and we're getting more from Wyoming.

I want to thank the people down there who are watching this.

This person has a problem with wasps, can she control without pesticides?

And she wants to know do wasp attack bees.

- Wasps attack, yeah, let Michelle handle - (laughs) Okay.

- Yeah, so wasps attack bees, and there are some ways that you can lure wasps into traps.

I think a lot of them have like a meat-centered trapping mechanism which then of course, honeybees are not carnivores and wasps are, so wasps will go into these traps that have meat and then they'll just drown in these traps.

So that's one way to handle it without chemicals.

- Okay, thank you, Eric.

This person wants to know and they were considering investing in corn futures.

So you're under pressure.

They want to know is ethanol production going to continue to increase?

- Oh boy.

Well, so someone's looking for investment advice here.

So is ethanol going to increase?

I mean that's a very political question.

I think hard for an economist to predict what happens in politics.

So, I don't know, the corn prices right in a relative sense, especially where they've been recently.

I will say though, I teach an Ag marketing class here at MSU and we were given funds a while back to make speculative investments in the market.

And this class actually ended up making money on a corn futures this year.

So, maybe that would have been great a few months back, is it still going to keep going up?

I don't know.

- That's a hedge answer, right?

- That's a total hedge answer.

- So the students make real investments.

I mean, you were like real money, real investments, right?

- Yeah.

So one of the classes I teach is futures and options.

And so it's a lot of Ag students who take it within the college, especially like business majors, some of them Ag business minors and the whole class is focused on how do you manage risk?

And one of the ways we talk about is with futures and options.

And so, one of the things, a student can finish and kind of go through the textbook and see.

But I think one of the best things that we do in that class is we actually go through putting in a bid offer and create a hedge position.

Now, since we don't own cattle or corn in the market, we're not actually setting up a hedge position, but it's the same, essentially the same set of things that you would do, whether you're managing risk, or making a speculative move in the market.

- [Jack] So if they make money, do they get a cut?

(Dave laughs) - You know, the students would like that, on the other hand, if they lose money, we can't make them pay for it.

But so no, so this is something that, money that's managed in an account.

And what I tell the students is that when I'm on shows like this, I will brag about how smart they are when they make money.

(all laugh) - Okay, great answer, guys.

Dave from Darby, and yeah, here again, I think this may be our first question from Darby.

Grasshoppers ate her raspberries and vegetables last year.

She's heard that either neem oil, or Nolo Bait, or non-toxic control are they effective or is there something else?

Can you handle that one?

- So grasshoppers are easier to manage when they're little.

So Nolo Bait is Nosema locustae, it's a protozoan and it's can be effective for treating areas if you get it out early enough, so that the young grasshoppers get ahold of it.

So the early instars, if you wait till later in the summer and they're getting fairly good size, it's harder for that material to be effective.

Neem oil is a broad spectrum kind of insecticide, and it also acts as an insect growth regulator on some species and it's somewhat of a deterrent.

So I guess I would start with kind of a two-pronged approach.

Let's get the Nosema, have that on hand.

So when you start seeing the very smallest grasshoppers, you can protect your raspberry bushes.

We used to use it in a greenhouse because the grasshoppers loved to eat basil.

And so then we would put the Nosema, out by the inlet shutters, where the air was being drawn in, where the hoppers would get in.

And it'd be a fairly effective way to keep them down, down to a low roar.

I think it would also work fairly well for your raspberry patch.

You'd put it around the perimeter, obviously follow the label.

And then if that wasn't effective, I don't know if neem oil is effective on grasshoppers.

We'd have to look at the label on that, but it is a fairly broad spectrum insecticide.

- Okay, so are those Italian grasshoppers eating the basil?

- Yeah, yeah, they taste pretty good actually.

- Okay, from Bozeman, back to our specialists on bees, this caller has a bird bath and this year bees are swarming around the water.

They want to know why and what she can do.

They're keeping the birds away.

Any comments guys?

- Well, yeah, bees are thirsty just like we get, and so that's why they're going there.

It's a dry spring here in Montana, by and large, and so that's what they've identified is that that bird feeder has got water or the bird water has water and so they like to do that.

Where you can do is get the water out of there, let it dry up for a few days.

And the bees will realize that, then they'll go someplace else, hopefully and then they won't come back and maybe your birds will be happy.

But that's what I would suggest.

- Another thing you can do is in your flower bed and stuff, you can trickle water on like a wooden board or over some rocks that are lower.

And the bees will go to that one, instead of the risky bird bath.

And that's kind of another way to just move them to a different location.

And then I feel like also these get blamed for a lot of things that wasps do.

So make sure that it's the bees, and not the wasps, but it could be wasps as well.

- Okay, interesting.

A Facebook question and we haven't heard a lot about African bees recently, but do we have to be concerned about the African bees at the present time?

- So here in Montana, and I think Mark was talking about this earlier and has experienced this as well.

It gets cold enough in the winter that Apis scutellata, Apis mellifera scutellata, which is the Africanized bees breed, don't live or thrive in our cold environments in Montana.

And so the only times you have to be concerned with Africanized bees in Montana, is if somebody brings the colony from the South and moves it here.

This is an important time to mention, if you import these into Montana you need to check in with the Montana Department of Ag and tell them where you got your bees.

Because along with those bee colonies you can some times in, not because you wanted to, import bee pathogens as well, and so we'd like to get bees from Montana and anytime you get these from the South, especially, we don't recommend that in general, because of Africanized bees and small hive beetle can be associated with those colonies.

But then we have a chance to get more Africanized bees genetics into Montana.

But in general, they don't thrive here, which is lucky for us because I think Mark will agree, it's not fun to keep and maintain, scutellata, Africanized bees, right, Mark?

- That's right, that's right.

There's just a bit of a misnomer with the Africanized bees.

They get kind of a bad rap and deservedly so.

However their staying individual bees sting, is not any worse than the Carniola bees or Italian bees, for example, that most beekeepers run up in this neck of the woods.

What the difference is, is the Africanized bees, they attack, they defend the hive in force.

I shouldn't say attack, they defend in force.

They send out quite a lot more bees, whereas a European colony will send out about a third of the bees to protect the hive, the Africanized bees will send two thirds.

And so you've got lots more potential to get stung real bad.

So that's, it's good that it's cold here in the winter.

- Down in places where they have Africanized bees and maintain them like South America, and of course then in Africa.

They tend their colonies a lot at nights, you know?

And so that's kind of a unique experience for beekeepers there.

They're working more at night than beekeepers here in the northern US.

- Interesting, I'm learning a lot tonight.

Dave, I have two questions for you.

Number one, this person transplanted collard greens this week and the leaves are turning yellow.

It's not been too cold.

The other vegetables he's transplanted are fine.

Is it just because collard greens likes higher temperatures than we do have here?

- They do thrive under a higher temperature and it's not typically, it's usually don't transplant those.

You would direct seed them.

So there might be a little setback just from transplant shock, but I would imagine he'll know in a week, whether or not they're gonna snap out of it.

- Okay, and the other question is and everybody can jump on this.

So this person would like to know is it okay to have beehives in town?

And if so, do you have to be licensed to do so?

- So that varies by the city.

- That varies by, yeah.

- Go ahead, I didn't hear the answer, Mark.

- Oh, like Dave was gonna say, it varies by locality, yes.

I believe that most cities in the state have their own rule about having X number of colonies, whether you can, or you can't, it's kind of like having chickens too, you can only have one or two chickens, that sort of thing.

And so yeah, definitely consult your local government to find that out.

- Yeah.

And I would add to that a little bit to also consult your local beekeepers, particularly small beekeepers that are hobbyist beekeepers, that have more time to mentor you.

But if you're just getting your first bee colony, it's important to consider location, where do the kids play, your neighbors, and just be neighborly about it in places where they're allowed and manage your swarm.

So you don't want to have bees swarming into your neighbors attic, for example, and things like that.

So if you're gonna maintain bees in town, it's important to get some mentorship and training first, before doing that, but then it can be a fun interesting hobby for you and your family.

And so I just encourage you to reach out to your local beekeeping clubs too.

- Yeah.

That's a good point, Michelle, yeah.

There's a lot of real active hobby groups in a lot of the areas around the state, that are good to consult with that.

There's Facebook groups around the state to consult.

Definitely look into that, before you get a hive of bees in your backyard.

- Okay, thank you.

And on that note, I have a caller from Chester, would like to know what they have to do to have a beekeeper put hives on their farm.

Who should they call and what preconditions are needed.

Mark, you might tell us how you select.

- Mark's on his way.

(all laugh) - No, actually Chester wouldn't be in our territory, honestly.

So in the state of Montana, we have the APL, I guess I'm not gonna, I don't remember the actual, Michelle might be able to tell us the actual name, but it's been called the bee law.

And so beekeepers have territories, so to speak, mainly to help prevent the spread of diseases.

And so we talked about three miles really with the forage range and that sort of thing.

And so each beekeeper has an area.

And so you could consult the State Department of Ag, in particular, the state entomologist, and then they can identify the beekeepers that would have locations, or be in your territory, in the Chester area, for example, and so then they could get you information to get in contact with those folks, to see if you've got a place where they could place bees.

- Okay, on the bee subject, and we have lots of questions coming in and we'll get to as many as we can, and this came from Missoula.

This person would like to know, do bumblebees produce honey or do they just pollinate crops?

- So bumblebees are, they're really interesting bees, because right now you're what you're seeing, those big large bees, are the queen bee and she's out foraging and provisioning the nest.

And then by the end of the summer, bumblebees will be a social insect and they'll have hundreds of bees in a colony that's actually underground.

So that's much different than honeybee colonies they'll store, honey, what's really nectar that they dry down to make honey and pollen and big pollen balls.

And they'll kind of have a big honey pot and some honeypots, it won't look like the honeycomb that you're familiar, that honeybees make, but they'll keep it under ground.

And it's primarily for provisioning their young, or the next generation, so bumblebees collect it.

But it would be much harder for us to harvest it from the bumblebees, who don't make excess like honeybees do.

- Mark, anything else?

- No, not really.

I guess other than that bumblebees, they're kind of a singular, they don't like to live in a colony like honeybees do, like Michelle said that, so yeah, they're very difficult to manage that way, commercially.

- Yeah, Michelle you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think I'm seeing as many bumblebees as I used to see, is that correct?

- So I've heard that, in some places there's been local reduction in honeybee numbers as well.

Laura Burkle here is a native and wild bee expert in the ecology department.

But I would almost say if you plant pollinator gardens, they will come.

And so at the Hort Farm here at Montana State University, we have a large pollinator garden and we have lots of bumblebees.

So if you plant things like prairie coneflower, sainfoin, phlox, bee balm, phacelia, things like this and you will see them come.

It's been pretty amazing.

Wouldn't you agree, David?

We see lots more bumblebees since we planted that garden.

- It's tremendous to see the diversity, tiny little native bees, I mean, eighth of an inch and smaller, all the way up to massive bumblebees.

So they're looking for nectar, and if you give them a variety of plants that bloom throughout the season and you give them a big kind of clumps of plant, as opposed to like singular specimen type plants, you can attract a lot of bees into your garden.

- Okay, interesting to learn that.

Eric, back to you, this sugar beet producer said that we alluded to the fact, that sugar beet producers would get government subsidies, and that's probably not correct, but there's a support price for sugar beets, Is that correct, or sugar?

- Well, I guess I'll speak about just in more general terms, kind of the subsidy programs.

They're not kind of the direct subsidy programs that I think we used to have.

A lot of them are in the form of crop insurance, where they have like a risk management product where it is subsidized, so that farmers buy it in sufficient, or participate in the product in high enough numbers, so that the insurance program is sustainable.

You have to have, just like with medical insurance, you need to have high risk people and low risk individuals, and so same with crop insurance, but they've gone about it by subsidizing it, to make sure that there are sufficient numbers there.

You know, the biggest, I guess, program with regard to sugar is probably on the trade area where we have protection of our domestic industries, by maybe restraining some of the imports from some of the other countries, and that's especially true with sugar.

- Okay, thank you for clarifying that.

Aday from Missoula, and a lot of people have this issue.

It's a great question.

People that start tomatoes early, they become tall and leggy, spindly for another word, waiting to be transplanted in a couple of weeks, how far up the plant can she put them in the soil?

In other words how deep can she submerse the stem into the soil?

- So we use the term deep stick with tomatoes and you can plant them very deep as there are root initials all along that stem.

So if you I've even seen people that had tomato seedlings that were spindly and they were two feet tall and they actually dug a little trench.

So instead of digging a two foot deep hole, they dug a six inch deep trench.

They laid most of the stem in that trench tipped the last few inches up, covered it all up and went that way.

So it's a good way to get more root development quickly on that.

Ideally, you wouldn't have a two foot spindly tomato, but it happens because you can't get them in the ground yet, or you have some low light limitations.

And so they get leggy because of the low light.

But yeah, you can pretty much bury as much of the plant, except maybe the top two inches, three inches and you should pull the leaves off, however.

So don't bury the leaves that are along that stem, you should pinch those off and then you can plant it as deep as you want.

- Thank you.

I've seen some awful leggy tomato plants being sold here and there.

And I liked actually to start them a little smaller, they're gonna catch up anyway.

- Yes, there really isn't much of an advantage people are like, Oh, that already has fruit set on it, well you really want to pinch that off, or if it has flowers on it, you should pinch those blossom off.

You want that plant that develop a foliage and build a sugar factory that way and not have it already diverting attention to developing a fruit at this point in the game.

- Good information.

Interesting question from Missoula, and I'm curious about this for myself.

They would like to know do hornets have a benefit ecologically, or are they just a nuisance?

- Michelle, you want to hit that one?

- So, I think it's a good question, and it's one I've asked myself and as somebody who is a microbiologist and neurologists that learned about bees, I had to ask this question too.

So I think in some cases, hornets and wasps, they parasitize and eat little caterpillars, they're carnivores.

And so they could eat the caterpillars that are getting your garden, and so maybe that's a good thing that they do.

I don't know, maybe David Bombauer has something that can, some local pests that they gets, but that's about the best thing I can say about them.

So I better end it there.

- I think you're right.

It's kind of a, it's kind of a net wash.

They prey on some pest insects, but there also can be, really bothersome to have a hornet's nest in your tree, because they're fairly aggressive, and so I don't feel too bad about having hornets' nest managed where they're so close to people.

- All right, Mark, this person says she sees several different types of honey being sold in some of the high-end commercial outlets, clover honey, various things like that.

Can you actually tell the difference in taste, in honey based on where the bees get the nectar?

- Oh, that's a really good question.

And that's one of the top five questions I get asked a lot as well.

A lot of the honey that's produced in the state of Montana it's really uniform, and it's a lot of alfalfa and clover honey and alfalfa, clover and sainfoin honey are real indistinguishable from each other without doing a chemical analysis, which is not a fast and easy process to do as Michelle can relate, I'm sure.

And so as far as I could, if I had three samples of each, one of each of those types of honey, I probably couldn't tell you which one came from which plant, because they are very similar.

And so I would say that in this, I don't have any data to back this up, but when you see the the term clover on a label in a grocery store, check to see on the back, look to see where that honey came from.

If it's a multiple source of different countries, probably there's not a lot of clover honey in there, the clover honey, it's a blend of different honeys from around the world and they call it clover, because that's what people want to buy and it's a marketing thing.

And so if you want clover honey, you're more likely to get clover honey, for example, if you contact your local beekeeper from a state that produces clover honey.

- Okay.

- So, you know, it's interesting, because I mean like buckwheat honey is very distinctive the dark honey.

And then I remember I took a beekeeping class down at Georgia and they were crazy about sourwood honey.

So there, I mean, there are some nectar sources.

How does a beekeeper if they're like, I want to produce sourwood honey and those trees bloom for a very short period of time, how do I actually go about that process?

Because it's fairly labor intensive, I would think.

- Right, and in Montana we are growing season is fast and furious, as you no doubt know.

And so all the honey, the bees make honey on whatever plant they feel like at the time that it's producing, that they feel that they can earn a good living off of, so to speak.

But when they do that, they mix it all together.

And so, we don't have large and varied floral sources necessarily here in Montana, relative to like Texas, or California or Mississippi, or I think you just said South Carolina, wherever you said the sourwood was produced, for example, but those seasons beekeepers can take their bees.

They know when the sourwood, for example, is gonna be blooming or they can, they can watch the plants and see, and they'll put their bees there.

And during that flow, they'll get that, then they'll take the honey off as quickly as they can, get that extracted, and now they know they've got sourwood honey.

And so then they move on to the next floral source.

In areas where they have longer growing seasons, where you can identify what's blooming, citrus bloom, for example, in California when it rains.

But, you know that you've got, you've made orange honey, for example.

- Yeah, and often local beekeeping clubs will do like honey tastings.

And so I first learned beekeeping in California and in the San Francisco area they would harvest eucalyptus honey.

And that's darker and much distinctive as well but it's a little, it's more labor intensive, because as Mark said you have to pull those honey supers off after that bloom.

But we also talked about how honey bees will forage close when that nectar source is available.

And so, if that's what's blooming, then you could pull some honey that was from just a single or a crop or two.

We're a little short on time, we have lots more questions.

I'm going to pick a few of them here and see if we can get some quick answers.

Again from Hinsdale, we mentioned labeling laws regarding honey, but she's seeing honey sold that lists corn syrup in the ingredients.

Is that legal?

- It's not legal in the sense, that if they call it honey and corn syrup's an ingredient I guess my advice would be, I guess, if you see corn syrup on the label, just don't buy it.

And so buy honey, as locally as you can and it's not as easy to do in Montana.

And we're one of the few packers of Montana honey, in the state of Montana, there are other packers in the state of Montana, as well.

But yeah, if it says, if it says corn syrup on the label, it's not honey, it's pretend, so don't buy it.

- (laughs) Good answer.

Eric, this person has heard of a program called Following the Crop from Montana State University.

Is that program still active?

And if so, what crop are they following this year?

Short answer.

- Yeah, okay.

So, it's Follow the Grain.

It's a travel course that we typically do every year, the last time we went was to China and last year would have been the, our time to go, obviously we didn't go last spring, but we are hoping to bring it back next spring.

So, you know, we're open to suggestions on where to take students.

The intention is to take students here and expose them to the global nature of agriculture.

- Okay, thank you.

Dave, quickly.

Their rhubarb plants are growing seed stalks, before the plants are leafing out.

Why, and is that normal?

- Wow, that's a great question.

No, it doesn't seem normal, but I really can't tell you why that's the case.

- I've never seen it myself.

- That's really interesting.

- You know, they might send a sample into the diagnostic lab and we will take a quicker look at it, or a more in-depth look at it.

Folks, that was an interesting program tonight.

I want to thank everybody that was involved especially Mark.

Mark, thanks for joining us.

I learned a lot about bees, it was very interesting.

Next week we have another program here.

I believe it's Rebekah Van Weiren, She's gonna talk about landscaping here in Montana and how valuable it is.

With that, everybody have a good week.

We'll be back again next week.

Thanks for watching and have a great week, good night.

- For more information and resources.

Visit montanapbs.org/aglive.

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