In this episode, we talk to a beekeeper who explains how bees communicate with each other and other bees in order to stay together in a colony. We also talk about the different types of worker bees and how they can survive the winter and survive the harsh conditions of the cold, hardy spring and hardy summer. This is the first episode in a new series called "You and the Bees" hosted by me and the bees. I became fascinated with bees when we did an outdoor episode of "Fear Factor" where we had to cover a group of bees and it was this outdoor thing that we did at this ranch. And while we were doing it, a local hive of bees came over and interacted with our bees and we shut down production while they worked out what to do with these other bees. And they did what they needed to do to stay with their colony and keep them from going to another colony. And guess what? They found a way to communicate with the other bees and managed to stay in their colony. How did they do it? What are they doing? How do they do that? And how do they stay together? Is it possible that bees who are loner bees survive in the winter? Can they survive the hard, cold, harsh conditions? Do they leave their colonies and find other colonies? Are they able to survive the cold and hardier spring and make it through the hardier than other bees? or do they die in the hardiest months of the rest of the year? We'll find out on the answer to these questions and find out! I hope you enjoy this week's episode of You and The Bees! and learn more about honeybees! Thank you for listening to this episode! You are amazing bees! - thank you so much for allowing me to be a part of your life! I m so excited to have you be a guest on the You and the Honey Podcast! xoxo, Caitlyn podcast! Caitlynn and the honeybee podcast - Caitlyn's first podcast, You & the Bees by the Honeybee . is a new podcast, This is a podcast about honey, and I am so excited about the honeybees, and so much honey, I can't wait to talk about it! (Thank you for letting me have you listen to this podcast, and it's so much more!
00:00:55.000And he's like, well, they're going to communicate because these bees are trying to figure out why these bees are here, why our bees are there.
00:01:02.000And I go, they're going to communicate?
00:01:27.000We don't know everything there is to know about bees.
00:01:30.000Bees have been around for 120 million years.
00:01:33.000We've been keeping bees for maybe 10,000.
00:01:36.000If I were to think I knew more than the bees, that would be so foolish of me.
00:01:42.000But we do know some of the ways that bees communicate.
00:01:46.000They communicate through scents, through pheromones a lot, through these chemical signals that they're sending out to the entire colony to let this colony that's a superorganism know what's going on.
00:01:57.000And so in your case, you had one colony of bees.
00:02:01.000A colony is the collective noun for a group of bees, whereas a hive is the box they live in.
00:02:08.000So you had these two colonies, you know, who met and were trying to make sure they all stayed together and they all stayed with their queen and went to the right place.
00:02:17.000And, you know, it sounds like you had a bunch of bees in one area and bees are social creatures.
00:02:21.000So they were attracted to the sense of these other bees and were there to see what's going on.
00:02:27.000And, you know, they eventually figured it out and everybody went back to their respective places and...
00:02:46.000The queen has a queen mandibular pheromone.
00:02:49.000She is sending out scent signals, pheromones to the colony and they're always communicating with each other and the queen and the worker bees have this wonderful system of checks and balances to make sure that everything gets done within the hive and that the colony is doing what it needs to.
00:03:07.000Is it possible that bees who are like loner bees could integrate with another hive?
00:04:00.000So a worker bee, and we're talking about honeybees, western honeybees, the ones you see me keep, the lifespan of a female worker bee varies throughout the year.
00:04:12.000So in the spring and summer, when the bees are working their hardest, the female worker bees will only live about six weeks.
00:04:19.000In the winter, when they're not doing quite as much and when we need more bees to make it through the winter, they'll live a little bit longer and they'll live about six months and their bodies actually change in the winter.
00:04:31.000The bees that are born later in the year and need to make it through the winter will have more fat bodies on them so that they can make it through the dearth when there's nothing in bloom and when bees are living off the honey that they collected or stored in their hive earlier in the year.
00:04:54.000Most queens will live a little bit shorter, but she can live significantly longer than all the other bees in the hive.
00:05:01.000And then we have the worker bees who live about six weeks, six months.
00:05:07.000The queen bee can live up to five years, and the drone bees will live about six months, the male bees.
00:05:11.000And what is the ratio of male bees to female bees?
00:05:16.000A honeybee colony is about 95% female, and the amount of male bees can actually fluctuate throughout the year.
00:05:25.000So when we need male bees around to mate with a queen, and they'll mate with a queen, not their queen, but when we need more male bees around, the colony will produce more male bees.
00:05:37.000In the winter, when there aren't as many resources available to the bees, The female bees will kick all the male bees out of the hive and they'll either starve or freeze to death.
00:05:48.000So right now there are no male bees in most hives.
00:05:53.000In these bees that came along with me today, there's not a single male honeybee there.
00:06:04.000So most people have never seen a male honeybee before, and that's just because male honeybees are out in the world doing the work of bees.
00:06:13.000They stay in the hive or they leave and they go to drone congregation areas to mate with a queen, but they're not going to be on a flower or in your wine glass or whatnot.
00:06:23.000So the male bees don't mate with their own females.
00:06:26.000Would that be like mating with the mother?
00:06:30.000So here's what happens within the colony when it's time for the queen bee to mate.
00:06:37.000So once a queen bee is born, when she reaches the ripe age of about seven days old, she'll go on a mating flight.
00:06:44.000And she may go on only one, possibly two mating flights in her entire life.
00:06:49.000And she'll fly out of the hive and she'll go to a drone congregation area, which is exactly what it sounds like.
00:06:55.000It's an area where there's a bunch of drone male honeybees flying around just waiting for a queen bee to fly by.
00:07:03.000And these drone congregation areas exist about 100 feet in the sky, which is another reason you would never see a male honeybee.
00:07:12.000If a queen bee flies by, the fastest, strongest drones win, and they will successfully mate with a queen, and the queen will mate with only about 15 to 20 drone bees, and she'll have enough sperm to last the rest of her life.
00:07:27.000And what happens to the male bees is once they mate with a queen, their endophallus rips out of their abdominal cavity and they fall to the ground, and that's the end of their little bee life.
00:08:11.000Is there a specific time of the year where the males know that the female queen is going to be flying around?
00:08:16.000Sure, in the spring and in the summer.
00:08:18.000And that's when, you know, that's their only job.
00:08:20.000So if they're present, that's what they're trying to do.
00:08:22.000And that's why the colony controls how many drones there are.
00:08:26.000So right now, in the hive, there aren't that many drone bees.
00:08:31.000They're trying to conserve the resources they have.
00:08:34.000So the honey that we eat from bees is their food source in the winter when nothing is in bloom and there's no flowers out there for them to forage from.
00:08:59.000Some research will show that they're contributing to the heating of the hive, but they're really not doing a lot of work, even when you see them in the colony.
00:09:08.000Not only can you distinguish them because they look different from the female worker bees, they're larger than the female worker bees, but they're not doing anything.
00:09:19.000They're kind of fumbling and bumbling around, so they really don't have a lot of purpose, which is why there aren't that many of them.
00:09:28.000We have to keep in mind they only make up about 5% of the population, maybe 10, sometimes zero.
00:09:34.000There aren't that many male honeybees, and I always love sharing with people that they probably have never seen one.
00:09:40.000So if you're ever near an observation hive or have the opportunity to go into a hive with a beekeeper, you know, I encourage folks to do that and make sure you ask to see a male honeybee.
00:09:49.000So they fly up in the air and they put a pheromone out that lets the queen know that they're there?
00:09:56.000Yes, the drones will emit a pheromone.
00:10:01.000These drone congregation areas still remain somewhat of a mystery.
00:10:06.000They seem to be a place that the drones will go back to annually, but we don't really know why or how they select these areas.
00:10:15.000Some research that shows, you know, they're covered by wind.
00:10:18.000They're going to be a safe area for the bees to fly around.
00:12:08.000Well, the comb building is a really interesting process because we see it as hexagonal comb, right?
00:12:17.000We see little hexagons within the hive, but they actually start off building it as circles.
00:12:22.000So the weight of the hive will bring it down.
00:12:27.000The way that they build the comb is actually up at an angle so that the honey doesn't seep out.
00:12:32.000It's remarkable what they have figured out how to do as a species, how to engineer this perfect building and do it out of beeswax, out of something that their body produces naturally.
00:12:45.000I mean, I can think of no better example that nature has given us for a sustainable creature that can build its home out of, you know, something that comes off of its body and just...
00:12:56.000Live with what's around them and then always leave the world better than they found it.
00:13:04.000But do we have any sort of studies on what is the process that's going on within them that allows them to know when it's time to create these combs?
00:13:17.000I don't know if it's when it's time to create the combs.
00:13:20.000I mean, they start creating a comb as soon as they find a cavity to build in.
00:13:24.000Most of the comb building takes place within the first 40 days.
00:13:28.000The bees will build the majority of their hives.
00:13:31.000So I don't know for sure, but I would say it's just a natural instinct.
00:13:36.000When they find a place to live, they need And they need a place to bring up their young.
00:15:01.000So they can, and on occasion they will if a colony is queenless, but it doesn't mean the colony can continue.
00:15:10.000So without a queen, a colony can't continue.
00:15:13.000So as a last resort is the only time you will see female worker bees laying eggs in a colony.
00:15:20.000And they will lay eggs that turn into bees that look different.
00:15:24.000They're male drone bees, and so their larvae and their pupae look a little bit different than the worker bees.
00:15:30.000And so as a beekeeper, if you see a colony full of male honeybee babies, brood eggs and larvae, it's a sign that a colony may be without a queen.
00:15:43.000So as a beekeeper, you can introduce a new queen to the colony and likely they'll accept her.
00:15:49.000You can also give the colony eggs from another colony that are female eggs, so female bee eggs.
00:15:57.000Any female bee egg can be made into a queen bee.
00:16:01.000So if you give a colony that's queenless the opportunity to make their own queen, that's sometimes even better than introducing a new queen to them.
00:16:10.000And the way that a queen bee is made is when the queen bee lays an egg and if it's a female worker bee egg, which most of them are because again 95% of the colony's population is female, Every bee in the first three days of their life,
00:17:17.000Well, it's not always the queen that knows, and it's more the colony that's making the decision.
00:17:22.000So we often think of, you know, a colony of bees being a monarchy where the queen is in charge and making all of the decisions, but that's not the case at all.
00:17:36.000It's the collective of female worker bees making that decision.
00:17:39.000And they can take any female egg and turn it into a queen bee, not only by that diet of royal jelly, but they will also make the cell that the bee is born into a little bit bigger to accommodate the queen bee's larger body size.
00:17:54.000So it's actually the group of female worker bees that's making that decision.
00:17:59.000And the queen bee doesn't always know when she's In her final days, it's the colony that would know.
00:18:04.000Her pheromones would get weaker and they would prepare for having a new queen and sometimes even have a new queen develop while their old queen is still alive.
00:18:15.000And in the case that you have a colony with an older queen who is failing and a new queen who just emerged from a cell, The queens will fight to the death.
00:19:10.000She's the only bee that defecates in the hive.
00:19:14.000All the other bees defecate outside the hive, and she has bees that clean up after her.
00:19:18.000She has, like, a royal court of attendant bees that follow her around and take care of all of her needs.
00:19:24.000Is there ever a time where the queen, like, something eats her or something attacks the queen?
00:19:31.000I mean, the queens will die naturally all the time.
00:19:35.000But is there like an insect or anything?
00:19:37.000There's nothing that would seek out the queen.
00:19:39.000But, you know, swarming is a dangerous endeavor and sometimes the queens don't always make it.
00:19:45.000So swarming is when the bees will decide to leave their hive and make another, either, you know, they're trying to make another bee colony or they're trying to find a new place to live.
00:19:54.000And that's a dangerous trip for the queen.
00:19:57.000That's why, you know, the queen doesn't really leave the hive that often.
00:20:01.000When I'm going to remove bees, I'll find a healthy colony either without a queen or sometimes I'll find a deceased queen and I'll have to, you know, do what I need to, either introduce a new queen or give them eggs or something.
00:20:14.000But without that, without you intervening, what would happen to them?
00:20:18.000Then the colony would naturally perish.
00:20:26.000You know, I mean, it's a super organism.
00:20:28.000So that queen bee is really, you can think of her as the reproductive organ of this larger being that is the bee colony.
00:20:36.000And so without her, without that, it can't continue.
00:20:41.000So I've seen videos of you where you've moved colonies of bees and one of the things you do is you isolate the queen and then you move the queen to a new place and all the bees go with the queen.
00:21:16.000So, you know, I just start working my way through the hive and I'm always looking for the queen.
00:21:23.000Finding the queen in a bee removal is the key to a successful bee removal because obviously we've talked about the importance of the queen, but the colony really wants to be with their queen and so they will naturally follow her.
00:21:37.000And once you find the queen and have control of the queen, you can control the colony.
00:21:44.000And so that's why it's so important for me as a beekeeper during these removals to always find the queen.
00:21:55.000You know, if it's a really, really large hive, I mean, if it's five, eight feet of comb in the walls of someone's shed or in Someone's, you know, backyard compost bin or whatnot.
00:22:27.000She's the only bee laying eggs in the colony, so that naturally looks a little different.
00:22:32.000She also has this kind of retinue that follows her around this circle of bees that is guiding her and giving her these signals on what to do.
00:22:42.000So there's clues that the bees will give you on her location.
00:22:46.000And, you know, if I'm moving bees from point A to point B and I don't know where the queen is, typically where most of the bees congregate.
00:24:14.000Well, if they don't have all the resources they need, if they're in a bad spot, if they don't have a queen, a large colony tends to be more defensive than a smaller one because they have more resources to defend.
00:24:26.000So, sometimes you'll see me do this, and it's a small swarm, so it's a swarm where there's no comb, there's no beeswax, there's no nectar, pollen, or honey, there's no baby bees, so they don't have anything to defend.
00:24:42.000They're much gentler, you know, in those cases most of the time.
00:25:18.000You know, they felt like they didn't have the resources they needed around their hive and they wanted to move where there were better resources.
00:25:27.000But that cavity in particular, a wall or the side of a shed or the floor of a shed is a very common place that I remove bees from.
00:25:38.000And that's because it's a common place.
00:26:27.000So I saw Zod through that and sometimes they don't like the vibrations of the...
00:26:33.000Tools that I'm using and this is the first I have no idea what to expect if how defensive they'll be so So this is your first exposure to these particular bees you're cutting through we're what for the folks who are just listening she's at shed and she's Sawing through the side of the shed where the bees were using my saw There's your voice very calm and soothing and are you getting stung here?
00:27:00.000No, these bees are not trying to sting me at all.
00:28:02.000That's your most joyful moment to just take a bite out of their house?
00:28:05.000No, but this whole removal process, there's nothing I'd rather be doing.
00:28:10.000That's what you love to do the most, is to find them and...
00:28:14.000I almost wish someone could monitor my brain and watch it light up as I do this work because there's so many points that are just so exciting throughout the process.
00:28:24.000I don't really know what to expect beforehand, so I get there and I see the high for the first time and I go, It might fill the whole wall.
00:28:33.000And sure enough, you know, then once I saw through the side and get through it, it does.
00:28:38.000And there's definitely another dopamine hit when I first see that beehive.
00:28:42.000And just like you said, wow, look at that comb.
00:28:44.000I mean, for me, it's times 10. And for the folks listening, this is a massive comb.
00:28:50.000Like, this whole thing is, like, looks like it's about 12 feet tall.
00:28:55.000And the comb goes all the way up the side in six or seven different rows.
00:29:01.000So there's like, how many bees are in there?
00:31:55.000You know, this is an observation hive, and there is a small colony in it that I removed from just the back of a mailbox a couple weeks ago.
00:32:03.000This is the entire size of the colony.
00:32:48.000It was a pretty small colony, so I just kind of scooped them into the box I was putting them in, and then, yes, I had a queen clip that I put the queen into, so I'll capture the queen and I'll put her in a queen clip, and it has these little slots where she's the largest bee,
00:33:05.000so she can't escape, but the other bees, the worker bees, because they're smaller, they can go in and out through the clip and take care of the queen.
00:33:13.000Whoa, so you got her in a little prison?
00:33:18.000And she's in there right now in the little prison?
00:33:20.000She's not in the little prison in there.
00:33:21.000She's roaming about freely, hopefully laying eggs and doing what she needs to do.
00:33:26.000So when you are removing bees like you did from that shed, there comes a point where you realize that, you know, you can manage this without your equipment.
00:33:36.000Is that when you're the most happy, when you can take the gloves off and take the headgear off and all that jazz?
00:34:03.000I sort of came out of the box, a bug lover and an animal lover.
00:34:07.000And I was really lucky to have parents that encouraged and supported that as well.
00:34:13.000And I spent a lot of nights and weekends and time in my backyard as a kid collecting bugs and Putting them in jars and trying to keep them as pets or trying to study and observe them.
00:34:25.000My childhood idols growing up were Dr. Jane Goodall and Diane Fossey, and I wanted to be just like them.
00:34:33.000But, you know, as a seven or eight-year-old, I couldn't exactly go to the jungles of Africa to study primates.
00:34:38.000So I went in my backyard and I collected bugs.
00:34:47.000My love of bugs just continued my entire life.
00:34:51.000So over 10 years ago I took a beekeeping class and I started keeping a hive in my backyard in central Austin and really just fell in love with honeybees and became fascinated by their world and being able to step inside of it.
00:35:07.000So I started my beekeeping business when I still had a full-time job and I was doing bee work on nights, weekends, lunch breaks, but it was really all I wanted to do with my time.
00:36:02.000I mean, really the best way to learn something like this is experience, and that's how I've learned the most, is just doing as much bee work as I can.
00:36:12.000When I started my business, I didn't really know what my business was.
00:36:37.000I got asked to teach beekeeping classes, and eventually I got asked to do live bee removals and For me, that was just what I fell in love with as a beekeeper was being able to go into a hive and see how bees live and work naturally without a human making decisions for them.
00:36:58.000You know, it allowed me to learn more about bees and I could see so much that I would never experience in the little boxes that we as beekeepers have.
00:38:16.000Taking paneling off a wall and finding eight feet of comb, right?
00:38:21.000And they were relatively small which was easy for me and easy for me to handle but you know I just did as much of those as I could for as long as I could and then eventually started to do more and more removals and larger ones and just a lot of experience.
00:38:39.000So all the information that you know about in terms of like pheromones and how they construct the hive and how they create a queen and all that stuff, that's all stuff you've gotten from books?
00:38:50.000Books online, beekeeping conferences and events.
00:38:57.000I always like to say I'm an expert on my own experiences.
00:39:02.000I'm not a bee biologist or I'm not an entomologist studying bees.
00:39:08.000I just really love bees and have been so fortunate that I get to live a life where I get to work alongside them every day and I learn so much from them.
00:39:19.000It's so fascinating how different human beings are.
00:39:22.000I find bees interesting, but I couldn't imagine that being my favorite thing to do.
00:39:26.000But with you, just the way you talk about it, you light up.
00:39:33.000It's so interesting to watch someone who is absolutely enthralled with something that just seems like most people would not be enthralled by.
00:39:47.000I mean, when I do these bee removals, I meet a lot of people who are so happy to see me and they were just terrified of the bees, you know?
00:39:54.000And that's an element that doesn't always come through, like, in the videos that you see me do with the bees and working with the bees is there's this other side that you're really helping people.
00:40:51.000You know, I will say that I'm really lucky most of the people I meet naturally they're on the side of bees because they called a beekeeper to remove the bees versus an exterminator or doing something else.
00:41:02.000But a lot of times I show up and there was a fear of the bees and then, you know...
00:41:08.000The folks will watch me work, you know, through the glass of their back door.
00:41:14.000I've had people in their cars before watch me from the safety of their car.
00:41:19.000And, you know, by the end of it, they're out there asking if they can open the door and come out and take a photo or whatnot.
00:41:25.000And, you know, and I'm showing them the queen or whatnot in the clip.
00:41:29.000And it was interesting doing this work through the pandemic when, you know, a lot of the times I would do bee removals and I wouldn't see people that often because I would show up and they weren't there.
00:41:42.000Us beekeepers were kind of like the original social distancers.
00:41:46.000We show up and nobody wants to be around us.
00:41:50.000I don't think it's an uncommon trait of beekeepers to be more introverted and just want to spend their time around these insects who may or may not be so happy to see them.
00:42:01.000But I would show up and I would have people during the height of quarantine, you know, I would have people peering through their windows with their whole family and parents would tell me this is the most exciting thing the kids have seen in months, you know, is have someone come here and watch the bee removal process.
00:42:22.000Why is it so enjoyable when it's just you alone with the bees and you're removing this hive from a shed or wherever it is and putting it into one of these things?
00:42:42.000There is something incredibly meditative about being inside of a beehive and with a colony.
00:42:50.000Whatever you're thinking about beforehand, whatever was on your to-do list or whatever has been on your mind all day, the second you open that hive, it all melts away.
00:43:03.000And you have to be so focused on every movement you make when you're working alongside bees, not only for your safety but for theirs as well.
00:43:13.000And that really just makes you, it forces you to be in the present.
00:43:17.000And it's hard to explain that to people who have a fear of bees and assume that It's chaotic inside of a hive and it's so disorganized and why would you want to be around these tens of thousands of stinging insects?
00:43:33.000But it's not like that at all most of the time.
00:43:41.000And there's also a great sense of humility that comes with it and just watching these creatures work and do all of this work.
00:43:51.000All of this amazing work within the beehive and, you know, knowing that these tens of thousands of creatures are all working together for the good of the colony.
00:44:02.000It's just a wonderful experience for me anyhow, but I can understand how people, it would terrify people.
00:44:10.000When you're doing this, do you feel like you are in some way communicating with these bees?
00:44:18.000Like, are you putting out energy, saying like, I'm here to help, I'm your friend, I'm not a danger?
00:45:23.000I think the communication goes back and forth and I hope that they can pick up on my behavior as well, that I'm not there to harm them.
00:45:29.000I'm not ripping open their hive as quickly and as forcefully as possible and I'm not, you know, I'm doing everything with a lot of care and precision or as much as I can and I hope that they pick up on that too.
00:46:44.000I mean, they seem to not mind, you know, when I pick up their queen and move her into a new box, which you would think, you know, that maybe would anger them.
00:46:54.000But, you know, the colony all works together and it's that super organism.
00:46:59.000So they all want to be together and they're all doing what's best for the good of the colony.
00:47:05.000And so I sometimes think that if I'm doing that as well, then, you know, it's a lot easier to do my job for sure.
00:47:11.000Now, as you've done this, have you become friends with other beekeepers?
00:47:16.000And do they have a similar mindset and similar experiences to the way you approach it?
00:47:22.000I have met some wonderful beekeepers and have some wonderful beekeeping friends, and everybody has their own way of keeping bees.
00:47:36.000I think it's an art form, especially the bee removal process.
00:47:40.000It takes a lot of creativity, and everybody will do it in a different way, and everybody has their own opinions about their bees or what's best for their bees.
00:47:51.000The beekeeping community can be, you know, divisive.
00:48:13.000Just different techniques for keeping bees, you know.
00:48:18.000Have different control methods for different pests and diseases.
00:48:22.000Some folks like to do it more naturally.
00:48:25.000There's a lot of different ways people keep bees all around the world, and I think everyone's doing it the best they can.
00:48:32.000But everybody has a different idea on how to keep bees, but also everybody has a different reason for keeping bees, and so they might have different management techniques for that.
00:48:56.000So the smoke, it will mask their alarm pheromones.
00:49:01.000So one of the pheromones, the chemical sense that they communicate with, is an alarm pheromone that, you know, lets the other bees know that there might be trouble in the hive.
00:49:10.000So maybe me, maybe a beekeeper coming in, and that will make it harder for the bees to communicate.
00:49:15.000But also what it does and what I use it more for is You know, I'll always use it at the beginning of a removal or when you go into any beehive, but it's the best tool for moving the bees around.
00:49:29.000So if I need to move the bees around, I'm going to have my smoker because if you and I were sitting around a campfire right now and the smoke wafted in your direction, what would you do?
00:49:39.000You would move and the bees react the same way.
00:49:44.000There's a certain point where you know that the bees are not going to be that defensive, and you might still use your smoker a lot if you're just trying to move them around because they're always going to move away from it.
00:49:54.000So it's one of the best tools we have in beekeepers.
00:50:24.000And when you're doing this, is there a specific amount of time you apply the smoke for before you start moving or do you just play it by ear?
00:50:33.000You know it's different for every colony but you know it's just a little bit of smoke will go a long ways and you don't want to do too much but you know once they start kind of reacting to it and you can see them settle down or move away from it and so it's it's just different every time.
00:50:50.000When did you start putting all of this stuff on social media?
00:50:56.000I mean, I've been sharing stuff about bees for a long time on Instagram, but I started to share more of the bee removal process in, I guess it was 2020. Well, that's probably when I found out about you.
00:51:13.000But were you trying to educate people about it?
00:51:17.000Are you doing it just because it's fun?
00:51:19.000You know, I was just sharing the work that bees and beekeepers do every day and could have never expected so many people to see it or be interested in it.
00:51:35.000But, you know, as soon as I started to kind of put the bee removal process together in like the one minute edited down format that these platforms, you know, would allow and kind of play to, People just really seem to be interested in it,
00:51:52.000which is great because it's a fascinating process.
00:51:55.000And, I mean, no one sitting here today is more shocked than me, you know, to put out a video and get, you know, 24 million views in 24 hours.
00:56:58.000You know, people will come up and share a bee story or want to tell me that, you know, they watch my video and now they're not afraid of bees anymore.
00:57:06.000Is that the most satisfying thing to you, the fact that you're spreading your love and your appreciation for these things and giving people an education and understanding of these incredible creatures?
00:57:18.000I mean, at first it just terrified me, you know, but now I'm really embracing it and hope that, yeah, I love showing people that you can work alongside these creatures and that they can be very peaceful and it can be a wonderful experience.
00:57:34.000You know, I think that Bees have been misbranded for so long.
00:57:40.000I mean, most people think that bees are aggressive and they're not.
00:57:44.000You know, they can be defensive, but I love showing people a better side of bees and that, you know, it's possible to work alongside these colonies without wearing gear.
00:57:54.000But then there's another side of I get to show people something they've never seen before.
00:57:59.000So, you know, hopefully it's entertaining to watch someone do this work and, you know, be covered in bees or whatnot.
00:58:05.000But they've probably never seen people remove bees before or maybe not like I have.
00:58:11.000And so I love showing people that, you know, something that they've never seen before.
00:58:15.000And hopefully I can educate them and there's something they learn from watching a video.
00:58:19.000A lot of people will say, now I can find the queen in a colony.
00:58:23.000You know, and that's great to hear, too, and just that people can see something that they wouldn't have experienced otherwise if I wasn't doing this and, you know, having my iPhone out.
00:58:33.000One of the problems with becoming successful or becoming viral is that you may get offers now to do things that you might not necessarily want to do, like some sort of a reality television show, I'm Erica the Beekeeper, and then they fake things.
00:58:49.000Have you had those things come your way?
00:58:56.000You know, I just try to sort through the offers as carefully as possible and in the beginning it was really figuring out I mean, what I wanted to do with this opportunity and also just how I want to live my life.
00:59:09.000You know, I live a pretty quiet life that I love.
00:59:11.000I'm so happy and I get to do what I love every day and it's on my own time.
00:59:15.000And I don't have a boss and I don't have someone that may want to show, you know, a different side of the bees.
00:59:23.000And that's why they're there and they are just waiting for me to, you know...
00:59:27.000The bees get really defensive one day and, you know, I just...
00:59:32.000Just try to, you know, do what seems like is best for me and the bees and my family.
00:59:38.000If I can help you in that regard, don't get involved with anybody else.
00:59:43.000Don't let anybody come along, executives and production companies.
00:59:50.000You already have this immense audience and incredible amount of success getting that message out.
00:59:56.000All you have to do is figure out what anybody would want to do with you is do some sort of reality show.
01:00:03.000Just sort of ramp up what you're doing.
01:00:06.000And just figure out a way to monetize it.
01:00:09.000And you'll be far more successful, completely independent, far more financially successful, because you want to have a bunch of parasites sucking off of what you've done.
01:00:17.000Because all they're trying to do is capitalize on it.
01:00:19.000And I guarantee, one of the things they'll do, because I've I've done some reality stuff before.
01:00:24.000One of the things I like to do is they fake scenarios.
01:01:22.000You know, and that's how I felt, too, is that if my goal is really to reach the most amount of people, I mean, just looking at the numbers of what a video that I, you know, just set up a couple iPhones and do the best I can editing it and putting it together.
01:01:56.000It was just, it was some bees I got from the night before, and they escaped.
01:02:01.000The queen escaped the clip, so sometimes if she's not older or well-mated, she might be a little bit smaller, and she escaped the clip, and it was a large colony of bees, and I showed my mom, and she said, oh, you have to post that, and my husband said,
01:02:17.000oh, no, you got to post that one, so I just put it together and posted it, and Yeah, listen to your husband.
01:02:26.000See, that's a perfect example of why you shouldn't be on television.
01:02:29.000Because there's not a place in the world where you're going to get that kind of views other than social media.
01:02:33.000I thought if the goal was really to teach people, you know, I mean, more people will see it this way.
01:02:38.000And I mean, like you said, it's kind of my way of doing it.
01:02:42.000And it's when I was going through the process of receiving the offers and, you know, deciding not to do a television show at the time, it was...
01:02:51.000I very much felt like nobody, you know...
01:02:55.000I guess if I do it, you'll know that someone had my health and wellness and that of the bees at the forefront.
01:03:02.000The problem is you don't know those people.
01:03:03.000An interesting thing that's been part of my story is that this all happened to me during the pandemic.
01:03:12.000At the height of quarantine is when those videos were getting the 50 million views a day.
01:03:20.000I didn't get recognized for a while because nobody was going anywhere and then woke up and went out of my house one day, you know, so my life really changed in a weird way.
01:03:29.000I was in a weird time where I was doing all these interviews and stuff, but it was from the study at my house.
01:03:40.000It was all very interesting to go through the process of receiving offers for doing things and working with people because, like you said, I never met these people.
01:04:22.000It felt to me like it was just the process.
01:04:24.000It felt like, you know, after that one video I posted and it was 24 million views in 24 hours, I mean, it felt like if you had a production company, you emailed me.
01:04:33.000You know, it just felt like that was what happens to people.
01:04:36.000And I met some great people and it wasn't the people.
01:04:38.000It was just, I mean, you know, I didn't know them.
01:06:19.000And then you talk to the camera, you talk to that person, you have some fun.
01:06:24.000And you don't have to deal with anybody.
01:06:25.000And then someone edits it, they put it up, and there's companies that you can get, like, very similar to what podcast companies do, where they find you advertisers.
01:06:36.000When you get 133 million downloads, it's not difficult to find advertisers, especially something that's...
01:06:43.000So interesting, so non-controversial, educational, wholesome.
01:07:18.000And one of the things about sharing my work with the world is that I've realized that people don't know a lot about bees or how important they are.
01:07:27.000Bees pollinate one out of every three bites of food we eat.
01:07:30.000And it's not just the apple or the almond that you've had today or your cup of coffee.
01:07:36.000It's the beef that you're eating that grazed on alfalfa.
01:07:38.000Bees are responsible for that and you know when our bee populations are healthy that's a good sign for our planet because bees are pollinating over 75% of plants need bees for pollination and our world would look so different without honeybees and the over 20,000 species of bees that do So much work for our planet and you know there's a lot of other beekeepers out there like me trying to
01:08:08.000help bees and doing wonderful work for bees but I do feel like you know beekeeping is a really noble profession because you're helping these creatures that do so much work for us and you know if we want our grocery shelves to look like they do now and to have a diverse diet we need to treat our bees better and make sure our bee populations are healthy.
01:08:32.000I read something about cell, more than one thing, about cell phone signals interfering with the way bees communicate.
01:08:52.000Let's see if we can find something on that.
01:08:53.000Because there was some confusion as to whether or not bees were behaving differently as cell phone use became more widespread and more towers were up.
01:09:07.000And I would just imagine that that signal...
01:09:13.000Obviously, we can't detect cell phone signals.
01:09:16.000You have to look at your phone to see if you have a signal.
01:09:18.000But whatever they are able to do is obviously so different than the kind of senses that we have.
01:09:26.000And I think the speculation was, or maybe theory, was that there is something about these signals that is interfering with the way bees communicate.
01:09:38.000There could be, but that's certainly not the biggest problem bees face.
01:09:42.000So I don't think that's a challenge that bees are facing right now.
01:09:49.000I could be wrong, but it's not a challenge as a beekeeper I face or I see a problem with my bees in cell phone towers.
01:09:55.000I see a problem with my bees not having enough food and with pesticides and industrial agriculture.
01:10:02.000What is industrial agriculture doing to bees?
01:10:18.000Almonds are almost entirely dependent on bees for pollination.
01:10:22.000And so we would have no almonds if we didn't have bees.
01:10:26.000And we're shipping our bees across the country, you know, to pollinate the almond crops in California and then maybe up to the apples and In New York, and we're putting them in these areas where they only have one food source, which isn't healthy for them or for anybody.
01:10:40.000They only have it for a short period of time.
01:10:43.000So, you know, they can only collect food there for a little while, and they may or may not have pesticides sprayed on this food that the bees are collecting.
01:10:51.000But at the end of the day, bees weren't made to be shipped on, or bees shouldn't be shipped on semi-trucks across the country to pollinate these places where there's just one thing living, and we're forcing the bees to pollinate this one crop.
01:11:48.000It's so many creatures who rely on bees for their food system as well.
01:11:54.000So when a beehive, when some beekeeper brings, like say there's an almond plantation and they bring these bees in, where are they getting these bees?
01:12:07.000From, you know, commercial beekeepers who keep them, most often in the south, they will overwinter the bees in the south where, you know, like right now our bees can still go out and forage, but in colder climates it's, you know,
01:12:24.000So I have beekeeping friends in Colorado who don't see their bees for months on end because if it's about 55 degrees Fahrenheit or below, the bees won't leave the hive and they're just clustering inside.
01:12:33.000So, you know, we'll have beekeepers from all around the country ship their bees and do this pollination circuit.
01:12:40.000And, you know, they'll come from all different areas, Texas, California.
01:13:58.000It's not what the bees are meant to have.
01:14:00.000I mean, these creatures have been around so long.
01:14:04.000It's for us to come along and start feeding them artificial food.
01:14:08.000So is it like human beings, where if you give them this artificial stuff, you see a decline in lifespan and a decline in overall longevity and robustness of health?
01:14:19.000I don't know if any studies have been done that have exclusively fed bees artificial food.
01:14:23.000You know, bees need natural food to live.
01:14:25.000We wouldn't want bees to live on exclusively artificial food.
01:14:45.000And so let's let them forage naturally.
01:14:48.000But they need to have things available to forage.
01:14:50.000So everybody that has a lawn of grass in their front yard with no wildflowers, no native plants, there's, you know, a lack of food for native pollinators.
01:15:02.000There's a lack of places for them to find food.
01:15:06.000Yeah, there's little things everybody can do to make a difference in the lives of bees.
01:15:12.000And the biggest one is everybody can plant food for bees.
01:15:16.000Anytime you're planting something in your yard or your garden or on your balcony, wherever you live, make sure it's something bees can forage from.
01:15:27.000So whatever is local and native to your area is best.
01:15:31.000And when you go to your nursery, you know, you can ask someone for help.
01:15:34.000Or what I like to do is I just look for the plants where the bees are on.
01:15:38.000So if I see a plant covered in bees, you know, I make sure it's native.
01:15:42.000But then, you know, I know it's probably a plant the bees will forage from and get food from.
01:15:48.000Everybody can plant food for bees and, you know, we just need a greater awareness about it too on a larger scale, an urban scale when we're planting our cities and building our roadways, thinking about the natural forage and food that we're taking away from the creatures that have lived here longer than us.
01:16:07.000One of the things that I've read about bees and honey is that local honey can protect some people from allergies that they may have from the very plants that these bees are getting their pollen from.
01:17:20.000Eat honey, enjoy honey for all the different wonderful properties that it has and all the wonderful things it can do for you, but not because you think it will help with your local seasonal allergies.
01:17:31.000Do you know that it's how they used to use it to preserve psychedelic mushrooms?
01:17:43.000And then they went on to create mead with honey.
01:17:46.000This is like in psychedelic lore when they're trying to figure out why certain cultures moved from a psychedelic culture to an alcohol-based culture for intoxicants.
01:17:59.000And they think that it stemmed from, initially, that they started to preserve mushrooms, in particular, in honey.
01:18:50.000My friend Maynard is the lead singer of Tool, and he owns Caduceus Vineyards and...
01:18:55.000He's a real weirdo because he does a lot of different things really well and one of the things that he does really well is he makes wine and he makes mead.
01:19:02.000And he makes different, you know, kind of sparkling wines and stuff.
01:19:06.000But they make, you know, it's alcohol based out of honey.
01:20:06.000In the 2011 one, I'll put it up on the screen, this guy put two cell phones in a beehive and then studied them with what they were doing after a couple minutes.
01:20:17.000But most of what I got to the abstract and the conclusion of all these studies is they just need to do more research to find out exactly what it's doing.
01:20:23.000They got to that it could be affecting electromagnetic waves and systems around the bees, and that could be what they're using to communicate, but it didn't...
01:20:33.000This is a person putting cell phones inside a beehive, though.
01:20:37.000These studies only come from over 10 years ago.
01:20:40.000The thing about that, it says, in his experience, Favre placed two cell phones inside a beehive and set up equipment to record the sounds of the bees when the phones were off in standby mode and active in a phone call.
01:20:54.000After the phones had been on for about 20 to 40 minutes, the bees began to make a high-pitched squeaking sound known as piping.
01:21:02.000This sound is usually a signal made by the bees to announce swarming or that the hive is in danger.
01:21:13.000However, even after the cell phone signals running for 20 hours and the piping sounds continuing, the bees did not swarm.
01:21:22.000Within only two minutes of the cell phones being turned off, the bees calmed down to their original state.
01:21:29.000But that seems like you're introducing a lot of other things other than just a cell phone signal.
01:21:58.000And when we talk about honeybee population decline, to begin with, we need to know that, you know, why we lose colonies every year and the populations aren't healthy.
01:22:11.000Beekeepers are replacing those colonies.
01:22:13.000So the populations are stable, even though hive loss rates...
01:22:17.000Go back to that, Jamie, what I was just going to point to, what you just had.
01:22:21.000Right here it says, 2009, Dr. Sanyuddin had found that EMR from mobile towers was responsible for the killing of bees, which is substantiated by a Swiss scientist, Daniel Favre, in 2011. Rock bees are the major pollinating agents on their migratory routes and And are sensitive to EMR,
01:22:43.000which would affect their navigational skills, physiology, changes in their antennal sencilla?
01:22:58.000Brain proteome neurotransmission and development.
01:23:02.000The orientation of honeybees is connected to the Earth's magnetic field, and for this they possess localized particles called magnetites.
01:23:12.000If EMR frequency from towers increases, the magnetite particles won't be able to detect the Earth's magnetic fields and disrupt their navigational skills, according to Dr. Sanuddin.
01:23:26.000So that previous study you read about the cell phones in the hive was what this guy did.
01:24:00.000Well, one of the ways they communicate in addition to the pheromones and through touching each other or piping, vocalizing is Through dancing, through movement.
01:24:14.000So we call it the waggle dance and every morning some scout bees will fly out of the hive and find the best places for the bees to forage from or in some cases if they need a new place to live they'll find a new nest site so maybe a new you know backyard shed or compost bin or whatever And the scout bees will come back to the hive and announce what they've found to the colony through a waggle dance.
01:25:13.000Yes, so you'll see the other bees around her and they are obviously, you know, getting her messages, reading the dance and If she is announcing a place to live or a place for the colonies to move, then what will happen is other bees will go and investigate that nest site and come back to the colony.
01:25:36.000And the more bees that choose the nest site, the more popular it is.
01:25:40.000And essentially, you know, the bees are all voting together on where to move to.
01:25:46.000So would they move the entire colony, including the queens?
01:25:50.000So when, you know, most of the colony with the queen leaves the hive and looks for a new place to live, that's a swarm.
01:25:58.000And that's, you know, a popular reason that they would do the waggle dance is to announce a new nest site for the other bees to go and investigate and come back to the hive and announce what they found the colony.
01:26:10.000Would they start a separate colony with a new queen or would they only move the queen?
01:26:16.000Well, what happens is most of the bees will take the queen and look for a new place to live and hopefully they will find a new place and be successful and go on and create more baby bees and have a great healthy colony in their new nest site.
01:26:32.000Meanwhile, back in the old hive, they have left behind food, they have left behind baby bees, they have left behind bee eggs, and enough nurse bees to care for these baby bees and bee eggs so that they can create another queen.
01:26:47.000So if they have the female, you know, a female bee egg, they can turn that into a queen bee.
01:26:54.000And so the swarming process is the natural reproduction process for the colony.
01:26:59.000You know, when you see me remove bees from somewhere, that's just, in many cases, the natural way we get more bee colonies into the world.
01:27:07.000So, you know, if we have one bee colony and we need two, that's how it happens in nature.
01:27:13.000So is that dependent upon the resources that are available in the area?
01:27:16.000Will they go out and find a new spot and go, hey, we found a good spot?
01:27:20.000And the other bees will stay there, and then they'll create a new queen, and then just keep expanding their numbers that way?
01:27:26.000They certainly make sure they have enough resources, you know, in the area.
01:27:29.000And they want to find a nesting site, a hive location that has resources around for them to build.
01:27:35.000But there are things that they look for.
01:27:38.000They actually have, you know, pretty more stringent requirements than we thought for building these sites, or for choosing a site to build a new hive.
01:27:47.000Which is why I do bee removals from the same places over and over again, compost bins, water meter boxes, things like that.
01:27:54.000The bees will look for an area that's climate controlled and the right amount of space.
01:28:01.000They need a certain amount of space to fit all the bees in there, of course, but they need space to expand and build the comb and grow.
01:28:08.000They like a small entrance that they can easily defend.
01:28:13.000Learn that it's about an inch, inch and a half big, I think, is their preferred entrance size.
01:28:18.000There's a wonderful professor of biology, Dr. Thomas Seeley, who's done An immense and incredible amount of work regarding how bees choose their nest sites.
01:28:31.000And so there are things that are better for the colony as a whole and, you know, they'll all decide on that together and choose and select the new nest site as a whole unit versus the individual bees.
01:28:46.000You know, everybody gets a say in the colony.
01:32:33.000They react to carbon dioxide, so earlier I was trying to show the gentleman, the queen, and I blew in the hole a little bit so that they could kind of move around in it.
01:32:53.000So it's more likely that she would be down here.
01:32:56.000But I also selected this piece of comb to bring out of this hive because...
01:33:02.000It's not quite fully built all the way across and if you notice this side the bees are just hanging on the comb and they're on top of each other and they're kind of making this little living chain of bees.
01:33:14.000Their little legs are all linked together and that's how they build comb.
01:33:17.000So you're seeing them build more of this beeswax comb.
01:33:21.000I don't know if you can see that group of bees there.
01:33:23.000I mean if you shake the hive you can see it moved.
01:33:47.000We produce wax, but they don't have ears, of course.
01:33:49.000They have these glands on their stomach, and it'll come off in these sheets, and they'll chew it up and form it into the beehive structure.
01:34:25.000That's actually how the bees will or can kill a queen.
01:34:31.000In beekeeping, we refer to it as a cuddle death because it sort of looks like, you know, a bunch of bees, just a ball of bees bawling all over the hornet or in some cases the queen.
01:34:43.000And in that case, that's what they're doing is they're overheating it to death.
01:34:47.000And that's their way of taking care of these, you know, northern giant hornets that made the news last year a lot.
01:35:55.000They are probably, you know, they're a predator of the bees.
01:35:57.000They will eat the bees or go after the honey or the pollen.
01:36:01.000And, you know, we have to keep in mind these hornets are native to an area of the world where people keep bees and beekeepers have learned to live alongside these hornets and have their own management techniques.
01:36:15.000But as we can see, the bees have their own management techniques.
01:36:21.000It's fascinating because they're totally different things, bees and hornets, but they're so similarly shaped that we put them in the same category.
01:39:41.000I mean, that was also media-induced fear, you know, as we saw the progression of these bees and saw them Get established in South America and Central America and you can track their progression.
01:39:55.000We knew that they would eventually make their way into the U.S. And so I think, you know, during that time the media just amplified the fear, you know, the fear factor.
01:40:15.000Dr. Kawahara said that it's just treated like a regular insect.
01:40:20.000In the United States, on the other hand, he continued, all this media surrounds this organism because of what it does and because of the name.
01:40:54.000It's just the same thing as murder hornets?
01:40:55.000It's the same thing as murder hornets.
01:40:57.000But, you know, the Africanized bee, that is a hybrid bee of our Western honeybee that we have here.
01:41:08.000And a bee from Africa that a biologist brought to Brazil to breed a better bee.
01:41:16.000So a biologist in the 1950s brought over this subspecies of bee To breed with the European honeybees, the Western honeybees that they had in Brazil, which were not native to Brazil.
01:41:33.000Bees are not native to the United States, you know.
01:42:15.000This happened well before we were here, about 100, 120 million years ago, I think.
01:42:22.000And that's one of the things I love most about beekeeping is when I go into this hive, I'm part of this collective consciousness that knows so much more than I do.
01:42:33.000So bees were brought over to North America.
01:44:10.000So a lot of them, and a lot of them are even better pollinators than honeybees for some plants because they're specialty bees.
01:44:19.000So they'll specialize in one plant and so it creates this relationship where we have some plants that rely on some of these bees where as honeybees are more I would say, and do, you know, a lot of plants.
01:44:33.000So, you know, that's why when we talk about the bee populations, it's, you know, we have the honeybees that are managed by humans, and then we have these other bee populations, which are not closely managed by humans,
01:44:48.000and humans are not replenishing or really even thinking about.
01:44:52.000They do so much work for our world and are this amazing kind of underground network of creatures that we never see that's contributing to our food system too.
01:45:02.000So is the way that bees pollinate, is it a secondary effect of their foraging?
01:45:09.000I mean, it's just a great byproduct of bees doing the work that bees do.
01:45:14.000When bees go out into the world every day and do the work that they need to do to survive for their colony, they're also offering our planet one of the most amazing services of pollination, of making sure other plants can reproduce and survive.
01:45:31.000And they don't even know they're doing this.
01:45:33.000So when they go and collect pollen and nectar from a plant, you know, they're Bringing that pollen to another plant so plants have the problem when it comes to reproduction that they can't move.
01:45:44.000So they need help to reproduce and that is what bees are doing.
01:45:49.000And are they the only insects that pollinate?
01:46:28.000So as wasps evolved into bees and as these bees figured out that pollen and nectar were great sources of food, the plants figured out it was beneficial for them to be able to attract these bees to the plant.
01:46:43.000And so they became more showy and vibrant and colorful.
01:46:54.000I mean, it's so interesting that we know so little about bees and that people don't think about them often, but they're around us all the time.
01:47:01.000I mean, you know, they're outside and they put food on our table and they mean so much to our world, but people rarely think about them until maybe they show up in your backyard, you know, and you need someone like me to come and remove them.
01:47:14.000One of the things that we covered really recently is the large amount of wasps that will inject their larvae into other creatures and use these parasitic relationships with caterpillars.
01:47:35.000Go to that caterpillar that we showed the other day where it implants all the larvae into the caterpillar and then the caterpillar will die and these larvae exude from its skin.
01:47:51.000Is that the wasp's only way of reproduction?
01:47:54.000Yeah, there's a bunch of different wasps that do this.
01:47:57.000A large number of wasps that have parasitic relationships with other ants and different creatures and they sting.
01:50:08.000There's something called the Varroa mite, and it's an exoparasite that lives on the bee and feeds off the fat bodies of bees, which we didn't actually know.
01:50:18.000You know, we've known about this pest in the beehive for a long time, since the early 1900s, but it wasn't until...
01:50:24.000In 2018, the Dr. Sammy Ramsey found out what the biggest, or arguably the biggest threat facing bees is feeding from.
01:50:32.000We thought it was feeding from kind of its blood forever, but it's not.
01:50:35.000It's feeding from the fat bodies of bees, but it lives on the bee or on the baby bees, and it will, I mean, if it was on us, it would be like the size of a rabbit.
01:50:55.000It's an exoparasite that lives off another animal.
01:51:00.000It really is interesting how many, like, that shape of what a wasp and a bee looks like, but how much variety there is in the way they live and what they do.
01:53:09.000It goes all the way deep into the log and then it drops off its larvae in there and the larvae survive eating the tissue or eating the wood.
01:53:23.000These relationships that these things have is so bizarre.
01:53:27.000There's so many bizarre parasitic relationships.
01:53:31.000And then there's relationships that fungus have.
01:53:35.000Parasitic relationships that fungus have with insects.
01:53:38.000Which is like the cordyceps mushroom that infects ants and causes these ants to explode.
01:53:43.000And these ants release these spores that will then infect all the ants around them.
01:53:49.000So when ants find that one of their ants has been killed and infected by this mushroom, by this fungus, they will drag this ant far away from the colony.
01:54:03.000We have undertaker bees that will haul the dead bees out of the hive and they will always do it as far away as possible.
01:54:09.000They'll always haul the dead bee out as far away as possible so that they don't, you know, infect the colony with whatever the bee died from.
01:54:16.000Get that one, the fungus that infects ants.
01:54:46.000And it'll explode and release millions of spore into the air.
01:54:51.000And when it does that, then everyone's doomed because they'll all get infected by it.
01:54:56.000This cordyceps mushroom, in fact, is used as a supplement.
01:55:01.000It actually increases oxygen utilization in humans.
01:55:05.000So there's a thing that my supplement company Onnit sells called Shroomtech.
01:55:09.000That's what it looks like when it pops out and then that thing will explode.
01:55:13.000Shroomtech is a supplement that's based on the cordyceps mushroom that the Chinese Olympic team started using in track and field events because it optimized your access to oxygen in some way.
01:55:27.000And the way they found it is high-altitude herding populations would notice that these cattle were grazing on these particular mushrooms and they found them to be more active.
01:58:31.000They breathe oxygen and the way, you know, from single-celled organisms over the course of evolution, we're closer to them than they are to plants.
01:59:32.000I think your friend Paul Stamets has done some great work with mushrooms and bees and figuring out there's a fungi that may be helpful to bees with the varroa mite, with killing that mite.
02:00:29.000That's what's so bizarre about information.
02:00:31.000I mean, I think about that all the time with my dog.
02:00:34.000Because, you know, I have one dog, and he doesn't have access to other dogs until, like, my daughter brings her dog over or my friends bring a dog over.
02:02:14.000But in the documentary Grizzly Man, when that guy lives in the woods long enough, the fox decide that he's their friend and they just hang out with him.
02:02:48.000This guy is opening up his car door in a suburban neighborhood, regular neighborhood.
02:02:52.000He's in the driveway, opens the door, lets his daughter walk a couple of steps away from the car, and he's getting something out of the car.
02:02:59.000A coyote comes and snatches the baby and is dragging the toddler away.
02:03:54.000So because they've had this relationship with gray wolves where they were persecuted by gray wolves, coyotes have figured out how to let the other coyotes know when one of them is missing.
02:04:26.000So because we eradicated gray wolves from North America up until, you know, like, what is the 90s when they reintroduced them from, not North America, but America, United States.
02:04:38.000Well, they reintroduced them from Canada to Yellowstone.
02:04:41.000But during that time period when they were killing the wolves, coyotes started spreading.
02:04:48.000And coyotes were spreading a little bit because they were persecuted by the gray wolves.
02:04:52.000And then people started killing coyotes.
02:04:54.000And as people killed coyotes, they spread even wider.
02:04:57.000It had the exact opposite effect they wanted.
02:04:59.000By people killing coyotes, now coyotes are in every single city in North America.
02:06:26.000And because she's in this stand, this smaller pen, rather, with her feet on this post, After a while, she gets over the idea that she's got this unfertilized egg that she thinks she's going to raise into a chicken.
02:08:27.000That was a bummer, but at least it was him.
02:08:29.000And then, you know, we had a fire, and then the chicken coop burnt to the ground, then we had to take the chickens and put them in another coop, and then the coyotes broke into that and they killed them all.
02:09:13.000Like, sometimes if he eats, and he ate kind of right before we got here, I'm like, he'll probably throw up in the car.
02:09:20.000He's weird, like, he won't throw up in the car as if I'm touching him.
02:09:24.000So I have a Land Cruiser, which is pretty small, so he sits and he puts his head on the center console, and as long as I'm petting him, he won't puke.
02:09:34.000But as soon as I stop petting him, he's like, bleh!
02:09:39.000It's something about being in the car.
02:09:41.000Well, it sounds like something about you, too, and the comfort and you petting him.
02:10:08.000And we had, I have one really great, I have four really great dogs, but my first dog Shelby is just like quintessential great dog, you know, and so just got to add to the starter and we're up to four, but you know, space them apart age wise and let them teach the next generation how to be in your house and around you and what you like and,
02:10:28.000you know, and it's, yeah, it's just the sourdough.
02:11:16.000I'm like you, I'm not as fascinated by bees, obviously, but I, like you, am just very fascinated by wildlife in general.
02:11:25.000And something, it changes you when you move out and can live more alongside nature, or at least it did for me.
02:11:32.000I mean, I am from Texas, have lived in an urban area my whole life.
02:11:35.000I've lived in Austin for 15 years and then just moved out to a little piece of dirt, you know, on the Colorado River and just living...
02:11:42.000In sync with the seasons and noticing everything and living in the rhythm of nature has really changed my life and, you know, kind of slows down the pace of life.
02:11:53.000Yeah, I think everybody should have a little piece of dirt and grow some food.
02:11:57.000I think it resonates with people because I think that's how humans have existed forever.
02:12:03.000And when you live like that, your body's like, oh, this is better.
02:12:07.000Because I think your body, when it's in Manhattan, it's like, this is great.
02:12:10.000There's so many cars and so many people.
02:12:12.000But your body's like, what the fuck, man?
02:13:47.000I tell people it's sort of like akin to keeping a garden where it's more labor intensive at different points throughout the year.
02:13:53.000And of course, once you first get started and get going, you know, there's a big learning curve and, you know, you just have to learn a lot and you do that through spending a lot of time with bees, with your bees.
02:14:04.000Depending on how many colonies you keep, you know, it can be not that labor intensive and a wonderfully fulfilling hobby or profession as far as you want to take it.
02:14:15.000And when you extract honey, you brought us some honeycomb, so thank you for that.
02:14:41.000And, you know, I take a very, very small amount for my personal use and then to share with friends and family or people who have helped me in the bees.
02:14:50.000And, you know, that's as much as I personally want to take.
02:14:55.000I was lucky early on in my beekeeping journey to figure out that harvesting and selling the honey just wasn't what I loved about keeping bees.
02:15:05.000And, you know, at the end of the day, it didn't make me feel that good.
02:15:37.000It was a horrible year for bees and beekeeping and I was thankful to have not really harvested a lot of honey because it was something we could have never predicted and the bees couldn't predict you know but in the winter when there's nothing in bloom there's not an opportunity for the bees to get more food naturally unless the beekeeper provides it so they're only collecting food during a short time of the year when the nectar is flowing and when the plants are blooming and so In the winter,
02:16:06.000when they're not doing that, they're living off what they collected earlier in the year and all the work they did earlier in the year.
02:16:12.000And so when we harvest honey in the summer or fall, you know, it's before the time the bees really need it.
02:16:17.000So we just need to be careful and mindful about how much we take.
02:16:21.000And, you know, you can certainly harvest honey responsibly, and most dog beekeepers do, of course.
02:16:26.000And, you know, there's no reason you can't happily harvest honey from your backyard hive if that's your choice.
02:16:33.000You just have to figure out how much to take?
02:16:38.000I mean, it's hard, but it mostly has to do with the size of the colony and trying to figure out how much they'll need and how much they made.
02:16:45.000And, you know, depending on the time of the year, how much they need to make it to spring.
02:18:01.000You know, the demand for honey is at its height.
02:18:04.000It's higher than it's ever been, probably because people, you know, like that it's like a natural sweetener and it's, you know, part of a healthier lifestyle.
02:18:12.000But, you know, the world's demand for honey is so high and the supply sometimes can't meet it.
02:18:19.000And there was a situation where beekeepers, or there still is, but people from What?
02:18:45.000Sometimes Chinese honey is cut with much cheaper corn syrup and fructose syrup to enhance profit margins and sometimes Chinese producers even feed corn syrup to the bees to get it into the honey more naturally.
02:18:59.000The importation of Chinese honey was specifically banned because it is so often adulterated.
02:19:29.000So you can figure out what the bees were feeding from.
02:19:32.000And every piece of honey is going to be different.
02:19:35.000Every bite of honey is going to be different.
02:19:36.000Every frame of honey you take from a hive is going to have different, you know, food sources that the bees were foraging from.
02:19:42.000So it's going to taste different and maybe have a different color.
02:19:46.000And, you know, it's all very unique and there's tests that you can do to figure out where the source of the honey, you know, depending on the pollen and the nectar and the source of the plants.
02:19:56.000Is there any sort of commercial test that you can buy where you can test honey to make sure it doesn't have corn syrup in it?
02:20:01.000I don't know if there's a commercial test.
02:20:27.000Well, no, please always support your local beekeeper who is pulling this honey, you know, with the bees in mind.
02:20:35.000My motto is hives before honey, and I'm always going to put the health and wellness of the colony and what's going on in the hive before honey.
02:20:41.000Harvesting honey and, you know, someone selling, a local beekeeper selling honey at a farmer's market, or if you find local honey that is truly local and from local bees, not just packaged locally, then that's a great way to support beekeepers and the bee population.
02:20:59.000You know, not buy honey from the store shelves, but look for honey that is labeled locally and maybe not the name of the big brand store on it or, you know, a big company.
02:21:12.000Or just go to your farmer's market and buy honey from your local beekeeper or your friend who is a beekeeper.
02:21:17.000I mean, that's where you should be buying.
02:21:24.000Is there a resource that people can go to where they can find local honey?
02:21:28.000Is there an online website that can direct you to local beekeepers that sell honey?
02:21:33.000I don't think there's one for honey, like a database where you can just find local beekeepers just to buy honey from, but most beekeepers will offer honey for sale.
02:21:46.000I mean, you know, if you see a beekeeper at a farmer's market or if you find a beekeeper and you really like buying their honey, please support them year after year.
02:21:55.000Most, you know, beekeeping is so not only local, but really hyper-local.
02:21:59.000I mean, bees forage for up to two miles.
02:22:01.000So beekeepers have a great sort of local community built in a lot of Cities and counties will have a beekeeping association and so that could be a great place for people to ask, you know, email the beekeeping association and say,
02:22:17.000hey, I'm looking to buy honey and buy honey for the year from one beekeeper.
02:22:22.000Buy it for gifts for your friends and family.
02:22:23.000Support, you know, a beekeeper that way.
02:22:26.000If you Google your local beekeeping association, you can find someone very local because, again, beekeeping itself is just something that the bees work in such a small area that I can have hives 10 miles away and they can be completely different with what they're bringing in and what's happening with them.
02:22:45.000Even here in Austin, hives on one side of 35 versus the other, it's different soil.
02:22:51.000It's just a completely different environment for the bees.
02:23:53.000I often see dark red honey in a lot of hives that I'm removing from people's backyards that are in really like suburban areas where people have a lot of hummingbird feeders.
02:24:31.000You know, the way that the bees collect the pollen is they go into the flower, they'll forage for pollen, and they store it on the sides of their legs.
02:24:40.000They have these little divots, and they'll pack it in these little balls.
02:24:45.000So if you are buying pollen to eat for your protein shakes or whatever, it's going to come in these little tiny balls of pollen.
02:24:52.000That's just exactly how it came off the bee.
02:24:56.000Because the way that beekeepers will collect the pollen is the bees will go through an entrance device on the front of the hive and the pollen will scrape off the bee's body and into a container below.
02:25:12.000You're getting pollen that was from the plant on the bee's legs right into your protein shake or whatever.
02:25:18.000And so it'll be little balls like that because that's how the bees store it and carry it and bring it back to the hive.
02:25:25.000And they can carry an insane amount of weight.
02:25:27.000They can carry over half their body weight in pollen and for up to two miles.
02:25:33.000So they're incredibly strong little creatures.
02:25:38.000Royal jelly is a special secretion that comes from the gland of every worker bee.
02:25:45.000And it's a food that's fed to the baby bees in the first stage of their development.
02:25:51.000And then again, if you feed it to a queen bee or if you feed it to a young female egg larvae for the duration of its development, That larva will turn into a queen bee, but it's a special secretion that worker bees make,
02:26:09.000and you can kind of think of it like milk, like mother's milk, because it's a food that the younger bees are eating, and it's from a gland that all the female bees produce.
02:26:21.000So it's just the food source for younger bees, or bees that I haven't developed yet, but a lot of Some folks will harvest royal jelly.
02:26:31.000You can harvest royal jelly, kind of scrape it out of the cell and harvest royal jelly for cosmetic purposes and whatnot.
02:26:38.000That's what it's for, cosmetic purposes?
02:30:17.000I love that you're doing what you're doing.
02:30:20.000It's really fun to watch your videos, and I think it's really illuminated the art and science and the love of beekeeping and just bees in general for a lot of people, me included.