Buzz’s Bees and Strachan Apiaries Certified New World Carniolan Producer Partners
Sue Cobey
The New World Carniolan is one of the longest running and most successful bee breeding programs. It’s an industry standard, “time tested and industry proven,” now going into its 40th generation. In addition, NWC stock has been utilized to enhance several breeding programs in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. Modeled on the Page Laidlaw Closed Population Breeding Program, selection and maintenance are based upon working with a known, genetically diverse population, as reviewed in Part 1. A key success factor is attributed to this practical, flexible, and dynamic breeding system.
A Certified NWC Producer Partnership has been established to ensure continuation into the future. Two well respected, multi-generational family businesses in northern California, Buzz’s Bees and Strachan Apiaries, have taken on this venture and bring their expertise and experience to the program. Buzz and Nicole Landon of Buzz’s Bees and Valeri Severson and her son Phillip Strachan-Russell of Strachan Apiaries will maintain the breeding population and produce instrumentally inseminated NWC breeder queens for the industry. They will also continue to provide NWC natural mated production queens to beekeepers for pollination and honey production.
Susan Cobey and Steve Sheppard at Washington State University will continue to provide technical support and augmentation of the breeding population. WSU holds a USDA- APHIS permit to import honey bee germplasm from Europe. Sourcing A.m. carnica stocks to enhance genetic diversity is key to strengthening fitness in the breeding population and ensuring the future longevity of the NWC program. Buzz’s Bees and Strachan Apiaries, well recognized and highly regarded within the industry, are featured here to share some insight into their beekeeping operations.
Strachan Apiaries, Yuba City
Strachan Apiaries was founded by Don Strachan in 1953, having learned beekeeping in his youth working with his cousin. He settled in the northern Sacramento Valley at the base of the Sutter Buttes, a highly productive and fertile region for beekeeping and agriculture. Here, he established his business, purchasing 600 hives and Caucasian Unlimited, a queen production operation. Don moved the business to its present location in Yuba City in 1961, where he and his wife Alice raised three daughters: Debbie, Donna and Valeri.
Don decided to work with Carniolan bees in 1980, obtaining stock from Everett Hastings in Saskatchewan, Canada. Hastings initially worked with Caucasian bees in the 40’s, and incorporated Carniolan stock into this in the 60’s, selecting for wintering ability and productivity. When Everett Hastings passed, this stock was not maintained. Strachan Apiaries began using NWC in the early 1980s. Carniolan bees became the backbone of the business, built into a 10,000 colonies operation with a focus on queen production, pollination, and honey production. Active in the industry, Don served as president of the California State Beekeepers Association during the centennial year of 1989.
Facing challenges is part of the business. The 1987 ban on importing bees to Canada due to the spread of tracheal mites, significantly reduced the queen and package bee market. The cold climate adapted Carniolan bees, reared in California, were favored. The impact of the closure was harsh on both the U.S. producers and Canadian beekeepers. The border reopened in June of 2004, and Strachan Apiaries were the first to ship queens to Canada. In the 1990s, low honey prices and weather disasters caused havoc. In the 1997 floods, Strachan Apiaries lost 1300 colonies. Resilience in overcoming these factors is an aspect of their success.
Valeri joined the business in 1975, as a bookkeeper, organizing queen orders and managing the office. Within a year she took interest in the beekeeping tasks, working in queen production, going out with the field crews, moving bees and learning the essential aspects of the business. With tenacity and persistence, among the all-male crews of the time, she made herself indispensable. Working closely with her dad for more than 25 years, the transition to management was a given. Valeri’s strong sense of responsibility for family and business provided stability. With Don’s passing in 2003, Valeri bought out her two sister’s interest in the business. Today, Valeri runs the largest female owned beekeeping operation in the U.S., averaging 10,000 hives. She credits her success to having good people to work with her in managing the operation.
Valeri’s interest in the Carniolan breeding stock included learning the insemination technique from Sue Cobey. She produces breeder queens to augment the program. Philip is now learning this skill. Jeronimo Vidaurri, a longtime employee of Strachan Apiaries, manages the cell builders for queen rearing and helps care for the breeding stock. Valeri says, his keen sense of quality control in queen production and breeder selection, and his conscientiousness in critical matters are highly valued. Jeronimo’s sons, Jerardo and Vicente, are following his footsteps, also work at Strachan Apiaries.
Valeri’s son, Philip has been working with her since 2010, learning the business. After many years and life changes, he decided to return to beekeeping and is transitioning to take over in a few years. During high school he worked in the warehouse extracting honey and building boxes though decided his interests were elsewhere. Philip went on to get a degree in accounting, which has proven valuable to the business. Happy to be back, he wished he had realized this was his passion sooner. Valeri feels fortunate to have him involved. Philip bought his grandparents’ house close to the business, and lives there with his wife Trinity and their three children: Dillon, 12 years old; Caleb, 9; and Lilly, 6. Valeri says, “I’m looking forward to seeing which one will be the beekeeper.”
An important aspect of this specialized industry is leadership. Valeri is a longtime member and supporter of the American Beekeeping Federation and the American Honey Producers Association. She has served as president of the California Bee Breeders Association and the California State Beekeeper Association. A supporter of bee research, Valeri also served on the National Honey Board and currently serves on the California Department of Food & Agriculture Apiary Board. She also worked on the initial organizing committee of Project Apis m. Philip, following this path, currently serves as Vice President of the California State Beekeepers Association.
Valeri lives with her husband of 44 years, David, a retired school principal and superintendent who continues to fill in at schools and colleges as needed. With a strong Christian faith, they are active in the church and keep busy with their three grown children, Philip, Kari and Jaycen, and six grandkids.
Buzz’z Bees, Oroville, CA.
Named “Buzz” before his family bought their first beehives, Buzz was destined to be a beekeeper. He grew up in the bee business, starting as a small child helping his dad, Skip. Skip Landon ran 500 hives for pollination and honey production as a sideline business. His mother, Lisa, worked weekends and Skip’s weekday job pushed the beekeeping to weekends only. Buzz and his brother Chris were hauled around to bee yards, helping with the beekeeping, and sometimes causing mischief.
Buzz always enjoyed the bees with strong interest. Skip set him up with his first colonies, trading Buzz for his labor. While still in high school, Buzz purchased an additional 100 colonies and managed these while attending California State University, Chico. He earned a degree in Plant and Soil Science and then his PCA, Agricultural Pest Control Adviser license. Upon Skip’s retirement in 2001, Buzz purchased his father’s operation.
While attending Chico State, Buzz met his wife, Nicole, who quickly realized hanging out with Buzz meant she would have to learn beekeeping. Together they ran bees as a sideline business while pursuing full-time careers in the rice industry. Buzz managed a rice farm and Nicole, with a degree in Agricultural business, worked as a bookkeeper.
Buzz and Nicole spent evenings and weekends maintaining the hives and raising queens to expand their operation. Working seven days a week grew increasingly demanding with their jobs, a growing bee business and starting a family. They choose to take a leap of faith, quit their jobs, and follow their passion to give the bee operation full attention.
Buzz decided to focus on raising queens, seeing a growing demand and limited supply, as he struggled to obtain enough queens for his own operation. Working bees together, Buzz and Nicole built their queen rearing business. Initially, just the two of them, they managed the intensity of the workload. While catching queens, they would set up a tent for their young son Max to play in the yard. Nicole says, it was rough, but worked and has grown into a very successful operation. Buzz and Nicole have three kids: Max is now 15 years old, Bryce is 13 and Josie at 11 is already grafting queen cells.
Today, Buzz’s Bees is a 6,000 colony operation, running hives in California, Nevada and Wyoming. Based in the eastern foothills of northern California, they produce both Carniolan and Italian queens, package bees, nucs and provide pollination services. They also have a bee operation in Wyoming for honey production. After the active bee season, they run a woodshop producing bee equipment, keeping their employees busy in the off season.
In Oroville, CA, Buzz purchased property in 2012 and built his warehouse. He expanded with a second building in 2019 to accommodate the growing business, including a grafting and packaging room, and a cold storage facility. Buzz is always looking for ways to improve his business. The cold storage facility, based on a Washington State University research project, provides a means to bank queens and to maintain colonies while avoiding the stressors of the dry Summer dearth. Colonies placed in cold storage shut down, reducing feed, labor and provide an opportunity to treat colonies in a brood-less state. Creative in applying innovations, the cold storage facility is also being used to successfully introduce and establish the new instrumentally inseminated breeder queens.
Buzz loves his career, the people he works with and the uniqueness of the industry. He also enjoys flying and holds a private pilot license. His flights include travel to Wyoming to manage his bee operation. Some trips have included the transported bees in nucs.
Nicole runs the office and the numerous aspects this business demands. Buzz’s mother, Lisa, provides the quality control, and does grafting, managing queen cells, and packaging queens for shipment. Key to the operation is a loyal returning all-woman Latina crew responsible for caging queens.
Rob Snyder, with the Bee Informed Partnership, has joined the team, splitting his time between BIP and Buzz’s Bees. Rob works in the queen department, with the breeders and cell builders. To help with the breeders, Rob is learning the technique of instrumental insemination. Buzz has mastered this skill, having taken Sue’s class a few years ago, and is now teaching Rob.
A recognized leader in the industry, Buzz currently serves as the president of the California State Beekeepers Association, CSBA. He is the past president of the California Bee Breeders Association. Acknowledged as a strong team, Buzz and Nicole were presented with prestigious awards at the CSBA convention in 2021, Buzz awarded the CSBA Beekeeper of The Year Award and Nicole awarded the CSBA President’s Award. Buzz was also the recipient of the CSBA Young Beekeeper of The Year Award in 2013.
Buzz and Nicole are also active in supporting research programs to benefit their operation and the industry. Looking for ways to improve his breeding stock, Buzz is involved in field testing a new pheromone-based assay that measures colony resistance to pests and diseases. This “unhealthy brood odor” or UBO assay involves application of a mixture of brood chemicals associated with honey bee stressors to a small area of capped brood cells. Colony hygienic response to the treated brood cells over the two-hour test period has been shown to be a reliable indicator of colony Varroa resistance and virus levels. Developed by Drs. Kaira Wagoner and Olav Rueppell and backed by a decade of research, the UBO assay is expected to be a practical new tool for bee breeders that provides a quick and precise method for measuring colony pest and disease resistance. Buzz hopes this will allow him to run tests himself, complimenting the BIP team’s hygiene assessment using liquid nitrogen freeze killed brood tests.
Honey bee health and nutrition is an increasing concern and many new products are being developed. Buzz is assisting in running field trails to test Optima, a bee feeding supplement and feeding stimulant. Optima contains plant polyphenols and essential oils known to promote bee health and reduce the prevalence of diseases.
To encourage beekeepers to use the BeeWhere program, Buzz is featured in a supporting video. The GIS technology tool, a geographic information system, is a software mapping program designed to protect pollinators with a pesticide notification system and promote the statewide registration of hives, as required by California law.
In addition, both Buzz and Valeri are featured in the Netflix series Rotten, an investigative report on the corruption in the global food supply chain. The episode Lawyers, Guns & Honey, aired Jan. 2018.
Information and Videos Links
Buzz’s Bees (530) 532-4302 https://www.buzzsbees.com
Strachan Apiaries (530) 674-3881 https://strachanbees.com
New Tool to fight Varroa Mite with Dr. Kaira Wagoner
Inside the Hive TV https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9SeQYL0cAQ
WSU Indoor cold storage project, posted on Project Apis m. https://www.projectapism.org/indoor-storage-of-honey-bees-blog/indoor-storage-conference-2021
BeeWhere https://beewherecalifornia.com
https://www.californiastatebeekeepers.com/beewhere/
Netflix series Rotten Episode Lawyers, Guns & Honey. Aired Jan. 2018.
Link https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7830582/?ref_=nm_flmg_slf_1
Credits
Thanks to Buzz & Nicole Landon and Valeri Severson & Philip Russel for information and photos for this article.
Thanks to Kaira Wagoner and Anna Marie Fauvel for comments and BIP photos of the UBO assays, and to Katie Lee for field testing photos.
