All in 117

Bees Over Everything: Innovative Beekeeping / Israel Bravo

I speak with Israel Bravo, an innovator in the world of beekeeping and bee colony storage. Israel has years of experience in beekeeping, and through experimentation and passionate dedication to the preservation of bee colonies, has managed to work through, and ultimately overcome, one of the major reoccurring problems experienced by many beekeepers around the world: the decline of bee populations in storage during the winter months. Beekeepers lose significant portions of their bee colony populations over those months of storage (often, up to 40 percent of the bee colony populations). It's common practice, at least in this part of the United States, to store bees through the winter months in vacant potato cellars, and for reasons discussed in this episode, provide less than ideal conditions for bee colony storage. Israel goes over the very practical methods and tools that can be adopted to prevent such significant losses.