Context

Busy Bee Farm is a bulk honey producer and commercial pollinator with about 15,000 hives and 25 full time workers. Founded in 2008, the company is located near Hay Lakes, Alberta, Canada and run by Mike DeJong, a forward-thinking beekeeper who was recently named the Beekeeper of the Year Award by the Alberta Beekeepers Commission.

‍DeJong recognizes that farming is continuously evolving, so he is always looking for ways to “stay ahead in methods and technology.” For years, DeJong used hand-written notebooks and Excel sheets to keep track of his operation, but data entry has often been a struggle, especially during busy times of the year. Busy Bee started integrating Nectar into their operation in May 2021, which, he says, has been helpful as the operation continues to grow. “As we've been getting bigger, it's just harder to keep track of yards,” DeJong says. Nectar helps with “knowing where everything is and having an efficient way of handling all that data and information.”

More efficient crew time

As the owner of the operation, De Jong spends most of his time troubleshooting problems and planning ahead to make sure that his team works efficiently. “Every day is just strategizing,” he said. “I don't want a crew to be sitting around waiting for three hours,” so his work focuses on “making sure the next job is set up for them and that they’ve got the supplies they need.”

He says that, at his current size, managing his operation without Nectar “would have been hard.” It would require him to constantly find records to show his team what’s been happening across the operation. But with Nectar, “if the guys are going to a yard and they have a question they can just look back to either the hive tag or the yard” and this allows them to see the history much easier.

In terms of overall asset management, he says, this is critical. “There's a lot more information available right now for the guys to look at what kind of queen is in the hive, when it was installed, where the hives have been and the history of where the hives have been.” “It helps me manage locations and yards better, he said.

As he’s expanded to new yards, De Jong says Nectar has also helped his team find yards more easily. “They're able to look right away and find directions,” he says, “so that's been helpful.” It also helps them if they miss a yard “because that happens, too.”

Operational oversight 

On a personal level, DeJong says that Nectar has been helpful as a way of generating a full picture of what’s happening across the operation. “I look at my program every day,” he said. This feature is particularly helpful for pollination, because once his hives get to Southern Alberta, “they're everywhere.” “When I can see that 500 hives have been scanned into a bee yard in Southern Alberta, I know they're there. I can see where they are on a map, and then I don't have to be physically there all the time.”

He says this would be critical if Busy Bee ever decided to expand geographically. “I can't drive out three, four kilometers away to go check on what's going on in the satellite operation,” he says. “So this was my next step.” But with Nectar, “I can confirm things pretty quickly by typing in a yard.” With Nectar, “we know where everything is.”

Converting hunches into facts

Like many beekeeping operations, queens and mite treatments are two of Busy Bees’ biggest costs. In early 2022, for example, queen’s cost Busy Bee more than $400K. Even so, mites, he said, “were our biggest problem.”

To support the accuracy and effectiveness of his queens and mite treatments, Busy Bee turned to Nectar for analytical support. Alongside Nectar’s team, DeJong has developed two specialized reports: a custom-built queen report, and a pollination report, both of which he receives on a regular basis.

Queen Report: Better data for better queens

Busy Bees’ queen report clearly visualizes hive survivorship over time across different queen providers and queen ages. In early 2022, Busy Bee began studying the qualities of over 9,000 new queens from different suppliers. With this data in hand, DeJong has been learning how to improve the process of purchasing new queens. “We just want to collect some data on how long queens are lasting and then how often we're replacing them,” he said. “I think that's good information to have versus just pulling it out of the air, right?”
 

The report is currently being directed toward solving a number of related problems. For one, to evaluate individual vendors and the survivorship of their queens. But also the honey production per queen type, and their resistance to mites. “We record what we’re treating,” he says, which means that his data can be used to help determine whether “certain traits of the queen didn't work well with mites.” It can also be used to solve problems that span across multiple seasons, as the data continues to collect.

Pollination Report: Yard-level strength detection

The pollination report was initially set up as a limited test to determine the outcomes of different pollination locations on colony survivorship. It shows the different mortality rates of Busy Bee hives that traveled for pollination vs the ones that stayed in their wintering yards. 
 

The report quantified the difference in mortality rates between hives that went to pollination versus ones that didn’t, thus supporting DeJong’s decision on what pollination contracts to return to the following year. “The pollination report has provided value, especially with planning where to send hives,” he says. “It helps us make decisions for future business endeavors.”

Growing with Nectar

Overall, DeJong is optimistic about the direction Nectar is heading, and believes that as more data accumulates it will translate into greater business value. “I think they've been doing good for us and they know what I want, and they're working on it,” DeJong said. “We see a future in Nectar and we’re hoping to fully implement it in our daily management practices.”

“Beekeeping is never going to be easy,” he says, “but the future of beekeeping is just having the best tools, the best equipment, and the best people to manage the stresses that are facing us. For DeJong, Nectar is a key part of that equation. 

I've been with Nectar almost since the start. They continue to adapt and change with us to meet our needs. I'm just trying to be more leading edge. I want to know where everything is and have an efficient way of handling all that data and all that information.

Mike DeJong, Owner at Busy Bee Farms