Hi, thanks for joining us for The Family Plot: Gardening in the Mid-South.

I'm Chris Cooper.

Honeybees are great, until   they get into your house.

Today, we're gonna   talk about what to do.

Also, everyone   wants free stuff.

Get free fertilizer   with composting.

That's just ahead   on The Family Plot:   Gardening in the Mid-South.

- (female announcer)   Production funding for   The Family Plot: Gardening in   the Mid-South is provided by:   The WKNO Production Fund,   the WKNO Endowment Fund,   and by viewers like you.

Thank you.

[upbeat country music] - Welcome to The Family Plot, I'm Chris Cooper.

Joining me today is David Glover.

David is the Bartlett Bee Whisperer.

And Mike Larrivee will be joining us later.

Mike is The Compost Fairy.

All right, so Mr. David, let's talk a little bit about bee removal.

What are the steps that we need to know?

- Well first off, there's a difference between bees and wasps, and a lot of people can't tell the difference.

In fact, some of the pest control companies don't know the difference, and so it's important to educate.

Google knows a lot of things, [Chris laughs] so if you got something, look it up.

Go to the images, go to pictures, and you can see there's a distinct difference between yellow jackets, wasp, hornets, and honeybees.

Best bet, if it's black and   yellow, it's not a honeybee.

Honeybees are orange, brown,   black, little muted colors.

Bright yellow, yellow jackets.

That's the first step.

We need to know that they are indeed honeybees because, if they're honeybees, I can deal with them.

If they're yellow jackets, wasp, hornets, that's your pest control company.

- Yeah, you don't wanna deal with those, right?

- No.

[Chris laughs] The second step is we do an evaluation.

We come to your home to see what's going on.

And sometimes there still are yellow jackets.

So I'll tell them what to do.

But the next step is to do a thermal image of the house   to look where they're   seeing their bees.

And we can actually see   the hive in the walls   behind bricks.

That is just a first   step because the bees incubate the brood about 94 degrees, 95 degrees, and that's what we see.

But we don't see honey.

The wax in the honey, they keep it cool.

So I could have two cubic feet of bee space and then 20 feet of honey.

So that gives us a starting place.

And then we have to determine if we're gonna do this through the walls from the inside or the outside.

About 90% of the hives removed from homes are in the ceiling joists.

They come from the   outside of the house   and they just go right across   the joist as far as they can.

And those we end up   doing from the inside.

Walls, sheet rock is   a whole lot easier   to repair than brick.

Recently had to do a brick job where we had to remove the bricks to get the bees out.

The hive was below the foundation of the house.

The facade, the brick facade, was where they were coming in.

And because the bees had been sprayed by a pest control company, they were trying to get a new exit from the house.

And they see light, inside light is the same as the sun.

And so they're coming in around the window into the bedroom.

When we remove the bees,   we cut out all the comb.

The brood comb goes into   a hive box, honeycomb goes into a bucket, and there's going to be trash comb.

There's going to be comb that's empty, doesn't have anything in it, or there'll be leavings   where we're cutting the brood   to fit into a hive frame.

And those go into   a trash bucket.

The big thing for us   is to save the brood.

The brood is the   babies, that's the eggs,   the larvae, and the   potential adult bees.

And to find the queen.

Without the queen, the   hive is basically useless.

- (Chris) Do you normally find the queen?

- About 97% this year, that's pretty good.

- That's pretty good.

- And the queen, it's important because she's the only fertile female.

In the spring and the summer, we can always raise up a new queen.

But in the fall, it's important to find the new queen, make sure that she's in there.

When we do work from the inside of the house, we open a window, we actually open the shades so there's light on the glass.

The bees that come into the house, instead of going all over the house and crazy, they go straight to the window.

All nature wants to get out.

And so when they get to the window, we just vacuum then out of the window, and they go into a two-stage vacuum.

The bees are safe in there-- - (Chris) Vacuum.

- (David) Vacuum.

- But the bees are safe.

- Think of sawdust collectors.

- Okay.

- You've got the vacuum over here, but you've got your sawdust being collected here.

The buckets that I use are basic five-gallon buckets.

They have eight pieces of plastic foundation Lincoln logged into the bucket.

In the bottom of the bucket is a half inch of foam, and the bees get sucked into there.

They hit the foam, they bounce.

They have an exoskeleton; they're real bouncy.

And we can get about 20   to 30,000 bees per bucket.

[Chris exhales through teeth]   [David laughs]   - (Chris) Wow, really?

- Really, really.

And in midsummer, those   hives, we can leave   with three buckets of bees.

And when we're setting   up the new hive,   we open the bucket, and   release the bees back   into their hive.

It's an eviction,   it's a removal, it's a relocation, but their home smells like home.

And so they go right into the box.

- How about that?

So let me ask you, you said earlier that some of those bees were sprayed.

What happens to bees when they're sprayed with a pesticide?

- Well, they die.

It's a -cide, you know?

Homicide, pesticide, something's dead.

And when the bees are directly sprayed, those will die.

But wax is very absorbent.

And a lot of times, when people use a can of wasp spray and they spray at a hive of bees, that first piece of comb catches the pesticide and stops it.

And it doesn't enter in the rest of the hive.

So the bees don't get killed.

They're not like wasps.

When people call about bees in a house,   they're looking at a small   nest, they're thinking wasp.

The reality is it can be huge.

The first few months that   they build in a house, they build two cubic feet of comb.

That's cubic feet.

- (Chris) That's impressive.

- And that first piece of wax stops the pesticide.

If the bees can find another exit, then they'll use that as their new entrance.

I've seen on chimneys where they've been on one side of the chimney, and they sprayed, and the bees now use the other side of the chimney as their entrance, and they build all the way around the chimney.

- Wow.

What kind of experience do you need to be able to remove bees?

- You need background in construction.

You need to understand how houses are built.

You need to know what's behind the walls.

- (Chris) Good point.

- And you need to know that there are pipes, there's electricity, there are other things in that wall besides bees.

And when we work through those walls, I'm always looking for electricity.

This is an exterior wall.

They could be bringing electricity along the side and down the wall.

And when we find the wires, you don't wanna cut them.

[Chris laughs] It's not good for us or the bees.

And I've been in situations where there were nine wires coming through.

I've been there where the can lights, where the bees have built their comb over and around the can lights in people's ceilings.

On a fireplace, you got the can lights in the front, really looks nice inside the house.

But it makes it difficult in removing bees because we have to remove all that comb off the wires and off the lights.

- (Chris) Right, how about that.

- So construction, deconstruction, - (Chris) Deconstruction, okay.

- and making it possible for the homeowners to get that put back together, I like to call it minimally invasive.

The smaller the hole, the better for me, and the better for the contractor who comes in and does the repair.

- Have you ever experienced a time where the bees were actually dead that you went in to remove?

- Several times.

- Okay, how's that?

- Well, it stinks, in both ways.

You're thinking 40,000 bees.

One bee doesn't smell bad, but when they're all sitting   on top of each other,   they start to mold,   and they smell like a dead dog.

- (Chris) Wow, how about that.

- It's pretty bad.

Plus it stinks because there's nothing to save.

So I've had situations where the bees have been sprayed and they're all dead,   and the honey is leaking   down through the walls.

It just coats through   the insulation.

It comes underneath the wall,   it gets into the   padding and the carpet.

In one house in Germantown, they knew something was wrong because their floor was squishy and sticky.

And spraying is never a good answer because, in the end, you're gonna have a higher cost in the repair because all of that wet stuff has to come out of the house.

If we can get it on the front end before anything gets sprayed, I have little controls that I use to keep the honey from leaking into the house as we remove them.

Catch, absorb the honey that's pooled up and get it out.

- So what happens to the honey, though?

Does some of that pesticide actually get into that honey, do you think?

- Well, I'm a little nervy when it comes pesticides.

So if I come to a hive that's been sprayed, and I can see in the wax that it's been sprayed, that honey's never saved, it's never used.

I talk with the homeowners and ask them if they want some of the honey.

If the homeowner's willing to eat the honey, they haven't sprayed the bees.

So that honey can be saved, and it can be fed back to the bees, or it can be harvested and eaten.

So the largest hive I've removed had 20 gallons of honey in it.

- 20 gallons?

- 20 gallons.

- My gosh!

- And think a five-gallon bucket about 50 pounds.

That's 200 pounds of honey sitting in someone's ceiling.

And if it falls, pfft, the ceiling crashes in.

- (Chris) Wow, how about that.

- It's crazy.

- David, that's some good stuff, man.

We appreciate you coming on the show and sharing that with us.

- Oh, I love coming back here.

- We know you do.

[David laughs] We appreciate it.

[upbeat country music] Green manure.

- Yeah, yeah.

- You hear that one a lot, especially when dealing with-- - That's not ripe manure.

It's not rip yet, no.

- Green manure.

Of course you hear that a lot, you know in vegetable gardens.

- You do, you do.

Very much so.

And, that is a kind of an old thing.

It's been around a long, long time.

Farmers practiced it way back, generations ago.

And it was a crop that you would grow that usually was one of the legumes, which have the nitrogen fixing, you know, ability.

So, what it does is, you grow this crop and it can be a cover crop.

You know, green manure and cover crop doesn't necessarily mean the same thing because cover crops can be not green manures, just cover crops to prevent erosion and things like that, or to break up hard soils.

But, a green manure crop is grown specifically   to grow and turn back into   the soil for its manure,   or nutritive, you know,   properties.

And, it's mainly legumes   like clover, vetch-- - Hairy vetch.

- Yeah, hairy vetch, beans-- - Alfalfa.

- Yeah, alfalfa, exactly.

You know, bean crops, all of those could be used as green manure crops.

[upbeat country music] All right, Mike, we're glad to have you on, man.

We're gonna talk about composting.

A lot of people wanna know about composting.

A lot of people, believe it or not, are not doing composting correctly.

So you gonna walk us through that process, right?

- For sure, I'm happy to be here, it's good to see you.

- Good.

- Yeah.

- So how you wanna get started?

- Well, so this is something that we do with demos, and this is sort of a why, why are we composting.

We start with why and then go to how.

So this is the journey of our food right here, if you will.

So you start with a homegrown tomato right there, and that's where the whole thing starts as far as composting is concerned, how it hits us.

And then we've got, good thing this isn't smellevision, this is... [Chris laughs] this is day one, so we've got some fresh stuff in there.

And a little caveat on that.

That would make an unbalanced product right there because this is mostly nitrogen.

There's very little carbon in there right now, and to balance that we would be adding a whole lot of carbon to it.

A good carbon source is leaves this time of year.

Also sawdust; make friends with a carpenter.

- (Chris) That would help, wouldn't it?

- Yeah, for sure, but you wanna watch out for treated lumber there and also black walnut because they will affect the growth of some plants.

If you're growing veggies, it could be a problem.

And then, so compost wants a lot of the same stuff that we do to be healthy and to complete their metabolic processes.

So you wanna make sure it's got enough water, moisture content needs to be good, and air.

So it needs oxygen to be a good, healthy anaerobic-- - And I'm glad to mentioned that 'cause a lot of people don't realize that - (Mike) Yeah, that's true.

- it needs air.

- Yeah, it does, yeah, for sure.

And it will, for sure, decompose in the absence of oxygen, but good, healthy compost needs oxygen.

So you wanna turn it every once in a while.

So this is an example of what it looks like when it's first turned.

And you see the tender greens, like the spinach and all that stuff is gone already; it's already breaking down.

But the more fibrous stuff, like for example, there's a pineapple top in there, and heavy leaves and stuff like that take little bit longer to break down.

You'll still be able to recognize those at this point.

- (Chris) Yeah, I'm with you so far.

- Yeah, next go around, things start to break down.

You see it's starting to look more like dirt, I guess.

But you see the sticks are still in there and beech leaves and stuff like that, and oak leaves that take longer to break down.

And then right over here is where you starting getting into the exciting stuff.

- (Chris) [laughs] It's exciting.

- Yeah, this is pretty close to being finished compost right there, and you really notice that it starts to, it has a different character.

It starts to get looser and lighter, and it smells kind of woodsy and sweet and nice, and that's sort of where it starts to get finished.

And then we cure it up at that point, and you let it sit.

And that's when it really develops the nutrients that you're going to be looking for as a soil amendment.

- Now how long would you let it sit?

- Well, okay, so this whole process, it depends.

Composting is a input in, output out situation.

So the more you fool with it, the faster it's going to break down, and the faster you get to a finished product.

So if you follow the University of California method, for example, and you're turning it every day or two and maintaining a consistent moisture level and keeping that oxygenated pile going, you can get to this stage here in a couple of weeks sometimes.

We have a much bigger facility.

We're dealing with windrows, so every couple of weeks, we're making sure that we're turning it, especially during the growing season when it's hot.

We get to here generally in about maybe two months, three months, and then it sits-- - (Chris) That's still pretty good.

- and cures up and in the cure pile for another couple of months from there.

And then you get, this is a poor, little volunteer [Chris laughs] that I got.

- He's kinda hanging there.

- I picked him out in the garden this morning against his will 'cause he was happy where he was at.

But he's sitting in some brand new sifted and finished composting.

- (Chris) Man, that looks good.

- It looks pretty good, I gotta say.

And a good, heavy nitrogen feeder like that, a tomato would love a lot of that at home.

But yeah, this is what we're putting back out in the world instead of letting it get to the landfill where it's going to cause problems instead of be helpful in growing stuff in our own landscapes.

- Some good stuff.

Let's talk about the carbon nitrogen ratio.

- Okay.

- 'Cause a lot of us get that wrong.

- Yeah, that's true, that's true.

Yeah, it's not a one to one-- - [laughs] Yeah, yeah, it's not one to one, right, right.

- One to one, and we were talking about that a little bit earlier.

If it smells funky, [Chris laughs] you don't have enough carbon in it.

So you wanna be adding carbon.

The general rule of thumb is somewhere   in the neighborhood of   25:1 carbon ratio to nitrogen.

So you wanna be stockpiling   those leaves this time of year, 'cause they're valuable.

[Chris laughs] If you're gonna be composting in the summertime when there's not leaves available, maybe, unless you got a magnolia or something like that.

If you have space for them, it's good to hang on to those so that you can add those as you're bringing your kitchen scraps and your grass clippings out to the compost pile and adding that nitrogen.

- Okay, let's give the folks some examples.

What is considered a carbon?

- Yeah, carbon, so leaves are like the most readily available source.

Everybody's got a tree in their yard or in their neighborhood that they can jack some leaves from.

And don't put them on the side of the road in bags.

You can cut down on your waste-- - (Chris) I say that all the time.

- Yeah, save your leaves, save your leaves, they're important.

But also sawdust is a great source.

Shredded newspaper is another one that you can get your hands on pretty easy.

You wanna stay away from paper that's bleached if you can help it, and you stay away from paper that's been any kind of wax coating or heavy dyes or anything like that, too.

But those are some fairly easily accessible carbon sources for folks.

- Okay, what about the nitrogen sources?

- Nitrogen is greens.

So yeah, anything that comes out of your kitchen for the most part.

There's some carbon that you're gonna be putting in your kitchen bucket.

But most of your stuff that's coming out of your kitchen, your veggie and fruit scraps and stuff like that, it's actually gonna be heavy in nitrogen.

Also grass clippings, which are great, and they break down super quick, too.

- All right, so we talking about the good things you should put in your compost pile.

What about those things we shouldn't put in?

- That's a good point.

It's a question of scale.

But in a backyard compost situation, yeah, you absolutely, absolutely wanna stay away from animal products, any kind of processed or cooked foods.

If it came out of a bag or a box, probably not such a good idea to be putting it in your compost pile.

Anything that you've cooked you wanna stay away from, too.

Oils, bones, anything like that because that's the difference between healthy compost that's useful in your environment and a rat farm.

- [laughs] Right.

- You don't wanna be growing rats.

- Yeah, you don't be doing that.

- Memphis has enough rats.

- Yeah we got enough of that.

- We don't need anymore of those.

- I'm with you on that.

- So yeah, that's a great point.

- Okay, what about scale with the compost pile?

Does it matter with homeowners?

Should we start with a smaller-- - Yeah, that's also a great point.

If you want a really hot compost, there's a critical mass in terms of volume that you're gonna be looking at.

And it's usually about a cubic meter, which is a lot if you're thinking about it.

And it could take awhile to get that.

The thing to remember with composting is it's a fairly forgiving art, [Chris laughs] and no matter how you do it, within reason, you're gonna come out with a fairly useful product.

It's efficiency, and more energy put in, the faster it goes, the more you are concerned about, properly sized compost pile and your inputs, the better the nutrient value of the compost that you're making is gonna be.

Another thing about that is you wanna have at least two containers so that one can do the curing, right, while you're starting a second pile because you're not gonna stop eating, you're not gonna stop mowing your grass, and the leaves are not gonna stop falling.

So you need to have a second pile or second container available so that this first one can finish doing what it's doing.

And then you just flip and start that cycle again.

And you can do a heap, I guess, in a bin on the ground with that soil contact, which I find is helpful because you have more access to those microbes that are in the ground, and they're gonna be doing the decompositional work for us anyway, and worms, and all that other stuff.

There are lots of containers on the market, tumblers, and all kinds.

And worm bins and stuff like that as well, for sure.

- (Chris) Okay.

- Yeah.

- All right, well we appreciate you coming on, telling us a little bit about composting.

- Well, sure thing.

- 'Cause you are the Compost Fairy.

- I am the Compost Fairy.

[Chris laughs] Yeah, we're serving Memphis for sure.

I'm happy to help with the education process, diverting some of that waste out of the landfill and turning it back into some of that good stuff.

- Well, look, you're doing a good job, man.

- Well, thanks so much.

- So we do appreciate that.

Thanks for being here, all right?

- Thanks, Chris, I appreciate it.

[upbeat country music] - We're here in the garden, and we've noticed that there's holes in the leaves on our okra.

And, that's from Japanese beetles.

We're gonna try to get rid of the Japanese beetles by fixing up some soap water.

What happens here is you put a little soap, dishwashing soap, in some water and you mix it up just a little bit for a soapy solution.

And, then you get your Japanese beetles, and you drop them in here, and this will eliminate the hormone that's present from them so that other Japanese beetles will not want to be attracted to this area.

So, you just take your soap, and then you're gonna find your beetles, pick them off and drop them in the soap.

And, this will take care of them by picking them off and putting them in this solution.

[upbeat country music] - All right, so here's our Q & A segment, y'all ready?

- Ready.

- Ready.

- Got some good questions here.

Mr. David, you help us out, we get in trouble, okay?

- Good luck.

- All right, [laughs] here's our first viewer email.

"Does imidacloprid hurt bees?"

And this is from   Nanetta via YouTube.

Good question,   - (David) It is a--   it's one that we   get all the time.

We are glad to have a bee expert here, so what say you?

- Anything that ends with cide is gonna kill the bees.

What we've found in studies is the imidacloprid that finds its way in the hives causes the bees to become drunk.

It messes with their ability to orient and how to GPS back to the hive.

The good thing is bees that can't find their way back to the hive can't do the waggle dance and tell the other bees where to go to find food.

Earlier this year, we had the first pan-European study on neonicotinoids.

Imidacloprid is one of the neonics.

And what they found, if you read what hits the internet, sixty percent of the bees died.

But if you dig down in the actual study, you see that the UK, Hungary, and Germany were involved in the study.

Germany lost no bees.

The difference between Germany, the UK, and Hungary is Germany went in with strong, healthy hives.

The hives that were in the UK and Hungary had disease, they had problems to begin with.

Germany also had alternative food sources for the bees to get to, where UK and Hungary, it was just rapeseed; that's all they had.

And if all you're eating is green beans all day long, your system's gonna get messed up.

Germany, because of the alternative food source, the bees that did the waggle dance for the alternate that came back, the bees were able to go and get food.

And they survived, they made it through winter.

And this is the advice I give to the kids that I mentor, strong, healthy hives.

If you don't have strong, healthy hives to start with, you're gonna have problems.

Germany is doing that.

They went in the study with a strong, healthy hive, and there was an alternative food source so that the bees that did the waggle dance told the other bees where to go.

In UK and Hungary, [clears throat] that's all they had to get from, and so a starving man with poison apples eventually is gonna eat an apple.

And the bees did, too.

- Wow.

Strong, healthy hives.

- And alternative food sources.

- Alternative food sources because the bees do the waggle dance, and the ones that are drunk and can't GPS back home don't tell them where to go.

The ones that do come home, that's where they go.

That's where the next foragers go.

So they're going to go to the other foods.

- All right.

- Very good.

- That was good.

- By the way, water's poisonous to bees.

And us.

- Yeah, all right.

Ms. Nanetta, good question.

I think we got you a good answer.

All right, here's our next viewer email.

"There is something eating   the leaves of my broccoli.

How do I control the pest   without using hard chemicals?"

And this is from   Mary in Germantown.

Something's eating the leaves of the broccoli, but guess what, she doesn't wanna use any hard chemicals.

And that's good.

- That's very good.

And I don't think she has to because we don't have a picture, but most likely, the culprit is either gonna be some kind   of worm, a looper,   something like that,   that will be easily controlled   with something called Bt, which   is Bacillus thuringiensis,   which is a naturally   occurring bacteria   that gets into the   gut of these worms, and it kills them, the caterpillars, it kills them.

- And you can kill them without using the hard chemicals.

- (Joellen) Right.

- Right, 'cause yeah, you're right, it's probably the cabbage looper or a cabbage worm, right?

And they're feeding on the broccoli.

Yeah, if you go ahead and use this Bt product, which is Dipel as a name for it, Javelin is another name.

It'll do the trick.

- (Joellen) Yes.

- Natural occurring organism.

So it will do the trick for you, Ms. Mary.

- But just remember, when it rains, you're gonna have to reapply.

- (Chris) Good point, that's a good point.

- Because it's just washes off, (laughs) so you have to reapply.

- All right, so again, Ms. Mary, no hard chemicals, Bt; it'll do the trick for you.

Ms. Joellen, Mr. David, we're out of time, it's been fun.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

- Remember, we love   to hear from you.

Send us an email or letter.

The email address is   familyplot@wkno.org,   and the mailing   address is Family Plot,   7151 Cherry Farms Road,   Cordova, Tennessee 38016.

Or you can go online to   FamilyPlotGarden.com.

That's all we have time for today.

You can find out more about the things we talked about on today's show on FamilyPlotGarden.com.

We also have our past shows if you want to see one again.

Thanks for watching, I'm Chris Cooper.

Be sure to join us next week for The Family Plot: Gardening in the Mid-South.

Be safe.

[upbeat country music] [acoustic guitar chords]