93
Let’s hear the story of Nebraska, its communities, its number one industry Agriculture, and the people who make it happen. Sponsored by Nebraska's Law Firm® - Rembolt Ludtke.
93
Bryce Doeschot--Serving Nebraska Over the Rural Radio Network
Nebraska agriculture is more than an industry—it’s a community. In this episode, we talk with Bryce Doeschot of the Rural Radio Network and KRVN radio about the importance of agricultural broadcasting, rural storytelling, and building community across Nebraska. Learn how Nebraska radio continues to serve as a trusted voice for farmers, ranchers, and rural families, keeping Nebraska connected.
Nebraska. It's not just a place, but a way of life. It's 93 counties that are home to innovative individuals, caring community, and a spirit that runs deeper than its purple story. It's a story that should be told. Welcome to 93, the podcast.
SPEAKER_01:Welcome to 93, the podcast about Nebraska, its communities, its number one industry, agriculture, and the people who make it happen. I'm Spencer Hartman, your host for today's episode, brought to you by Nebraska's law firm, Rembalt Ludke. This morning, we're pleased to welcome Bryce Duskett as our guest. Bryce is a uh broadcaster for KRVN, host of Market Journal, University Carrot Delegate, tree farmer, beekeeper, a real life renaissance man. Thanks for being here, Bryce. I've never been called that.
SPEAKER_02:That's a first Spencer. Thanks for the chance. And you're actually in my studio. So you say you're hosting the show, it's true, but uh you're kind of changing the tables up a little bit. Outside of you guys' regular studio.
SPEAKER_01:Happy to have you over here to record record today. Well, when uh when you want to interview the radio man, it's easiest to go to the radio station, I guess.
SPEAKER_02:Thanks for having me. Excited to be part of the podcast.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, well, the tables are turned a little bit as I think back as you and I have gotten to know each other. There's been many times when you're holding a microphone in my face asking me questions. Uh and so I get the chance to return the favor to you today. Including uh relatively recently, uh you had me on uh a podcast, a new podcast that you've been working on called Surviving the Family Farm. Uh tell us a little bit about your inspiration for that, your goals, how it came about. Uh tell us a little bit about it. Surviving the Family Farm.
SPEAKER_02:It's uh the the name in itself is a bit uh I don't know what the right word to describe it, but it it is what it is, right? Uh surviving the family farm, a lot of people will face challenges. Everybody faces challenges in agriculture, right, Spencer? Uh right now we're talking about, well, we're back in a drought, even though it's wintertime across the state of Nebraska. We've got low commodity prices in the grain sector. So we've got all these challenges out there. But what this show works to address is what happens when the biggest challenge is working a lot of times with family or other challenges that come up on the farm that aren't tied to production agriculture, maybe more of uh family dynamics, succession planning, you name it. That's what the goal of the show is, is to talk about some of those interpersonal things, uh, things that don't always get addressed in agriculture here at the Rural Radio Network. Every hour from 6 a.m. through through 4 p.m., we do hourly updates of agriculture news and markets and weather. Kind of those three things are the core. That's what farmers and ranchers care about, right? But we don't always often talk, or we don't oft talk enough, about some of those deeper challenges, family fights, trying to get the the older generation to talk about succession planning. So had this inspiration, called up three people, including yourself, to be part of the show. I'm not the expert, I'm just the guy who asked the questions, and uh recorded a pilot episode that we've got released now that's available wherever you listen to podcasts, along with YouTube, so you can hear our questions across the U.S. People wrote in and we had our panel, again, you as our attorney expert, along with two other folks, address those questions and try to give some practical advice that people can can take back with them and maybe make a little bit of a difference.
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Powell Was this something uh you're a well-traveled person? Uh you and I often joke uh about uh how many miles we put on our vehicles and call each other as we're driving across the great state of Nebraska. Uh was this uh a topic you hear frequently as you travel and and were hearing from folks that they're really struggling with this, or what was your inspiration to start the podcast?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, well it's not something that people say on their first part of the year when you meet them. Yeah, we're really struggling to talk about succession planning, but as you pull back the onion and you read between the tea leaves, it's often apparent that nearly every ag operation at some point faces this exact challenge. Uh so that was the inspiration. It's not talked about enough, whether it's you know when you're visiting one-on-one with somebody, as I'm sure you probably get to have those conversations. A radio broadcaster doesn't pull that out of people, believe it or not, because the family business is the family's business, people would tell you. But I know it's uh an issue that that that farm families uh go through, and it's something that we do we want to shine a light on.
SPEAKER_01:Sure, sure. What uh you mentioned that you run ag reports every hour, uh weather, news, commodity prices. Uh as you report on these matters and as you travel the state, uh what are you gathering as sort of the number one or number two, you know, sort of top couple uh things on people's mind or concerns in agriculture today in Nebraska?
SPEAKER_02:Well, today in this moment, there's a lot of people mad at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Spencer. Uh we call these data dump days. So earlier this week, USDA came out with their latest forecast, the the World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates in the Production Report. And uh farmers get these are these are chances for the markets. Going back to that, what we talk a lot about, particularly grain markets here. We're talking, Spencer. These are when these reports come out, it's usually the chances and in January. People hope the market will rally a little bit based on the data that comes out from USDA. Well, this week, instead of finding less bushels, which many farmers expected based on the historically high yield that USDA projected over the past crop year, I'm getting in the weeds, but hang with me. Yeah. Uh instead of finding less uh corn acres and corn yield uh bushels, USDA came out and said, surprise, we actually found more. And so uh in a single day, I think the corn market, the futures market lost 23 cents uh at the close. So this week, today, what's the topic you'd find bombers talking about across the corn belt? It would be USDA reports and their frustration with him at the moment. But big picture, those topics, you know, low commodity prices in the grains, record high in the in the cattle sector. That's continues to be the driving conversation. Sure, sure.
SPEAKER_01:What uh talk to us a little bit about your role at KRVN. Um how did I know there's some sister networks. Tell us a little bit about the breadth and reach of of the station and and uh the coverage across the great state of Nebraska.
SPEAKER_02:So the quick history of who KRVN is, uh it starts with the parent company, which is the Nebraska Rural Radio Association, went on the air with KRVN, the first radio station as part of the group in 1951. So coming up on February 1st, we are celebrating 75 years of serving rural Nebraska. And so uh uh every radio station, TV station publicly licensed has these call letters. So KRVN. Uh it's just a call letter, but it's deeper than that because it stands for something. It stands for K, you know, K doesn't matter here in this case, but Rural Voice of Nebraska. That was the goal when these four farm groups came together. They sold memberships as a cooperative structure door to door back in starting in 1948. They came up with the idea, sold$10 memberships, and eventually put a radio station on the air in Lexington to serve the underserved areas of Nebraska. The goal from the beginning was clear, serve everybody. It's uh kind of in rural areas of the state. Uh, we tried to do that one radio station, started out 10,000 watts, doesn't mean a lot to most people, but now it's uh 50,000 watt, which is the largest AM frequency you can have. Wow. And while we reach much of Nebraska and almost all of Kansas with that signal, it doesn't fulfill the full mission, which is to serve the entire state. Because of that, over the years, over the past 75 plus years, we have grown the Nebraska Rural Radio Association, to the board of directors, when I say we, into owning 15 radio stations across the state. So the company owns radio stations in Scottsbluff, Lexington, of course, Holdridge, Brokenbow, York, and West Point. Now you and I sit here in Lincoln, and this is our headquarters for what we call the rural radio network. And what the network is, is we feed those ag reports, weather, markets, etc., uh, out to 14 radio stations hourly across the state. And then we've got a couple of affiliates outside of our own radio stations up in Shadron, Nebraska. So the goal, while it was an ambitious goal back in 1948, uh, when they had their first ever meeting, the Nebraska Rural Radio Association is fully built out today. As every day here at the Rural Radio Network, we wake up, we know our why, which is to serve farmers and ranchers, and we had the pleasure to do that uh reaching uh several hundred thousand people with our broadcasts.
SPEAKER_01:Uh you mentioned that uh when this started, they were selling stock door to door for ten dollars. I I am a shareholder. I think I think I paid$25 for mine. Uh inflation, basically. Is that stock worth anything today? Uh it's not a traditional stock like you would buy like Walmart. Do you want to tell us a little bit about that?
SPEAKER_02:Non-dividend paying stock. You can still buy a share in the Nebraska Rural Radio Association. We it comes with one free meal a year at the annual meeting, so we invite everybody to come out to Incarney in the summertime in June, is when we have that and give an update of what the association has been up to. But uh about 4,000 farmers and ranchers are part of the Nebraska Rural Radio Association. They elect a board to represent them, and so the board meets four times a year along with our senior leadership team at the company, and we share updates of what's going on in radio.
SPEAKER_01:You mentioned uh uh that you give uh on-the-hour updates uh until what time in the evening did you say? Uh through 4 p.m. 4 p.m., yes. Uh is there a time when KRVN stops broadcasting for the day and starts back up the next day?
SPEAKER_02:So at KRVN AM specifically, we are proud to have somebody what we call in the chair, live on the radio from 6 a.m. uh through or up until 6 p.m. And then at that point we join Sports Nightly, which is the Huskers Radio Network programming, uh, and get into our evening. But uh it's untraditional today to have somebody physically be behind and live on the radio for 12 hours a day. We're proud to do it at KRVN.
SPEAKER_01:Uh I think I recall you telling me one time, and and if I'm mistaken on this, uh we can just cut it out and and call it good. But uh something about uh the because of being 50,000 watts, uh you would be, I don't know, broadcasting on the moon or something if uh if you went on through the night.
SPEAKER_02:So it's an interesting backstory. Uh so it started out, and and some of your listeners that are are in central Nebraska might remember this. It was originally 1010 on the AM dial. So the the slogan was 1010 for KRVN. And then I can't recall the year. That's bad history of of mine, but they changed that. They applied for a different license to become 50,000 watts at 880 a.m. And so now everybody knows KRV and AM is 880. But because of that, uh, and the huge signal that AM radio carries as compared to FM, but there's another 880 in the US, and I believe it is in New York. And so when we applied to acquire that license, there's a whole backstory, and as part of a 50-year history book, you could you could thumb through Spencer. But the long short is in the middle of the night, so AM signal travel is even better when it's dark out in Cincinnati, Ohio, they decided that 880 would be interfering with each other. And that New York radio station was on the air first. And so, in order for KRVN to take over 880 here in the plains, we have to go directional at night. So you think about an AM uh tower, and there's actually four radio towers north of Holdridge where KRVN AM is pushed out from, it's just like a circle during the day. So it pushes out everywhere as far as we can get the signal of 50,000 watts. But at night, so we don't interfere with the New York 880, we go directional. So we put an entire signal to the west. And so even though if uh what's the next town to the east of Holdridge, Spencer? Let's test your geography. Grand Island's a good example. Yeah, even though you're not far from Holdridge at night, you cannot get 880. Very interesting. But in California, as you're driving home from work, you can get 880. And for a long time, we've had people tell us that uh they enjoy listening to the the uh the unique mascots that we have here in Nebraska, and they joke, they don't joke, they they were actually listening, and some of them still do. They write in all the time and tell us they enjoy hearing these uh the the haymakers play the Minutemen uh because that's what they hear out on the coast.
SPEAKER_01:I will uh fact check you with our good friend, the Navy pilot who lives on the coast of California and and see uh how how frequently he can catch the signal.
SPEAKER_02:It's a good test for people when you're driving to see how far you can get 880 and send your reports in. I admit it all the way on the east side, because of course I'm here in Lincoln, but all the way to Kansas City and can still get 880 during the day, which is pretty impressive.
SPEAKER_01:Sure. Yeah. Wow. As you know and and people who know me know, I'm I'm more of a night owl than I am a uh early bird. And so admittedly, I watch very few, if any, of the uh market journal episodes because they're on early Saturday morning.
SPEAKER_02:Can't believe you miss it.
SPEAKER_01:Uh tell us a little bit about the partnership uh between uh KRVN, the University of Nebraska Market Journal as its own entity and sort of how that works and and uh your role in all of that.
SPEAKER_02:Well the roots run deep. Of course, it started with KRVN back in the day, as we need to fill 12 hours of programming, six or you know, five, six days of the week, however you look at it. And so right at the beginning, uh KRVN and the University of Nebraska Lincoln have always been partners on content. And so that looks a couple of different ways. Of course, one, uh KRVN AM is the longest-running Husker affiliate, continuous Husker affiliate carrying that programming uh of any other radio station in the state. So proud to carry Husker Athletics, and a lot of people will tune in to hear those broadcasts. Go big red. Uh hoping for better football season sometime soon, Spencer. Men's basketball, though. We got another one last night. Yes. I digress. That's on the sporting side. When it comes to extension, though, we've got extension experts and they serve all 93 counties. KRVN's goal is to serve the entire state. So early on, we started having those extension professionals come on the air and share what they're doing and do their extension outreach efforts through the radio. Uh, we're kind of a pioneer in that early in the day. So you fast forward, we've always had this long-standing relationship. We do a couple of Saturday programs that originate here in Lincoln. One is called The Chat with the Chancellor, where we feature each chancellor along with the president of the university on a rotation basis. And then we do the weekly IANR update with uh the vice chancellor. So through that uh relationship, close ties with the university, we recognize that while AM and FM radio is how a lot of rural Nebraska still get their news, people also watch TV. And so we want to have uh TV partnerships, and we've got those across the state. And there was an opportunity several years ago, I can't even recall which year it is at this point, Spencer, four or five years ago, uh, where the host uh had had left Market Journal and I've done some. I was I was thinking two to three years, and I knew it had been longer than I than it seems.
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_02:But the host had left. Uh I had worked on Market Journal back when you and I were in undergrad, and so was familiar with with their team and had approached the vice chancellor at the time of, hey, here might be an opportunity for us to collaborate. So now our rural radio network broadcasters host Market Journal, which airs at 7 a.m. on Nebraska Public Media. We serve the entire state of Nebraska with radio, and there's only one TV show in the state that serves all of Nebraska through the Nebraska through Nebraska Public Media, and that's Market Journal. So we host that and we also contribute segments on a weekly basis. There you go.
SPEAKER_01:I was I was more of a uh watch uh backyard farmer because it aired at four o'clock in the afternoon. But uh yes.
SPEAKER_02:It's more your style, not a New Year's resolution.
SPEAKER_01:Maybe I'll uh start with the case. You can catch it.
SPEAKER_02:It airs uh 7 a.m. Central Time on Nebraska Public Media, follows Market to Market, which is the Iowa public uh television uh ag programming.
SPEAKER_01:Sure. Uh tell us a little bit about uh being a carrot delegate. Does this have something to do with uh vegetables and gardening, or uh what is a carrot delegate all about?
SPEAKER_02:Well the university loves their acronyms, right? And and this is a university-affiliated uh program, and it's the council uh yeah, I'd have to see how carrot is Council for Ag Research, Extension and Teaching. There we go. Uh, which is part of APLU, which is the Association of Public Land Grant Universities. How about that? I should get an A plus. Yeah, about soup, and you know what they all mean. Yes. So this is a group, uh, the carrots that every land grant uh is designed to have them to be part of this association. And what we do, uh, the the idea is to have stakeholders of the land grant be part and be champions, frankly, for the university system. Myself being raised on a uh row crop operation and my ventures outside of my professional work here on the radio uh often include relying on the university in a number of different ways, largely through Nebraska Extension and the work that they put out. So I've always believed in the land grant system, rely heavily on what Nebraska Extension and the university puts out, and appreciate those resources. So several years ago, Vice Chancellor Baeme at the time asked me to join Carrot, which there are four of us right now, that uh our obligation is kind of twofold. One coming up here in February, we'll travel to Washington, D.C. Uh, and we'll advocate on behalf of the land grant system along with colleagues across the entire nation. We all kind of go at the same time and visit with our lawmakers, Nebraska. We're very lucky to have a lot of support for what the university does. So it's just uh a reminder that this this funding, and there's lots of different funding elements for the university system, is critically important. And here's why it is. That's the message we share. So over the years, I've shared a couple of different experiences for me, but uh involved in a Christmas tree farm. And not only here in Nebraska, but there's extension resources across the country that if I didn't have access to that publicly available, uh I wouldn't be able to do what I do right now. I've also had trees die, believe it or not, during during drought. And uh just here in Nebraska able to send those samples in and my extension office in Lancaster County can help me diagnose what's going on and can can make suggestions. So happy to serve on that uh that committee with three other outstanding individuals across the state. And it's fun to hear their their stories too of how they rely on the university because uh they're similar yet vastly different than myself.
SPEAKER_01:Sure. You mentioned uh tree farm, that's a good pivot. Let's uh let's we've talked enough about work, let's move on to to you as a as a person and personal life. Uh I recall uh you used to be a um oh the word is escaping me. Uh not a vineyard, a uh person who produces grapes. That's a word.
SPEAKER_02:What am I looking for? Uh I was gonna say orcher, but that's not true. Yeah, okay. The word doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_01:You used to grow graineries. You used to grow grapes. Yes, and uh fortunately for me, uh a tomato is officially a vegetable. And so as I was growing tomatoes, I could win the uh vegetable production uh FFA Award, while you could win the fruit uh production FFA Award in the same year. And uh thank goodness we didn't classify tomatoes as a fruit. So it's official to all of our listeners tomatoes are a vegetable.
SPEAKER_02:We still debate who would have won had we been head to head. I think with your hydroponic tomatoes versus my two acres of grapes, it would have been close.
SPEAKER_01:So you have moved on uh from a vineyard uh to uh well you mentioned you grew up row crop operation, uh Duska farms diversified, got some cattle and and all sorts of things, I understand. But uh most interesting to me, at least, is the the tree farm uh followed by being a beekeeper. So uh let's talk about trees first. How'd you get into the tree farm business and and uh what's the status of that now? Is it year-round or sort of focused uh the couple weeks a year when we're selling Christmas trees? Tell us about that.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so uh grew up on the And always had plenty of work to do. And so there was no shortage of that. But at age 14, when I was 14, my brother was 16, my dad uh decided that we needed to get a little experience outside of working for him. So my brother started working, even though again there was plenty of work to do in the summer. He started working. He was driving uh an earth mover. They were building dams for the local uh earth moving company. Uh and at the same time, when I was 14, he drove me over to the local Christmas tree farm. And there's not a ton of them left in Nebraska, but drove me over there and made me go up and knock on the door and ask this uh older gentleman if I could come work for him mowing that year. And so that was a lot of years ago, again when I was 14, 15 years old. And so from that point, I started doing seasonal work for him, which was selling Christmas trees and then helping out in the summertime with mowing and the general tasks. So uh that's Yonke Pine Christmas Tree Farm located south of Lincoln. You fast forward uh a lot of years. I always enjoyed helping out with the Christmas tree sales where there was cutting trees, and and this there's a lot of holiday joy that comes with that season, we get into in a second. But you fast forward when I was in school at at one point after a couple of events, the the owner, Art Yonke, decided that he was gonna uh stop planting Christmas trees, and he had kind of shared that with me. That was gonna be his maybe his last year. And I said, Well, Art, it'd be a shame if you you just stopped. And so maybe there's a a plan where you could teach me what you've done out here, and we can maybe grow some trees together. So I think that was maybe eight, nine years ago at this point. Uh and trees take a very long time to grow.
SPEAKER_01:I was just gonna ask, how how long from the time you so uh describe to our listeners a little bit. You're I I've personally participated in this process, so I I know, but uh you're planting what a foot-tall tree or so?
SPEAKER_02:Yep, so 12, 12, 16 inches. They call them tutus, and we buy trees from uh largely the state of Michigan, and those are uh two years, they start as a seed, of course, two years in a greenhouse, two years at a transplant bed, and then they pull them out of the ground, and after four years of growing, that tree is only 12, 16 inches tall.
SPEAKER_01:I had no idea that uh the trees we were planting were four years old already. I thought maybe a year or so, but wow. So you start with a four-year-old tree, and then how long from a four-year-old tree to harvest for your customers?
SPEAKER_02:An ideal situation is that the trees we grow, largely scotch pine, would grow 10 to 12 inches per year. And so from time you plant to time you harvest would be six, seven years, because people like you know, somewhere from just six to eight foot tall harvestable tree. Uh drought has has been a very big challenge for Christmas tree, or really all trees in the state of Nebraska over the past five years at this point. And if you don't have uh a large, uh costly irrigation system, uh people don't always have a hard time wrapping their head around this, but it's not cost effective to keep trees watered at that scale all the time. And so uh while we do water and do our best to keep trees growing when they're small, you you might lose you you do lose a lot of them in drought years. So because of that, trees take a little bit longer to get to a harvestable point, but six to eight years is is the window.
SPEAKER_01:Uh now you're a dad to two young boys. How long till you've got them out there watering trees?
SPEAKER_02:Hopefully it'll be quick. Our oldest is three years old, he'll be four coming up in August. He uh he comes out and helps plant. So and then our youngest will be one here in January. So hopefully they'll be out there before before not too long.
SPEAKER_01:Now, is this just a two-week a year commitment uh or other than I guess watering trees? But if it's raining, uh, what else do you have to do on the tree farm?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it is year-round work. So uh things get the busiest when we plant trees, uh, roughly the first two weeks of April, and then we mulch trees the week after, a couple of weeks after. We're constantly doing weed controls, so applying uh chemicals around trees to manage them. But the challenging part there is, Spencer, you can only spray, whether you're spraying for weeds or spraying the trees for disease, very small windows. And between the wind and bud break, is what we're always watching. Uh you're you're you've got a narrow window there. So spraying, and then as soon as May hits, we're full steam mowing every 10, 12 days, depending on how much moisture we get. So it is year-round, which brings us into the fall where we get trees ready to harvest. There's some things we do to prepare them. Uh, some tree farms will spray uh a color coating on all the trees. We go out and tag and measure every tree so the customer knows we're choosing a crisp tree farm. They know exactly how tall that crisp tree is and the price on it out in the field. And then we open up the day after Thanksgiving for tree sales and invite people out to the farm. They come out, pick out their perfect tree. Depending on the weather, they might spend an hour out there or 10 minutes, and then we'll cut their tree down. We shake it to get all the old dead needles and gross things you don't want in your house out of it. Then we wrap it up tight through a baler. People load it on their car and they're off to have a very Merry Christmas. Now, do those trees just grow in the perfect shape? Oh, you forgot about that. You got to help them out a little bit. I want to forget about shearing season, but I shouldn't forget about it. Yeah, shearing season happens. Uh art always tells me it's right after flag day. That's the way I always remember when he wants to get started. But if you think of what looks like very long butter knives that happen to be incredibly sharp, like a razor, that's what uh our shears look like. And we've run a couple of those, or usually one of them at a time. And so, yeah, a tree does not grow in a perfect shape. And so we go out there and hand shear every single tree that's pretty much uh two, three years old up to the ones harvestable, and you cut new growth. You can't cut any old growth. You're cutting new growth to get it into the perfect shape of a tree. And like I said, from from about two to three years on, every year that tree needs to be shaped. And there are some species of trees that you actually have to shape a couple of times of the year. Thankfully, we don't grow those because it's a lot of hard work and it is the hottest time of the year.
SPEAKER_01:You mentioned uh that you get a lot of holiday joy around that time of year. Uh any any uh impactful stories you'd like to share with us?
SPEAKER_02:I can't think of maybe the ones that are super impactful, but to me, there's nothing better than having a family come together at the holiday. A lot of people, this is the start of their holiday. They the kids get back from college, maybe you see a lot of those uh families that that'll come back. And uh thinking of the interim, interim uh head of Kasner right now, Tom Berkey and his family come out every year. And so to see them, yeah, family comes together, they go out there, pick a tree out, take a picture, and to know how much joy that brings their family. But really, it's the stories when you hear and you see grandma and grandpa come out and they say, you know, we started coming out to the tree farm 40 years ago, and our kids were, you know, they saw every Christmas out here, and now our grandkids are out here experiencing it too. Those are the ones that bring me the most joy and love those interactions with our customers.
SPEAKER_01:Sure, sure. Uh, one last topic, and we'll let you off the off the interview hook here, which is being a beekeeper. Uh tell us uh about that. I was gonna say something that I can't imagine for me would not bring me a lot of joy is being stung by a bee. Uh sort of polar op the yin and yang of Christmas tree farming is getting stung by bees, right? I've got way too many hobbies, is what this uh interview is turning into, Spencer.
SPEAKER_02:Revolution for me. Yeah, got into beekeeping a couple of years ago, uh, maybe three three years ago is when I started that. And I don't remember why. I think it was when we moved to our new property. We have five acres there, and I was telling my wife, you know, at the time, we need to do something here besides have have her hobby, which is horses up by the barn. Well, and I forgot about one of your others, which was I used to get weekly egg deliveries. There we go. We got the chickens, I got horses, and then needed bees in the backyard. So I had a perfect spot for bees. Uh, happened to stumble upon a guy in the town just to the south of us, Adams, Nebraska, who was selling bees, and he was offering classes at the same time. So I thought this would be perfect. I'll go learn a little bit about bees, have a couple beehives. And uh, when I was getting into it, I said, Well, how many beehives should I start with? And he said, You need two because one will inevitably die, and you need to have a second one so you don't get too sad about it. And so that's been an interesting journey learning about bees. They are the strangest little creatures uh in the world, but they can it's incredible what hundred thousand bees can do in a beehive and make so much honey. Started this three years ago, and I think this year harvested around 25 gallons worth of honey.
SPEAKER_01:Wow. So um, and you keep them there year uh year round, they they hibernate during the winter, or how do you keep them? Do you do something to keep them from getting too cold and freezing?
SPEAKER_02:A lot of commercial beekeepers in the state. There's a good guest idea for you. There's a few of them in Nebraska, but they will actually take their bees outside of the state, uh, you know, down south somewhere. A lot of people go to Florida, California to do pollinating services down there, and bees survive a lot better uh when it's warm. Here in Nebraska, though, you can keep bees year-round and you just have to get them. You can't take too much honey from them, is the best way to put it. So bees are making honey to get themselves through winter, and that's the food they rely on. So you as long as you enter winter with plentiful supplies for them, they do what we call clustering, where they all get real tight and they have a certain uh uh uh degree they try to stay by their their vibration, which is a little humming you hear, creates a little bit of warmth for them and they can stay warm in there. Uh, when it is incredibly cold though, it's it's hard on bees. And often you'll see the headlines that beekeepers report 50% losses through the winter. And that's not uncommon, unfortunately, because of uh the threats that bees face, which is largely Virola mites.
SPEAKER_01:Have you uh defied the odds and kept two for two hives alive? Or are you are you part of the statistics?
SPEAKER_02:Well, we went from two to four through uh year one. I think I replaced one hive, but the nice thing about bees is they're always kind of they're always when they're in a confined space, you know, it's it's it's weird, but you treat them just like they're livestock, right? So they're they're always breeding and they have their seasons and they have their lifespan, uh, which is very short, 20 to 21-ish days in the core season.
SPEAKER_01:We order bees to put in the greenhouse to pollinate the hydroponic tomatoes, and and they I mean our pr our goal is not honey production, it's pollination. But a couple three weeks they're they're gone.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and so they're constantly regenerating themselves. And where I'm getting with this, Spencer, is so you can split hives and you and they're actually oftentimes the key thing you're trying to manage is swarming. And so they will actually make their the queen. There's only one queen per hive, but they're trying to make a new queen so they can half of them can leave the hive with the old queen and go establish a new hive. And so you're constantly managing swarming while you're trying to get them to make as much honey as possible for you. So with that, I've caught swarms, I've split, and so this past year I had eight beehives uh that were making honey for me. Wow. Wow. So we'll see how we get through the winter and what what next spring looks like.
SPEAKER_01:All right. Something we ask all of our guests, uh, give us just one word, just one word, uh, that to you best describes and explains this great place in which you were born and raised, uh and raising your family now. Your one word for Nebraska.
SPEAKER_02:Well, to me, there's no better word than just opportunity. There is opportunity everywhere in the state of Nebraska. As long as you're willing to work hard for something or work towards something, I think anybody can achieve anything, and that's my word.
SPEAKER_01:Opportunity. Bryce, thanks for joining us this morning. Uh, if you enjoyed this episode, consider subscribing on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Share it with someone who might find it of interest. Please keep listening as we release additional episodes on Nebraska, its great communities, Nebraska's number one industry, agriculture, and the folks who make it happen.
SPEAKER_00:This has been Nighty Three, the podcast, sponsored by Nebraska's law firm, Rembolt Ludke.
