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SPEAKER 02 : 1:28

Welcome to Retirement Unpacked with Al Smith, owner of Golden Eagle Financial. You want a retirement plan that alleviates your fears about the future so you know your money will last. As a chartered financial consultant, Al Smith will help you find a balance between the risk and reward of the market and the safety of your retirement income. And now, here’s your host, Al Smith.

SPEAKER 03 : 1:52

Well, thank you for tuning in another program of Retirement Unpacked. I sincerely appreciate you listening. There’s other things you could be doing. And if you’ve listened before, you know, I’ve talked a lot about how we need to plan so that as we move into retirement, there’ll be adequate income. But I’ve also spoken quite a lot about finding your purpose in retirement and because moving from the workplace to retirement involves an enormous amount of time and I think we all need to think about how should we spend that time? How can we give back? How can we find something that provides us fulfillment and it can also benefit other people? Well, you may have heard him before. It’s been a year and a half or two years since I had him on the show. But I am fortunate enough to have Troy Davidson, who is retired and also a master beekeeper. He knows, I’ve probably forgotten more about bees than, he just knows everything there is. And you have a certification, Troy, what is that?

SPEAKER 09 : 3:06

Yeah. Well, thanks for inviting me back. I love being on the show. So there’s a number of different programs Colorado is offer. I think Colorado State is a great program for master beekeeping. Mine is through the University of Montana. It’s a three year course. That you go through, you start as an apprentice, you test out of that and move your way up to journeyman and then finally through the master beekeeping course. And it’s about like I said, it’s a three year program and then you get your sort of certification through that. That’s. Similar to the ones they have in Colorado. It involves a lot of book work, a lot of going out with other beekeepers at different levels and learning all about the bees and all that good stuff.

SPEAKER 03 : 3:59

So it’s about half hands-on and half learning material about what you need to know if you’re going to be a beekeeper.

SPEAKER 09 : 4:08

Absolutely. It’s part of a biosciences field, so it gets a little complicated on the book side of things. I have a lot more fun when I’m out in the field talking with other people.

SPEAKER 03 : 4:15

Well, I can certainly imagine that. What would you say is the greatest misconception that the general public has about honeybees?

SPEAKER 09 : 4:26

You know, I would say a couple things. One, that they sting you all the time, no matter what. They’re just going to find you and sting you. And that part is not true. They’re curious. If you’re at a barbecue, of course, they’re going to be attracted to the foods and stuff. It’s generally the… more of the yellow jackets and the wafts that will sting you. Bees will generally leave you alone unless you’re threatening their hive. Well, that makes sense. Yeah, and I think the other misconception is honey just shows up on the store shelves, and it’s quite a complicated process for that to happen. So I would say that’s probably two of the most misconceptions.

SPEAKER 03 : 5:12

What takes place between the bees making the honey in the hive and you having it? Because you brought me a wonderful sample here of wildflower honey. What happens between the bees making it in the hive and it ending up in the jar? What takes place?

SPEAKER 09 : 5:28

Yes. And it’s… If you YouTube a commercial beekeeping operation, it’s a lot different than your smaller, your more local beekeepers. In our case, ours, we keep it as fresh and natural as possible. Our process is we extract the frames from each individual hive.

SPEAKER 03 : 5:52

The frame is like the network of things that hold the…

SPEAKER 09 : 5:56

yeah it’s a honeycomb shape absolutely okay that’s what it is it’s the honeycomb on a if you can picture like a picture frame almost it’s and you put you slide it into a box which we call a super and you have ten of them in that box and we extract each one when they’re full and then you uncap it and there’s there’s many ways you can uncap it You can, for lack of a better term, a pitchfork type system where you uncap each cell on the frames. Some people use a heated knife, a serrated knife, and they scrape down along that. We use a fairly new system. It’s almost, if you can picture, a rolling pen that you would use in baking. And it’s got wheels of stainless steel cutters on it, spaced about a quarter inch apart, the distance between the cells. And we run it through that. And it basically just slices a little slice through those cells. And then we spin it in a spinner and it spins the honey out and drops it into the bottom of a barrel. And from there, some beekeepers put it through multiple filtering processes. We do a simple strain. We keep most of everything in there other than, say, the large particles of wax or something that the bees may have brought in and fallen onto the bottom of our extracting process. bees leg or something yeah there’s yeah and sometimes the wax the bigger chunks of wax and stuff that people just probably don’t want that now the benefit now that spinner um correct me if i’m wrong that’s kind of like a centrifuge it is absolutely so it’s uh it’s a motorized unit some people have hand crank uh ones and it literally does that it just spins the frames you put two or four or eight or twelve however big the machine is and it spins that honey those frames and it takes the honey out of the cell simply by the gravity like a centrifuge

SPEAKER 03 : 8:09

Well, and let’s say if you have one hive and you have several of those sheets that are holding the honey, like the frames, as you call them, how many small jars of honey would that ultimately produce?

SPEAKER 09 : 8:31

On a smaller, what we call the honey supers, which are about a six-inch deep frame, square box if you can imagine full of say 10 frames you’ll get about 30 35 pounds of honey out of that so if you’re if you’re bottling you know one pound jars do the math 35 bottles um some people do the bigger regular deep supers and you can get about 70 pounds of honey out of each of those Oh, wow. The problem with it, it depends on how you want to do it. Obviously, the heavier, the harder it is to move around and take off those hives.

SPEAKER 03 : 9:10

Yeah, I can see that. So it’s not a labor-free hobby by any stretch of the imagination.

SPEAKER 09 : 9:19

Very labor-intensive, yeah, very labor-intensive.

SPEAKER 03 : 9:21

But it’s a labor of love. Absolutely. And in your case, I know you, having gotten the certification after three years and everything like that, being a labor of love, it’s what you do and what you love. What if someone were mowing lawn in the backyard or something like that and then all of a sudden they realized there’s bees flying around because there’s a hive. Are some hives in trees or bushes or do some of them, I know wasp nests often end up in the overhang of underneath the roof of a home. Do beehives end up there sometimes also?

SPEAKER 09 : 10:02

Yeah, so a lot of times we’ll get calls and then we direct them to the Colorado State has a great swarm line, a hotline that you can call and they’ll send out somebody to extract and take care of those swarms for you for the most part. Unless they’re in the attic and stuff, then it becomes a little different, complicated process. But they’ll still help you probably find someone who will do that. And a wasp, those are most of the times the little nests you’ll see under the eaves and stuff. If you see bees on a branch or clustered around the side of a pillar or something, more than likely that’s what we call a swarm. And a swarm is when… A particular hive will decide, for a number of reasons, that it’s time to take off and find a new home. So that can be because the queen is no longer really productive. By that, I mean the queen’s not laying enough eggs, so the worker bees will all get together and basically make a new queen egg. And that queen and half of the hive will take off. They’ll swarm. And they’ll find a branch or the side of a house, a pillar or something. And they’ll sort of go there and group. And then scout bees will go out and try and find a better house, a hive that they can live in.

SPEAKER 03 : 11:37

Now, unlike people, the new small swarm, will they still be in a good relationship with the original hive?

SPEAKER 09 : 11:44

Well, you know, it’s funny. It’s almost, I liken it to Game of Thrones when it comes to… That’s exactly what I was thinking of. If those two queens see each other, if the new queen that those bees have created in the old hive and the other queen were to get together, which does happen, they fight to the death. A lot of times that old queen that is in the hive before they swarm or maybe because they won’t swarm because she finds these eggs that the rest of the colony is producing and she’ll kill those eggs or she’ll kill the bee right when it comes out. So it’s a fight.

SPEAKER 03 : 12:22

That reminds me of these nature shows I’ve seen where male lions will come into a pride and young, strong male lions chase off the old male and then kill the cubs so that the offspring will carry their own DNA.

SPEAKER 09 : 12:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER 03 : 12:40

And I had never even imagined that that would be true in bees also. But that’s just part of the natural cycle of things is the strongest, you know, survive. The elk that has, you know, 10 cows has to fight off the other young elks that, you know, they want to reproduce also. And that’s kind of like the nature of things. so to speak. What would you say to someone who’s thinking, well, gosh, this sounds like fun. I could put on one of those hazmat suits and, you know, grow, not grow, but raise bees and have fresh honey that came from my backyard. Is that something that’s easy? Or what would you recommend for someone who would like to become a beekeeper?

SPEAKER 09 : 13:34

That’s a great question, Al. I always tell people, because I get that question quite often, I want to start beekeeping. What do I need to do? And I think the thought process is that I’m going to go out and buy all the equipment, you know, the hazmat suit, the bee suit, and all the equipment, and I’m going to plop it in my backyard, and I’m going to be a beekeeper. I always suggest to people, number one, Maybe find a bee club or a mentor, maybe a neighbor, somebody who’s already a beekeeper, and I would say shadow them. Go over there for a weekend, ask them if you can help them or watch them or whatever, and see if it’s really for you, because there’s a little bit more to it sometimes. And those are great resources. You’ll find out really quick whether you want to be a beekeeper or not. And that’s to kind of save you before you go out and spend a lot of money on bee equipment. Beekeeping can be an expensive hobby, especially initially. I would say go out, educate yourself, find out if your HOA even allows bees. Is it going to be okay? You don’t necessarily want to be a bad neighbor. By that I mean think about it. Where are you going to place the hives? Does your neighbor have a lot of kids and they have the pool or something on your side of the backyard where it’s closest to you? You might think, okay, well, maybe I’m going to put it on the other side of the yard. Or just think through what you’re going to do. and try and be a good neighbor, first of all. I like to bribe my neighbors with bottles of honey.

SPEAKER 03 : 15:17

That can really help. And the thing about that is your neighbor may love your hive, especially if he gets a bottle of honey from time to time. But depending on the community where you live, there may be a covenant Nazi neighbor. Years ago where we lived, we had a lawn that sloped in the back, making it very, very easy for a dog to jump over the fence. And so we extended the mesh part of our fence. above the rail to the post. And the covenant read, well, you can have mesh fence up to the top of the fence. It didn’t say post or rail. And that was explained clearly to me, and the dog ran away again.

SPEAKER 09 : 16:10

And HOAs can be tricky. They really can. So like you’re suggesting, I would check what the rules are for sure. You’re kind of jumping into something that may sound absolutely fabulous to you and interesting, but there’s a little bit of research and some education you want to put behind it.

SPEAKER 03 : 16:33

Well, that sounds really interesting. And correct me if I’m wrong, but there’s like a whole network of clubs and that sort of thing where someone could learn about it before they end up investing money and starting their own hive. Or you even provided another word, which you can explain more about that after the break.

SPEAKER 05 : 17:08

Most retirement planners start with numbers, but Al Smith of Golden Eagle Financial starts with your story. At Golden Eagle, your first meeting’s not a sales pitch. It’s a simple conversation about where you’ve been, what matters to you, and where you want to go when you retire. Al listens intently, and then, using simple tools and the info you already have, he can show you how long your current plan might last if you were to retire today and not change anything. That alone can be eye-opening and expose any holes in your current strategy. It’s the foundation Al uses to help you build a plan that works for the long run to retire on your terms. No pressure, no jargon, just a clear picture of where you stand and how to make it better. Al’s been helping people retire well for decades and he’s seen it all. The good, the bad, and the overly complicated. He’ll help you keep it simple. If you’re ready to plan your retirement with purpose, Schedule a no-pressure visit with Al Smith. Go to the klzradio.com advertisers page to schedule your conversation. Investment advisory services offered through Brookstone Capital Management, LLC, a registered investment advisor, BCM, and Golden Eagle Financial Limited are independent of each other. Insurance products and services are not offered through BCM, but are offered and sold through individually licensed and appointed agents.

SPEAKER 03 : 18:33

Welcome back. We’re blessed to have Troy Davidson, who is a master beekeeper here. And he has an email, info at milehighbees.com, if you’d like to learn more about beekeeping. And also, Troy just really, really loves beekeeping. And if you were involved with a service club or someone like that, he would… you know, love to have you buy him breakfast and he can talk about beekeeping to you. Now, I know there is quite a hierarchy of clubs and everything like that throughout the whole metro area. Is that accurate, Troy?

SPEAKER 09 : 19:16

There’s a lot of really good clubs out there. You know, Wherever you live at, if you were to search online for bee clubs and maybe type in your area, your zip code or something, you’ll find them. There’s so many good people in the beekeeping business. And if you really want to learn something about bees or just want to find out where to buy some local honey, they’re the place to go.

SPEAKER 03 : 19:41

That sounds awesome. Now, beekeeping, obviously, the end result is honey. Why should people have honey instead of sugar?

SPEAKER 09 : 19:55

For one, I think it tastes better. Nutrition-wise, honey has all the minerals, has the enzymes, has all the antimicrobials that are so much healthier for you than the refined sugar that most of us eat. Give Honey a try. You’ll find it’s