Neil Specht & Jerry Hayes
I have known successful commercial Canadian Beekeeper Neil Specht, since we were both young and good looking. Neil has always impressed me with his openness to learn, discuss and disagree nicely in order to get to a logical and meaningful answer. I was honored to be able to speak at the Saskatchewan Beekeepers Development Commission (SBDC) Conf. where I saw Neil. It was an outstanding meeting, well organized and a most important valuable sharing with little fluff except maybe my talks. I asked Neil if he would tell Bee Culture readers about his journey in beekeeping. At first he said probably not, but he came around and I think you will enjoy and learn from Neil’s experiences and his sense of humor as he struggled and learned.
The SBDC has a funny award that they give to smart, successful leaders in the beekeeping world called the “BS” of the Year Scoop Shovel Award. It isn’t meant to be offensive just a humorous recognition from colleagues and friends to someone in the Beekeeping Industry.
Jerry
It was my honour to pass the “BS”er of the Year Scoop Shovel Award on to a deserving, Dr Elemir Simko, at the Saskatchewan AGM meeting where Jerry Hayes was a guest speaker. I teased Jerry that he was lucky to be from out of the country or he could be a recipient, that would require him to return and to pass it on. Where upon he asked if I would write something for Bee Culture from my vast knowledge of beekeeping.
🤔 BS? (Bee Stuff 😊)
He suggested my growth in beekeeping. (read mistakes and struggles) I’ll call it the value proposition.
At an early age, I got to watch a National Film Board movie in grade school. I’m thinking I was 10 or 11. It was about the discovery of bee language by Dr. Karl von Frisch. I knew then that I would have honey bees in my life to watch them speak to each other. To see how they make group decisions to successfully survive.
Let’s start with the economics. What does one hive cost today? Probably the same then, but how quick can you pay for it? With inflation in those days it took me about a year to pay for the equipment and a little bit more for the bees. I was told that for many reasons you should always start with two colonies. Then the worst thing that could happen, did happen. I had a good crop. Christmas honey presents for all.
The extracting was a mess but we made honey in a volume that allowed for more, so, I doubled the colony numbers each year for the next 5 years to 64.
Growth necessitates business bottle necks and then the lessons learned so you don’t do it again. 😒 We were lucky though to have growth to this point.
Family labor was stretched. Storage was a huge problem. Family time was getting scarce. Honey in the barrel marketing was needed to complete lower bulk prices.
By the way, at this point, I was God’s gift to beekeeping and knew everything there was to know.
I of course bought the dedicated 1 ton truck I was going to need. Extractor, pump and bulk tank.
We moved extracting into the family two-car garage. Also plumbed in water, rewired electric and was ready to go. That year was a 10 pound honey crop with bees starving and robbing each other to death. Those were the early days of tracheal mites. Winter losses were significant too. The big lesson I learned was when you are absolutely sure you know it all, watch out, you fool! The love of my wife, my grain farm and hobby beekeeping were sorely tested. Lesson… many don’t survive. Much of our $’s were going to the sidelines.
I survived and grew back more slowly. I should say, we, but at this point my wife, Janine saw my beekeeping hobby as a waste of time and money. I had always put my profits back in. Now all the extra money was tied up. The other lesson would be that your hobby/passions have a cost. Maybe not money but time and space. The family had no Summer holidays. Please value your family time, and your car garage.
The growth through to a sideline outfit of 300 plus was a lot slower than we had thought. Time was getting to be more of a problem that required an extra farmhand. We had inherited the family dry land grain farm early in our marriage in 1976. The farm was struggling through the 1980’s double digit interest rates.
About this time, Janine was giving me grief about how we had to pay a hired worker and I got to clean up to go “work the bees” while she got to go drive a dusty old tractor… and about all the money and time wasted on bees. Real unhappiness. We were poor (snake belly poor… so poor, we didn’t have a pit to hiss in) It was at that time I got to point out that the bee sideline had made $16,000 and the farm had made nothing. Right then Janine became a “BEE LIEVER”
Then WE embraced other ways of getting a little more $ out of each hive. Pollination, any one? 🧐Loading a one ton by hand is nothing like unloading. You see, they crawl and follow you into the truck for the fun ride home. But for just few extra dollars value your partner. You can’t lift them yourself.
The next big growth is the dedicated building to get past the dividing line of 300 colonies to the magic 500 colonies number. This commitment eats up many side-liners wanting to move to commercial operations. The added un-earning negative $ overhead expense requires extra attention and endurance.
We were lucky at this point as we had been doing small acreages of pollination to get that extra income.
At this time I was asked to pollinate a garden size plot, a proof of concept trial of the first Liberty Link Canola, for Dr. Tom Schuler. He needed 2 hives, 100 miles from my closest bees. Ohh no, no, that’s not profitable. But we would help because he was stuck. Then the next exciting endurance thing happened.
He was so happy that over the next year or so he asked if he could contract for 1000 colonies? Well, we could grow bees even if the crops were sketchy. So if he would contract with us for three years we could go borrow and grow. This became an evergreen contract for two years in the future. The banks loved it. That paid for bees and buildings, trucks and men. Oh, did I mention forklifts? Value your back?. Over the next years we grew to be the largest pollination company in Saskatchewan with 3000 and then to 5500 at our largest.
Remember the bank? We had wrecks like the high Winter losses associated with Varroa and control resistance. That ever-green contract needed many bees. Luckily the bank was ready to help again. We rolled the dice and went back in up to our necks. That brings out the value of doing cash flow projections, speaking points, for that visit to the creditors. And your wife.
OK the charts (see charts on previous page).
Pollination contract value is used for speaking to farm managers? The value proposition. We are downsizing now, because we value our retirement time more now.😃 In the end, you should know, I think Jerry would appreciate a shovel with his name on it. I hope I have helped, from Canada.
Neil Specht is the recipient of the Alberta Beekeeper of the Year Award! Congratulations Neil. Well Deserved
