Queens Order Honey – Justin Orders

0:00:03	Beginning
0:00:45	Justin history of beekeeping and his passion
0:03:40	How big is the operation?
0:05:55	His experience with extracting honey
0:09:09	The difference between Males and females in the bee world
0:11:02	How Jusin raises a Queen
0:13:35	His experience with selling honey
0:17:27	Why few younger people are in beekeeping, compared to older people
0:19:44	How age impacted his work with bees?
0:21:24	Challenges that Justin faces in beekeeping
0:27:30	His experience with extracting hives from people’s property
0:28:03	Beekeepers and organizations in Charlotte
0:32:15	His Website, blogs, and social media
0:36:22	His views on environment and sustainability within beekeeping
0:38:42	Other Pollinators besides bees
0:41:01	One piece of advice to give to your past self
0:41:55	One piece of warning to give to your past self
0:42:35	Hope and dreams for his farm in the future
0:45:05	His focus on all pollinators not just honeybees
0:45:25	Closing

Hosami Ghanaini 00:12
Okay, this is Hosami Ghanaini interviewing Justin Orders on 24th of October 2024 at Queen’s Order’s Ani Pierry. Today we’ll explore Justin’s experience as a certified beekeeper in Charlotte. Hi Justin.

Justin Orders
Hey, how’s it going?

Hosami Ghanaini
How you doing?

Justin Orders
Good.

Hosami Ghanaini 00:21
So could you tell me more about how long you have been beekeeping?

Justin Orders
I’ve been keeping bees for six years now. I started in 2018. Yeah, but I’ve always loved bugs, insects, general bees, a special place in my heart. But yeah.

Hosami Ghanaini
Do you mind telling me your age? How old are you?

Justin Orders
32.

Hosami Ghanaini 00:49
Okay. So what are you initially good at and interested in beekeeping?

Justin Orders
Yeah, so I actually went to UNCC for a biology program. I didn’t graduate and I eventually wanted to go to grad school at NC State for entomology. But the whole being in school scene kind of just not really, for me, you know, research and whatnot. But I still wanted to help insects and help save bees and they were dealing with a lot at that time too. So I just bought a hive wanting to help out, help contribute to a pollinator, populations, biodiversity, so on and so forth. A lot of the things that I learned in school conservation, whatever. So yeah, just love for insects, but also wanted to help them.

Hosami Ghanaini 01:30
So how did you learn about beekeeping?

Justin Orders
Some on my own. I also went to the bee school. Mecklenburg County has a beekeepers association, which I’m a part of now. And they have a bee school where they train new beekeepers that are very new to beekeeping. And after a couple weeks, months presentations, you take the test for the Becoming North Carolina Certified Beekeeper. Passed that and now I’m a certified beekeeper. I’m actually also a journeyman beekeeper. I just haven’t set in all the paperwork for it. So I’ve done the next stage of that as well. But just to answer your question, there’s a lot of education opportunities not only Mecklenburg County, but also in the state of North Carolina.

Hosami Ghanaini 02:24
So when did you start at the school 2019?

Justin Orders
It was winter of 2019.Yes.

Hosami Ghanaini
How long did you stay there?

Justin Orders
It’s only a, the curriculum is only like three months. So it’s like January to March.

Hosami Ghanaini 02:45
How is beekeeping?

Justin Orders
It was tough. I had a lot of fun with my friend. I still keep in contact with he’s a very good beekeeper in Charlotte. And he helped me out again. And when I had some really difficult questions, but I made it through that first year. Well, I had one hive and actually turned to two. So then by the next year, I had two hives. I was very fortunate in that. And then it just kind of grown and grown. It got a lot easier every year. There’s been some hard years, but that first year was the hardest.

Hosami Ghanaini 03:16
So how many hives do you have right now?

Justin Orders
Here in my AP area, I have, I counted it yesterday, there’s 38. But I have dozen dozen and a half in other places where I keep bees for the people, people’s backyards. So all across Charlotte and greater Charlotte, I have another maybe 15, 20 bees hives.

Hosami Ghanaini 03:40
So how many bees are like in one hive?

Justin Orders
The peak season, it’s anywhere from 10 to 20,000. Right now, it’s getting to, I would say maybe there’s 5000 bees per hive. So do the math, 50 hives, you know, 25,000 or 25,000 bees. Rough, very, very rough. I don’t count them.

Hosami Ghanaini 04:04
Okay, so could you tell me how your day as a beekeeper goes?

Justin Orders
Yeah, when I’m, when I’m doing, you know, now this time of year, it’s not as busy, but in peak season, I’m coming out here and checking on these hives, making sure everything looks good as far as them putting on a lot of honey. I also, again, will go to my other clients hives, people that I take care of the bees for them. I’ll go there and see if their hives need anything. Do I need to split them up? Do I need to add on another box, give them a little bit more room? How are they with pests and viruses and all that stuff? I’m just checking on them. But yeah, it varies every day. It’s very different from the previous day for a lot of the things that I do.

Hosami Ghanaini 04:50
Are they far away from you?

Justin Orders
These hives, sometimes, yeah, sometimes they can be 50 minutes away from me sometimes. They’re right up the road from me. I have one client that’s just down the road from us. I could walk there if I wanted to, but yeah, they’re all over. A lot of driving.

Hosami Ghanaini 05:05
So like, how often are you with bees in hives like daily?

Justin Orders
On average, I’d say I’m in an individual hive twice a month.

Hosami Ghanaini
Twice a month?

Justin Orders
Yeah.

Hosami Ghanaini 05:24
So do you get stung, oftenly?

Justin Orders
Yeah, I get stung almost every single day. And that’s not to say I get stung every day, because there’s definitely days I don’t get on my hives. But on the days that I do, I get stung so many times that it kind of equates to, again, like once a day, or once every other day or something like that. It’s often.

Hosami Ghanaini 05:45
So speaking of hives, what do you do when you are with hives to people who are unfamiliar with beekeeping?

Justin Orders
What was it, for sure?

Hosami Ghanaini
What do you do with hives? Like, how do you extract as a honey?

Justin Orders
Oh yeah, extracting the honey is pretty easy. So what I’ll do is I just showed you one of those frames. I’ll cut it open. If it does honey in it, typically the bees will seal it with wax. So they’ll put all the honey in the frames and the cells and those geometric hexagons. I’ll take a hot knife or even just a cold knife, kind of like this tool here, and I’ll cut open the wax. I’ll put it into a centrifuge like that fire pit, a giant cylinder, and it’ll eventually start to, once I turn the machine on, it’ll spin the honey out. It falls to the bottom of the cylinder and then I’ll put it into bottles and jars and all that stuff. Yeah.

Hosami Ghanaini 06:38
So do you reuse the hives again?

Justin Orders
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. The comb and the wax that the honey was in can be reused for years.So long as it’s not contaminated with stuff and it usually isn’t.

Hosami Ghanaini 06:56
So what are the uses of honey in your beekeeping? Do you, besides extracting honey, do you have any other uses for honey?

Justin Orders
Uses for honey? I mean, I eat the honey. We make a couple of different products. We have skin care products, lotions, and chapsticks sometimes utilize honey or beeswax. I’ll use the beeswax too. It’s applicable to those things. But yeah, no, we don’t use a whole lot of it here. Most of it we sell. We sell from this friend’s, like just from our porch or people buy it and take it out.

Hosami Ghanaini 07:37
You also sell the honey comb itself?

Justin Orders
We do. We sell it sometimes. We sell the comb. It’s really hard to get sometimes and typically I stray away from doing that because there’s a lot of nutritional benefits to eating raw honey, but there’s not a whole lot eating the comb. The wax is not really good for us, but people still like it.

Hosami Ghanaini 07:56
Is there a difference in taste between honey and honey comb?

Justin Orders
I want to say it’s difference in taste. I think it’s just the more, it feels more real when you’re eating it, when you’re actually biting into the honey. There’s like an aesthetic value to that, that I guess is worth the extra price and effort, extra effort in doing that. But yeah, it’s not like it’s, you know, better. It just feels better, I guess.

Hosami Ghanaini 08:22
Okay, so dealing with the honey comb is like some kind of process not to break it?

Justin Orders
Yeah, so again, I’ll take the comb and I’ll cut it with the knife and then that’s not damaging the actual cells of the comb. It’s just damaging essentially the covering of it. It’s just opening the door to it. And once all the honey comes out of that, I’ll put it back on the hive and they can reuse it. The comb is basically the same as it was before. It just had an opening, you know. It’s not a big deal.

Hosami Ghanaini 08:22
I read in your website articles about like the differences between males, aka drones and females in the world. Could you tell us more about this? What is the difference between males and females?

Justin Orders
Yeah, so females in the hives typically are the ones doing most of the work. Their names are actually workers compared to that of the drones, as males are called. Again, worker bees throughout their lifetime, several different jobs starting from a nurse bee to guard bee to eventually forager bees, the bee that you typically see. If you’re anywhere that you see honeybees, drones have really just one job and that’s to mate with queens in the beginning season of the year, the spring season of the year. They don’t do a whole lot other than that. It’s a very important job, mind you, but it’s one that, again, it’s not very useful this time of year. There’s not a whole lot of queens for them to mate with right now. For instance, the worker bees, the female bees will actually drag them out of the hive because they’re almost seen as a parasite to the hive compared to, again, with all the work that the worker bees do. The drone bees don’t do any of that work. They don’t even have stingers, so they can’t even defend the hive if they were to need to. So, yeah, drones are important but also expendable.

Hosami Ghanaini 10:26
Like after mating, they get like, they die immediately?

Justin Orders
They die almost immediately, yeah, well after mating, yeah, that kind of shows you their purpose in life is really just that. After that, they’re really, you know, no good. Important job as it is, it’s not like nature was expecting them to do more than that.

Hosami Ghanaini 10:48
So, what’s the process of raising a queen? How do you like get a queen or how do you get a queen like at the first stage and how do you raise it? How do you know them?

Justin Orders
Oh, it’s a process for sure. So, what I’ll do is every year the hives will want to make a copy of themselves. That’s why I started with one hive in my first year and then I had two by the end of the year because that one hive turned into two. So, what will happen is every spring usually, the hive will get so big that they’ll want to split or swarm fly somewhere else, take one of those queens with them, take the queen that they have with them. What I’ll basically do is I’ll take maybe, I’ll trick them into thinking they’ve swarmed. I’ll take a couple frames of bees from that hive box that’s going to swarm, put it in another box, a smaller box, and I’ll raise a queen from that box and do so. I’ll just give them plenty of food. The bees will take one of the eggs that the queen will eat from that other box. Those are feedings, stuff known as royal jelly. And they’ll do this to maybe half a dozen, a dozen eggs. All those queens will develop and once they hatch out at once, they will fight the death to see who is the strongest queen. I’ll do a couple different things to not have that happen. But yeah, I can raise those, I can raise that queen and take her and sell her or sell the hive that she’s now in. I make pretty good money from that, selling the hives. But yeah, it’s a process.

Hosami Ghanaini 12:38
Okay, so what kind of food do you get for bees? You told me if you want to transfer the queen, you give them food. What kind of food?

Justin Orders
Just sugar syrup, sugar syrup that I make. And that’s something I also use to feed them during this time of year when there’s not a whole lot of flowers in bloom. I’ll feed them sugar syrup and then I’ll give them a little bit extra stuff to do.

Hosami Ghanaini 13:03
Also, you could sell as a queen itself only?

Justin Orders
Yeah, I can do that. I can put her in a cage and sell them. I don’t have a whole lot of people asking for that. So yeah, I can sell those.

Hosami Ghanaini 13:03
And you could also sell it with a hive. So how much is it alone and how much is it with a hive?

Justin Orders
It’s 180 for the hive, maybe 35 for the queen.

Hosami Ghanaini 13:38
Okay. Also, for saying I saw on your website that there are, yeah, you’re selling honey on your website. Are there any other ways that you sell honey like in supermarkets or in markets?

Justin Orders
There’s a couple stores or there’s a couple places I’m at where I have honey for sale. I sell at farmers markets when I have an opportunity to do that. But yeah, that’s really it. Sell it from here, sell it on my website, farmers markets, a store through here and there, but it gets sold every year. I’m always out, you know, from March, April, when the season starts to take off again. So it works out.

Hosami Ghanaini 14:06
So how do you get into this farmer market? Do you contact with someone or do you?

Justin Orders
Yeah, the people that run it, I’ll reach up to them and see if they need anyone to fill a spot or they’ll reach up to me and say, “Hey, we need a spot. Can you fill it?” That’s what I do. I don’t have any stay in a new market right now. I dont have anywhere that i am there every weekend but just when they need someone to come fill a spot. I am usually able to do it.

Hosami Ghanaini 14:29
Do you collaborate with any local businesses?

Justin Orders
Not yet. I don’t have that much honey to sell. If I had gallons and gallons, I would sell to, businesses that want the honey barbecue or something like that, but right now, no, just enough to sell it to other people.

Hosami Ghanaini 14:54
So do you like to consider the area, the area medium or large?

Justin Orders
Say it’s medium, it’s definitely not large. Typically, large AP areas have hundreds of hives, 200, 300 hives. This is very small. I couldn’t have much more hives than this right now. It’s a lot for me to manage and obviously, I don’t have that much more land. I kind of want this number and don’t want many more. So yeah, it’s a medium AP area, but I may eventually expand and find somewhere else to put the hives and maybe put 100 out there if that seems to be calling. But right now, I’m good with this amount.

Hosami Ghanaini 15:37
Is it connected with having a big land or having a small land?

Justin Orders
You definitely want a lot of land. You definitely want a lot of pasture land or an area that’s a little bit rural. Like here’s maybe hard to have 100 hives here because everything’s a lot of residential places that I don’t want my bees swarming in people’s trees in yards and homes and whatnot. So I’d much prefer if I was somewhere in the more rural parts of the state, I would have 100, 150 hives.

Hosami Ghanaini 16:12
Okay, so what about your neighbors? Are they good with you having bees?

Justin Orders
Yeah, I don’t get any complaints. I need to review it. It’s stung every once in a while, but it’s pretty rare. Yeah, so far so good, but I’m still wary of that. And again, if I had more hives, I’d probably get more complaints, but this is a pretty small number compared to some other operations.

Hosami Ghanaini 16:42
So tell now it’s like a one-man job. Don’t you have anyone also working with you here?

Justin Orders
Not right now. I have some helpers every once in a while come out. The spring months are very, very difficult. A lot to do then. That’s usually what I need, a hand or two to help me.

Hosami Ghanaini
From March to May?

Justin Orders
Pretty much, yeah, March to May. Yep, that’s the prime time.

Hosami Ghanaini 17:06
Okay, so I know you’re so young and what do you think of not only beekeeping, but also in farming? A few are younger people are working in this industry than the older people. Is there a major reason behind this? Could you tell us about it more?

Justin Orders
My theory on why more younger people aren’t doing those jobs? I don’t know. That’s for me. I can see people wanting to get out of generational farming because their dad did it, their grandfather did it, their so-and-so did it. Maybe they want to break from that, especially with how the economy is shifting and things are getting bought out and whatnot. But I’m not, this is my first generational beekeeper. I’ve had family members do farming, but I’m not really tied to that. I would say, while it is difficult, I hear a lot more people complaining about their jobs and the financial sector or the education sector. I just hear a lot of my friends not very happy with their jobs. While this isn’t like, I’m not making six-figure doing this, it’s also very, very rewarding. That’s the huge trade-off that I find with this kind of work. It may not be for everyone, but I feel like people should at least consider it. It works out. If you’ve got the right setup and everything, you can make this work. I don’t know. I guess they don’t know.

Hosami Ghanaini 18:55
Younger people walking here in Charlotte, can beekeeping or in farming in general?

Justin Orders
Not a lot. I know everyone always looks to me as the young person in beekeeping right now. They think that im some kind of unicorn. Normally people become hobbyist beekeepers when they are retired. They work their whole lives and then they want to wind down and do beekeeping. It’s very calming, relaxing, or at least a it can be. That’s how that usually evolves. It’s not this way where it’s like, I just one day wanted to become a beekeeper.

Hosami Ghanaini 19:34
In what way do you think your age and that your approach for challenges and opportunities in beekeeping and dusting, does your age help you?

Justin Orders
Absolutely. It’s very challenging. This is very visibly demanding work. I can get injured very easily doing this stuff. If I was 60, 70 years old, I’m sure I would be having a lot more limitations to doing this kind of work. Being young and having the strength and energy to do some of this stuff, lifting heavy bee equipment, heavy boxes, moving pines, all that stuff, I have huge advantages by being young and also being young and understanding how to advertise myself on social media and use technology to my advantage is huge.

Hosami Ghanaini
Yeah, I really like your art because you know, writing on the website.

Justin Orders
Thank you. I need to do more of that. I should really focus on that this off season. But it’s hard. I have to prioritize other things sometimes.

Hosami Ghanaini 20:41
You told me it’s very hard to drag one of those boxes. How heavy are those?

Justin Orders
They can be, depending on the box, sometimes they can be 80 pounds. Generally, the smaller boxes, the ones that I’ve honey in them are 20, 30, 40 pounds. But sometimes I’ve got to take them, sometimes I’ll remove them from buildings and whatnot and they’ll be on roofs and I have to take them down ladders and that’s not only is that difficult, but it’s also very dangerous. But yeah, it can get very, very heavy.

Hosami Ghanaini 21:18
So what challenges do you have in Charlottes with beekeeping?

Justin Orders
I would say I have a whole lot of challenges in Charlottes. It’s a very nice city for people that are into this kind of thing that are wanting to support this. I have a pretty good network of other beekeepers in the area. Yeah, I wouldn’t say I have, if anything, I have advantages. Again, I wouldn’t want to keep bees out and name the rural town and carry or somewhere like that. It’s kind of a little bit more distant from cities and whatnot. It seems that it lends well to my business and whatnot.

Hosami Ghanaini 21:18
So is weather Charlottes when you were side?

Justin Orders
Sorry, say that again.

Hosami Ghanaini
Weather in Charlottes is on your side?

Justin Orders
Was it one time?

Hosami Ghanaini
Weather, the Weather.

Justin Orders
Oh, is it on my side? Yeah, absolutely. The climate here is really nice. We have warm winters too. It’s not too brutal. That’s really a very difficult time for bees as it is most insects and so far they’ve done pretty well with them. Yeah, I wouldn’t really want to go any further north if I was beekeeping. Charlottes is a pretty good place for the climate we have. It’s not too hot. It’s cool in the winter. Not too cool. Yeah.

Hosami Ghanaini 22:46
What do you do when winter was a busy?

Justin Orders
Not a whole lot. They kind of go into a state of dormancy where they’re still doing things, trying to keep the hive warm. They’re interested in using the honey in order to keep the hive warm, using it as an energy source for making heat. But yeah, most of the work I’ve already done by that time, I’m not feeding them that much. I’m just kind of making sure that they’re fat and happy and hoping they’re going to make it to next year.

Hosami Ghanaini 23:20
But also do you keep them in an open place like this?

Justin Orders
Yeah, they stay just as the way they are. I don’t need to put them in storage or anything. It’s again pretty mild here. I’ll put some insulation on them. Right now it’s not necessary for that, but later in the season I’ll add some insulation.I’ll do well.

Hosami Ghanaini 23:37
Do you get like many losses in this winter period?

Justin Orders
No, I haven’t had a whole lot of losses. I did a couple years ago. I think I wrote about that too. In 2022 we had a bunch of snow, very cold winter. I lost maybe half of my colonies, but I also am still pretty new to the thing. I think a lot of that was due to starvation, not necessarily from the cold. But yeah, I don’t have a whole lot of losses. I lose maybe 10% of my colonies every winter. That’s not bad.

Hosami Ghanaini 24:31
I also saw a very interesting article with the name “Pollinators and the bestsibs”. Could you tell us more about the issue of bees extension? Is there an issue of bees extension really happening right now?

Justin Orders
Yeah, honey bees, but native bees are being lost. The numbers are shrinking just because pesticide use, that’s one of the things. Broad-spectrum pesticides, mainly people are spraying things in their yard and wanting to get rid of one insect, but in turn getting rid of several species of insects. Climate change is definitely linked to that habitat loss is a major way that bees are declining if they don’t have a certain habitat made or porridge on them, they’re just gonna die. So yeah, pesticides for sure, but it’s a lot of different factors. But honey bees surprisingly are doing really well, they’re doing much better than they were a decade ago and that’s a large part in due to beekeeping becoming more of a hobby and people seeing this as a way to help bees in their populations.

Hosami Ghanaini 25:31
So is it like a worldwide issue or is it like just in the States?

Justin Orders
No, it’s worldwide. Speaking of honey bees specifically, the issue that they had the most was peromites, this mite that is indigenous to Southeast Asia. It got carried over from that area and now it’s spread pretty much all across the world. I think it’s the only place that they don’t have it still is Australia and there’s been a large lot of involvement in trying to keep that happening because it’s an island, but at any rate, yeah, that’s a global thing. Everywhere you have peromites now and everywhere beekeepers are having to understand how to better suit their hives to keep them happening.

Hosami Ghanaini 26:24
So it’s not an easy job?

Justin Orders
You have to always be ahead of the curve, you have to always be aware of that risk. It’s 20, 30 years ago, there wasn’t as big of a threat of peromites and so beekeepers didn’t have to worry about losing their hives in a season or whatever. It was just kind of like, yeah, beekeeping is easy. It’s not that case anymore.

Hosami Ghanaini 26:51
Speaking of pollinators, do also you work in some farming?You give them bees to pollinate as…

Justin Orders
I don’t do a whole lot of that right now. We’re in Charlotte, so I don’t have a whole lot of, not as many farms and not as many farms that need that are growing things that need specifically honeybees that pollinate them, but I definitely open to that if someone wants to hire me for something like that, I’d be open to that. But right now, no, it’s just, again, keeping bees for myself and keeping bees for people that want bees in their backyards.

Hosami Ghanaini 27:24
So you help also if someone has like a hive in his backyard, you go to and extract this hive?

Justin Orders
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, people have bees up in a tree or maybe it’s even nested in their wall somewhere in a cavity and somewhere in their house. I can remove that.

Hosami Ghanaini 27:41
And you could easily put them in a box, right?

Justin Orders
Pretty easily, yeah. I just take the comb out piece by piece very gently and put it into a high box and the bees would do just fine.

Hosami Ghanaini 27:55
So in Charlotte also that any organization or person here help you like overcome or help you with your challenges in beekeeping? If you have any challenge or problem, do you go to anyone in Charlotte?

Justin Orders
Yeah, Mecklenburg Beekeeping Association, again, is a great organization for new beekeepers or people that just have questions about beekeeping. Maybe it’s just you have a swarm in your yard, you want to call someone, you call them, they have a list of people you can contact and help you with that. Also Tommy Helms was a very, it still is a very good resource. He’s the other beekeeper in Charlotte. He’s been keeping bees here for…

Hosami Ghanaini
What’s his name?

Justin Orders
Tommy Helms.

Hosami Ghanaini
Okay.

Justin Orders
He’s been keeping bees for a couple of decades and he’s a really good resource.

Hosami Ghanaini
He holds one Charlotte. Where is his place?

Justin Orders
He’s over kind of northwest. Um, where we’re at north, he’s just a little bit further west. He’s maybe 15 minutes down over off like, I think it’s supposed to like Freedom Drive. Yeah.

Hosami Ghanaini 28:58
Anyone else?

Justin Orders
He’s like the main guy. There’s a couple other people, but for me at least he’s been, he’s been really helpful. He builds a lot, a lot of the equipment you see here he built. And I bought a purchase from him. Um, but yeah, he did a lot of that.

Hosami Ghanaini 29:16
So lately do you build those equipment by yourself?

Justin Orders
No, God, no, he does all that work. Um, I’m just, I just purchased, he sells it very cheap and I’m very happy to have him.

Hosami Ghanaini 29:26
Also, is there any vet for bees specialized here in Charlotte?

Justin Orders
Veterinarian for bees? To my knowledge, no. I think there’s more like sometimes beekeepers can or veterinarians can take a class like an ingenuity and case class on beekeeping and some of the, medicine that’s used for them. Um, but I would say the closest thing to what you’re describing would be a, there’s a state inspector that can come by and visit hives. I had, I had the state inspector come out to my, my ABR this spring, basically just say I could sell hives. I need, in order to sell 10 or more hives, I need a certification that allows me to do that in the state of North Carolina. So he came out and verified that my hive was hives were doing well and enough to sell. Yeah, that’s like the closest thing we have to that.

Hosami Ghanaini 30:28
So also this state inspector has to come if you want to like sell just honey or is it like connected to a hive?

Justin Orders
No, you can get, um, sometimes it’s not allowed or it’s not required that you get someone to verify that your honey is, for instance, like NC certified, but it is something you can do. You can get, like, you can get a little sticker you can put on your bottle as it says, it says NC certified honey, but you don’t, you’re not allowed to do that. Does it, you’re selling 10 or more hives?

Hosami Ghanaini 31:01
Also regarding Charlotte, you’re like, is it possible if you have like a small house to have like a couple of boxes or a couple of hives in your house or speaking the flow is like, is it permissible to have this kind of?

Justin Orders
Yeah, absolutely. This is, um, there’s no land ordinance or anything that tells people how many hives they can have or can’t have. And Davidson, I know there is a limitation. They say you can only have four hives in your, in your, on your property. But here in Charlotte and the town of Charlotte and or technically in Huntersville too, there’s, there’s nothing that says you can’t, you know, limit on how many hives you have.

Hosami Ghanaini 31:41
Okay. Do you collaborate with any other beekeeping like work together, beekeeper, any other farmers?

Justin Orders
No, not really. I, again, I may do something where I reach out to a farm. There’s a farm right at the road from here, not half a mile down the road. And if it came to it, I would maybe put the bees on there. But yeah, I’m just solo for right now.

Hosami Ghanaini 32:18
Speaking of your website, what motivated you to start writing your blogs and being in the website writing articles?

Justin Orders
Oh yeah, I mean, I like writing. I also understand that having blogs and having a presence on my website is pretty important to, you know, SEO, search engine optimization and just like making my website seem more active than it is. It’s difficult because I’m the only person doing it, doing the work. And I, again, I struggle to have time to do such, but I do enjoy doing it. And I do get really usually good response from what I share. So that’s always nice too.

Hosami Ghanaini 32:48
You also teach people, right?

Justin Orders
Yeah, I teach people how to become beekeepers, people, you know, for instance, if they want to have a hive, but also take care of it, I’ll coach them on how to take care of the hive and maybe do that for a year, maybe just for a season and then eventually they can do it themselves.

Hosami Ghanaini 33:04
So do you make like some kind of courses like workshops, maybe?

Justin Orders
That’s a very good idea. No, most of what I do is I just kind of run them through what it’s, you know, what each season yields and kind of just go through the everything, all the things that you should expect. Occasionally I’ll have like a, if I have maybe, you know, a handful of people that want to come out and see some hives for the first time, I’ll do an apiary tour and give them a little, kind of like what I just showed you there, I’ll give them a little bit of a show and show them, you know, what I do in a day with as a beekeeper and see if that interests them.

Hosami Ghanaini 33:40
Do you have any other work on social media, like other platforms or any website?

Justin Orders
Absolutely, I’m on all the social media, not all of them, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, you know, I share, I do a lot of educational videos more for advocacy as far as like here, you know, kind of like what I would show people if I was teaching them how to keep bees, I would show them, hey, this is what this looks like, hey, this is what this looks like, you know, things that interest me and I feel like other people will be interested in too.

Hosami Ghanaini 34:13
So does this platform help you like sharing your experience and sharing your like work with other people? Do you get like other people contacting you like a lot from these platforms?

Justin Orders
I wouldn’t say that, but it is nice every once in a while, you know, people will say, oh, I saw this video and reference me or whatever, and that’s just nice to know that my, my, my bandwidth is getting that far, is reaching that far. So yeah, you know, it’s, it’s nice for connections, but most of the time it’s just nice to get a response or a comment or something like that. I know one of my, one of my videos that got on Facebook got like millions of views.

Hosami Ghanaini
Really?

Justin Orders
And yeah, I now have like 5000 followers on Facebook. It’s really, it’s kind of unsustainable. You know, you hit viral. It’s just, you just post and then every once in a while you’ll have a post that just like takes off like wildfire and that’s exactly what happened. Now I get an app, I call these followers on Facebook who I have no idea who they are or whatever and why they’re still following me, but yeah, pretty cool.

Hosami Ghanaini 35:27
What was this video about?

Justin Orders
I’ll show you. It’s a wasp. It’s very short and honestly it kind of, it’s weird because I put a lot of work into a lot of the videos that I do and this, this one was not a lot of work. It was just a video.

Hosami Ghanaini 35:43
Are you also on TikTok?

Justin Orders
Yeah, I don’t post as much on TikTok, but I guess I should do more because I know that the potential for virality is a lot higher with that social media program. Yeah.

Hosami Ghanaini 36:09
So speaking also of sustainability and getting to people, how has like beekeeping impacted your perspective on the environment and sustainability? Like speaking of the big picture of fun?

Justin Orders
Yeah, I mean, we’re all responsible for what happens in our environment. I mean, some more than others, of course, corporations and businesses that are polluting environments intentionally and dealing with the fines or whatever. That’s one thing. But also, what we put in our yards, what we grow in our yards, what we do to our yards, cutting grass, how sustainable is all that if we’re all doing it at the same time and throughout the year. It can be very tricky, but just understanding, again, we all are responsible and I’ll play a role in whether that’s buying hive or planting some native flowers or whatever. Maybe we can all do something.

Hosami Ghanaini 37:09
Those companies are big like figures in the industry? They play a key role in beekeeping and farming in general?

Justin Orders
I want to say they play a key role in it. Every once in a while, there’ll be some beekeepers will say, “Oh, my bees died and they had some pesticide exposure.” And maybe that’s because the wherever area that the bees were around were being treated by pesticides. But I wouldn’t say that’s happening all the time. I would just say I’d say that’s more ecological, environmental disasters and stuff like that. That’s a lot of stuff that’s really completely out of our hands.

Hosami Ghanaini
So it’s more complicated than only one factory.

Justin Orders
Yeah, absolutely. And here’s the video. It’s a wasp on top of a frame of bees.

Hosami Ghanaini
Wow.It has like many likes and many bees.

Justin Orders
Yeah, I think it got 2.5 million bees. It just was crazy. I didn’t even realize too because I have notifications turned off on Facebook. They just get a ton of stuff there and then all of a sudden with them just erupted one day like what is going on?

Hosami Ghanaini 38:31
So also speaking of companies and bees, is there other pollinators than bees? Or voting only bees as pollinators? Or we have many other pollinators than bees?

Justin Orders
Oh yeah, there’s a ton more pollinators than bees. There’s bees pollinate, wasp, yellow jackets pollinate, flies, moths, butterflies, bats, even mosquitoes I’m told pollinate some things. So yeah, there’s a ton more pollinators and what I want people to understand is like it’s not just about saving honey bees. It’s definitely not just about saving honey bees. It’s about saving all pollinators and helping, you know, like all the things they plant around here. They have flowers that are forged on for days and days and days by a host of different species of insects and you know, just buying hive isn’t going to save the planet. It’s while that may help and else it may not help. Really the more focus should be on you know what can we do to provide for native pollinators or just pollinators in general by giving them food, not just planting a bunch of grass and grass to eat. It’s like what you know what can actually help them out.

Hosami Ghanaini 39:41
So do you work with other pollinators than bees?

Justin Orders
Not really no, I only keep honey bees but I do some, I wouldn’t say I would work with them but I do some work with the landscaper out in East Charlotte. He does some work with planting native species of plants that are good for pollinators. So yeah, I definitely know of ways to help them out but I don’t work with them specifically.

Hosami Ghanaini 20:09
Do you think your background as a student at UNCC has backed it also your work in beekeeping?

Justin Orders
Absolutely, 100%. Yes.

Hosami Ghanaini
How is that?

Justin Orders
I mean I learned a lot from just like I took a insect biology class, I took a zoology class, it took a lot of my focus was on conservation and to get a kind of understanding like the delicate balance that a lot of ecologies environments have. So yeah, I think at least I learned a lot from that, at least I sparked an interest in me to want to learn more and understand more. But yeah, I know I definitely, I think I’ve very much aligned with what I do now at least.

Hosami Ghanaini 41:00
Well, that’s very interesting. So if you could give your past self one piece of advice, what would it be?

Justin Orders
I don’t know. I think we all say relax because we you know hindsight is 2020 everything but even then it seems like some of the my reactions were worthy of being anxious or at least excited about. So I don’t know it’s maybe I haven’t seen everything come down. I would probably say make more of a social media for evidence but at the same time like it doesn’t mean that much to me. I still have a pretty good business things are working out pretty good so yeah I don’t know it’s a good question. I don’t think about that a lot.

Hosami Ghanaini 41:49
So also if you could give yourself one piece of warning what could it be? You made like a mistake in your first tears as a beekeeper.

Justin Orders
You gotta feed your bees. Best if you take the honey off. If you take the honey off the bees, they’re that’s their honey for the ear you know and that’s their food source for the year. So like that what I was talking about in 2022 where a lot of bees died that was because of starvation because they didn’t feed them enough after I took off a lot of honey from them. I just thought they’d be okay and they were not because that was a very anxious very anxious year. Yeah definitely that.

Hosami Ghanaini 42:30
So also if you have like hopes or dreams of for your farm when your hive is in the future.

Justin Orders
Yeah I definitely hope to expand this maybe to another place. But yeah I just want to I really want to do more in advocacy and teaching people about bees and kind of disarming their beliefs that bees are like aggressive and wanting to sting them. You know anything I can do to kind of educate and again calm people about pollinators and bees I think would be great.

Hosami Ghanaini 43:08
Yeah this is also connected to my next question. What is an aspect of beekeeping that people often misunderstood?

Justin Orders
It’s hard work. I don’t know if people understand that. It’s just the amount of work. It’s very difficult very strenuous very yeah sometimes it could be up to Austin wearing a bee suit in the middle of August and lifting boxes and moving bees around. Yeah it’s heavy lifting a lot of work. But also perhaps the people that understand how rewarding this is it’s very very nice to be around bees. It’s a very calming aspect to it.

Hosami Ghanaini 43:54
Also in Charlotte what do you envision for the future of farming and beekeeping in Charlotte in general?

Justin Orders
I like to see a lot more micro farms urban farms. I’d like to see more people getting into that perhaps getting away from careers that don’t really suit them and maybe opening up farms especially areas for their maybe food deserts where there’s not a whole lot of organic homegrown foods you know like things from all over the place things from all over the country the world. I’d like to see more of that where we reveal the on farms and places away from here but really because it’s a great place to grow to grow not just again not just that bees but also have farms and gardens it’s a very good state an area for that so I’d like to see much more of that.

Hosami Ghanaini 44:45
Okay so are there any other questions I should have asked you about beekeeping or I didn’t ask for the beekeeping?

Justin Orders
That’s a good question. Um no honestly I think he really hit a lot of the the nails on the head with with everything and I just want to emphasize again while again beekeeping is great and it’s great to keep honeybees the the focus towards pollinators should not just be on honeybees it should be all pollinators all the matter like it’s not just specifically honeybees so however you can get that word out and that I said that I think that would do everyone much the better.

Hosami Ghanaini 45:30
Thank you so much Justin.

Justin Orders
Of course, thank you for the opportunity.

Hosami Ghanaini
Thank you.