Idaho resident Bill Kindall estimates that in his 54 years as a full-time commercial beekeeper that he's managed and raised nearly 15 billion bees. If you were ever on the TV game show “The Millionaire” and were asked the following million-dollar question, “What’s the deepest canyon in the United States? Almost everybody would respond immediately the Grand Canyon in Arizona. Unfortunately, that’s the wrong answer. Most people are surprised when they learn that in fact the deepest canyon in the U. S. and all of North America as well is “Hell’s Canyon” on the Snake River that borders between the states of Idaho, Oregon and Washington. For millions of years the waters of the Snake River have gouged out a deep path that winds below the surrounding mountain rims. On the Idaho east rim of the ten-mile-wide and 70 mile long Hell’s Canyon gorge the taller peaks of the Seven Devils Mountains are nearly 8,000 feet tall. At one time gold seekers mined the river bars along this stretch of the river. Today this region is known as the Hell’s Canyon Recreation Area and flat-bottomed jet boats skim across the numerous rapids hauling tourists on sight-seeing day trips. Whitewater rafting, camping, hiking, swimming, boating, fishing and kayaking are also popular summer seasonal activities in the region. In the early 1800’s explorers like Lewis and Clark turned back from attempting passage down the Snake River and sought a safer land route through the mountains on their trip to reach the Pacific Ocean. The same western Idaho mountain slopes and river banks of the 1,038 mile Snake River that turned back the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery party 200 years ago, today provides honey bee yard sites for Kindall Apiary, a family-owned beekeeping operation, based out of Payette, Idaho (pop. 6,000). The town of Payette is located on the western edge of the Treasure Valley on the banks of the Snake River. Payette is also the geographic location where the Snake River turns north for some 150 miles flowing through Hells Canyon before it eventually flows westward into Washington State and empties into the larger Columbia River in route to the Pacific Ocean. The Kindalls are fourth and fifth generation beekeepers. Bill Kindall, at 71 years of age, claims he’s slowed down a little (due mainly to health issues over the past few years). The family bee business manages some 3,000 to 3,500 hives and he now lets his three grown sons do most of the heavy work, as well as supervising the day-to-day operations. He stated that Kindall’s Apiaries is kept all in the family, as there aren’t any other employees. Of course, he admits that his wife Judy is the “matriarch” of the family and rules everything. Besides helping with the bees, she also keeps track of the bookkeeping. Married for 46 years, their sons (all full-time fifth generation beekeepers) are Jim, 43; Teke, 40; and Bob, 37. Bill and Judy also have seven grandchildren. The actual name of their family bee operation is W.C. Kindall Apiary. The bee business has been in existence since 1910 and was originally run by H (Henry) Wiedner, a well-known Idaho beekeeper. Bill and his dad (Charles F. Kindall) bought the business from Henry’s widow in 1966, changed the name and later moved onto the property that included a house and barn that sets on the edge of Payette and is zoned commercial. The old barn, built in 1910, has been used as a bee shop since its construction. This past winter, while they were in California, much of the roof was damaged from a windstorm. The structure has since been torn down and the Kindalls are planning to rebuild it sometime in the future. He claims beekeeping is “kinda in their blood,” as his mom’s dad (William Alexander Grigg) was also a beekeeper, along with four uncles, three nephews and a few cousins. Bill’s been keeping and working bees since he was old enough to pick up a hive tool and smoker. He’s been full time since the age of 16, some 54 years ago. He says his tried and true beekeeping methods, which he’s passed on to his sons, are based on practical experience and a process of elimination. His philosophy, “If it works, then continue doing it and if it doesn’t, stop.” Bill said he had to make a life-changing career decision years ago when he began working fulltime with bees. “I asked myself whether I wanted to live to work bees, or work bees to live? I didn’t want to be like some beekeepers who are a slave to their bees and are so busy they never have time to enjoy life.” He was born and raised near the town of Middleton, which is mid-way between his hometown and the state capital of Boise, some 50 miles southeast of Payette. He has three brothers who are all full time beekeepers. Phillip and Joe live around the town of Cambridge (50 miles north of Payette) and Harvey lives in Livingston, Montana. Together they (all the Kindalls) have some 11,000 beehives between them. Bill said, “Although all my brothers have separate bee operations of their own, if there’s a problem, or an emergency and a machine breaks down, we’ll come and help each other as needed.” During the honey flow season they set bees at some 60 different bee yards up and down the Weiser, Payette and Snake Rivers in a three county-wide area. Although they don’t pollinate agriculture seed crops in Idaho, there are a lot of onion fields in the Treasure Valley and their bees do forage on some of these fields. Bill said that years ago farming in the area consisted of perhaps 50 percent alfalfa seed, but today there’s a variety of crops besides alfalfa and clover, including onions, sugar beets, wheat and corn. The main honey-producing plants in the region, according to Bill, are dandelions in the spring and then in the summer it’s alfalfa, yellow and white clover and loosestrife. In the fall the biggest honey bee forage is wild buckwheat. He said that if the area gets some rain, sometimes the buckwheat produces more honey in the fall months than the entire summer. He likes the purple loosestrife plants, even though state and federal agriculture departments term it a noxious weed and have tried to eradicate it. Due to the fact that southern Idaho is basically a desert with hot summer temperatures, the Kindalls made a decision several years ago to concentrate their efforts on bee pollination in the California almond orchards for their main source of income instead of extracting honey. For the 2010 season they signed pollination contracts averaging $140 per hive. He tells the story about one of his brothers who committed his bees to an almond orchard owner on one day and the next day he was contacted by another desperate owner who was willing to pay an additional $60, or $200 per hive. They ship their bees to California each winter for almond pollination and have been setting them in the same groves there since 1976. Bill said that usually by January 15th of each year they’ll start shipping bees to California by contracting a semi truck that makes six round trips with an approximate cost of $2,500 per round trip. In looking back at the 2010 almond pollination season in California, Bill said, “It was one of the worst seasons I’ve seen in the past 30 years. The weather was cold and it rained most of the season. We sent 3,000 heavy, healthy hives to the almond orchards and most came back fairly light with little build up. In fact, the semi-truck hauling their bees back to Idaho averaged 3,500 pounds lighter per load on the return trip.” All honey supers (except for one per hive) produced from bees foraging from their yards are pulled off and placed into storage. Then, this super is later removed in the fall and placed into storage. After this super is removed, we begin feeding liquid syrup. On occasion, they do extract some small amounts of honey for sale, but currently their Dakota uncapper needs repaired, which they planned to do this summer. Bill explained that he’s probably the only commercial beekeeper he knows whodoesn’t extract most of the honey, but he feels the bees benefit and it gives them a good healthy start, which they need in the spring when they return from California. If they have too, they’ll also feed their bees and nucs with one-gallon jugs of sugar-water. Every autumn they also yard (in a hundred acre field they’ve leased for the past 40 years) all their bees for a few cooler months on the Oregon side of the Snake River. In January, it’s their sons’ job to dig the hives out of the snow and inspect all the colonies before loading them onto a semi for transport to warmer weather in California. Both Bill and Judy travel to California in mid-January to unload bees. Bill said that because the bees have already all been gone through by their sons before they arrive in California, “All we have to do is unload them and set them straight into the almond groves. By doing so there’s less drift of bees away from the hives when they’re released, plus you don’t have to stop and feed them.” By the time the hives are shipped to the Golden state, they’ve been inspected and gone through several times and fall fed with sugar syrup. According to Bill, a semi will hold about 488 hives per load before it is maxed out weight-wise. Bill said that when they pull the bees from their summer beeyards, they remove honey supers and place them into storage to be used in the spring for bee food when the bees return from California. Bill explained, “In the past in the spring we’ve had to spend time and money pumping syrup for the hives. By adding a full honey super (which was set aside last fall) and splitting big hives, we don’t have to stop and feed. It’s more efficient and all we have to do is requeen if needed. There’s also less swarming.” In the past, Bill’s main beekeeping job in Idaho was making queen cells. He said he normally raised between 6,000 to 7,000 queen cells per year and sometimes they’ll have extras they didn’t need. When they do, they’ll usually end up giving them away to beekeeping friends. But this year, he didn’t raise queens, but instead bought queens from Jordan Demick, an eastern Oregon commercial beekeeper, to expand their honey bee genetic pool. They have mostly Carniolan honey bees in their hives. Their bee equipment includes seven bee trucks: three one tons, a 1 ½ ton, two 2 tons, and one 2 ½ ton. Bill said normally, due largely to fuel costs, they just use the smallest truck that will get the job done. They also have three 4-wheel drive Jeep homemade forklifts, plus a Bobcat 130. Bill’s proud of his flatbed bee truck. He designed the flatbed by using an old truck frame that had been lying around in the weeds by the shop for 35 years. Not only did he weld the old frame onto his truck bed, but cut and laid heavy wood planking on it and painted the boards white. He also designed a removable board so he could expose the fifth wheel connection for their RV trailer that they use on weekend camping outings. Bill said that because of all the rain they had this spring, they had to move one bee yard from the rapidly rising waters of the Payette River. Also, because of all this moisture, there’s been an abundant growth of weeds and brush. “When everything dries out from the hot summer weather, I believe this year has the potential for having the worse fire conditions I’ve seen in the past 25 years.” Therefore, nearly all of their 60 bee yards are surrounded with high brush and weeds that have to be mowed, weed-whacked and then scraped down to bare soil to prevent damage from potential man-caused, or lightning fires. By mid-July 2010, Bill said his sons had been busy each day working in the hot sun in 90 degree plus weather weeding, mowing and clearing around and between hives. Bill said he welded a home-built scraper onto his Bobcat for the scraping duties. When he’s not working with bees, Bill keeps busy with his knife-making hobby which brings in an additional part time income of $2,000 to $3,000 per year. About eight years ago he started working with obsidian making knives, arrowheads, tomahawks and spearheads. He first learned the skill when he was about 11 years old from an old Paiute Native American from Nevada that his dad had befriended. It wasn’t until decades later that he took up knife-making in earnest as a hobby. Obsidian is a volcanic rock usually found in lava beds in North America ranging from California to Washington State in the Cascade Mountain Range. It occurred when lava spewing from an eruption cooled rapidly when it came into contact with water. The end result was a glass-like textured material, usually dark in appearance, with colors ranging from black, to dark green, to dark brown and occasionally with white clusters mixed in. Bill explained that Native Americans have been using the material for thousands of years to make hunting and warring tools and it has a real sharp edge to it. In fact, obsidian is so sharp it is used for surgical scalpels in hospitals. Bill said he usually makes about 100 knives per year. Each year he donates some of his knives to the Idaho Honey Producers Association for an auction fundraiser at their annual fall meeting. Judy makes stone necklaces as a hobby, which she also donates for sale at regional annual bee and honey association meetings. Actually, Bill gives credit to his wife Judy for his knife-making hobby. She suggested that he do it as a hobby and stop complaining about the quality of homemade knives he’d seen at art and craft shows. Judy recalls that every time Bill would see a homemade knife at an arts and craft show, he’d state, “I can do a better job than that. Finally, I told him to stop complaining and prove it by making his own knives. So he did.” Bill tells the story that several years ago, as they were returning from California after placing bees in the almond orchards, they were driving through a remote stretch of highway near Glass Butte, Oregon (between Bend and Burns). They stopped on a side ranch road when Judy spotted some obsidian. While they were gathering a bucket of obsidian, the ranch owner drove up and asked what they were doing. They explained who they were and what they were doing. He said, “Oh, I’ve got a whole mountain of obsidian in the back of my place.” He drew a map to the area, gave them permission to gather it and told them to be sure to shut the gates. Since then, they’ve made annual stops at the ranch to gather the rocks. They have also found another obsidian gathering location at Davis Creek in northeast California. Over the years Bill has donated a number of his custom-made obsidian knives with hardwood handles and holders to Northwest beekeeping and honey-producing organizations as a fundraiser. Bill is part native American himself (Cherokee) and attends an annual Pow Wow for the Nez Perce Tribe at the town of Wallowa, in eastern Oregon, where he donates his knives to help raise money for that tribe’s repurchase of reservation land fund. As the sun sets on southwestern Idaho along the Snake River, commercial beekeeper Bill Kindall has learned to live with some 15 billion honey bees. Although age has slowed him down a little, he still keeps his beekeeping skills honed and sharpened just like his obsidian knives.