Changes at BroodMinder (363)

363 - Changes at BroodMinder

[music]

Jeff: Welcome to Beekeeping Today Podcast presented by Betterbee, your source for beekeeping news, information, and entertainment. I'm Jeff Ott.

Becky: I'm Becky Masterman.

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Jeff Ott: Hey, a quick shout out to Betterbee and all of our sponsors whose support allows us to bring you this podcast each week without resorting to a fee-based subscription. We don't want that and we know you don't either. Be sure to check out all of our content on the website. There, you can read up on all of our guests, read our blog on the various aspects and observations about beekeeping, search for, download, and listen to over 300 past episodes, read episode transcripts, leave comments and feedback on each episode, and check on podcast specials from our sponsors. You can find it all at www.beekeepingtoday.com. Hey, everybody, welcome to the show. Hey, Becky.

Becky Masterman: Hi, Jeff. How are you? Oh, sorry.

Jeff: That's all right.

Becky: Did you catch me? I was doing something else.

Jeff: That's all right because we didn't have-- Did you notice how quiet the beginning was and how quickly I asked you how you're doing?

Becky: I was expecting this listener opening, and wow, it wasn't there.

Jeff: It's not there. Folks, it's the doldrums of December, like my alliteration there, doldrums of December.

Becky: Big fan.

Jeff: If you're loving bees but don't know what to do, you can send us an opener and we'll use it. And you can fill in our map. We have a lot of open states on our map. Even if your state is filled in, we'd love to hear from you, so please send us an opener.

Becky: I don't even know if we have a lot. We're going to have to do a countdown pretty soon, because we might be getting close to the final countdown of the state map, right?

Jeff: There's some significant states open that have not checked in.

Becky: Help us. North and South Dakota, come on.

[laughter]

Jeff: Becky, we have asked for HiveIQ questions for our free HiveIQ tool that is co-branded with HiveIQ and Beekeeping Today, and we've received many good questions. Let me tell you, tell the folks that are still waiting for their tool patiently, that we've had a very, very busy fall, and I owe everybody who's had a question on the show their tool. They will be coming out, are being shipped out in next two weeks. I promise that, yes. Hang in there. We have a new question from Soren Carlson from Sweden. I love this question.

Becky: That's excellent.

Jeff: Soren, if you're listening to this question now, you owe us an opener so we can fill in Sweden on our listener opener map. Let's get on with the question.

Becky: Even a hold the hive to a hostage.

[laughter]

Jeff: What a wonderful idea. At this rate that I'm getting them out the door, it'll feel like it's being held hostage.

Becky: Okay. [laughs] What's Soren's question, Jeff?

Jeff: All right. This is Soren's question. "I have been a beekeeper for just 10 years. The beekeeping is going fine, but rational honey handling, I want tips on. I normally have four hives and sell all the honey I harvest. What prevents me from expanding a bit is that I don't understand how I can handle more honey in about the same amount of time with small incremental investments." He writes, "Soren from Sweden." That's a really good question. I think that troubles many, many beekeepers.

Becky: I think that's an excellent question. I can think of a couple of different answers to it. Can I just start with, one of the issues around honey production is the timing of your colony population and making sure you have the most number of available foragers. It's really the average age is around 25 days. You need to have your peak population of 25 plus or minus day-old foragers at the time when the nectar flow comes in.

Sometimes that means you need to really boost that population using a pollen substitute. Some beekeepers will use a boosted population with a light syrup to stimulate reproduction. One of the ways to do it is to just have more available foragers in the colony and then, hopefully, increase the yield in the colony. That's the easy way to do it if you stick with four hives.

Jeff: So you can boost the amount of honey. That'd be the least expensive. You have a great method for handling the increase of honey once you start getting that honey in, but you don't want to spend a fortune in equipment.

Becky: Equipment.

Jeff: Yes. What's your approach?

Becky: Let's say I want to spend a fortune in equipment, but the household budget would be really lopsided if we did that. When your operation starts doubling, it starts doubling at a number that's really scary on an Excel spreadsheet. That's the range that I'm in right now, where when I went from 12 to 20 and then 20 to 40, then I got to the point where I was like, "Holy cow, that's a lot of equipment if I decide to keep growing the operation." What I started to do, and I love it so much, but it works really well in Minnesota because we have a great long nectar flow, is I start harvesting-- As soon as a super is ready, basically, I will pull that super and extract the honey and then put it back on a colony.

If I extract in an apiary three times in a year, I don't need three times the equipment, because I'm really pulling, extracting, and then putting on the equipment back on that. Actually, I move apiary to apiary. It's just a great way to get different varietals and it's a great way to, honestly, store less equipment and maintain less equipment. I make my supers work three times as hard during the season.

[laughter]

Jeff: That might involve a little bit more time because you're extracting more frequently.

Becky: I am. It's funny because I feel like I'm just a really efficient extractor. I think that if you commit to doing it really regularly, it's not quite that once a year, "Oh my gosh, honey's all over the place." Also, the number of supers. It's not that overwhelming number of supers. That's another reason why if I try to extract all of my honey at one time, I have no place to handle that much honey at one time. It really has allowed me to stay like a small-scale extractor, but harvest a lot of honey. It's not just the super equipment, I guess, but it's also the scale of my extracting setup.

Jeff: I love that approach. I think that's really smart. It works for you there in Minnesota because you have multiple flows. It may not work if you have just one flow, one major flow a year.

Becky: That's why I was thinking, if you just have that one major flow, then it's really maximizing the size of that colony. It could be the Demaree method where you're-- Or Demaree method, depending on how you want to pronounce it. That's where you're working on boosting the population of the colony instead of making more colonies because it's less equipment.

Or like I said, boosting that population by providing them some supplement. The other thing, too, I could solve my problem if I just decided to sell my divides instead of keep my divides. I'd have a lot of money [laughter] to invest in equipment. Soren could do that, though. If he's got four colonies and if he's got a pretty good survival rate, he could divide his colonies and he could take the proceeds and then invest in some more equipment. Maybe not sell all of them and maybe grow slowly.

Jeff: That's a great approach, too. There you go, Soren. You have three different options. Boost your brood. Two, the extract and put the supers on the next colony quickly. Then three would be to make your divides and take that investment and put it into equipment and self-fund your expansion. Thank you, Soren, for your question. I will be shipping out a HiveIQ2 to you. Hang in there. It'll get there to Sweden, I promise you. Becky, I know you haven't used a lot of sensors in your hives. Can we say zero?

Becky: I consider myself a sensor.

Jeff: Oh, perfect. There you go.

Becky: I'm my own hive scale. My eyesight, I can check to see how much brood is in there. Yes, it's not that I don't want to. It's just that I have not crossed that threshold. You're right, unlike having the fascinating graphs that you are able to share with me about what's going on in your colonies, I literally have to open those girls up and check them.

Jeff: You learn a lot just from doing that. Having the sensors is valuable, and I really enjoy it. Today's guests are BroodMinder, who is the largest sensor manufacturer in North America. We had others, we would have them on as well. They're going through some changes. They are expanding, they are doing different things. We invited them on this week to talk about that. I'm looking forward to talking to them.

Becky: Sensors and scales. BroodMinder has been giving beekeepers tools to really do some really good colony monitoring. I'm excited. I can't wait to hear from them.

Jeff: We'll hear from them right after this message from our sponsors.

[music]

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[music]

Jeff: Hey, everybody. Welcome back. Sitting around the great big Beekeeping Today Podcast table sitting in Stoughton, Wisconsin, we have Rich Morris, Amanda Stoltz, and Lorenzo Pons. Welcome, BroodMinder family, to the Beekeeping Today Podcast.

Rich Morris: We are so happy to be back. Really good to see both of you.

Becky: Thank you. It's nice to see the three of you.

Jeff: Amanda, welcome to the podcast. I don't think you've been with us in the past.

Amanda Stoltz: No, I have not. Thanks for having me.

Jeff: You are everywhere at BroodMinder, so I'm glad to finally formally really meet you and have you on the show.

Amanda: I've been with BroodMinder for about nine years now, so it's good to be on and talk about it.

Jeff: As a user of BroodMinder technology, I see your name included in everything, and Rich refers all the hard questions to you. Not hard question.

[laughter]

Rich: Well, she's my go-to person.

Jeff: That's good. It's nice to finally meet you. Tell us who you are and give us a quick five-minute history of BroodMinder and bring us to today and then we'll get into the details of everything else.

Rich: BroodMinder is now about 10 years old. We started it with the intention of saving the bees, like everyone else. Being a product designer, we've pursued it in a very scientific way. We make very few promises. Our big idea is to collect the data, to understand what the data is telling us, and then to analyze and see what data is valuable and where we can get a return on investment for our beekeepers out there.

I've been a beekeeper about 20 years. Started up BroodMinder, and then along the way, found a bunch of people via the internet and via crowdfunding who wanted to do this along with me. We have about 10 people on the team. We've been having a great time so far and learned a ton. That's where we're going. We principally make sensors for the hive, temperature and humidity, weight scales, entrance counters. Now we also are getting into hornet trapping, the yellow-legged hornets, and those sorts of things. Then we have this huge infrastructure of software behind it all focused to beekeeping and trying to give people information that we feel is valuable.

Jeff: Amanda, we'll go to you, and then Lorenzo. Just give us a little bit about your background and if you keep bees. That type of thing.

Amanda: I'm a software developer. Right before I met Rich, I had quit my job for a bit to travel. I was living in New Zealand. I just happened to work on a farm for a week or so that was doing primarily beekeeping, so I had a little bit of knowledge there. Then when I came back to Wisconsin, an old coworker of mine set me up with Rich because he was looking for a developer to help with some firmware. Once we got started with that, I never stopped helping.

[laughter]

Then there's been what, two apps and a full data ingestion and a bunch of software. Then I have done some beekeeping for about three or four years now with a friend of mine who happened to be an entomologist and has worked breeding queens, I think, when she was in school. Then talking to beekeepers every day and helping them understand things or fixing bugs, I've been learning a ton through that, too.

Jeff: When you say fixing bugs, you mean software bugs, not--

[laughter]

Amanda: Well, I could fix a video, too, or something.

[laughter]

Jeff: Lorenzo, welcome back. We talked about a year ago, about this time.

Lorenzo Pons: Yes. Thank you. Thank you for having me and happy to be here back to Wisconsin for this meeting. It's just two years ago already. It's always great when we all meet together in person, because we're talking each one to the other every day, but in person is absolutely great. It's already nine years about me. I was in aerospace for 20 years before developing tools for engineers.

I am also a beekeeper, a hobby beekeeper. I found, okay, let's try to do something that could help the beekeepers understand what's going on into these black boxes. I am not on the hardware side of the electronics. That's how we met with Rich and we started working together using his hardware. One day after the other, one month after the other, one year after the other, we started being friends and working together and building that global team we have right now.

Jeff: I like the worldwide connectedness of the BroodMinder app because it brings a worldview into the problems you're trying to solve through the technology and through the hardware and software. That just gives it a different fullness to the solution as opposed to a single focus. Kudos to the team.

Lorenzo: I like to say we have a global problem and we are trying to find the global solution now. We all working on the same objectives.

Jeff: Rich, you introduced us. You say you have a temperature and temperature humidity in the hive, BTV. You didn't mention that your BeeDar, the front entrance bee counter and the sound catcher. [laughs] For a beginning beekeeper, maybe going into their second year bees, and they're interested, intrigued by BroodMinder, what do you recommend beekeeper beginning to get into technology? What do you recommend to them first?

Rich: It's been really interesting going through all of this and trying to find where the value of these measurements we're doing are. It's not very different than a human body. When you have a sick kid, the first thing you do is check their temperature. I'm embarrassed to say it was a surprise to me how indicative the temperature is of a beehive health.

The thing we know is that when the queen is in there and when she's doing her job, they regulate the temperature within a degree to 95 degrees Fahrenheit, 35C if there's brood. If there's not, they don't. Very quickly, you can get a good idea of that. It's our simplest sensor, but also the most valuable that we tried to make the entry point $35 or $40 for a sensor you can put in your hive and it will tell you more than anything else.

Along the way, when I started, I just wanted to know when during the winter my bees died. That was in Wisconsin. We bundle them up in winter in October or November and open them up in March. Did they die in December or did they die in February? Seven of the first eight years I kept bees, they died. The lid would blow off or some different things. Then we found out, "Oh, they thermal regulate." Well, that's great.

The other thing we found is that when they swarm, there's a very clear indication on the temperature that there's a bump of about 4 degrees Fahrenheit, a couple of degrees C, for about 20 minutes. That has been really fascinating to see and to understand, whether you are a experienced or a beginner, how often your bees swarm. We had no idea, and how many failed swarms. We also see when the queen does her virgin flights. A lot of times, she will take a lot of bees with her. That will also trigger this temperature event. We watch for that.

By far, the best value and the best thing we sell is a temperature sensor. It also makes you think about why. The thing I loved when I first started doing it was it made me understand the biology better because, oh, they thermal regulate. Why did they do that? Well, they swarm. Why is it doing that? I think that's the most valuable.

Becky: I love the idea of a hive scale. It's a little bit more of an investment, but it's not outside of the range of what they're paying for equipment. Hive scales can tell you so much about your honey stores for the winter or what they're doing as far as collecting surplus nectar or if you leave the brick off the lid of the colony.

Rich: Oh, ouch. Ouch.

Becky: I'm sorry. [laughs]

Rich: What we've found, and I love seeing the weight. The weight is telling you, in general, more about the environment. One of the things we really love, we share our data open source. Looking at year over year, weight is nectar, nectar is blooming, blooming is climate. Way in a silo, let's say you go back in the day, he did a lot of research with that.

The weight is wonderful, but if I have $100 to spend, I would recommend that you get three temperature sensors and put in three different hives than half of a scale.

[laughter]

You have [unintelligible 00:20:15] more expensive. If you can, the scale does tell you a lot. You see-

Becky: Rich, you're not a good salesperson at this point. You should tell them to do both. [laughs]

Rich: Well, do both. We'll make you a bundle deal.

Amanda: It's fun. If I'm out talking to my friends about my hives, it's much more fun to be like, "Oh, look at it, it was five pounds every day this week." Than, "Oh, the temperature is stable as a rock."

[laughter]

Rich: That true. Every spring, Theo has a horse race between his hives where he's watching the Kentucky Derby time. May is ever getting there. You see the difference between the hives, you see the personalities. There's some that are just plotting along and others that are racing off to the top. He also had $10,000 worth of scale.

Jeff: You mentioned Theo, and he's one of your engineers or one of the people that works with you there at BroodMinder, just for listeners. I will tell you as a user of BroodMinder stuff for a long time, long before I even started the podcast, was it's fun to combine the scale and the temperature at the same time. You can really tell a lot. If you have a couple of them in the yard, and this is something I've shared I think before in the podcast, it was really interesting.

A couple of summers ago I noticed one of the colonies, the weight was going down quickly, and I said, "Oh, it's being robbed out because I knew that colony was weak. One was going up, at the same the rate, one was going down. It was very clear while I was sitting in my office, I could tell which colony was being robbed out, which colony was doing the robbing. When I went out later that day, sure enough, that's the absolute case. As a geeky beekeeper who likes knowing what their bees are doing all the time, I really enjoy that window into the bee behavior the sensors do provide. That's fun.

Rich: Since we're geeking out here and going over the top, then, Lorenzo, you should talk a little bit about Europe's perspective. There are less backyard beekeepers and more commercial. Commercial in Europe means a few hundred hives, not a hundred thousand hives like in the US, but they are more interested in the BeeDar. Just talk about some of what you've seen with the pollination.

Lorenzo: We are using the BeeDar for pollination because it's telling you the foraging activity. You know that the strength of the colony is directly proportional to how much pollination you have there. The BeeDar is helping you to understand this. The overall profile over the day, they are getting up early or if they are stopping at noon, and you get that view.

For pollination, and often it can be two kinds of pollination. You can pollinate all herds for producing fruits, but we are also working on seed production. That is, you're producing hybrid seeds when you need very specific pollen from male flowers to move to very specific female flowers. You want to monitor those things. Sometimes you're feeding them with the special proteins to support them, and you are also seeing this with the internal sensors because you are holding the brood longer. Is what you are saying. You get the whole picture.

Rich: The worldview. [chuckles]

Lorenzo: Yes, the whole picture.

Jeff: You recommend the sensor is the biggest bang for the buck. What would be your second item? Would that be the scale then would you recommend if someone was expanding their investment in the technology?

Rich: It's been interesting because the archetype of the beekeeper, we've got the backyard people, we've got side liners, we've got all these different archetypes, but if I had $500 to spend, I would buy a temperature sensor or two for each hive and a hub, because once you have that, then you really have the health view of your apiary. I would get a scale to put on it because it is nice and when the black locust in Wisconsin comes in and we're seeing 10 pounds of growth a day in that.

I guess part of what we're doing this week, which we'll get into is, looking and saying, "What should we be recommending? What should we be doing?" We've gone from collecting data to using data over these 10 years. Where is the value? We're going to spend this week with the team here arguing with each other of, what should we tell people? The exact question you're asking is one we want to make clear to our customers and users is, what do we recommend you do? That's my recommendation.

Amanda: Can I explain what a hub is?

Becky: I was just going to say, if it doesn't happen soon enough, they're going to pause the podcast and start Googling.

Jeff: I was going to say, I'm sitting here saying, "Go, Rich." I'm just sitting here like the dog in the back window of a car. Yes, I got it.

Becky: Amanda and I are on the same page here.

[laughter]

Amanda: A hub is, we sell a-- it's called a cell hub is normally what you'd want, and that's connecting to the cell data network. Every hour, it will connect and upload your data to our services. That way, you're not having to go out to your hives with our cell phone app and collect it yourself. It's just automatically uploading live.

Rich: That's another aspect that just changes the way you interact with the entire system. That once you have automatic data, you've had this for a number of years, Jeff, it just becomes easier and you just bring up and say, "Oh, what are my bees doing?" It's just very convenient. That's the other thing we argue about, is how to price these things. We have to make a little bit of money even though about half of us are volunteers, but where we want people to use the tools that are best for them, so we don't make much markup on our cell hub and our Wi-Fi hub because it is such a enabler to the utility of the overall system.

Becky: I want to know if you have a support group for beekeepers who sign up for all of this technology and then don't stop looking at it all the time.

Rich: Don't what?

Becky: Don't stop looking at it. [laughs]

Rich: Oh.

Amanda: It's the Chart Addiction Club.

Rich: It's Chart Addiction.

Becky: Exactly. You do have a name for it, Amanda.

[laughter]

Jeff: That's funny.

Becky: No, I think it's fantastic.

Jeff: You're not signing me up for that, are you, Becky?

Becky: I'm not because I honestly love hearing the updates. I've said this before, I'm so obsessed with my bees already that I don't know if putting technology into them would increase that to the point of interfering with my marriage, or would it help me? [chuckles]

Rich: What it allows you to do, Becky, is to leave town and still obsess. You don't have to just go out every half an hour to, how are they doing?

Becky: Again, that's a marriage thing, Rich.

[laughter]

Jeff: We've talked about the devices and everyone's focused on sensors and scales and hubs, but what makes it all useful, and you touched on this a little bit, Rich, was, what does beekeeper do with it? What beekeeper does with that depends so largely on the software. I'd like to ask Amanda what's your challenges? Lorenzo, I think you're heavily involved in the design or some of the software functionality. Let's talk about, not technically, but how do you take the information from the sensors and make it usable for the beekeeper?

Amanda: That is the challenge that we're trying to solve, and if you know, please let us know.

[laughter]

That's probably one of the big things we're going to be talking about this week. At our last summit two and a half years ago, we had the mindset change where we are collecting all this data, we're storing it, we have the base foundation for this. Now, how do we make sense of the data and let people use it instead of just looking at it? We're still fighting through that. My challenge--

Rich: Importantly, I'll just say, our target audience is not engineers and scientists. It's my mom, beekeepers, it's gardeners. Go ahead. That's part of the particular challenge that we're trying to solve.

Lorenzo: I think there are three layers on this. The lower layer is the raw data. What we had on the early times with the raw temperature and raw weight coming. Then we added the second layer, which is already something that is starting to talk a beekeeper jargon where you add the broad level, where you add the productivity values, where you add the nectar flow indexes. These algorithms are already into my reminder, they're already into the bees app. This is already giving the beekeeper beekeeping information.

The third layer, and that's certainly what we will be discussing this week is, I am still pulling the data, I am still going to see how my bees are doing. I think the beekeeper is willing to be better informed.

We need to push the data to the beekeeper and to make it so, so clear and easy that this hive needs your attention. That's the one you should go looking at because your husband needs you and you don't spend the whole day in the apiary. Watch out this one and let the other one [inaudible 00:30:20]

Amanda: This is getting really personal. I like this.

[laughter]

Rich: Well, Lorenzo has two young children, so they are also demanding.

Amanda: Exactly.

[laughter]

Jeff: Currently today, how does a beekeeper see their data? You mentioned an iPhone or an Android app, a cell phone app.

Amanda: What I was going to say is one of the challenges I have is we started out with mostly viewing the data on the website. We have invested time into that. In general, when you're looking at comparing large amount of hives or different charts, how we used to, it's much easier on the website with the bigger view. We have made a lot of additions to our bees app and added charts and the metrics that Lorenzo said with the brood and productivity. It's trying to scale things down to a smaller screen and do more specific markers and broader things of what's happening in your hive instead of trying to view the broad charts, which are hard on a small screen.

Rich: Why are we moving to the small screen?

Amanda: Well, I did just run the numbers for this summit, and over half of our users are not logging into the website and only using the app.

Rich: You can use it in the apiary, plus our users are getting younger, and us old dinosaurs, I love my PC. Lorenzo actually made a huge push two years ago in our last summit, said we need to have all of the functionality in my hand in the apiary. The big challenge was, like Amanda said, okay, we're trying to squeeze a 17-inch monitor's information into 3-inch monitor world. That was a really difficult user experience challenge that Lorenzo and Amanda worked on very hard. We feel really good about where it is.

Amanda: We get a little closer every time.

Rich: Yes, it's continuous improvement.

Lorenzo: Good foundation.

Jeff: We have the combination of the hardware and software and the user experience. I think that's a good place to break, and we will hear from our sponsors, we'll come back, we'll find out what's in the future for BroodMinder. Stay tuned. We'll be right back after these messages.

[music]

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[music]

Becky: Welcome back, everybody. Earlier, I interrupted a big announcement, and that was Rich. Is there something that I heard about semi-retirement? Amanda, is there something that I heard about an exciting position you're going to take on?

Rich: Yes, you did. A year ago, I'm finding that all my cohort is retiring and doing things they want to do. Well, I'm already doing what I want to do. That's great, but maybe there's other things, too. I approached Amanda and Lorenzo and said, "Next October, I want to be scaling back. I don't want to quit, but I don't want to do the stuff I don't want to do." What I love doing is the inventing and making the circuits, it's the sciencey aspect of it. I said, "Someone's got to take over." I said, "Amanda, that's you if you want it, or we can shut the whole thing down."

Becky: Oh boy. No pressure.

[laughter]

Becky: This what I say. [laughs]

Rich: Bear in mind, I've got 40 years of experience manipulating people.

[laughter]

Becky: I know, Rich, we're being recorded [laughs], and Amanda's right there next to you. [laughs]

Rich: Seriously, it really was a need that I had, and I didn't want to pressure if that wasn't-- Amanda is the best software engineer, bar none, that I've ever worked with, and that has been instrumental into our success so far. It's time to evolve and start taking other responsibilities. I'm stepping back as a lead drone into a pure R&D aspect, and we're elevating Amanda to be in charge, or general manager, if you'd like to say. I'll still be very involved, but Amanda.

Amanda: Yes, I'm very invested here. I love what we're doing and feel like we're headed in the right direction, and, obviously, I'm happy to step up to keep things going and hopefully take them further. Working with Lorenzo here is great. He's got a very different perspective than me. Together, we're going to keep going.

Lorenzo: Yes, we're combining together, and I'm taking care also in Europe, which is another place to bring mix. I think the power of this group is having different horizons and different perspectives. When we are gathering together and just the 10 or 15 of us sharing the ideas, is very, very good because this is very rich and is giving us the power to understand things and push it forward.

Rich: I think the power of the group is also with all these disparate viewpoints, we are absolutely all comfortable with the critiques and the opinions of each and then deciding which direction to go. In a design environment, you really want conflict, but you want positive conflict, not ego-based sorts of things. The team we have is just great.

Jeff: You've gotten together, and you've mentioned a summit. Explain what the summit. A user group meeting, or is this an internal meeting? What is the summit that you're referring to?

Rich: It's our second BroodMinder Global Summit. Last night, I picked up Lorenzo and Maxime and Morgan at O'Hare Airport, and we came back about midnight and had a glass of wine. A few minutes ago, Theo Hartman walked in the door from Virginia. Anya McGuirk is going to show up about two o'clock this afternoon. Then our local group of about four. There's about 10 of us all together. There are 10 of us all together. Alexandra, we couldn't get a visa for her in time, unfortunately. She's our marketing person, and she won't be here, but she'll be here in spirit and on Zoom.

The next until Sunday, we're going to be totally focused on what we decided two years ago, how we've done, what the good parts are, celebrate those things, what the soft spots are. Mike will be here, who's our support guy. We'll be sharing all of that. Like I said, we're all beekeepers, and so we are going to be really outlining the future. Also, here I'm not doing my job. I'm supposed to be stepping back and making Amanda and Lorenzo telling all this.

Becky: You're supposed to be doing the things you enjoy, which is talking about them talking.

Rich: Talking.

[laughter]

Well, I do it. Thank you. The idea is that I'm not making the decisions. We're all going to discuss, and then Lorenzo and Amanda are going to say, "Here's our direction." It's both a exciting and wonderful moment that we just all enjoy.

Lorenzo: We are trying to build a roadmap for the next two or three years and also have fun and trade some ideas. I honestly don't know exactly what will be the outcome of this. That's the amazing part, too. What will happen? The discussions this morning was already really amazing, with the guys talking together about tech things and discussing experiences. It's a mix that produces something that

is guiding us for the next two years.

Rich: Zoom is amazing, but face-to-face and actually discovering exactly how tall Lorenzo is and how short Maxime is.

[laughter]

You don't get that on Zoom.

Jeff: Not that you're picking on anybody specifically.

Rich: No surprise...

[laughter]

Tomorrow we sit in a big circle, and we will spend the entire day focused on the past and the future. Then, we go to a new arcade here in Stoughton to have a little fun and then come back for a big party. Tomorrow will be awesome.

Jeff: We're talking to you about a day early to find out where BroodMinder will be in two to three years. Is there anything you would like to give us an insight into future direction?

Rich: I need to back off and let the kids take over.

Amanda: Kids. [chuckles]

Lorenzo: I think there is one thing we started a little bit late to do with this dealing with mites, and now we are starting to do it very hard with the BTV and MiteMinder. I think mites will take a big place in the future of BroodMinder. Either being able to monitor it with different means, not just the cameras, but with different means. Being able to model it, I hope we can do some modeling.

Maxime working on modeling the mice, trying to make forecasting because this is something we are always willing to do. Look to the front of us, not to the rear. Mites will be an important part. There is this user experience that we want to improve because it can always, always, always be better. Hornets are part of the game that is arriving because in Europe, this is problem number one right now, far beyond the mites.

Jeff: We talked about this really briefly before we started recording. Can you talk to us about the yellow-legged hornet is new to the US Southeast? You have extensive experience there from the south of France with the yellow-legged hornet. Can you talk to us just real briefly about your experience with them and where you see the BroodMinder environment or the ecosystem for BroodMinder helping with that?

Lorenzo: The yellow-legged hornets arrived in France at 2004, so 25 years already from now. It's been expanding all across Europe at a pace of 100 kilometers per year. Right now, it's knocking in the door of the British, Netherlands, in Germany, in Switzerland, so just expanding all around Europe.

Rich: In Georgia, United States. [laughs]

Lorenzo: Of course, it's arrived to the United States three or four years ago. The thing is that it's not something that is arrived and is just there already. I've seen the pressure growing up over the last 10 years. For example, the last two years I've experienced on my A period, the highest pressure I've ever seen. At the point that the highs have been locked down for two months without being able to get out.

Rich: Say what that means, what the bees experience.

Lorenzo: The hornet is predating, in front of the hive, and it will start at 8:00 AM in the morning and it will end up 8:00 PM in the evening. The whole day and the bees are under constant, constant, constant pressure. When there is just one or two, you still get foragers being able to fly off and not being trapped. When you have 6, 7, 8, 10 hornets in front of each hive, they are not being able to forage, so they stay into hive.

They are really, really locked down. You have to support them by feeding them, by giving them proteins, giving them sugar, and hoping that the pressure will go down, but it was not the case. We've been developing tools that are protecting the hives. We have a shield in front of the hives that is creating a zone with no hornets. This is avoiding the guardian bees to be defending all the time during the day.

Rich: This all ramps up in the late summer.

Lorenzo: Yes. I haven't said that, but the pressure start beginning of July, and it's ending right now, more or less when the cold arrives. It's July, August, September, October, November. Five months.

Amanda: Just about when we see really big populations of yellowjackets in the US and they start to show up at hives to steal honey, so that makes sense.

Lorenzo: We have these yellow-legged, but there's another, which is called Vespa velutina. That's the scientific name, but there's also two more hornets that are arrived on the south of Spain, it's called Vespa orientalis, the other one is Vespa soror. There's a few hornets that are still expanding over the time. This has become the main threat for beekeepers because they actually see in front of their hive, they have a big problem. Varroa is a big problem for beekeepers, but you're not really seeing it, actually, so you're not realizing how the threat is. The hornets you're seeing every day. Some are desperate. You are really wondering, "Oh, can I still do beekeeping on those conditions?"

Jeff: You had mentioned that you can actually see the hornets using the BeeDar BroodMinder product or are you developing it? I'm not sure which you were saying.

Lorenzo: We are developing. Early this year, the question was, we have this BeeDar that is counting bees or counting forager bees, and so it's based on doppler effects. It's sending electromagnetic wave and measuring the wave coming back. The question was, would we be able to see hornets? Do they have a specific signature into the electronic world? Maxime started to work with that, and we have the chance to work with Herb Aumann, who is a former MIT professor and radar specialist. Started working together with him and trying to measure it, and we found out that yes, the hornets have a specific signature, which is at the lower frequency than the bees because they are bigger, they are beating the-

Rich: Flapping. [chuckles]

Lorenzo: -flapping at a lower frequency and you see it on the radar. Now, our challenge is, can we count them? Can we have a tool that is measuring the level of pressure? Until today, there is nothing that allows someone to say, "Oh, your pressure is low or medium or high." "Oh, you are past the limit, the threshold, and you need to do something." We are exploring, and we are doing research on that direction.

Jeff: There are so many questions I have, both as a user and from a beekeeper standpoint, on all of this. We only have a limited amount of time, and I know you guys want to quit talking to us and get down to the summit. Not necessarily the arcade, but the summit.

[laughter]

Will you be at NAHBE this year?

Amanda: Yes, we will. I'll be there with Rich and Theo. Anyone else?

Rich: Yes. Steve.

Amanda: Oh, Steve. I forgot about Steve.

Rich: Yes, we'll be there in full force. This is plunging Amanda deep into the world of interfacing directly with customers who are excited to be there and buy stuff.

[laughter]

Becky: What about the Midwest Honey Bee Expo? Will you be there, too?

Amanda: Yes. That's right in my backyard, so we'll be there.

Rich: That would be wonderful.

Becky: I have a really quick question about memberships. I think that, Lorenzo, you were talking about some of the benefits that the hub could share and report back. Some of that happens within memberships, and so you can subscribe to become a BroodMinder member. There's even a free membership for the very beginner, maybe.

Amanda: We do have subscriptions for our services. To just have the sensors and looking at the raw charts and collecting with your phone, you don't need a membership. If you get a hub doing live data, then we require at least our lowest membership. On the free level, you can make your account with five hives. We have just the setup where you have your apiaries and your hives, and it's organized nicely and easier to view. To get more of those, we have different levels. For the first level is 5, and then I think it's 10.

Rich: 12.

Amanda: 12. I don't know.

[laughter]

Becky: The good news is you have a good website.

[laughter]

Rich: Another thing we argue constructively about is to make it as affordable as we can, but also, Amanda's got to make a living, and we need to make a living. We believe there is value. We're told there is value from people like Jeff. We are--

Jeff: Why do I have to pay for everything?

[laughter]

Rich: By the way, we don't give anything away for free, but we do take care of our people.

Jeff: Thank you for mentioning that, because we've been talking about BroodMinder, and we've had BroodMinder on

everything I have I paid for, and have not received anything for any endorsement or usage or anything. Just want to make sure that's clear for all of our products we mentioned on the show.

Becky: I think that, like I said, the website is really, really clear and exciting and highlights what you have to offer, but also, even looking at the membership page, it's pretty exciting to see what you can get, a lot of value in those memberships.

Amanda: Yes, the computed metrics and the things that we're working on to try and make things easier. Unfortunately, it costs us to make and store and compute and think of. We do need to charge a small fee for that.

Becky: I love how Midwestern you all are as far as apologizing for charging people for a really good service.

[laughter]

This is great.

Lorenzo: Well, this helps you to be in good relationship with your husband.

[laughter]

Becky: What's the price I'm willing to pay?

[laughter]

Jeff: Well, it's been truly a pleasure having you all on the show, and wish you the best for the outcome of the summit. I don't mean that selfishly. As for all of you, I think is really the only real supplier of electronics and sensor data for hive data in the US. I think this is just a collection of people and technology and coming together to service beekeepers. Thank you for what you're doing. I appreciate it.

Rich: Well, we have really enjoyed it. Selfishly, we're doing this for ourselves because you love the data. We love understanding better. We really do see that we have a possibility of improving things in general. Like I said, it just drives me bananas that we're still losing over half of our livestock every year. That's just wrong. We're trying to make a difference.

Jeff: Very good. Thank you for joining us today. We look forward to seeing everybody at NAHBE and Midwest, and make sure you-- Did you tell us what booth you're in at NAHBE? Do you know offhand?

Rich: Offhand, I don't know, but we'll be there. We're in the right-hand corner next to George and The Keeper's Hive.

Jeff: All right. Look for BroodMinder at NAHBE if you're going there. Otherwise, look for them on the website. You can find additional information in the show notes. Thanks, Lorenzo, Amanda, and Rich, for joining us today.

Amanda: Thanks for having us.

Rich: You're welcome.

Lorenzo: Yes.

Becky: Thanks so much.

[music]

Jeff: I enjoy talking to the BroodMinder team, looking at the technology, and looking at the future possibilities. It's exciting.

Becky: I just wish they liked each other, though, Jeff.

Jeff: Yes, you saw the tension there, didn't you? Just it's--

[laughter]

Becky: No, it is such dedication for bees, such dedication for their business, and such dedication to beekeepers, and each other. I love that. That just came through so clearly. Very exciting.

Jeff: It's great for beekeepers who want a little more insight into their bees when they can't necessarily be there to open them up or want to find out what's going on without disturbing them greatly. That's one of the great benefits. Originally drew me to using sensors at all was I had always learned that the more you open your bees, the more you disturb them.

The old saying was, each time you open them, you take out a day of productivity from the bees. I don't know how true that is, but that's what I was told as a young beekeeper. How can I find out what's going on with the bees without opening them? When the sensors came around, it was like, "Wow, okay, this works." Thanks to BroodMinder, and enjoyed having them on.

Becky: Yes, I'm always happy to learn what they're doing. As soon as I own enough supers for my operation, then I'll invest in some BroodMinder monitoring devices. Hopefully, I get there. [laughs]

Jeff: You don't have to wait, Becky. You don't have to wait.

[laughter]

That about wraps it up for this episode of Beekeeping Today. Before we go, be sure to follow us and leave us a five-star rating on Apple Podcast or wherever you stream the show. Even better, write a quick review to help other beekeepers discover what you enjoy. You can get there directly from our website by clicking on the Reviews tab on the top of any page.

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[00:55:10] [END OF AUDIO]