The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #1908 - Erika Thompson

00:00:11.000 This is your first podcast.

00:00:14.000 This is my first podcast.

00:00:16.000 Well, thank you very much for allowing me to be the host of you for the first podcast.

00:00:21.000 Thank you so much for having me and the bees.

00:00:23.000 My pleasure.

00:00:23.000 I became fascinated with bees when we did an episode of Fear Factor where we had to cover these people in bees.

00:00:30.000 And it was this outdoor thing that we did at this ranch.

00:00:34.000 And while we were doing it, a local hive of bees came over and interacted with our bees and we had to shut down production.

00:00:44.000 And so I talked to the beekeeper.

00:00:46.000 I said, what's going on?

00:00:47.000 And he said, we have to shut everything down for an hour or so while they work this out.

00:00:52.000 While the bees work it out? 0.99

00:00:54.000 Yeah.

00:00:54.000 I'm like, what do you mean?

00:00:55.000 And 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.

00:01:02.000 And I go, they're going to communicate?

00:01:03.000 Like, is it going to be a bee war?

00:01:05.000 He's like, no, they're going to sort it out.

00:01:06.000 And I'm like, how do they sort it out?

00:01:08.000 And it's kind of unknown, right?

00:01:11.000 Sure.

00:01:12.000 Well, what happened with those bees?

00:01:13.000 They sorted it out.

00:01:15.000 The other bees went away, and our bees came back and stayed, and then we resumed the show.

00:01:21.000 That's great.

00:01:22.000 So, what kind of communication are bees capable of? 0.59

00:01:26.000 Do we know?

00:01:27.000 We don't know everything there is to know about bees.

00:01:30.000 Bees have been around for 120 million years.

00:01:33.000 We've been keeping bees for maybe 10,000. 0.95

00:01:36.000 If I were to think I knew more than the bees, that would be so foolish of me.

00:01:42.000 But we do know some of the ways that bees communicate.

00:01:46.000 They 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.

00:01:57.000 And so in your case, you had one colony of bees.

00:02:01.000 A colony is the collective noun for a group of bees, whereas a hive is the box they live in.

00:02:08.000 So 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.

00:02:17.000 And, you know, it sounds like you had a bunch of bees in one area and bees are social creatures.

00:02:21.000 So they were attracted to the sense of these other bees and were there to see what's going on.

00:02:27.000 And, you know, they eventually figured it out and everybody went back to their respective places and...

00:02:33.000 And it was fine.

00:02:34.000 So what is happening, though, when they're figuring it out?

00:02:37.000 They're smelling that these other bees have a specifically different pheromone?

00:02:42.000 Yes, they will have a different scent and that's how they'll stay with their colony.

00:02:45.000 And it comes from the queen.

00:02:46.000 The queen has a queen mandibular pheromone. 1.00

00:02:49.000 She 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.

00:03:07.000 Is it possible that bees who are like loner bees could integrate with another hive?

00:03:13.000 Absolutely.

00:03:14.000 It happens to me in my work all the time.

00:03:17.000 I remove bees from places and I'll go in and take a colony and a hive out and relocate it to my apiary area. 0.86

00:03:25.000 And in that process, I don't always get every bee, of course.

00:03:30.000 And the bees that are left behind or if there's a loner bee, they can join another colony.

00:03:35.000 And it's actually their chances of successfully joining are increased if they bring gifts of pollen or honey.

00:03:44.000 Whoa.

00:03:44.000 Wow.

00:03:45.000 But, you know, bees live a very short lifespan, so sometimes they'll just live out the rest of their bee life.

00:03:52.000 And the bees that we see out in the world foraging, they're at the end of their short bee life.

00:03:59.000 How long is a bee's life?

00:04:00.000 So 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. 0.77

00:04:12.000 So in the spring and summer, when the bees are working their hardest, the female worker bees will only live about six weeks. 0.99

00:04:19.000 In 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.

00:04:31.000 The 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.

00:04:47.000 And how long does the queen live? 0.98

00:04:48.000 The queen can live the longest. 0.66

00:04:50.000 She can live about five years.

00:04:53.000 That's on the longer end.

00:04:54.000 Most queens will live a little bit shorter, but she can live significantly longer than all the other bees in the hive. 0.98

00:05:01.000 And then we have the worker bees who live about six weeks, six months. 0.92

00:05:07.000 The queen bee can live up to five years, and the drone bees will live about six months, the male bees.

00:05:11.000 And what is the ratio of male bees to female bees? 0.87

00:05:16.000 A honeybee colony is about 95% female, and the amount of male bees can actually fluctuate throughout the year.

00:05:25.000 So 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.

00:05:37.000 In 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. 1.00

00:05:48.000 So right now there are no male bees in most hives.

00:05:53.000 In these bees that came along with me today, there's not a single male honeybee there.

00:05:59.000 They starve to death.

00:06:00.000 They starve to death.

00:06:01.000 They have no way of foraging.

00:06:02.000 They don't do the work of bees. 0.98

00:06:04.000 So 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.

00:06:13.000 They 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.

00:06:23.000 So the male bees don't mate with their own females.

00:06:26.000 Would that be like mating with the mother?

00:06:28.000 That would be like incestuous, right?

00:06:30.000 So here's what happens within the colony when it's time for the queen bee to mate.

00:06:37.000 So once a queen bee is born, when she reaches the ripe age of about seven days old, she'll go on a mating flight.

00:06:44.000 And she may go on only one, possibly two mating flights in her entire life. 0.88

00:06:49.000 And she'll fly out of the hive and she'll go to a drone congregation area, which is exactly what it sounds like. 0.99

00:06:55.000 It's an area where there's a bunch of drone male honeybees flying around just waiting for a queen bee to fly by.

00:07:03.000 And these drone congregation areas exist about 100 feet in the sky, which is another reason you would never see a male honeybee.

00:07:12.000 If 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. 0.91

00:07:27.000 And 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.

00:07:38.000 Whoa.

00:07:38.000 So they die during mating.

00:07:40.000 They die during mating.

00:07:41.000 Whew.

00:07:42.000 Harsh life for a male bee.

00:07:44.000 Depending how you look at it, I guess. 1.00

00:07:46.000 Starved to death, die when you have sex. 1.00

00:07:47.000 Yes. 1.00

00:07:48.000 Rough.

00:07:48.000 I mean, but also, you know, his genes pass on and he's a successful male honeybee.

00:07:54.000 But they also don't have to do a lot of work in the hive, you know?

00:07:57.000 They don't forage for food.

00:07:59.000 They don't build the hive.

00:08:01.000 They don't have wax glands. 0.76

00:08:02.000 They don't even have stingers.

00:08:03.000 They don't defend the hive.

00:08:05.000 So they have one role.

00:08:07.000 So how does the males know?

00:08:11.000 Is there a specific time of the year where the males know that the female queen is going to be flying around?

00:08:16.000 Sure, in the spring and in the summer.

00:08:18.000 And that's when, you know, that's their only job.

00:08:20.000 So if they're present, that's what they're trying to do.

00:08:22.000 And that's why the colony controls how many drones there are. 0.52

00:08:26.000 So right now, in the hive, there aren't that many drone bees.

00:08:31.000 They're trying to conserve the resources they have.

00:08:34.000 So 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.

00:08:45.000 Wow.

00:08:46.000 The male bees, when they're inside the hive, what's their specific job?

00:08:53.000 What kind of work are they doing when they're in there?

00:08:56.000 They're really not doing a lot of work.

00:08:57.000 Just hanging out, eating?

00:08:59.000 Some 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.

00:09:08.000 Not 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.

00:09:17.000 They're walking around different.

00:09:19.000 They'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.

00:09:28.000 We have to keep in mind they only make up about 5% of the population, maybe 10, sometimes zero.

00:09:34.000 There aren't that many male honeybees, and I always love sharing with people that they probably have never seen one.

00:09:40.000 So 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.

00:09:49.000 So they fly up in the air and they put a pheromone out that lets the queen know that they're there? 0.67

00:09:56.000 Yes, the drones will emit a pheromone.

00:10:01.000 These drone congregation areas still remain somewhat of a mystery.

00:10:06.000 They 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.

00:10:15.000 Some research that shows, you know, they're covered by wind.

00:10:18.000 They're going to be a safe area for the bees to fly around. 0.52

00:10:22.000 And they're massive.

00:10:24.000 They can be 100 feet in the sky, but they can be about 500 feet wide.

00:10:28.000 I mean, a ton of male honeybees flying around, just doing circles, waiting for a queen to fly by.

00:10:34.000 And how does the queen detect where they are, like in terms of like pheromones? 1.00

00:10:39.000 I think it's just the chemical pheromones, you know, and they're not flying that far from their hive area.

00:10:45.000 So, you know, it's within a radius.

00:10:48.000 Bees to forage will only fly about two miles.

00:10:52.000 But, you know, they go every day.

00:10:54.000 This is the males.

00:10:55.000 The drones fly out of the hive and try to mate successfully every day.

00:11:01.000 They're always doing this and most drones will never mate with a queen. 0.98

00:11:04.000 You know, it's a small percentage of drones that mate with a queen because she only mates with maybe 15 to 20 drones. 0.99

00:11:11.000 So do bees have a nose like we think of a nose?

00:11:15.000 Their world very much exists through scents, but they don't really have a nose like we do.

00:11:23.000 They can taste through their feet.

00:11:26.000 They even have a way to taste the difference between sweet and salty through their feet.

00:11:31.000 And I believe it's just glands that they're doing this through.

00:11:34.000 But they have antennae too, which their antennae help them Yes. 0.88

00:12:00.000 Like, how do they know how to do it?

00:12:02.000 Do we have an understanding of how they teach each other?

00:12:06.000 Or is it innate in their genetics?

00:12:08.000 Well, the comb building is a really interesting process because we see it as hexagonal comb, right?

00:12:17.000 We see little hexagons within the hive, but they actually start off building it as circles.

00:12:22.000 So the weight of the hive will bring it down.

00:12:27.000 The way that they build the comb is actually up at an angle so that the honey doesn't seep out.

00:12:32.000 It'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.

00:12:45.000 I 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...

00:12:56.000 Live with what's around them and then always leave the world better than they found it.

00:13:02.000 They're amazing.

00:13:03.000 It is very fascinating.

00:13:04.000 But 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?

00:13:17.000 I don't know if it's when it's time to create the combs.

00:13:20.000 I mean, they start creating a comb as soon as they find a cavity to build in.

00:13:24.000 Most of the comb building takes place within the first 40 days.

00:13:28.000 The bees will build the majority of their hives. 0.97

00:13:31.000 So I don't know for sure, but I would say it's just a natural instinct.

00:13:36.000 When they find a place to live, they need And they need a place to bring up their young.

00:13:44.000 The queen lays eggs in the comb. 0.92

00:13:46.000 It's not just storing honey and food.

00:13:49.000 You know, this is where the bees also raise their young.

00:13:52.000 And I think it's just they know that they need a safe place to live.

00:13:56.000 And so they start to build a beehive immediately.

00:13:59.000 And does the queen, if the queen, it's a solitary queen in the hive, in the colony.

00:14:06.000 So what happens when females are born? 1.00

00:14:09.000 So the female bees are the worker bees, and they're the ones that make up about 95% of the population. 1.00

00:14:15.000 And they cannot lay eggs that have been fertilized.

00:14:20.000 So they can lay eggs that only result in drone male bees. 0.98

00:14:24.000 So there's no competition between the queen and the worker bees. 1.00

00:14:28.000 I mean, the queen has one job. 1.00

00:14:32.000 That's to lay eggs for the colony. 1.00

00:14:34.000 She is essentially... 1.00

00:14:36.000 The female reproductive organ of this greater being that is the superorganism of a bee colony. 1.00

00:14:44.000 So when the worker bees are born, they're the ones doing all the work for the hive, the other female bees besides the queen bee.

00:14:51.000 So does the queen, when the worker bees are born, and you said they lay eggs and they can only make males?

00:14:59.000 They don't lay eggs.

00:15:01.000 They don't lay eggs.

00:15:01.000 So they can, and on occasion they will if a colony is queenless, but it doesn't mean the colony can continue.

00:15:10.000 So without a queen, a colony can't continue. 0.64

00:15:13.000 So as a last resort is the only time you will see female worker bees laying eggs in a colony.

00:15:20.000 And they will lay eggs that turn into bees that look different.

00:15:24.000 They're male drone bees, and so their larvae and their pupae look a little bit different than the worker bees.

00:15:30.000 And 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.

00:15:41.000 And what happens then?

00:15:43.000 So as a beekeeper, you can introduce a new queen to the colony and likely they'll accept her.

00:15:49.000 You can also give the colony eggs from another colony that are female eggs, so female bee eggs.

00:15:57.000 Any female bee egg can be made into a queen bee. 1.00

00:16:01.000 So 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.

00:16:10.000 And 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,

00:16:27.000 they're fed royal jelly.

00:16:29.000 And then they're switched to a diet of pollen and a little bit of nectar.

00:16:33.000 But if a baby bee is fed royal jelly through the duration of its development, it turns into a queen bee.

00:16:42.000 But a regular worker bee cannot give birth or cannot lay an egg that would be a queen bee or even a female bee. 0.96

00:16:50.000 Correct.

00:16:50.000 So where does that female bee come from?

00:16:52.000 Only from a queen?

00:16:54.000 Where does...

00:16:55.000 Yes.

00:16:55.000 So a queen can only give birth to a queen?

00:16:59.000 A queen can lay both female and male be eggs. 0.99

00:17:02.000 I shouldn't say give birth.

00:17:04.000 So a female can lay a female... 1.00

00:17:07.000 So does when a female... 1.00

00:17:09.000 When a queen knows that her time is short when she's about to die, does she, like, make a successor?

00:17:16.000 No.

00:17:17.000 Well, it's not always the queen that knows, and it's more the colony that's making the decision.

00:17:22.000 So 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.

00:17:31.000 It's the colony making the decisions.

00:17:34.000 So it's all the worker bees.

00:17:36.000 It's the collective of female worker bees making that decision. 1.00

00:17:39.000 And 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.

00:17:54.000 So it's actually the group of female worker bees that's making that decision. 1.00

00:17:59.000 And the queen bee doesn't always know when she's In her final days, it's the colony that would know.

00:18:04.000 Her 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.

00:18:15.000 And 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. 0.78

00:18:27.000 And the best queen wins.

00:18:30.000 And that's what needs to happen for the life of the bee colony.

00:18:35.000 Wow, they fight to the death.

00:18:37.000 What a ruthless world.

00:18:39.000 They have figured it out, though, how to do this and how to live in these giant societies.

00:18:46.000 And, you know, it all works.

00:18:47.000 And it's remarkable.

00:18:49.000 It is very remarkable.

00:18:50.000 But it's also very ruthless, right?

00:18:53.000 I mean, it's kind of crazy that they fight to the death.

00:18:55.000 Sure.

00:18:56.000 Like, this poor queen. 1.00

00:18:57.000 She's done a great job.

00:18:59.000 She's made all these bees and A lot of bees. 1.00

00:19:02.000 A queen bee will lay up to 2,000 eggs per day. 0.98

00:19:05.000 I mean, she's an egg-laying machine. 1.00

00:19:06.000 That's all she does.

00:19:07.000 She doesn't feed herself. 1.00

00:19:09.000 She doesn't clean herself. 1.00

00:19:10.000 She's the only bee that defecates in the hive. 0.99

00:19:14.000 All the other bees defecate outside the hive, and she has bees that clean up after her. 1.00

00:19:18.000 She has, like, a royal court of attendant bees that follow her around and take care of all of her needs. 1.00

00:19:24.000 Is there ever a time where the queen, like, something eats her or something attacks the queen?

00:19:31.000 I mean, the queens will die naturally all the time. 1.00

00:19:35.000 But is there like an insect or anything?

00:19:37.000 There's nothing that would seek out the queen.

00:19:39.000 But, you know, swarming is a dangerous endeavor and sometimes the queens don't always make it. 1.00

00:19:45.000 So 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.

00:19:54.000 And that's a dangerous trip for the queen. 0.99

00:19:57.000 That's why, you know, the queen doesn't really leave the hive that often. 0.93

00:20:01.000 When 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.

00:20:14.000 But without that, without you intervening, what would happen to them?

00:20:18.000 Then the colony would naturally perish.

00:20:20.000 Whoa! 0.71

00:20:21.000 That would be the end of that colony.

00:20:24.000 What a fascinating creature.

00:20:26.000 You know, I mean, it's a super organism.

00:20:28.000 So that queen bee is really, you can think of her as the reproductive organ of this larger being that is the bee colony.

00:20:36.000 And so without her, without that, it can't continue.

00:20:41.000 So 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.

00:20:54.000 Yes.

00:20:55.000 So that's how you, like say if you went to someone's attic and you found a swarm of bees up there or what would that be?

00:21:00.000 A colony of bees?

00:21:01.000 A colony of bees, yep.

00:21:02.000 So you would then, you have to figure out a way to get them out and then find the queen.

00:21:08.000 Yes.

00:21:08.000 How do you find the queen?

00:21:10.000 A lot of patience, a lot of practice.

00:21:13.000 Do you have to take apart the combs?

00:21:15.000 Yep.

00:21:16.000 So, you know, I just start working my way through the hive and I'm always looking for the queen.

00:21:23.000 Finding 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.

00:21:37.000 And once you find the queen and have control of the queen, you can control the colony.

00:21:44.000 And so that's why it's so important for me as a beekeeper during these removals to always find the queen.

00:21:50.000 So how much time will that take?

00:21:52.000 It's always different.

00:21:53.000 It depends on the removal.

00:21:55.000 You 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.

00:22:09.000 I mean, it can take a long time.

00:22:12.000 Some of these bee removals will take hours. 0.58

00:22:15.000 Sometimes I have to go back the next day.

00:22:17.000 But then sometimes you get lucky and she's on, you know, one of the first few combs you pull up and she looks different.

00:22:24.000 She's bigger than all the other bees. 1.00

00:22:26.000 She has a different job, right? 0.97

00:22:27.000 She's the only bee laying eggs in the colony, so that naturally looks a little different.

00:22:32.000 She 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. 0.99

00:22:42.000 So there's clues that the bees will give you on her location.

00:22:46.000 And, 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.

00:22:57.000 Here's a video.

00:23:00.000 Wow, I never watched these again.

00:23:01.000 And so that's like a little clip that you use?

00:23:04.000 That's the queen in there? 1.00

00:23:05.000 You've found the queen?

00:23:07.000 I tell you what, that moment feels so good.

00:23:09.000 It's hard to capture it in a video.

00:23:11.000 Oh, that's a bee telling the other bees where to go.

00:23:14.000 She's fanning her Nazanov gland. 0.99

00:23:16.000 So you can actually see the Nazanov gland in that video, in that little clip.

00:23:20.000 So on the back of her abdomen, wow, thank you.

00:23:26.000 Jamie on the ball.

00:23:27.000 Yeah, the back of her abdomen.

00:23:29.000 You can kind of see it.

00:23:30.000 So see how she has all those little black stripes and then at the end you can... 1.00

00:23:34.000 Yeah, that's...

00:23:35.000 It's a little gland that's exposed and that's one of the pheromones, the ways they communicate in...

00:23:41.000 She is signaling to all the other bees where to go, and she's letting them know.

00:23:46.000 You can see them start to move down and into the new hive.

00:23:50.000 It was getting dark.

00:23:50.000 I was racing daylight there.

00:23:53.000 And then they will eventually do the rest of the work for you.

00:23:56.000 You're doing this with no beekeeper suit, nothing on your hands, nothing?

00:24:01.000 Yeah, this was a really great, great colony of bees.

00:24:06.000 Are there bad colonies of bees?

00:24:09.000 There are certainly bees that can be more defensive.

00:24:12.000 Why would that be?

00:24:14.000 Well, 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.

00:24:26.000 So, 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.

00:24:42.000 They're much gentler, you know, in those cases most of the time.

00:24:47.000 But every colony is different.

00:24:49.000 Every colony has a different, you know, behavior and is in a different set of circumstances.

00:24:56.000 So I never know what I'm getting myself into.

00:24:59.000 So what would cause them to be there if they didn't have those resources?

00:25:02.000 To be where?

00:25:03.000 Like in the wall right there?

00:25:06.000 Those bees had been there for a number of years.

00:25:07.000 I don't know exactly how long.

00:25:10.000 But those bees likely were relocating, looking for a new place to live because maybe their hive, something happened to it.

00:25:17.000 It got damaged maybe.

00:25:18.000 You 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.

00:25:27.000 But 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.

00:25:38.000 And that's because it's a common place.

00:25:40.000 Bees choose to live. 1.00

00:25:41.000 It replicates what, I mean, it's so ideal for what the bees want in an environment.

00:25:46.000 It almost is, you know, the same kind of width of a beehive, that space in between the floor.

00:25:54.000 They like a closed environment that's climate controlled with a small entrance that they can easily defend.

00:26:00.000 They like it, you know, protected from the weather and from the elements and they need a lot of space.

00:26:05.000 So in those backyard sheds, people tend to not go in them very often and you know, the bees aren't bothered by people.

00:26:13.000 So that's a pretty common place that I'll do removals from.

00:26:17.000 So when you go to a place like that and you see them, that's how you know you don't need an outfit.

00:26:22.000 Because you were just like...

00:26:23.000 So now you're all suited up.

00:26:27.000 So I saw Zod through that and sometimes they don't like the vibrations of the...

00:26:33.000 Tools 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?

00:27:00.000 No, these bees are not trying to sting me at all.

00:27:03.000 Whoa! 0.71

00:27:04.000 This is wild!

00:27:07.000 So that is, they've developed these combs and these almost like...

00:27:12.000 You can see the honey right there.

00:27:13.000 Yeah, but it's almost like a commercial beehive sort of setup.

00:27:18.000 You know, if you think of dividing that wall up and stacking them on top of each other, that's a traditional beehive.

00:27:25.000 Yeah.

00:27:25.000 So now you've gotten rid of the mask and you're still just handling this.

00:27:31.000 Sure.

00:27:32.000 You just took a bite of it. 1.00

00:27:33.000 You're a psycho. 1.00

00:27:34.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:27:34.000 There's bees there. 1.00

00:27:35.000 I've been working hard.

00:27:37.000 That was a long removal.

00:27:39.000 I know, but there's bees flying around your face and you're just biting into that honeycomb.

00:27:43.000 There's bees all over that thing. 1.00

00:27:45.000 There really aren't.

00:27:46.000 I mean, they're not...

00:27:47.000 What?

00:27:48.000 They're not trying to sting me.

00:27:49.000 There are a lot of bees there.

00:27:50.000 I understand, but you just took a bite with bees to the left and the right of your mouth.

00:27:55.000 I tell you what, you're watching me at my most joyful moments.

00:28:01.000 I love doing this.

00:28:02.000 That's your most joyful moment to just take a bite out of their house?

00:28:05.000 No, but this whole removal process, there's nothing I'd rather be doing.

00:28:10.000 That's what you love to do the most, is to find them and...

00:28:14.000 I 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.

00:28:24.000 I 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.

00:28:33.000 And sure enough, you know, then once I saw through the side and get through it, it does.

00:28:38.000 And there's definitely another dopamine hit when I first see that beehive.

00:28:42.000 And just like you said, wow, look at that comb.

00:28:44.000 I mean, for me, it's times 10. And for the folks listening, this is a massive comb.

00:28:50.000 Like, this whole thing is, like, looks like it's about 12 feet tall.

00:28:55.000 And the comb goes all the way up the side in six or seven different rows.

00:29:01.000 So there's like, how many bees are in there?

00:29:03.000 If you had to take a wild guess.

00:29:05.000 I hate doing this, but I mean, maybe 200,000, 250,000.

00:29:10.000 Wow.

00:29:11.000 That is a large beehive.

00:29:13.000 Those bees have been there for some time.

00:29:15.000 And not only do we know because of the size, but also the age of, I'm sorry, the color of the comb.

00:29:21.000 So you can see that it's darker.

00:29:23.000 It's almost dark brown.

00:29:24.000 And if you think of, oh, that's a beautiful shot of the comb with a bunch of pollen.

00:29:30.000 So it's Full of those brightly colored different...

00:29:33.000 See, there's even some white pollen at the top.

00:29:35.000 There's white and orange and yellow and red colored pollen mixed in with some nectar.

00:29:40.000 And the pollen is the bee's protein source. 0.86

00:29:43.000 So pollen is actually a great source of protein.

00:29:46.000 I think there's like two grams of protein per tablespoon of pollen.

00:29:50.000 Pound for pound, it's a better source of pollen than beef or chicken, but most people...

00:29:54.000 Better source of protein.

00:29:55.000 Better source of protein.

00:29:56.000 Thank you.

00:29:57.000 Is it as bioavailable?

00:29:58.000 But most people aren't going to eat a pound of pollen, of course.

00:30:01.000 Is it gross?

00:30:02.000 It doesn't have much of a taste or flavor.

00:30:05.000 To me, it kind of tastes like wheatgrass, almost.

00:30:10.000 So it's something you can put in a shake or something?

00:30:12.000 Yes, it's very mild.

00:30:15.000 Not much flavor, in my opinion.

00:30:17.000 Is it as bioavailable as chicken or beef?

00:30:20.000 Because there are certain plant proteins that aren't that bioavailable, even though there's a high gram of protein per ounce.

00:30:26.000 Um, we wouldn't want to harvest as much pollen from bees as we do other protein sources, of course.

00:30:34.000 And, you know, this is their food source, so we We shouldn't really be taking this to consume.

00:30:42.000 I'm not saying to take it from them, but I know that bee pollen is something that people do supplement their diet with.

00:30:48.000 And I just was curious if you know if it's bioavailable.

00:30:51.000 I don't know.

00:30:53.000 I guess I don't know what bioavailable means.

00:30:56.000 Bioavailable is some of the most...

00:31:00.000 Bioavailable protein is meat.

00:31:02.000 Whereas if you have 10 grams of, say, venison, it's more bioavailable than 10 grams of protein from, say, broccoli.

00:31:14.000 The protein that is in plants is less bioavailable.

00:31:17.000 Your body doesn't process it as well.

00:31:19.000 Oh, meaning how we process it?

00:31:20.000 Yes.

00:31:21.000 I have no idea how our bodies process bee pollen.

00:31:23.000 You're only interested in bees.

00:31:26.000 I like to spend most of my time with bees.

00:31:28.000 You like bees more than you like people?

00:31:30.000 I spend most of my time with bees.

00:31:32.000 I mean, just naturally, I don't spend that much time with people.

00:31:36.000 I spend most of it with bees.

00:31:39.000 You kind of like bees more than people.

00:31:43.000 I love bees.

00:31:44.000 Wow!

00:31:45.000 That sound, by the way, if everybody's listening, you're like, is there a fan on?

00:31:48.000 No, there's a hive here. 0.81

00:31:50.000 She brought a small colony.

00:31:53.000 What would you call that?

00:31:55.000 You 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.

00:32:03.000 This is the entire size of the colony.

00:32:05.000 It's quite small.

00:32:07.000 And unfortunately, less than 25% of colonies or swarms like this make it through their first year.

00:32:14.000 And this was just a swarm, so there was no...

00:32:20.000 There was no beeswax, pollen, nectar, baby bees.

00:32:23.000 So everything within this hive was given to them by me from another colony, from a donor colony.

00:32:31.000 So you found them in a mailbox?

00:32:34.000 I found them.

00:32:34.000 They were kind of hanging like on the outside of the mailbox.

00:32:37.000 There was like a post with four by fours.

00:32:39.000 And you noticed that there's a queen there.

00:32:41.000 So you took the queen, put her in this little hive thing. 0.98

00:32:46.000 It was actually a pretty quick grab.

00:32:48.000 It 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,

00:33:05.000 so 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. 1.00

00:33:13.000 Whoa, so you got her in a little prison? 1.00

00:33:17.000 Temporary.

00:33:17.000 A temporary...

00:33:18.000 And she's in there right now in the little prison?

00:33:20.000 She's not in the little prison in there.

00:33:21.000 She's roaming about freely, hopefully laying eggs and doing what she needs to do.

00:33:26.000 So 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.

00:33:36.000 Is that when you're the most happy, when you can take the gloves off and take the headgear off and all that jazz?

00:33:43.000 I don't know if it's when...

00:33:44.000 I mean, I definitely love working alongside the bees without the equipment.

00:33:48.000 It's definitely when I'm the most comfortable.

00:33:51.000 But yeah, I mean, there's no place I'd rather be than elbows deep in a high full of bees.

00:33:57.000 Wow.

00:33:58.000 How did you get involved in this?

00:34:00.000 My whole life I've just loved bugs.

00:34:03.000 I sort of came out of the box, a bug lover and an animal lover.

00:34:07.000 And I was really lucky to have parents that encouraged and supported that as well.

00:34:13.000 And 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.

00:34:25.000 My childhood idols growing up were Dr. Jane Goodall and Diane Fossey, and I wanted to be just like them.

00:34:33.000 But, you know, as a seven or eight-year-old, I couldn't exactly go to the jungles of Africa to study primates.

00:34:38.000 So I went in my backyard and I collected bugs.

00:34:41.000 They were everywhere.

00:34:42.000 They were easy to find and easy to pick up.

00:34:45.000 And...

00:34:47.000 My love of bugs just continued my entire life.

00:34:51.000 So 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.

00:35:07.000 So 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.

00:35:20.000 What was your other job?

00:35:22.000 I was a communications director for various non-profit associations, and I loved my job.

00:35:27.000 It was a great job.

00:35:28.000 I worked with amazing people, but it just wasn't bees.

00:35:32.000 It wasn't what I wanted to do.

00:35:34.000 Wow.

00:35:34.000 Every day.

00:35:35.000 And it didn't feel right for me to go and sit in an office.

00:35:38.000 I wasn't that person.

00:35:40.000 I wanted to be outside.

00:35:43.000 So yeah, I started my business while I still had a full-time job.

00:35:46.000 And in 2018, I quit my full-time job and became a full-time professional beekeeper.

00:35:52.000 That's amazing.

00:35:53.000 So do you have a formal education in bees?

00:35:56.000 I don't.

00:35:57.000 So, did you learn this from books?

00:36:00.000 Did you learn this from videos?

00:36:02.000 Like, how did you learn this?

00:36:02.000 I 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.

00:36:12.000 When I started my business, I didn't really know what my business was.

00:36:16.000 I just wanted to be a beekeeper.

00:36:20.000 It really started as organically as it could.

00:36:23.000 You know, people would ask me for beekeeping services.

00:36:26.000 So folks would say, can you keep bees on our property? 0.99

00:36:28.000 We want bees, but we don't want to be beekeepers ourselves.

00:36:31.000 Or can you give us a private lesson?

00:36:33.000 You know, you've been doing this far longer than we have.

00:36:35.000 We're first-year beekeepers.

00:36:37.000 I 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.

00:36:58.000 You 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.

00:37:10.000 Keep bees in.

00:37:11.000 So, you know, really just a lot of experience and doing a lot of bee removals and, you know, of course, books as well.

00:37:21.000 But this is one of the things you can't really learn from a book.

00:37:24.000 You just sort of have to get out there and do and see bees and see how they work together.

00:37:30.000 And I started small.

00:37:31.000 I started not with, you know, hives that had eight feet of comb and removing them from a backyard shed.

00:37:37.000 I started with water meter boxes.

00:37:40.000 So water meter boxes are those things everybody has in their front yard.

00:37:44.000 You know, it's a box about a foot deep, and it has that plastic lid with a small opening, and it's one of bees' favorite places to build.

00:37:51.000 It's one of the most common calls I get as a beekeeper is to remove bees from these boxes.

00:37:58.000 And starting out, I thought, you know, it was the most controlled environment.

00:38:04.000 I could start with doing the removal process because you just never know what you're getting into.

00:38:09.000 But at least I knew this is always going to be the size, right?

00:38:12.000 The hive is never going to be much larger.

00:38:14.000 I won't get surprises like...

00:38:16.000 Taking paneling off a wall and finding eight feet of comb, right?

00:38:21.000 And 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.

00:38:39.000 So 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?

00:38:50.000 Books online, beekeeping conferences and events.

00:38:54.000 I mean, talking to other beekeepers.

00:38:57.000 I always like to say I'm an expert on my own experiences.

00:39:02.000 I'm not a bee biologist or I'm not an entomologist studying bees.

00:39:08.000 I 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.

00:39:19.000 It's so fascinating how different human beings are.

00:39:22.000 I find bees interesting, but I couldn't imagine that being my favorite thing to do.

00:39:26.000 But with you, just the way you talk about it, you light up.

00:39:29.000 It's so obvious.

00:39:31.000 We vary so much.

00:39:33.000 It's so interesting to watch someone who is absolutely enthralled with something that just seems like most people would not be enthralled by.

00:39:45.000 Yes.

00:39:46.000 You know, I get that a lot.

00:39:47.000 I 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?

00:39:54.000 And 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.

00:40:04.000 I mean...

00:40:05.000 When I go and remove bees from a place, it's like you're giving these people back a sense of security in their own space.

00:40:12.000 And that's a great feeling as well, you know?

00:40:15.000 So there's a lot of...

00:40:17.000 I mean, that's why I love doing this.

00:40:19.000 There's a lot of different sides of it.

00:40:22.000 Do you find it enjoyable to sort of educate these people whose homes have been invaded by bees too and maybe give them a sense of peace?

00:40:31.000 Because a lot of people are terrified of bees.

00:40:33.000 They see bees and they just want to run away.

00:40:35.000 Whereas you come along and you're so calm and you're not like this gigantic, imposing, scary person.

00:40:40.000 You're very sweet and calm and then you're there touching them with no gloves on.

00:40:46.000 So then maybe people are like, oh, maybe I need to rethink bees.

00:40:50.000 Absolutely.

00:40:51.000 You 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.

00:41:02.000 But a lot of times I show up and there was a fear of the bees and then, you know...

00:41:08.000 The folks will watch me work, you know, through the glass of their back door.

00:41:14.000 I've had people in their cars before watch me from the safety of their car.

00:41:19.000 And, 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.

00:41:25.000 And, you know, and I'm showing them the queen or whatnot in the clip.

00:41:29.000 And 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.

00:41:42.000 Us beekeepers were kind of like the original social distancers.

00:41:46.000 We show up and nobody wants to be around us.

00:41:48.000 We're used to being alone.

00:41:50.000 I 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.

00:42:01.000 But 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.

00:42:20.000 What is your mindset?

00:42:22.000 Why 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?

00:42:35.000 What is your mindset?

00:42:37.000 Are you just at peace?

00:42:38.000 Are you just in the moment?

00:42:39.000 What's going on there?

00:42:42.000 There is something incredibly meditative about being inside of a beehive and with a colony.

00:42:50.000 Whatever 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.

00:43:03.000 And 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.

00:43:13.000 And that really just makes you, it forces you to be in the present.

00:43:17.000 And 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?

00:43:33.000 But it's not like that at all most of the time.

00:43:36.000 It's incredibly calm and orderly.

00:43:39.000 All the bees have a job. 0.99

00:43:41.000 And there's also a great sense of humility that comes with it and just watching these creatures work and do all of this work.

00:43:51.000 All 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.

00:44:02.000 It's just a wonderful experience for me anyhow, but I can understand how people, it would terrify people.

00:44:10.000 When you're doing this, do you feel like you are in some way communicating with these bees?

00:44:18.000 Like, are you putting out energy, saying like, I'm here to help, I'm your friend, I'm not a danger?

00:44:24.000 Like, do you have a mindset?

00:44:26.000 Or are you just in the moment completely?

00:44:29.000 Like, how are you...

00:44:30.000 I think it's a mutual communication.

00:44:32.000 You know, I'm trying to read their behavior and they're probably trying to read mine as well to see if I'm a threat.

00:44:38.000 But from the very first second that I meet the bees, I'm trying to figure out what they need and, you know, what their situation is like.

00:44:47.000 And they're trying to read my behavior just like I'm trying to read theirs.

00:44:50.000 It's no different than you reading, you know, your dog's behavior.

00:44:54.000 They wag their tail.

00:44:55.000 You know they're happy.

00:44:55.000 They put their ears back.

00:44:56.000 You know they're scared.

00:44:57.000 The bees will send you signs and signals and communicate to you how they're feeling.

00:45:02.000 You know, of course, they'll start stinging you if they're not feeling well and if they are feeling defensive.

00:45:08.000 But, you know, before that, they'll sort of ping you.

00:45:11.000 And there's a frequency pitch that changes sometimes, you know, in a hive that's maybe a little bit more defensive.

00:45:17.000 A frequency in terms of, like, the sound?

00:45:20.000 Like the sound, sure.

00:45:21.000 And so it's...

00:45:23.000 I 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.

00:45:29.000 I'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.

00:45:43.000 I certainly think that they do.

00:45:45.000 So, it's the movement, but is it also the mindset?

00:45:49.000 Is it, like, a vibe that you're putting out?

00:45:51.000 Are you, like, saying in your mind, I'm your friend, I'm here to help out?

00:45:56.000 Like, are you...

00:45:57.000 I'm probably not saying it in my mind.

00:45:58.000 I'm probably talking to him.

00:45:59.000 Oh, really?

00:46:00.000 You talk out loud to the bees?

00:46:01.000 Yes, all the time.

00:46:03.000 It's just me and them, you know?

00:46:05.000 I mean, you're really working alongside them.

00:46:07.000 And I like to think that at some point during the removal process, they realize...

00:46:14.000 That I'm offering them something better, you know, after I've opened their hive and removed half the wall or what have you.

00:46:21.000 They know that this new hive is where their food is, where their baby bees are, and it's just a better place for them.

00:46:26.000 So I hope they know that I'm on their side.

00:46:29.000 I certainly, you know, try to tell them that.

00:46:32.000 And yes, I talk to them.

00:46:33.000 But I don't know.

00:46:35.000 I mean, it's just a wonderful experience, you know.

00:46:39.000 And every bee removal is different.

00:46:41.000 Well, at the very least, they seem to accept it.

00:46:44.000 Yes, they do.

00:46:44.000 I 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.

00:46:54.000 But, you know, the colony all works together and it's that super organism.

00:46:59.000 So they all want to be together and they're all doing what's best for the good of the colony.

00:47:05.000 And 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.

00:47:11.000 Now, as you've done this, have you become friends with other beekeepers?

00:47:16.000 And do they have a similar mindset and similar experiences to the way you approach it?

00:47:22.000 I have met some wonderful beekeepers and have some wonderful beekeeping friends, and everybody has their own way of keeping bees.

00:47:32.000 It's very much a craft.

00:47:34.000 It takes a lot of skill, of course.

00:47:36.000 I think it's an art form, especially the bee removal process.

00:47:40.000 It 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.

00:47:51.000 The beekeeping community can be, you know, divisive.

00:47:54.000 How so?

00:47:55.000 Just because everybody has a different opinion on what the best way is to keep bees.

00:48:01.000 And that probably stems from a lack of understanding that we all don't know all the answers to all the questions.

00:48:07.000 So what's like the major points of contention amongst the beekeeping community?

00:48:11.000 Between the beekeeping community?

00:48:13.000 Just different techniques for keeping bees, you know.

00:48:18.000 Have different control methods for different pests and diseases.

00:48:22.000 Some folks like to do it more naturally.

00:48:25.000 There's a lot of different ways people keep bees all around the world, and I think everyone's doing it the best they can.

00:48:32.000 But 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.

00:48:43.000 Do you use, is it like the smoke?

00:48:46.000 Is that like a point of contention?

00:48:48.000 No, not at all.

00:48:48.000 Don't use too much smoke?

00:48:50.000 Don't use any smoke?

00:48:51.000 No, don't use too much smoke, but always use smoke.

00:48:55.000 Always use smoke.

00:48:56.000 Yes.

00:48:56.000 So the smoke, it will mask their alarm pheromones.

00:49:01.000 So 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.

00:49:10.000 So maybe me, maybe a beekeeper coming in, and that will make it harder for the bees to communicate.

00:49:15.000 But 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.

00:49:29.000 So 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?

00:49:39.000 Get away. 0.73

00:49:39.000 You would move and the bees react the same way. 0.73

00:49:44.000 There'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.

00:49:54.000 So it's one of the best tools we have in beekeepers.

00:49:58.000 We don't really use a lot of tools.

00:50:00.000 It's pretty simple.

00:50:03.000 There's simple tools and simple equipment, but the smoker is the most important tool.

00:50:08.000 What is in the smoke or what kind of smoke is that?

00:50:10.000 Whatever.

00:50:11.000 I mean, for me it's, yeah, whatever is laying around.

00:50:13.000 You know, I like to use a lot of pine straw, pine needles, burlap sacks.

00:50:17.000 I get burlap sacks.

00:50:18.000 So you just burn things and you put them in that device and then you just blow the smoke on them.

00:50:24.000 That's it.

00:50:24.000 And 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?

00:50:33.000 You 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.

00:50:50.000 When did you start putting all of this stuff on social media?

00:50:56.000 I 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.

00:51:13.000 But were you trying to educate people about it?

00:51:17.000 Are you doing it just because it's fun?

00:51:19.000 You 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.

00:51:35.000 But, 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,

00:51:52.000 which is great because it's a fascinating process.

00:51:55.000 And, 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.

00:52:07.000 Yeah.

00:52:08.000 I mean, it's an insane experience.

00:52:11.000 Is that on TikTok or what is that?

00:52:12.000 Yeah, TikTok is bizarre.

00:52:15.000 It's...

00:52:15.000 The amount of views you get on TikTok is very strange.

00:52:18.000 It's significant, I'll say.

00:52:21.000 I mean, mind-blowing.

00:52:22.000 And, you know, you can see the numbers go up after you push that button.

00:52:26.000 And it's...

00:52:27.000 I mean, the first time, you know, I had...

00:52:29.000 I started to post maybe in the spring of 2020 on TikTok.

00:52:36.000 And...

00:52:37.000 By August, I had a video.

00:52:39.000 I posted a video in August that received 24 million views in 24 hours.

00:52:44.000 And my life changed, I mean, with the push of a button, really.

00:52:49.000 You know, not even overnight.

00:52:50.000 It was...

00:52:51.000 I had emails from everybody that had a production company, it seemed like.

00:52:56.000 And, you know, just having that many people...

00:52:59.000 See you.

00:53:00.000 It was a mind-blowing experience.

00:53:01.000 But then what I thought was the most viral someone could go, I thought that was it.

00:53:07.000 In March of 2021, about six months later, I posted another video and it got 50 million views in 24 hours.

00:53:14.000 Wow.

00:53:16.000 It was just unreal.

00:53:18.000 That's crazy.

00:53:18.000 It's crazy.

00:53:19.000 That's more than anybody who's ever seen Titanic.

00:53:22.000 I'm just kidding.

00:53:23.000 Is that true?

00:53:24.000 How many people have bought Titanic?

00:53:27.000 I'm guessing.

00:53:27.000 A lot.

00:53:28.000 No, please.

00:53:29.000 It's got to be.

00:53:30.000 I wonder.

00:53:30.000 Definitely more than Black Adam.

00:53:32.000 What would I say?

00:53:33.000 Ticket sales?

00:53:34.000 Yeah.

00:53:34.000 Okay.

00:53:35.000 I've had someone tell me that I've had a few videos that more people have seen than the Super Bowl.

00:53:42.000 Yeah, I'm sure.

00:53:43.000 Well, what's the Super Bowl?

00:53:44.000 How many people is the Super Bowl?

00:53:45.000 It's probably close.

00:53:47.000 50 million?

00:53:48.000 50 million is huge.

00:53:50.000 And that's only the first day they get, you know, then these videos would keep getting views and it was just, I mean, it was insane.

00:53:56.000 I'm probably wrong about the Titanic.

00:53:58.000 Was that the numbers, the amount of money that it's made?

00:54:02.000 Yeah, that's a problem because it's hard to figure out how much a ticket costs.

00:54:07.000 What is the biggest hit show on television?

00:54:12.000 Is there a hit show on television anymore?

00:54:15.000 Television's giving way to the internet.

00:54:19.000 Like, what's the...

00:54:20.000 Well, so, like, at the height, all in the family, most watch TV finales of all time, right?

00:54:26.000 Yeah.

00:54:26.000 All in the family, 40 million.

00:54:28.000 How crazy is that?

00:54:31.000 I can't believe it!

00:54:33.000 But there's more than I would have to have higher, but I was just saying.

00:54:35.000 Right, but that's a pretty good comparison, though.

00:54:39.000 40 million, and you did that in, you know, a couple hours on TikTok.

00:54:43.000 With an iPhone.

00:54:44.000 Nuts! 0.70

00:54:44.000 Like, with an iPhone that I just happened to set up on a rock. 0.70

00:54:48.000 And the video that got 50 million views in 24 hours, I had that bee removal I did six months prior.

00:54:54.000 I had it just sitting in my camera roll.

00:54:56.000 I just decided to post it.

00:54:58.000 I think the weather was maybe bad that week.

00:55:00.000 I don't know.

00:55:02.000 Yeah, it's crazy.

00:55:04.000 I don't think anything can prepare someone for that experience.

00:55:08.000 How is this the first podcast you've ever done then?

00:55:10.000 I would imagine people have already asked you.

00:55:14.000 I've had requests.

00:55:16.000 You held out for us?

00:55:19.000 You know, y'all made it so easy and efficient.

00:55:22.000 It was like, are you interested this day?

00:55:25.000 Just making sure you'll be there tomorrow.

00:55:26.000 I mean, it was like if Bees had a podcast.

00:55:28.000 It was great.

00:55:30.000 You made it hard to say no.

00:55:32.000 Well, luckily we're in Austin.

00:55:33.000 Yes, that's convenient.

00:55:35.000 And, you know, for me, I mean, again, I like to spend most of my time doing this work.

00:55:40.000 And it's seasonal.

00:55:41.000 It's cyclical.

00:55:42.000 There's, you know, a time of the year where I can do a lot of it.

00:55:45.000 And there's a time of year where I can't do quite as much.

00:55:48.000 And so sometimes timing doesn't match up.

00:55:51.000 I mean, I'm terrible at checking direct messages.

00:55:53.000 That's how a lot of requests come through.

00:55:56.000 So I won't see them for like six weeks or six months.

00:55:58.000 Yeah, I know what that's all about.

00:56:01.000 This video has over 100 million views.

00:56:05.000 There's multiple videos I saw.

00:56:06.000 Oh my god, that's so insane.

00:56:10.000 100 million views.

00:56:13.000 Wow.

00:56:15.000 Erica, that's gotta be so strange for you.

00:56:19.000 It's incredibly unusual.

00:56:20.000 Do you get recognized on the street?

00:56:22.000 Are you the bee lady? 0.67

00:56:23.000 You know, I live a pretty quiet life.

00:56:25.000 So, I mean, I've got a little piece of dirt and grow some food.

00:56:28.000 Got 30 beehives, four dogs, a white-winged dove, five chickens, a great husband.

00:56:33.000 You know, I don't really go out that much.

00:56:36.000 You know, I'm in beehives most of the time.

00:56:39.000 But has it happened?

00:56:40.000 It's happened, yeah.

00:56:41.000 I mean, a lot of times.

00:56:43.000 Well, and I don't do myself any favors because I pretty much wear the same thing every day.

00:56:48.000 I mean, that's the truth.

00:56:50.000 But, you know, people have recognized my truck before when I'm driving.

00:56:54.000 Whoa.

00:56:54.000 So, yeah, it's happened.

00:56:57.000 But I love it.

00:56:58.000 You 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.

00:57:06.000 Is 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?

00:57:18.000 I 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.

00:57:34.000 You know, I think that Bees have been misbranded for so long.

00:57:40.000 I mean, most people think that bees are aggressive and they're not.

00:57:44.000 You 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.

00:57:54.000 But then there's another side of I get to show people something they've never seen before.

00:57:59.000 So, you know, hopefully it's entertaining to watch someone do this work and, you know, be covered in bees or whatnot.

00:58:05.000 But they've probably never seen people remove bees before or maybe not like I have.

00:58:11.000 And so I love showing people that, you know, something that they've never seen before.

00:58:15.000 And hopefully I can educate them and there's something they learn from watching a video.

00:58:19.000 A lot of people will say, now I can find the queen in a colony. 1.00

00:58:22.000 Hmm.

00:58:23.000 You 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.

00:58:33.000 One 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.

00:58:49.000 Have you had those things come your way?

00:58:52.000 Yeah.

00:58:53.000 Yeah.

00:58:54.000 What's that been like?

00:58:56.000 You 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.

00:59:09.000 You know, I live a pretty quiet life that I love.

00:59:11.000 I'm so happy and I get to do what I love every day and it's on my own time.

00:59:15.000 And 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.

00:59:23.000 And that's why they're there and they are just waiting for me to, you know...

00:59:27.000 The bees get really defensive one day and, you know, I just...

00:59:32.000 Just try to, you know, do what seems like is best for me and the bees and my family.

00:59:38.000 If I can help you in that regard, don't get involved with anybody else.

00:59:43.000 Don't let anybody come along, executives and production companies.

00:59:48.000 They're going to mess it up.

00:59:50.000 You already have this immense audience and incredible amount of success getting that message out.

00:59:56.000 All you have to do is figure out what anybody would want to do with you is do some sort of reality show.

01:00:03.000 Just sort of ramp up what you're doing.

01:00:06.000 And just figure out a way to monetize it. 0.98

01:00:09.000 And 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. 0.98

01:00:17.000 Because all they're trying to do is capitalize on it. 0.97

01:00:19.000 And I guarantee, one of the things they'll do, because I've I've done some reality stuff before.

01:00:24.000 One of the things I like to do is they fake scenarios.

01:00:27.000 They'll create a scenario.

01:00:29.000 I mean, they might even want to place a queen somewhere.

01:00:32.000 And then you have to, like, there's a dilemma.

01:00:35.000 You know, there's a sorority house. 1.00

01:00:37.000 You have to help these girls and they're shrieking. 1.00

01:00:39.000 You know what I'm saying? 1.00

01:00:40.000 They'll come up with some bullshit. 0.99

01:00:42.000 Thank you. 1.00

01:00:43.000 Yeah, don't.

01:00:44.000 Don't.

01:00:44.000 Don't get involved in the machine.

01:00:46.000 The machine is filled with a bunch of, some of them are wonderful people, but there is a very clear mandate.

01:00:53.000 They want to create problems and solutions, and that's what every reality show is.

01:00:57.000 And they fake problems, and they fake solutions.

01:01:00.000 Don't want to be a part of that.

01:01:01.000 And also, you're going to have a bunch of people telling you how to do it, and you're going to get weirded out by it.

01:01:05.000 You're going to hate it.

01:01:07.000 If you did do it, I guarantee you we could have a podcast two years from now, and you're like, you were right.

01:01:13.000 Well, then I probably won't.

01:01:15.000 You know, I think I've made that decision that TV isn't for me.

01:01:19.000 Thank you for your perspective.

01:01:21.000 You don't have to.

01:01:22.000 You 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.

01:01:36.000 133.5 million people!

01:01:39.000 Look at that!

01:01:40.000 Yeah, you cannot get that on television.

01:01:43.000 They'll just rob you. 0.99

01:01:44.000 I wasn't even going to post that one with the 133 million.

01:01:48.000 And it's my...

01:01:49.000 Why weren't you going to post it?

01:01:52.000 Well, I'm in my pajamas.

01:01:53.000 Happy Earth Day.

01:01:55.000 You're in your pajamas?

01:01:56.000 It was just, it was some bees I got from the night before, and they escaped.

01:02:01.000 The 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,

01:02:17.000 oh, no, you got to post that one, so I just put it together and posted it, and Yeah, listen to your husband.

01:02:23.000 He's right.

01:02:24.000 33 million people watched it.

01:02:26.000 See, that's a perfect example of why you shouldn't be on television.

01:02:29.000 Because there's not a place in the world where you're going to get that kind of views other than social media.

01:02:33.000 I thought if the goal was really to teach people, you know, I mean, more people will see it this way.

01:02:38.000 And I mean, like you said, it's kind of my way of doing it.

01:02:42.000 And 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...

01:02:51.000 I very much felt like nobody, you know...

01:02:55.000 I guess if I do it, you'll know that someone had my health and wellness and that of the bees at the forefront.

01:03:02.000 The problem is you don't know those people.

01:03:03.000 An interesting thing that's been part of my story is that this all happened to me during the pandemic.

01:03:12.000 At the height of quarantine is when those videos were getting the 50 million views a day.

01:03:20.000 I 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.

01:03:29.000 I was in a weird time where I was doing all these interviews and stuff, but it was from the study at my house.

01:03:37.000 I didn't actually go anywhere.

01:03:40.000 It 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.

01:03:49.000 I didn't shake a hand.

01:03:51.000 I didn't share a meal.

01:03:52.000 I was shocked that they would...

01:03:54.000 Hire me without doing that, too.

01:03:56.000 And it just didn't feel good.

01:03:59.000 Yeah.

01:04:01.000 Some of them are wonderful people.

01:04:03.000 A lot of them are wonderful people.

01:04:05.000 But it's just that's their job.

01:04:06.000 You can't blame a hyena for being a hyena.

01:04:09.000 That's what they do.

01:04:11.000 And those people, they find someone like you, and all they think of is, I can buy a bigger house if I can get Erica's show on television.

01:04:19.000 I mean, that's literally all they do.

01:04:21.000 Well, I met some great people.

01:04:22.000 It felt to me like it was just the process.

01:04:24.000 It 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.

01:04:33.000 You know, it just felt like that was what happens to people.

01:04:36.000 And I met some great people and it wasn't the people.

01:04:38.000 It was just, I mean, you know, I didn't know them.

01:04:41.000 We'll see.

01:04:41.000 I mean, never say never, but maybe now.

01:04:45.000 Here's the thing.

01:04:46.000 You can do more on your own.

01:04:49.000 Do you know who Mr. Beast is?

01:04:51.000 Yes.

01:04:51.000 Great guy.

01:04:52.000 Had him on the podcast before.

01:04:54.000 What he's done is amazing.

01:04:56.000 He's done it completely on his own.

01:04:58.000 And everything he's done, it's been his decision.

01:05:01.000 He has this enormous following.

01:05:03.000 He does all his good.

01:05:05.000 He contributes to charities.

01:05:08.000 He runs food banks.

01:05:10.000 He funds all of his programs and all of his things through his show.

01:05:15.000 He funds all of his new episodes through old episodes.

01:05:20.000 He's doing it completely independently.

01:05:22.000 He's so happy. 0.99

01:05:23.000 And he doesn't deal with any bullshit. 0.99

01:05:25.000 No one's telling him what to do. 0.98

01:05:27.000 I see a way where you could do something in your world that's akin to that.

01:05:33.000 Like, if you're getting this much response, you could do it completely independently.

01:05:37.000 It's just, it's a matter of if you want to monetize it.

01:05:41.000 If you want to monetize it, you want to do it on YouTube.

01:05:43.000 And all these different places and have advertising.

01:05:46.000 You can do that and then you don't have to deal with anybody.

01:05:49.000 I can just deal with the bees. 0.55

01:05:51.000 That's what I really want to do at the end of the day.

01:05:55.000 He's figured it out.

01:05:56.000 That would be the dream.

01:05:57.000 A lot of my process, I'm restricted because I have to edit or I have to do all these other things.

01:06:03.000 Are you doing this all yourself?

01:06:04.000 I'm doing it all myself.

01:06:06.000 All you need to do is hire an editor.

01:06:08.000 If you hired an editor and had someone that you trust, a friend or someone like that, a family member, to come film with you, that's it.

01:06:19.000 That's all you need.

01:06:19.000 And then you talk to the camera, you talk to that person, you have some fun.

01:06:24.000 And you don't have to deal with anybody.

01:06:25.000 And 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.

01:06:36.000 When you get 133 million downloads, it's not difficult to find advertisers, especially something that's...

01:06:43.000 So interesting, so non-controversial, educational, wholesome.

01:06:47.000 Everything's cool about it.

01:06:48.000 It's really interesting.

01:06:49.000 It's great for the environment.

01:06:50.000 And I think it's very important that people understand, like, how important bees are to the ecosystem.

01:06:57.000 If all bees died, all people die.

01:07:01.000 We have to really understand that.

01:07:03.000 Like, there is a gigantic system that's in place.

01:07:05.000 And I'd like to hear you talk about that.

01:07:08.000 Because there is a crazy system in place with, like, how our food is made.

01:07:12.000 Yes.

01:07:12.000 How our plants are pollinized.

01:07:14.000 It's all done through these magical little creatures that you're fascinated with.

01:07:18.000 It is.

01:07:18.000 And 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.

01:07:27.000 Bees pollinate one out of every three bites of food we eat.

01:07:30.000 And it's not just the apple or the almond that you've had today or your cup of coffee.

01:07:36.000 It's the beef that you're eating that grazed on alfalfa.

01:07:38.000 Bees 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

01:08:08.000 help 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.

01:08:32.000 I read something about cell, more than one thing, about cell phone signals interfering with the way bees communicate.

01:08:40.000 Do you know what that is?

01:08:42.000 I have heard a little bit about that, or I've heard about that years ago.

01:08:45.000 I haven't heard about that recently, and I don't know if there's any merit to that.

01:08:50.000 Oh, okay.

01:08:52.000 Let's see if we can find something on that.

01:08:53.000 Because 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.

01:09:07.000 And I would just imagine that that signal...

01:09:11.000 Whatever that is, that's in the air.

01:09:13.000 Obviously, we can't detect cell phone signals.

01:09:16.000 You have to look at your phone to see if you have a signal.

01:09:18.000 But whatever they are able to do is obviously so different than the kind of senses that we have.

01:09:26.000 And I think the speculation was, or maybe theory, was that there is something about these signals that is interfering with the way bees communicate.

01:09:38.000 There could be, but that's certainly not the biggest problem bees face.

01:09:42.000 So I don't think that's a challenge that bees are facing right now.

01:09:49.000 I 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.

01:09:55.000 I see a problem with my bees not having enough food and with pesticides and industrial agriculture.

01:10:02.000 What is industrial agriculture doing to bees?

01:10:05.000 It's killing our bees. 0.99

01:10:07.000 It's, you know, we're putting these large monocrops.

01:10:11.000 We're putting acres and acres of the same thing that need bees to pollinate. 0.99

01:10:15.000 For example, almonds.

01:10:18.000 Almonds are almost entirely dependent on bees for pollination.

01:10:22.000 And so we would have no almonds if we didn't have bees. 0.98

01:10:26.000 And 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.

01:10:40.000 They only have it for a short period of time.

01:10:43.000 So, 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.

01:10:51.000 But 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.

01:11:04.000 So that's how they do it.

01:11:05.000 They bring in bees.

01:11:08.000 You know, the way that most beekeepers earn a living is through commercial pollination services.

01:11:14.000 So we need bees for food like almonds. 1.00

01:11:19.000 And, you know, plants are pollinated one of two ways.

01:11:24.000 They're self-pollinating or they're cross-pollinating and they need some help to reproduce and to fertilize.

01:11:30.000 And bees are the best pollinator our planet has. 0.94

01:11:34.000 So when bees go out and collect food for themselves, you know, they're pollinating plants and making sure plants are reproducing.

01:11:43.000 And without bees, we wouldn't have, you know, many, many foods.

01:11:47.000 But it's not just us.

01:11:48.000 It's so many creatures who rely on bees for their food system as well.

01:11:54.000 So 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?

01:12:07.000 From, 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,

01:12:22.000 the bees will stay in the hive.

01:12:24.000 So 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.

01:12:33.000 So, you know, we'll have beekeepers from all around the country ship their bees and do this pollination circuit.

01:12:40.000 And, you know, they'll come from all different areas, Texas, California.

01:12:44.000 We'll have some beekeepers. 0.98

01:12:45.000 Florida is a big place for beekeepers.

01:12:48.000 And what are they feeding their bees? 0.94

01:12:50.000 Like, how are they keeping their bees alive when they're doing this?

01:12:53.000 Well, you know, they're pollinating the almonds, so that is food for the bees.

01:12:56.000 Once they get there.

01:12:57.000 But when they acquire them in order to ship them, how are they doing that?

01:13:01.000 As beekeepers, we're supplementing food for the bees all the time because there simply isn't enough.

01:13:05.000 I mean, that's one of the biggest challenges facing bees is habitat loss.

01:13:09.000 And that extends.

01:13:11.000 It's not just honeybees, but it's, you know, the over 20,000 species of bees that we share this planet with.

01:13:17.000 They're all...

01:13:18.000 You know, feeling the effects of not having enough food or not having a diverse enough diet.

01:13:24.000 So we will supplement the bees feed with sugar water when needed.

01:13:29.000 And it's trash.

01:13:31.000 I mean, it's just like feeding your kids McDonald's every day, you know. 0.97

01:13:34.000 What is the difference between what they get?

01:13:37.000 Because pollen, obviously, you were talking about the protein.

01:13:41.000 Sure.

01:13:44.000 Give them something artificial or supplement something exogenous that is akin to pollen?

01:13:51.000 There is a pollen substitute, yep. 0.66

01:13:53.000 It's mostly made of like a soy powder.

01:13:55.000 That's not good for them either?

01:13:57.000 It's not natural food.

01:13:58.000 It's not what the bees are meant to have.

01:14:00.000 I mean, these creatures have been around so long.

01:14:04.000 It's for us to come along and start feeding them artificial food.

01:14:08.000 So 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?

01:14:19.000 I don't know if any studies have been done that have exclusively fed bees artificial food.

01:14:23.000 You know, bees need natural food to live.

01:14:25.000 We wouldn't want bees to live on exclusively artificial food. 0.91

01:14:29.000 You shouldn't have bees in that area. 0.99

01:14:31.000 But yeah, we have people that live like that.

01:14:34.000 But, you know, we certainly want to keep the bees as healthy as possible.

01:14:39.000 And these sugar water diets are not what's healthiest for the bees. 0.53

01:14:44.000 And they know best, you know.

01:14:45.000 And so let's let them forage naturally.

01:14:48.000 But they need to have things available to forage.

01:14:50.000 So 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.

01:15:02.000 There's a lack of places for them to find food.

01:15:06.000 Yeah, there's little things everybody can do to make a difference in the lives of bees.

01:15:12.000 And the biggest one is everybody can plant food for bees.

01:15:16.000 Anytime 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.

01:15:24.000 And what would those things be?

01:15:26.000 Flowering plants.

01:15:27.000 So whatever is local and native to your area is best.

01:15:31.000 And when you go to your nursery, you know, you can ask someone for help.

01:15:34.000 Or what I like to do is I just look for the plants where the bees are on.

01:15:38.000 So if I see a plant covered in bees, you know, I make sure it's native.

01:15:42.000 But then, you know, I know it's probably a plant the bees will forage from and get food from.

01:15:48.000 Everybody 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.

01:16:07.000 One 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.

01:16:21.000 Is that true?

01:16:22.000 That's completely false.

01:16:24.000 That's false.

01:16:24.000 There is no scientific evidence to prove that.

01:16:27.000 And the idea...

01:16:28.000 The hippie logic?

01:16:29.000 Well, the idea of it doesn't even hold weight.

01:16:31.000 So the idea is that if you are somehow exposed to the local pollen in your area, that you will gain some sort of...

01:16:41.000 Right.

01:17:06.000 Or ragweed.

01:17:07.000 So there is really no merit to that claim.

01:17:12.000 Yeah, because that is a hippie thing. 0.99

01:17:14.000 They say, oh, you need local honey to protect you. 0.85

01:17:16.000 You know, honey is great.

01:17:17.000 It's antibacterial, antimicrobial.

01:17:20.000 Eat 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.

01:17:31.000 Do you know that it's how they used to use it to preserve psychedelic mushrooms?

01:17:36.000 I did not know that.

01:17:37.000 Yeah, they used to preserve psychedelic mushrooms in honey because it keeps them from rotting.

01:17:42.000 Yeah.

01:17:43.000 And then they went on to create mead with honey.

01:17:46.000 This 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.

01:17:59.000 And they think that it stemmed from, initially, that they started to preserve mushrooms, in particular, in honey.

01:18:06.000 Wow.

01:18:07.000 Yeah.

01:18:07.000 And then preserving them in honey is obviously a very effective way to preserve things.

01:18:11.000 And then they went from that to creating mead with honey, which is alcohol-based.

01:18:16.000 And then the alcohol changed the way that people behaved and changed the culture.

01:18:20.000 Wow.

01:18:21.000 And, you know, lowered inhibitions, made people more aggressive, changed, like, less thoughtful, less sense of community.

01:18:27.000 Do you know if the process of the mushrooms in the honey was part of discovering mead?

01:18:32.000 Was it because they left it for so long and it fermented?

01:18:34.000 I don't believe so.

01:18:36.000 It was...

01:18:36.000 I don't believe so.

01:18:38.000 I don't know, though.

01:18:38.000 I'm not sure.

01:18:38.000 I don't know much about mead myself.

01:18:40.000 Mead is weird.

01:18:41.000 Yeah.

01:18:41.000 It's like a weird kind of beer-like thing.

01:18:43.000 My friend Maynard, he has a winery.

01:18:47.000 He owns Vineyards.

01:18:48.000 You know Tool, the band Tool?

01:18:50.000 Yes.

01:18:50.000 My friend Maynard is the lead singer of Tool, and he owns Caduceus Vineyards and...

01:18:55.000 He'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.

01:19:02.000 And he makes different, you know, kind of sparkling wines and stuff.

01:19:06.000 But they make, you know, it's alcohol based out of honey.

01:19:11.000 Sure.

01:19:11.000 Have you had that?

01:19:12.000 I have had it before.

01:19:14.000 Do you like it?

01:19:14.000 I do like it, yeah.

01:19:15.000 Do you like it just because it's honey?

01:19:17.000 Like, if you didn't know it was honey, would you like it?

01:19:18.000 I'm definitely pro-honey, you know?

01:19:21.000 But I'll say one thing that I am curious to try.

01:19:23.000 Have you ever heard of mad honey?

01:19:25.000 Yes.

01:19:25.000 I ordered some.

01:19:26.000 No.

01:19:27.000 Yeah, yeah, I bought it online.

01:19:29.000 You want it?

01:19:30.000 Is it here?

01:19:30.000 No, I wish it was.

01:19:31.000 See, you get excited.

01:19:33.000 No, I haven't even tried it.

01:19:35.000 I just got it, like, a little while ago.

01:19:37.000 It's at my house, yeah.

01:19:38.000 You can buy it on Amazon. 0.99

01:19:39.000 It might be bullshit, though. 0.95

01:19:41.000 Well, you'll have to, I mean, I'm so curious to find out, what is your source? 0.98

01:19:44.000 Because I know it comes from, I think, Turkey and Nepal, or I don't know if it comes from other places.

01:19:48.000 We've covered it on the podcast many times.

01:19:50.000 Oh, you have?

01:19:50.000 Okay.

01:19:50.000 Because it's such a wild way of extracting it, the way these guys...

01:19:55.000 Yes!

01:19:55.000 Let's pull that up so people can see it.

01:19:58.000 Oh, by the way, did you find anything about cell phones?

01:20:00.000 There are, it seems like, two studies.

01:20:03.000 This comes from 2009-2011.

01:20:06.000 In 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.

01:20:17.000 But 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.

01:20:23.000 They 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...

01:20:33.000 This is a person putting cell phones inside a beehive, though.

01:20:36.000 Correct.

01:20:36.000 That's what I'm saying.

01:20:37.000 These studies only come from over 10 years ago.

01:20:40.000 The 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.

01:20:54.000 After the phones had been on for about 20 to 40 minutes, the bees began to make a high-pitched squeaking sound known as piping.

01:21:02.000 This sound is usually a signal made by the bees to announce swarming or that the hive is in danger.

01:21:13.000 However, even after the cell phone signals running for 20 hours and the piping sounds continuing, the bees did not swarm.

01:21:22.000 Within only two minutes of the cell phones being turned off, the bees calmed down to their original state.

01:21:29.000 But that seems like you're introducing a lot of other things other than just a cell phone signal.

01:21:34.000 You're introducing electronics, heat.

01:21:36.000 There's a lot of stuff going on, sound, vibration, right?

01:21:40.000 I'd have a lot of questions about that, yeah.

01:21:42.000 I mean, I don't know if that tells us too much about it.

01:21:45.000 Go back to that article, Jamie, to the very top of it.

01:21:47.000 Because this is the title of the article, which is what's interesting to me.

01:21:51.000 It says that it might be contributing to honeybee population decline.

01:21:56.000 So that's what they call...

01:21:58.000 And 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.

01:22:11.000 Beekeepers are replacing those colonies.

01:22:13.000 So the populations are stable, even though hive loss rates...

01:22:17.000 Go back to that, Jamie, what I was just going to point to, what you just had.

01:22:21.000 Right 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,

01:22:43.000 which would affect their navigational skills, physiology, changes in their antennal sencilla?

01:22:50.000 How do you say that?

01:22:52.000 Do you know?

01:22:53.000 I don't.

01:22:54.000 You're a big lady. 0.65

01:22:55.000 They might have made that word up.

01:22:57.000 They might have made it up.

01:22:58.000 Brain proteome neurotransmission and development.

01:23:02.000 The orientation of honeybees is connected to the Earth's magnetic field, and for this they possess localized particles called magnetites.

01:23:12.000 If 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.

01:23:26.000 So that previous study you read about the cell phones in the hive was what this guy did.

01:23:32.000 That's that farf guy. 1.00

01:23:33.000 This says that substantiates that, but that's not exactly what you just read.

01:23:37.000 So I feel like they're drawing conclusions a little bit.

01:23:40.000 Maybe they're just trying to scare people.

01:23:42.000 I feel like that's what they're trying to do.

01:23:45.000 So that's fascinating though that they use the Earth's magnetic poles to navigate.

01:23:50.000 Do we understand how they do that?

01:23:51.000 They also use the orientation of the Sun with where their hive is located to tell the other bees where to go.

01:23:59.000 How do they do that?

01:24:00.000 Well, one of the ways they communicate in addition to the pheromones and through touching each other or piping, vocalizing is Through dancing, through movement.

01:24:14.000 So 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.

01:24:41.000 It's a series of movements.

01:24:42.000 It kind of looks like a figure-eight pattern.

01:24:45.000 And it's the bee waggling her abdomen up in the air and doing this dance and telling the other bees...

01:24:51.000 There's a waggle dance right there.

01:24:52.000 Yeah, there we go.

01:24:53.000 So she's telling...

01:24:54.000 Well, there's usually other bees around her, but she'll tell the other bees where to go based on the... 1.00

01:25:05.000 She tells her nest mates that the food is 270 degrees or to the left of the sun on the horizon.

01:25:11.000 Whoa! 0.71

01:25:13.000 Yes, 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.

01:25:36.000 And the more bees that choose the nest site, the more popular it is.

01:25:40.000 And essentially, you know, the bees are all voting together on where to move to.

01:25:46.000 So would they move the entire colony, including the queens? 0.91

01:25:49.000 Yep.

01:25:49.000 Well, that's a swarm.

01:25:50.000 So 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.

01:25:58.000 And 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.

01:26:10.000 Would they start a separate colony with a new queen or would they only move the queen? 1.00

01:26:16.000 Well, 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.

01:26:32.000 Meanwhile, 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.

01:26:47.000 So if they have the female, you know, a female bee egg, they can turn that into a queen bee.

01:26:54.000 And so the swarming process is the natural reproduction process for the colony.

01:26:59.000 You 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.

01:27:07.000 So, you know, if we have one bee colony and we need two, that's how it happens in nature.

01:27:13.000 So is that dependent upon the resources that are available in the area?

01:27:16.000 Will they go out and find a new spot and go, hey, we found a good spot?

01:27:20.000 And the other bees will stay there, and then they'll create a new queen, and then just keep expanding their numbers that way? 0.98

01:27:26.000 They certainly make sure they have enough resources, you know, in the area.

01:27:29.000 And they want to find a nesting site, a hive location that has resources around for them to build.

01:27:35.000 But there are things that they look for.

01:27:38.000 They 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.

01:27:47.000 Which is why I do bee removals from the same places over and over again, compost bins, water meter boxes, things like that.

01:27:54.000 The bees will look for an area that's climate controlled and the right amount of space. 0.98

01:28:01.000 They 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. 0.64

01:28:08.000 They like a small entrance that they can easily defend.

01:28:13.000 Learn that it's about an inch, inch and a half big, I think, is their preferred entrance size.

01:28:18.000 There'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.

01:28:31.000 And 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.

01:28:46.000 You know, everybody gets a say in the colony.

01:28:49.000 Hmm, fascinating.

01:28:50.000 So, let's take a look at this, because you brought one.

01:28:54.000 Oh, the hive?

01:28:55.000 Yes, certainly.

01:28:55.000 Can you put it up on the table?

01:28:56.000 I would be happy to.

01:28:57.000 Please do.

01:28:59.000 May I move around with this?

01:29:00.000 Yeah, sure, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:29:02.000 You can take your headphones off and make it easier while you're doing this.

01:29:08.000 And that, is that honey that is from that particular group, the honey that you have there?

01:29:14.000 What is this?

01:29:17.000 That's honey from another colony, and that's really just for them to have a little bit of food.

01:29:26.000 They have food in this hive, but that's just a nice kind of...

01:29:32.000 Is this honey like a slow drip or something?

01:29:35.000 Can I lift this up?

01:29:36.000 Or would the bees come out?

01:29:39.000 You will see bees when you lift that up, but you are more than welcome to lift it up.

01:29:44.000 And do you see them in there?

01:29:47.000 You can even put your finger there.

01:29:49.000 And those are their little proboscis. 0.98

01:29:51.000 Hi, guys.

01:29:52.000 Or girls. 0.64

01:29:52.000 Excuse me. 0.64

01:29:53.000 Sorry.

01:29:54.000 And so you have little dots, little holes here, folks.

01:29:58.000 You can see that.

01:29:58.000 Little holes in the bottom of this honey jar.

01:30:01.000 So it's like a slow drip to them.

01:30:04.000 Wow.

01:30:05.000 The sound they're making is so fascinating.

01:30:07.000 The sound's incredible.

01:30:13.000 Is that okay?

01:30:13.000 I'm sorry.

01:30:14.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:30:14.000 No, that's great.

01:30:15.000 Yeah, it's kind of blocking me, but...

01:30:17.000 It's okay.

01:30:21.000 Well, anyways...

01:30:23.000 I can see it over this way.

01:30:26.000 Oh, are you?

01:30:27.000 Okay, cool.

01:30:28.000 So there is a queen in there, and this was a swarm, so they didn't have anything with them.

01:30:34.000 So this is all stuff from another hive that I donated to them.

01:30:38.000 But these are all female bees. 0.99

01:30:40.000 I haven't seen a single male bee in there.

01:30:42.000 And if I open this door, Jamie will panic and run out of the studio.

01:30:45.000 I would, yep.

01:30:46.000 You would?

01:30:47.000 Yep.

01:30:47.000 You haven't learned from her what she said?

01:30:49.000 I was attacked when I was a younger child.

01:30:52.000 Oh my goodness.

01:30:53.000 Were you attacked by bees or hornets?

01:30:55.000 I don't know.

01:30:56.000 It was inside of a grocery store and I didn't see it coming.

01:30:59.000 A grocery store?

01:31:00.000 Inside of a grocery store.

01:31:01.000 Yeah, I was in the frozen food section and something flew up my shirt.

01:31:04.000 Next thing I knew, I was swollen.

01:31:07.000 That's probably hornets, right?

01:31:09.000 I got lit up by hornets in Utah this September.

01:31:13.000 So the thing about honeybees is once they sting you, they will die.

01:31:16.000 The stinger is, you know, attached to their abdominal cavity and it'll rip out of them and they'll die shortly after.

01:31:22.000 But, you know, a lot of hornets and wasps, well, they won't.

01:31:25.000 They can sting you multiple times without dying, which also the queen can. 0.98

01:31:29.000 She is the only bee that, well, the male drone bees don't have a stinger. 0.98

01:31:33.000 The female worker bees, their stinger is barbed, which makes it stick into your skin and rip out. 0.98

01:31:40.000 They can sting other bees and it won't rip out and they won't die.

01:31:43.000 But the queen bee, her stinger is not barbed. 1.00

01:31:45.000 So you could be stung multiple times by a queen in theory, but the queens rarely have an occasion to sting. 1.00

01:31:52.000 Is that because the queen is ready to fight to the death? 1.00

01:31:56.000 Yeah.

01:31:56.000 That's right.

01:31:58.000 I can pull that out like that that way.

01:32:01.000 Wow, that's so cool.

01:32:03.000 And so there's, you know, on this side we have a lot of...

01:32:07.000 And you can feel them, too.

01:32:08.000 I mean, you can just feel their warmth.

01:32:09.000 So they always try to keep their hive at around 95 degrees. 0.62

01:32:13.000 And that's just body temperature that's causing that?

01:32:15.000 That's just their body heat.

01:32:17.000 Up here, we have a bunch of honey.

01:32:19.000 That's, you know, capped honey.

01:32:21.000 That's going to be their food source during the winter.

01:32:23.000 And then over here, there's a lot of pollen.

01:32:26.000 It may be hard to see, but...

01:32:28.000 Are these holes, could they get out of there if they wanted to?

01:32:31.000 Well, it's screened, so they cannot.

01:32:33.000 They 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.

01:32:45.000 Just rep some a little bit.

01:32:47.000 And we saw her down here where there's brood. 0.65

01:32:51.000 This is where the baby bees are. 0.99

01:32:53.000 So it's more likely that she would be down here.

01:32:56.000 But I also selected this piece of comb to bring out of this hive because...

01:33:02.000 It'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.

01:33:14.000 Their little legs are all linked together and that's how they build comb. 1.00

01:33:17.000 So you're seeing them build more of this beeswax comb.

01:33:21.000 I don't know if you can see that group of bees there.

01:33:23.000 I mean if you shake the hive you can see it moved.

01:33:26.000 Yes.

01:33:27.000 How long is the process to make?

01:33:29.000 Like how much comb can they make in a day?

01:33:32.000 I don't know how much comb.

01:33:34.000 It would depend on the size of the colony.

01:33:36.000 But, you know, every bee or the female worker bees have these little wax glands on the underside of their abdomen. 0.99

01:33:42.000 They have eight of these glands and the wax comes out.

01:33:46.000 I mean, like we do.

01:33:47.000 We produce wax, but they don't have ears, of course.

01:33:49.000 They 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. 0.99

01:33:58.000 Wow.

01:33:59.000 One of the things that I saw that was really wild was these hornets that would come and kill honeybees.

01:34:08.000 They'd swarm in and just a few enormous hornets, they would chop off the heads of these honeybees. 1.00

01:34:15.000 And to stop that, the honeybees swarmed the hornets and just beat their wings on them and heated them up until they died of overheating.

01:34:24.000 Yes.

01:34:25.000 They will.

01:34:25.000 That's actually how the bees will or can kill a queen.

01:34:31.000 In 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.

01:34:43.000 And in that case, that's what they're doing is they're overheating it to death.

01:34:47.000 And that's their way of taking care of these, you know, northern giant hornets that made the news last year a lot.

01:34:55.000 Murder hornets, right?

01:34:56.000 That's what they're calling them?

01:34:57.000 Yes.

01:34:58.000 Great word.

01:34:59.000 You know, it plays into the fear of bees, that media.

01:35:04.000 There it is right there.

01:35:05.000 Yes.

01:35:06.000 So why are these hornets killing these honeybees?

01:35:09.000 Look how they just jump on top of them.

01:35:11.000 That's remarkable.

01:35:12.000 I mean, that is incredible.

01:35:13.000 Yeah.

01:35:14.000 Can we see that on the camera?

01:35:15.000 Yeah.

01:35:16.000 Okay.

01:35:17.000 So they just know what's going on.

01:35:20.000 Okay.

01:35:21.000 And so they know what's going on and they just jump all over it.

01:35:24.000 So this is a common thing that these large hornets will do this?

01:35:28.000 Or they just instinctively know that they can heat them up?

01:35:32.000 Look at that.

01:35:32.000 That's so crazy.

01:35:34.000 And so by being on top of them, how long does it take for them to overheat them?

01:35:38.000 I wouldn't know.

01:35:39.000 This is a hornet that we hopefully don't have in the US. There's been no sightings of these hornets this year.

01:35:49.000 So I've never seen anything like that.

01:35:52.000 Why do hornets kill bees? 1.00

01:35:55.000 They are probably, you know, they're a predator of the bees. 0.80

01:35:57.000 They will eat the bees or go after the honey or the pollen.

01:36:01.000 And, 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.

01:36:15.000 But as we can see, the bees have their own management techniques.

01:36:18.000 To take care of these hornets, too.

01:36:21.000 It'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.

01:36:29.000 But they're very different.

01:36:30.000 They're very different.

01:36:31.000 But, you know, people get them confused all the time.

01:36:35.000 It's just, you know, people not knowing.

01:36:37.000 And I get a lot of calls that turn out to be hornets or wasps.

01:36:41.000 And, you know, I try to do my best beforehand to gauge, like...

01:36:45.000 Make sure that I'm showing up for bees.

01:36:48.000 But people just don't know the difference a lot.

01:36:50.000 When they are hornets, what's the protocol? 0.96

01:36:53.000 Do you just murder them? 0.98

01:36:54.000 No. 0.99

01:36:55.000 I'm not an exterminator.

01:36:57.000 That's not what I do.

01:36:58.000 I hate hornets.

01:36:59.000 You know, they're not so bad.

01:37:02.000 You want me to move this?

01:37:03.000 Yeah, let's put this down now.

01:37:04.000 Yeah, I got it.

01:37:09.000 Well, I've just been stung by them so many times.

01:37:11.000 When you, in Utah, where I go in September, there's a ton of them up there.

01:37:18.000 And you can just get too close to their hive and they decide to light you up.

01:37:22.000 Like, they're not nice at all.

01:37:24.000 They're not like your cute little honeybees.

01:37:26.000 They're allowing you to touch them.

01:37:28.000 And the thing is, like, once one of them stings you, apparently, they release a phyrmone that makes all of them swarm toward you.

01:37:34.000 Well, I mean, that's the same way with bees.

01:37:36.000 It's a chemical marker.

01:37:38.000 It's a pheromone, yep.

01:37:39.000 You know, you're marked as a threat to the colony and all the other bees need to go after you.

01:37:46.000 You know, in Texas here a lot we have, I guess, a lot of paper wasps.

01:37:50.000 Everybody has paper wasps under their porch.

01:37:52.000 Look at all these bees, like, riding them and dragging them to the ground.

01:37:56.000 It's so fascinating.

01:37:57.000 And, I mean, that's a remarkable creature, that hornet.

01:38:00.000 Yeah, it's definitely remarkable.

01:38:02.000 Like, a monster. 0.99

01:38:04.000 Like a giant monster that comes to chop your mom's head off. 0.99

01:38:07.000 Because they're just chopping everyone's head off. 0.99

01:38:09.000 It's horrible. 1.00

01:38:10.000 I mean, they go in there and they can kill thousands.

01:38:13.000 There was a swarm of hornets in this one documentary I watched that wiped out an entire colony of bees.

01:38:18.000 They just swarmed in and cut all their heads off. 0.84

01:38:22.000 And so I guess they're eating them.

01:38:24.000 This is so hard to watch.

01:38:25.000 I don't...

01:38:25.000 It's like, these are your people.

01:38:27.000 Look.

01:38:27.000 See, they're going and they're eating the babies.

01:38:30.000 Is this difficult for you?

01:38:31.000 I mean it's not enjoyable.

01:38:35.000 You're like, Jamie, shut it off.

01:38:36.000 I just...

01:38:37.000 You feel very connected to this.

01:38:39.000 Yeah, I mean...

01:38:40.000 That'd be a real problem if those things became invasive. 0.76

01:38:43.000 I mean, it could be.

01:38:44.000 Yeah, if they came over here.

01:38:46.000 Well, they have been found here.

01:38:48.000 Colonies have been found here.

01:38:49.000 The nest, as I understand it, have been completely eradicated.

01:38:51.000 And we don't even know if, you know, they could establish themselves here.

01:38:56.000 Climate-wise?

01:38:57.000 Climate-wise.

01:38:57.000 You know, I don't think any new nests were found in 2022. Yeah.

01:39:02.000 It was in the Pacific Northwest, correct?

01:39:04.000 Yes.

01:39:05.000 Why there?

01:39:06.000 Has it become shipping containers?

01:39:07.000 I believe they were from shipping containers, but also climate.

01:39:11.000 So that is one place where these hornets could live and reproduce, you know.

01:39:17.000 And it was, I mean...

01:39:20.000 I was on the news here in Texas because the news here in Texas was covering these hornets.

01:39:25.000 You know, the amount of press that they got was just incredible.

01:39:31.000 I mean, it was just all about the fear of these hornets coming over.

01:39:36.000 But, you know, it's similar to what the fear around Africanized bees is from.

01:39:40.000 Yeah, the killer bees. 0.97

01:39:41.000 Killer.

01:39:41.000 I 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.

01:39:55.000 We 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.

01:40:06.000 What is this, Jimmy?

01:40:08.000 They eat the hornets?

01:40:09.000 Yeah.

01:40:10.000 They fry the hornets up to eat them and put them in sake.

01:40:14.000 What?

01:40:15.000 Dr. Kawahara said that it's just treated like a regular insect.

01:40:20.000 In 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.

01:40:28.000 It's a craze.

01:40:29.000 Interesting.

01:40:30.000 Of course.

01:40:31.000 But that's what we do. 0.98

01:40:32.000 We fuck everything up. 0.83

01:40:33.000 Yeah, I would say well said, sir. 0.68

01:40:34.000 Yeah.

01:40:34.000 Or ma'am.

01:40:35.000 I'm sorry.

01:40:36.000 Whoever it is.

01:40:37.000 They.

01:40:37.000 They, them.

01:40:39.000 So killer bees. 0.92

01:40:40.000 What's the difference between the Africanized killer bees?

01:40:43.000 So the Africanized bees, I won't use that word.

01:40:48.000 It's not a bee?

01:40:49.000 Well, no, I won't use the term killer bees.

01:40:51.000 I'll try to not use that.

01:40:52.000 Why do they use that term?

01:40:54.000 It's just the same thing as murder hornets?

01:40:55.000 It's the same thing as murder hornets.

01:40:57.000 But, you know, the Africanized bee, that is a hybrid bee of our Western honeybee that we have here.

01:41:08.000 And a bee from Africa that a biologist brought to Brazil to breed a better bee.

01:41:16.000 So 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.

01:41:33.000 Bees are not native to the United States, you know. 1.00

01:41:35.000 They're not?

01:41:36.000 They're not.

01:41:37.000 No, they were brought over by the colonists because we needed them.

01:41:40.000 Wow!

01:41:40.000 So honeybees are not native to the United States.

01:41:44.000 So what pollinated plants before honeybees came here?

01:41:48.000 Here in the US or here in the sense of here?

01:41:51.000 Because bees evolved from wasps, actually.

01:41:55.000 As wasps became vegetarian and figured out that pollen was a good food source, bees evolved from these predatory wasps.

01:42:04.000 So wasps went vegan and they became this much more peaceful creature, which is the honeybee.

01:42:11.000 How long did that take?

01:42:13.000 I don't know how long it took.

01:42:15.000 This happened well before we were here, about 100, 120 million years ago, I think.

01:42:22.000 And 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.

01:42:33.000 So bees were brought over to North America.

01:42:37.000 Yes.

01:42:39.000 And South America.

01:42:40.000 And South America.

01:42:40.000 What pollinated plants before the bees?

01:42:43.000 Other bees.

01:42:43.000 These are just honeybees we're talking about.

01:42:45.000 Oh, they're different bees.

01:42:46.000 There's over 20,000 species of bees, but also we have other bees, but we have other pollinators as well.

01:42:52.000 So we have butterflies, bats, birds.

01:42:54.000 Whoa, look at these creeps.

01:42:56.000 Wow, look at that crazy looking blue bee. 0.85

01:42:59.000 What's that thing off of its abdomen? 0.99

01:43:01.000 I would guess that's an orchid bee.

01:43:03.000 Oh, there it is.

01:43:04.000 Oh, yes, thank you.

01:43:04.000 Wow.

01:43:06.000 South and Mesoamerica.

01:43:08.000 Look at that creepy little one to the left.

01:43:10.000 The ground nesting bee.

01:43:12.000 It looks like a ground nesting squirrel.

01:43:15.000 Creepy little squirrels.

01:43:16.000 Wow.

01:43:18.000 Look at that.

01:43:19.000 How do you say that?

01:43:20.000 Crepuscular?

01:43:22.000 Crepuscular bee from the southwestern US. So those bees were the bees that used to, but they didn't create honey?

01:43:30.000 So most bees do not create honey, which is one of the reasons that we have kept the honeybee, right?

01:43:38.000 Because they create a massive amount of honey, and that's because they're in a larger colony.

01:43:43.000 So a lot of bees are solitary bees, whereas honeybees are what we call social bees.

01:43:51.000 So they live in these giant colonies.

01:43:53.000 That we as humans can move around and manipulate and put, you know, in our fields to pollinate our crops and also produce a lot of honey.

01:44:03.000 So these other bees would just buy them, they were like lone wolf bees?

01:44:07.000 They're solitary bees, that's right. 0.58

01:44:09.000 Out there pollinating.

01:44:10.000 So a lot of them, and a lot of them are even better pollinators than honeybees for some plants because they're specialty bees. 0.99

01:44:19.000 So 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.

01:44:33.000 So, 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,

01:44:48.000 and humans are not replenishing or really even thinking about.

01:44:52.000 They 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.

01:45:02.000 So is the way that bees pollinate, is it a secondary effect of their foraging?

01:45:08.000 Yes.

01:45:09.000 I mean, it's just a great byproduct of bees doing the work that bees do.

01:45:14.000 When 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.

01:45:31.000 And they don't even know they're doing this.

01:45:33.000 So 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.

01:45:44.000 So they need help to reproduce and that is what bees are doing. 0.99

01:45:49.000 And are they the only insects that pollinate?

01:45:52.000 Do wasps pollinate as well? 0.94

01:45:53.000 Yes, wasps pollinate, you know, butterflies, birds, bats.

01:45:57.000 There's lots of pollinators.

01:46:00.000 Birds?

01:46:00.000 Birds can be pollinators when they feed on, you know, a plant, on a flowering plant and go to another flowering plant.

01:46:06.000 They can take the pollen from one flowering plant and make sure it meets the female part of the other plant. 0.73

01:46:13.000 You know, anything that's feeding on these flowering plants can be a pollinator.

01:46:17.000 Wow.

01:46:18.000 What a fascinating sort of symbiotic relationship.

01:46:22.000 That we never think about or see.

01:46:25.000 And plants and bees evolved together.

01:46:28.000 So 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.

01:46:43.000 And so they became more showy and vibrant and colorful.

01:46:47.000 And they have a mutual relationship.

01:46:53.000 It's so incredible.

01:46:54.000 I 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.

01:47:01.000 I 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.

01:47:14.000 One 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.

01:47:31.000 Do you know about all this?

01:47:32.000 Not from the wasps family, no.

01:47:35.000 Go 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.

01:47:51.000 Is that the wasp's only way of reproduction? 0.60

01:47:54.000 Yeah, there's a bunch of different wasps that do this. 0.95

01:47:57.000 A large number of wasps that have parasitic relationships with other ants and different creatures and they sting.

01:48:06.000 You know the tarantula hawk, right?

01:48:08.000 Do you know about that one?

01:48:08.000 Oh yeah.

01:48:09.000 That's crazy.

01:48:10.000 It stings a tarantula, embeds the tarantula with its larvae, and then the larvae eat the body of the tarantula and burst out of its body.

01:48:19.000 Go to a tarantula hawk Because that's one of the ones that my friend Maynard sent me.

01:48:25.000 Sent you?

01:48:26.000 Do we have that guy?

01:48:28.000 It's probably in our box somewhere from our old studio.

01:48:32.000 Yeah, he got one from his farm and he sent it to me in a glass of vial.

01:48:35.000 It's huge!

01:48:36.000 They're huge.

01:48:37.000 They're like a finger.

01:48:38.000 Oh my gosh. 0.99

01:48:38.000 Look at the size of that sucker. 0.99

01:48:41.000 Gigantic. 1.00

01:48:42.000 So they'll sweep down, jack a tarantula, sting it.

01:48:47.000 See if you can find a video of it because it's pretty amazing when the larva come out of the tarantula's body.

01:48:54.000 Paralyzes a spider.

01:48:56.000 Video from Arizona.

01:48:57.000 Arizona, that's where Maynard lives.

01:48:59.000 So the tarantula hawk will swoop down.

01:49:04.000 Get a hold of this tarantula.

01:49:07.000 I think I already got it.

01:49:08.000 Oh, it already got it.

01:49:09.000 It already stung it.

01:49:10.000 Now he's just hanging back, waiting for it to die.

01:49:14.000 And once it paralyzes it, it injects the body of this thing.

01:49:20.000 Look at that.

01:49:21.000 It just crawls back like it was under a car.

01:49:23.000 Yeah, like it's under the hood.

01:49:25.000 Let's check the exhaust system here. 0.59

01:49:28.000 And injects its body with its... 0.93

01:49:31.000 Look at that.

01:49:31.000 It's on its back.

01:49:32.000 Look how it's doing it.

01:49:34.000 That is amazing.

01:49:36.000 Isn't that wild?

01:49:38.000 Look at that.

01:49:39.000 Wow.

01:49:39.000 And then it dies.

01:49:40.000 And so it falls over onto its back and then the tarantula hawk just sort of keeps jacking it.

01:49:47.000 I'm amazed that you didn't know about this.

01:49:50.000 I'm so happy that we could show you something.

01:49:52.000 Thank you!

01:49:54.000 Yeah, apparently there's a very large number of wasps that have these sort of parasitic relationships with other insects.

01:50:02.000 I mean, there are a lot of...

01:50:03.000 I mean, bees have a parasite that lives on them and harms them, you know.

01:50:07.000 What is that?

01:50:08.000 There'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.

01:50:18.000 You know, we've known about this pest in the beehive for a long time, since the early 1900s, but it wasn't until...

01:50:24.000 In 2018, the Dr. Sammy Ramsey found out what the biggest, or arguably the biggest threat facing bees is feeding from.

01:50:32.000 We thought it was feeding from kind of its blood forever, but it's not.

01:50:35.000 It'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.

01:50:44.000 Oh, God.

01:50:45.000 So it's huge on the bee.

01:50:47.000 I mean, you can see them.

01:50:48.000 They're usually on the underside, the undercarriage.

01:50:50.000 But, you know, it's awful for bees.

01:50:54.000 But it's like that.

01:50:55.000 It's an exoparasite that lives off another animal.

01:51:00.000 It 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.

01:51:12.000 Sure.

01:51:12.000 And, you know, how they're all, of course, they all have their own job.

01:51:16.000 They're all suited for these different climates, and, you know, it's amazing.

01:51:19.000 Have you seen the one that has a really long needle-like thing that comes out of its abdomen and it injects larvae into wood?

01:51:28.000 I don't know.

01:51:30.000 Yeah, what is that called again?

01:51:31.000 The wood wasp, I believe.

01:51:33.000 But it has, almost looks like a ruler or like a needle coming out of the back of it.

01:51:38.000 Well, you know, if it's the stinger, the stinger is a modified ovipositor, something that, you know, lays and positions eggs.

01:51:46.000 So that's why only the female bees have a stinger, is because they only have the ovipositor that's able to lay and position eggs. 0.99

01:51:54.000 So I don't know if that's what it is.

01:51:55.000 Makes sense.

01:51:56.000 It could be that.

01:51:57.000 Because it goes into, like, logs.

01:52:00.000 Oh, wow.

01:52:01.000 And this long thing allows it to inject its larvae into these crevices. 1.00

01:52:06.000 That does.

01:52:06.000 And it's really long.

01:52:08.000 It's like half the size of its body.

01:52:10.000 That's amazing.

01:52:11.000 That's beautiful.

01:52:12.000 So this wasp deposits parasitic larva deep inside its trunk. 0.81

01:52:17.000 Look at the size of that thing.

01:52:19.000 It's way longer than its body.

01:52:21.000 It must be curled up in there.

01:52:24.000 That is amazing.

01:52:27.000 So it finds a little crack.

01:52:28.000 And once it finds a crack, watch how it injects it.

01:52:32.000 It sort of like...

01:52:34.000 It dunks it into the crack and it's dropping off larvae.

01:52:37.000 And look at the back of it.

01:52:39.000 Wow.

01:52:39.000 That is incredible.

01:52:41.000 It's this large, it looks like a translucent bubble, like a large water bag.

01:52:49.000 Oh my god, look at that.

01:52:52.000 Look at it, it's injecting them.

01:52:56.000 So it's injecting these larvae.

01:52:59.000 There's a 3D artistic rendering of what it looks like.

01:53:03.000 It almost looks like he's drilling for oil.

01:53:05.000 She's drilling for oil. 0.99

01:53:06.000 Look how deep it gets.

01:53:07.000 That's crazy.

01:53:09.000 It 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.

01:53:22.000 This is crazy.

01:53:23.000 These relationships that these things have is so bizarre.

01:53:27.000 There's so many bizarre parasitic relationships.

01:53:31.000 And then there's relationships that fungus have.

01:53:35.000 Parasitic relationships that fungus have with insects.

01:53:38.000 Which is like the cordyceps mushroom that infects ants and causes these ants to explode.

01:53:43.000 And these ants release these spores that will then infect all the ants around them.

01:53:49.000 So 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.

01:54:00.000 Do you know about that?

01:54:01.000 No, but we see it in the bee colony.

01:54:03.000 We have undertaker bees that will haul the dead bees out of the hive and they will always do it as far away as possible.

01:54:09.000 They'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.

01:54:16.000 Get that one, the fungus that infects ants.

01:54:20.000 It's cordyceps mushroom.

01:54:22.000 It gets bees too, apparently.

01:54:23.000 Does it?

01:54:24.000 Same sort of situation?

01:54:27.000 Well, the ants, once it does it, see these fungus, look at it, mushrooms grow out of the body of these bees and ants.

01:54:36.000 Oh my goodness.

01:54:38.000 But with some, they get to a certain point where the heads of these things will explode.

01:54:43.000 It looks like a head, like a ball.

01:54:46.000 And it'll explode and release millions of spore into the air.

01:54:51.000 And when it does that, then everyone's doomed because they'll all get infected by it.

01:54:56.000 This cordyceps mushroom, in fact, is used as a supplement.

01:55:01.000 It actually increases oxygen utilization in humans.

01:55:05.000 So there's a thing that my supplement company Onnit sells called Shroomtech.

01:55:09.000 That's what it looks like when it pops out and then that thing will explode.

01:55:13.000 Shroomtech 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.

01:55:27.000 And 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.

01:55:38.000 And so then they started eating them.

01:55:40.000 And the way they farm them, it's wild, they farm them on caterpillars.

01:55:45.000 They farm the mushrooms on caterpillars?

01:55:47.000 Yes.

01:55:47.000 They farm the cordyceps mushroom on caterpillars.

01:55:50.000 Why?

01:55:50.000 Because that's the way they grow the best.

01:55:52.000 Wow. 0.97

01:55:53.000 Yeah, because they're sort of a parasitic mushroom. 0.98

01:55:55.000 The same sort of mushroom that's exploding.

01:55:59.000 See if you can find a video of them exploding because it's pretty wild.

01:56:02.000 Do they only have to grow them at certain altitudes still?

01:56:05.000 Have they figured that out?

01:56:07.000 I don't think they have to be at altitude to grow them.

01:56:10.000 I'm not sure about that.

01:56:11.000 But I do know that they grow them on caterpillars.

01:56:15.000 Okay.

01:56:15.000 Because when we were supplementing or when we were sourcing them for that supplement, we were like, what?

01:56:21.000 They're growing them on caterpillars. 0.99

01:56:22.000 This is fucking crazy. 0.99

01:56:23.000 That's so interesting. 0.99

01:56:24.000 Yeah, it's really interesting.

01:56:26.000 But that relationship that they have, what's really fascinating to me is that the ants seem to recognize.

01:56:33.000 Yeah, this is the great one.

01:56:35.000 So these things grow all over this ant, and they take over the ant's body.

01:56:43.000 And once they get to a certain size, we're watching a time lapse.

01:56:50.000 This is actually from Netflix.

01:56:51.000 What's the show that it's from?

01:56:53.000 Look how cool this is.

01:56:55.000 Look, it sprouts out of the body like a tree.

01:56:59.000 I mean, it also looks like just little hairs are growing all over its body.

01:57:04.000 Also, this is happening like very slowly, right?

01:57:08.000 But if you watch it the way we're watching, it's so creepy.

01:57:11.000 It's like a scene from the movie Alien.

01:57:13.000 It does.

01:57:13.000 So this ball, which contains all the spores, grows off of this stalk.

01:57:18.000 And notice how it goes high in the air.

01:57:20.000 Is that at the end of that?

01:57:22.000 Unfortunately.

01:57:22.000 So it grows high in the air so it can catch wind.

01:57:26.000 So when it blows up, it sprays all over all the other ants.

01:57:30.000 So if it happens in the colony, the ants realize, oh, we're all doomed, so let's drag this away.

01:57:35.000 So if it happens in the colony, drag this ant way out of town and let them die out there. 0.97

01:57:41.000 I mean, it makes sense though, right?

01:57:42.000 So much of what I see bees do is just what makes sense and what's most efficient and what's best for the good of the colony.

01:57:51.000 But how do they know?

01:57:52.000 That's crazy.

01:57:54.000 I don't know how they know.

01:57:55.000 How do these ants know?

01:57:56.000 Obviously, they've only been alive for like a week, right?

01:57:59.000 So where are they getting the information?

01:58:01.000 How do they know that there's a fungus growing on this ant that's going to kill everybody if they don't get it out of town?

01:58:06.000 And they know so much more than we do.

01:58:08.000 I mean, they knew this was the process.

01:58:11.000 Is that one going to blow?

01:58:12.000 It's a longer clip.

01:58:13.000 Okay, good. 0.99

01:58:14.000 So look at all these little balls that are hanging off of its body. 0.99

01:58:17.000 Isn't that crazy? 0.99

01:58:18.000 I've never seen anything like that.

01:58:19.000 That's extraordinary.

01:58:20.000 It's so extraordinary.

01:58:21.000 And fungus, by the way, fungus is closer to us than it is to plants.

01:58:28.000 Fungus breathe oxygen.

01:58:31.000 They 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.

01:58:41.000 Look how that thing is.

01:58:43.000 Isn't it crazy?

01:58:44.000 How it just grows into this, like, weird-looking tree.

01:58:49.000 And it's all just these little branches.

01:58:51.000 Look at that!

01:58:52.000 That's insane!

01:58:53.000 That's some beetle got jacked.

01:58:55.000 Look how tall.

01:58:57.000 It's so much bigger than its actual body.

01:59:00.000 Oh my goodness.

01:59:01.000 Look at that!

01:59:03.000 Amazing.

01:59:04.000 And that's these mushroom stalks growing out of the body of this beetle.

01:59:08.000 And it's a whole world existing on this little insect.

01:59:12.000 God, that's so fascinating.

01:59:14.000 See if you can find Cordyceps mushroom farming on caterpillars.

01:59:18.000 See if you can find a video on that.

01:59:21.000 Because I've seen that too.

01:59:24.000 But I mean commercial production of cordyceps mushrooms.

01:59:29.000 They grow them on caterpillars.

01:59:31.000 Look how wild that is.

01:59:32.000 I 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.

01:59:43.000 Oh really?

01:59:44.000 Oh interesting.

01:59:47.000 There's just so much symbiosis, right?

01:59:49.000 There's so many relationships going on between these organisms.

01:59:52.000 Look at that.

01:59:53.000 So that's cordyceps mushrooms.

01:59:55.000 Wow.

01:59:56.000 They call it Himalayan Viagra.

01:59:58.000 Whoa.

01:59:59.000 Well, that makes sense, right?

02:00:00.000 Because like nitric oxide and, you know, transportation of oxygen and muscles.

02:00:07.000 But it improves athletic performance.

02:00:10.000 Like you can really tell the difference when you work out with this stuff.

02:00:14.000 Look at that.

02:00:16.000 It sounds like the cows could, too, you know?

02:00:19.000 Yeah, well, they definitely noticed it, like I said, from high-altitude herding populations.

02:00:24.000 Well, the cows probably knew better than us, you know?

02:00:26.000 They figured that out.

02:00:28.000 Somehow, another, right?

02:00:29.000 That's what's so bizarre about information.

02:00:31.000 I mean, I think about that all the time with my dog.

02:00:34.000 Because, 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.

02:00:43.000 But he knows all this dog stuff.

02:00:44.000 No one's telling him that he has to pee on these certain trees.

02:00:48.000 He has this thing where he rolls in fox poop.

02:00:52.000 It's so disgusting.

02:00:53.000 But we have this fox that comes and visits our yard, and the fox is really cool.

02:00:58.000 Have you ever heard a fox bark?

02:01:01.000 Yes.

02:01:02.000 They have this weird sound, right?

02:01:04.000 Well, we have a video of this guy in our yard barking.

02:01:06.000 I don't know where it is.

02:01:07.000 I'll try to find it. 0.99

02:01:08.000 But this guy lives in our yard sometimes, comes in and barks and takes a shit in the yard. 1.00

02:01:16.000 And my dog, when he finds that shit, he's like, oh, yes. 1.00

02:01:19.000 And he rolls around in it and he'll come in the house and I'll let him inside. 1.00

02:01:24.000 And I'm like, what's going on, man?

02:01:25.000 I'm like, what is that? 1.00

02:01:25.000 Oh, you fucking dummy. 1.00

02:01:27.000 And he's happy as a lark, right? 1.00

02:01:29.000 And proud of himself.

02:01:30.000 So happy.

02:01:31.000 Yeah, this is a fox.

02:01:41.000 I think my dog loves the fox.

02:01:43.000 I think he's had some interaction with fox.

02:01:46.000 Because fox and people become friends in the wild.

02:01:50.000 Have you ever seen the documentary Grizzly Man?

02:01:52.000 Yes.

02:01:52.000 Amazing.

02:01:53.000 Yes.

02:01:54.000 Right?

02:01:54.000 Well, here's that noise they make.

02:01:58.000 Here we go.

02:02:00.000 A little bit before that I think.

02:02:03.000 That's so weird.

02:02:04.000 It's such a weird noise they make.

02:02:06.000 I bet Marshall could tell us what he's saying.

02:02:08.000 Yeah.

02:02:08.000 He's like, oh yeah.

02:02:09.000 Hey, what's up, man?

02:02:10.000 That's Freddy.

02:02:12.000 He lives down the street.

02:02:14.000 But 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.

02:02:22.000 Like right next to him.

02:02:24.000 Remember one of them stole his hat and they were playful with him?

02:02:28.000 They were playing with him.

02:02:29.000 I feel like most creatures just want to live peacefully on this planet, you know?

02:02:32.000 And so when someone else like him comes along and lives alongside these foxes, you know, they realize he's not there to hurt them.

02:02:39.000 Sort of.

02:02:40.000 Depending upon how big you are.

02:02:42.000 Did you see the video that was released from Woodland Hills today where a coyote tries to eat a toddler?

02:02:47.000 No.

02:02:47.000 It's horrible.

02:02:48.000 This guy is opening up his car door in a suburban neighborhood, regular neighborhood.

02:02:52.000 He'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.

02:02:59.000 A coyote comes and snatches the baby and is dragging the toddler away.

02:03:04.000 Please.

02:03:04.000 Yeah, don't show her.

02:03:05.000 She had a hard time dealing with the...

02:03:08.000 Just dealing with the bees. 1.00

02:03:09.000 Coyotes are assholes. 1.00

02:03:11.000 I mean, you have them. 1.00

02:03:12.000 We have them where we live here on the river.

02:03:14.000 Yeah, we have them.

02:03:15.000 They're creeps.

02:03:18.000 But they're small wolves, and they're wolves that have been persecuted by gray wolves.

02:03:23.000 And so because of the adaptation, there's a great book called Coyote America by Dan Flores.

02:03:28.000 And he details how coyotes...

02:03:32.000 Because of the persecution with gray wolves, coyotes are related to—they're a type of wolf.

02:03:39.000 You think of them as coyotes, but they're actually a small wolf.

02:03:41.000 And they're related to red wolves, but they don't breed with gray wolves.

02:03:46.000 So when you hear about coy wolves, That's an eastern wolf is breeding with a coyote, not gray wolves.

02:03:53.000 Gray wolves kill coyotes.

02:03:54.000 So 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.

02:04:06.000 And that's how they call.

02:04:07.000 Yeah, it's like roll call.

02:04:09.000 I can hear that at my house all the time.

02:04:11.000 They think they do that to communicate when they've killed something.

02:04:13.000 And they also think they've done that to do a roll call.

02:04:16.000 And when one of them is missing, it causes the female to have more pups. 0.99

02:04:22.000 And then they spread their boundaries.

02:04:24.000 So they move into new neighborhoods.

02:04:26.000 So 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.

02:04:38.000 Well, they reintroduced them from Canada to Yellowstone.

02:04:41.000 But during that time period when they were killing the wolves, coyotes started spreading.

02:04:48.000 And coyotes were spreading a little bit because they were persecuted by the gray wolves.

02:04:52.000 And then people started killing coyotes.

02:04:54.000 And as people killed coyotes, they spread even wider.

02:04:57.000 It had the exact opposite effect they wanted.

02:04:59.000 By people killing coyotes, now coyotes are in every single city in North America.

02:05:05.000 Every city.

02:05:06.000 A hundred years ago, they weren't.

02:05:08.000 A hundred years ago, they were confined to the southwest.

02:05:13.000 And I guess the northwest as well.

02:05:15.000 I guess they were mostly in the western coast of the United States.

02:05:18.000 They were like Montana and Arizona.

02:05:20.000 Well, now they're everywhere.

02:05:20.000 They're in New York City.

02:05:22.000 Coyotes are in the Bronx now.

02:05:23.000 I had no idea.

02:05:25.000 Coyotes are in Central Park.

02:05:26.000 Wow.

02:05:28.000 We're good to go.

02:05:47.000 They tricked the dog into doing this?

02:05:50.000 Yes.

02:05:50.000 I had a giant dog.

02:05:51.000 He was a mastiff.

02:05:52.000 And he was a real sweet dog.

02:05:54.000 And he's way too big for them to eat.

02:05:56.000 And so what they did is they honeypotted him.

02:05:58.000 And they decided, like, I'm your friend.

02:06:00.000 And he's like, I like dogs.

02:06:02.000 You're my friend.

02:06:03.000 See, he doesn't know that it's a coyote.

02:06:04.000 He thinks it's a dog.

02:06:06.000 So my pool guy had left this gate open.

02:06:09.000 And we had a chicken coop.

02:06:10.000 And I don't know if you've ever bred chickens.

02:06:12.000 I have chickens.

02:06:13.000 Okay, great.

02:06:13.000 So you know about brooding.

02:06:15.000 Yep.

02:06:15.000 So we had this one chicken that was brooding, and when the hen was brooding, we put her in a separate, smaller pen where she has to stand.

02:06:23.000 And she can't sit in the nest. 1.00

02:06:25.000 There's a post.

02:06:26.000 And 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.

02:06:40.000 That's what the brooding is.

02:06:41.000 And they'll sit on this egg.

02:06:43.000 They just decide that this is going to be the egg that gives them a chick.

02:06:46.000 It's kind of sad because there's no rooster, so they never get fertilized.

02:06:50.000 Well, when the coyote recognized that this was a smaller pen, they had been trying to get in the big one.

02:06:57.000 It was too fortified. 1.00

02:06:59.000 But the smaller one, they're like, you know, I can get this big, dumb motherfucker to break into this. 1.00

02:07:03.000 So this coyote tricked my dog into destroying that pen. 1.00

02:07:08.000 He had never done that before.

02:07:10.000 I was in my house with my family, and we were playing some board game.

02:07:14.000 And I look out the window, and I see a coyote running across my backyard with a chicken in his mouth. 0.99

02:07:21.000 And I'm like, what the fuck is going on? 0.99

02:07:22.000 And what was your dog doing? 1.00

02:07:23.000 Was he just standing by?

02:07:25.000 He destroyed the pen.

02:07:26.000 So he was over by the pen that he had torn apart because he's 140 pounds.

02:07:30.000 He was huge.

02:07:31.000 So he just destroyed this pen.

02:07:33.000 Was it going after the chickens?

02:07:34.000 Yes.

02:07:35.000 The coyote talked him into it.

02:07:36.000 And was the dog going after the chickens as well?

02:07:38.000 Oh my God.

02:07:40.000 But it was only one chicken in this one smaller pen.

02:07:44.000 So he destroys this pen.

02:07:46.000 The coyote's like, thank you, grabs it and hops over the fence.

02:07:49.000 I'm like, what?

02:07:50.000 And so I go over. 0.99

02:07:52.000 I'm like, what the fuck happened? 0.99

02:07:52.000 I go over there and I see Johnny. 0.99

02:07:54.000 His name is Johnny Cash.

02:07:55.000 And Johnny is standing there going, what's up?

02:07:58.000 And I go, what did you do, man? 1.00

02:08:00.000 You fucking let the coyote into the... 0.99

02:08:01.000 And I realized, looking at this pen, there's no way that Little Coyote could have done it, this 35-pound coyote. 1.00

02:08:07.000 It was him.

02:08:08.000 He did it.

02:08:08.000 And, like, he had one job.

02:08:09.000 And then he realized that it's fun to kill chickens.

02:08:12.000 Oh, no.

02:08:12.000 So, unfortunately, then he also realized that he's strong enough to go through the large chicken coop.

02:08:18.000 So he tore a hole in the large chicken coop and went on a rampage and killed, like, nine chickens one day.

02:08:24.000 Oh, I'm so sorry.

02:08:25.000 It was a bummer.

02:08:26.000 That must have been traumatic.

02:08:27.000 That was a bummer, but at least it was him.

02:08:29.000 And 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.

02:08:36.000 Oh my goodness.

02:08:37.000 So we went to the yard one day and it was just feathers everywhere and just dead chickens.

02:08:42.000 It was a mess.

02:08:43.000 Do you have chickens now?

02:08:44.000 We do not.

02:08:45.000 But we want to get chickens again.

02:08:47.000 Do you have coyotes now?

02:08:48.000 Yes.

02:08:48.000 Yes, we have coyotes, but I've got some mitigation techniques that I'm going to use to get rid of some coyotes.

02:08:56.000 Is Marshall, is he helpful at all?

02:08:58.000 I don't think he's helpful.

02:08:59.000 I was hoping he would be here.

02:09:00.000 Oh, I was going to bring him.

02:09:01.000 I'm a big dog fan.

02:09:02.000 I would have brought him if I had known.

02:09:03.000 I was going to bring him, but he was tired.

02:09:06.000 We threw the ball today, and he was a little exhausted.

02:09:08.000 I didn't want him throwing up.

02:09:10.000 Hey, don't get out of bed for me, Marshall.

02:09:12.000 It's not that.

02:09:13.000 Like, 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.

02:09:20.000 He's weird, like, he won't throw up in the car as if I'm touching him.

02:09:24.000 So 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.

02:09:34.000 But as soon as I stop petting him, he's like, bleh!

02:09:39.000 It's something about being in the car.

02:09:41.000 Well, it sounds like something about you, too, and the comfort and you petting him.

02:09:45.000 Well, he's a love sponge.

02:09:46.000 Golden Retrievers are love sponges. 1.00

02:09:48.000 That dog just wants to cuddle with you all the time.

02:09:51.000 You should get another one.

02:09:52.000 I think so, but Mrs. Rogan is not so convinced.

02:09:56.000 She thinks it's more work, another dog.

02:09:58.000 I think it's the opposite.

02:10:00.000 I think it's less work, because then they have a buddy.

02:10:03.000 We have a theory in our house.

02:10:04.000 It's like a sourdough.

02:10:06.000 So Marshall can be like the starter.

02:10:08.000 And 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,

02:10:28.000 you know, and it's, yeah, it's just the sourdough.

02:10:33.000 Maybe I'll talk her into it.

02:10:34.000 It's, you know, we had five dogs at one point.

02:10:39.000 Wow.

02:10:40.000 And so I think she's a little traumatized by the five dog experience, which is a little crazy.

02:10:44.000 Five is a lot.

02:10:45.000 It's a lot.

02:10:45.000 There's a lot of dogs running around, but...

02:10:47.000 Also a lot of joy.

02:10:49.000 Listen, if it was up to me, I can't even go to a dog pound.

02:10:54.000 I'd have a hundred dogs. 0.77

02:10:56.000 I love dogs.

02:10:57.000 Me too.

02:10:58.000 But, you know, gotta pick your battles.

02:11:03.000 Be practical sometimes, yeah.

02:11:04.000 I mean, I love animals, period.

02:11:06.000 I would love to live on a ranch.

02:11:07.000 I think living on a ranch and living with animals, both domestic and wild...

02:11:14.000 That's what I would like, I think.

02:11:16.000 I'm like you, I'm not as fascinated by bees, obviously, but I, like you, am just very fascinated by wildlife in general.

02:11:25.000 And something, it changes you when you move out and can live more alongside nature, or at least it did for me.

02:11:32.000 I mean, I am from Texas, have lived in an urban area my whole life.

02:11:35.000 I'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...

02:11:42.000 In 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.

02:11:53.000 Yeah, I think everybody should have a little piece of dirt and grow some food.

02:11:57.000 I think it resonates with people because I think that's how humans have existed forever.

02:12:03.000 And when you live like that, your body's like, oh, this is better.

02:12:07.000 Because I think your body, when it's in Manhattan, it's like, this is great.

02:12:10.000 There's so many cars and so many people. 1.00

02:12:12.000 But your body's like, what the fuck, man? 1.00

02:12:14.000 Can we get a break? 0.99

02:12:15.000 When there's like some calm and nature and there's no calm or nature unless you go to Central Park and even then it's like a...

02:12:21.000 Coyotes apparently.

02:12:22.000 Yeah.

02:12:23.000 Have you seen them there?

02:12:23.000 I have not, but...

02:12:25.000 Show the video because it's kind of crazy to see them running around Central Park.

02:12:28.000 And there's a lot of them.

02:12:29.000 Wow.

02:12:30.000 Yeah, they're in the Bronx. 0.99

02:12:31.000 They're in like abandoned buildings and shit. 0.91

02:12:33.000 Like people find them. 0.99

02:12:34.000 And what's disturbing is their diet is a large part of it is house pets.

02:12:40.000 I mean, it must probably have to be in that sort of environment.

02:12:43.000 Cats and dogs.

02:12:43.000 Because what else is there?

02:12:44.000 Yeah.

02:12:45.000 Well, in urban areas, like, there it goes.

02:12:49.000 Look at that.

02:12:52.000 Roaming around Central Park.

02:12:53.000 Small wolf.

02:12:54.000 Wow.

02:12:55.000 How strange.

02:12:56.000 It's like that movie, I Am a Legend.

02:12:58.000 It's almost like nature can't wait for us to go away, and then it'll just repopulate, and, like, we're never here.

02:13:04.000 I mean, that's what I think about the bees.

02:13:06.000 They've been here so much longer than us, than me.

02:13:08.000 Except them honeybees. 0.84

02:13:09.000 Well, I mean...

02:13:10.000 That's what's crazy.

02:13:12.000 I did not know that.

02:13:13.000 That's probably the most interesting thing that I've learned today, is that we brought them here.

02:13:17.000 Yep, honeybees are not native to the United States or to North America.

02:13:21.000 So how difficult is it if someone...

02:13:24.000 Oh, by the way, shout out to my buddy Steve, Steve Ryan, who is a beekeeper.

02:13:28.000 He's one of the first people that I know that I've ever met that taught me or told me how he raises bees.

02:13:34.000 He gave me some of his honey from his own bees.

02:13:36.000 I'm like, that is cool.

02:13:37.000 I've always thought that would be a cool thing to do.

02:13:39.000 But how difficult is it to have your own little hive and colony and the whole...

02:13:45.000 It's really not that difficult.

02:13:47.000 I tell people it's sort of like akin to keeping a garden where it's more labor intensive at different points throughout the year.

02:13:53.000 And 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.

02:14:04.000 Depending 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.

02:14:15.000 And when you extract honey, you brought us some honeycomb, so thank you for that.

02:14:19.000 Yes, my pleasure.

02:14:20.000 When you extract honey from that, do you feel like you're stealing from the bees?

02:14:24.000 Yes.

02:14:25.000 I do and so that's why I don't harvest a lot or sell any honey because it's just not where I find my joy in keeping bees.

02:14:34.000 This is a little bit of honey that I harvested in the summer and this is the last of our summer harvest.

02:14:40.000 That the bees had.

02:14:41.000 And, 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.

02:14:50.000 And, you know, that's as much as I personally want to take.

02:14:55.000 I 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.

02:15:05.000 And, you know, at the end of the day, it didn't make me feel that good.

02:15:09.000 So this is their food source.

02:15:11.000 It's their food source during the winter.

02:15:13.000 I can't predict the weather, of course, and don't know how long the winter will last and when the spring will come.

02:15:20.000 A perfect example is here in Texas last year when we had the major snowpocalypse.

02:15:25.000 Everything that was about to bloom, those early blooming plants that the bees really rely on to get them to spring, snapped back.

02:15:34.000 None of it bloomed.

02:15:35.000 Everything died.

02:15:37.000 It 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,

02:16:06.000 when 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.

02:16:12.000 And so when we harvest honey in the summer or fall, you know, it's before the time the bees really need it.

02:16:17.000 So we just need to be careful and mindful about how much we take.

02:16:21.000 And, you know, you can certainly harvest honey responsibly, and most dog beekeepers do, of course.

02:16:26.000 And, you know, there's no reason you can't happily harvest honey from your backyard hive if that's your choice.

02:16:33.000 You just have to figure out how much to take?

02:16:36.000 Like, how do you guess that?

02:16:38.000 I 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.

02:16:45.000 And, you know, depending on the time of the year, how much they need to make it to spring.

02:16:49.000 But also as a beekeeper...

02:16:52.000 You can intervene and give them the resources they need to do their job well, right?

02:16:57.000 So you can give them that artificial food that we talked about and supplement their food if you need to, but it's never ideal.

02:17:05.000 So I can even take honey from one hive and put it in another hive and give it to another colony if there's a weaker colony.

02:17:12.000 So the way that we've kept bees in these boxes allows us to manage honey.

02:17:17.000 You know, their space and their resources so we can donate things from one colony to another colony.

02:17:24.000 Could you buy commercial honey and introduce it to, like if you bought honey off the shelf?

02:17:29.000 Sure, absolutely.

02:17:29.000 That's okay?

02:17:30.000 Yeah, absolutely.

02:17:31.000 I mean, you know, there's always a risk that you're buying some adulterated funny honey that's been cut with corn syrup or something.

02:17:38.000 Oh, really?

02:17:38.000 Oh, of course.

02:17:38.000 I mean, it was a big problem.

02:17:41.000 Oh my god, so it's like drugs?

02:17:44.000 I mean, you know, you can not always know what you're getting sometimes.

02:17:50.000 Wow, I never even thought they would do that.

02:17:52.000 Do you even imagine they would cut honey?

02:17:54.000 They do everything. 0.99

02:17:56.000 People are so gross. 0.98

02:17:57.000 For sure, for sure. 0.98

02:17:58.000 Isn't that crazy?

02:17:59.000 It's crazy.

02:18:00.000 They cut it with corn syrup?

02:18:01.000 You know, the demand for honey is at its height.

02:18:04.000 It'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.

02:18:12.000 But, you know, the world's demand for honey is so high and the supply sometimes can't meet it.

02:18:19.000 And there was a situation where beekeepers, or there still is, but people from What?

02:18:35.000 What?

02:18:45.000 Sometimes 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.

02:18:59.000 The importation of Chinese honey was specifically banned because it is so often adulterated.

02:19:06.000 Oh, China.

02:19:07.000 And so people got around that by shipping the honey to a different country.

02:19:14.000 So they would ship it to Malaysia and then import it from Malaysia.

02:19:16.000 But it would still be Chinese honey that was cut down.

02:19:21.000 Is there like a test you could do with drugs?

02:19:23.000 You can certainly test honey.

02:19:24.000 Really?

02:19:25.000 How do you do it?

02:19:26.000 There's tests you can do to even...

02:19:28.000 There's pollen analysis.

02:19:29.000 So you can figure out what the bees were feeding from.

02:19:32.000 And every piece of honey is going to be different.

02:19:35.000 Every bite of honey is going to be different.

02:19:36.000 Every frame of honey you take from a hive is going to have different, you know, food sources that the bees were foraging from.

02:19:42.000 So it's going to taste different and maybe have a different color.

02:19:46.000 And, 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.

02:19:56.000 Is 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?

02:20:01.000 I don't know if there's a commercial test.

02:20:03.000 Like a drug thing?

02:20:04.000 Like you dip it in to see if it's fentanyl?

02:20:06.000 I don't know.

02:20:07.000 I don't know.

02:20:09.000 Talking to you has made me feel guilty about buying industrialized honey.

02:20:13.000 Well, I mean, industrialized honey.

02:20:15.000 I mean, buy honey from your local beekeeper.

02:20:17.000 It's a great way to support beekeepers.

02:20:19.000 I never thought of that until today, though.

02:20:21.000 I would just see honey on the shelf.

02:20:23.000 Oh, there's honey.

02:20:24.000 Let me grab that honey. 1.00

02:20:25.000 Please don't do that.

02:20:26.000 Don't buy honey from the shelf.

02:20:27.000 Well, no, please always support your local beekeeper who is pulling this honey, you know, with the bees in mind.

02:20:35.000 My 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.

02:20:41.000 Harvesting 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.

02:20:57.000 So please don't...

02:20:59.000 You 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.

02:21:12.000 Or just go to your farmer's market and buy honey from your local beekeeper or your friend who is a beekeeper.

02:21:17.000 I mean, that's where you should be buying.

02:21:21.000 He does now.

02:21:22.000 Well, now you know me.

02:21:23.000 I do know you.

02:21:24.000 Is there a resource that people can go to where they can find local honey?

02:21:28.000 Is there an online website that can direct you to local beekeepers that sell honey?

02:21:33.000 I 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.

02:21:44.000 Just ask your local beekeeper.

02:21:46.000 I 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.

02:21:55.000 Most, you know, beekeeping is so not only local, but really hyper-local.

02:21:59.000 I mean, bees forage for up to two miles.

02:22:01.000 So 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,

02:22:17.000 hey, I'm looking to buy honey and buy honey for the year from one beekeeper.

02:22:22.000 Buy it for gifts for your friends and family.

02:22:23.000 Support, you know, a beekeeper that way.

02:22:26.000 If 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.

02:22:45.000 Even here in Austin, hives on one side of 35 versus the other, it's different soil.

02:22:51.000 It's just a completely different environment for the bees.

02:22:54.000 Always support the local beekeeper.

02:22:56.000 That's the best thing you can do.

02:22:57.000 And like you said, a farmer's market is probably a good resource or something like that.

02:23:01.000 Absolutely.

02:23:02.000 Why is some honey dark and some honey light?

02:23:05.000 It's just what the bees are foraging from. 0.82

02:23:07.000 You know, honey has a different flavor profile in addition to having different colors.

02:23:13.000 Dark stuff has, like, kind of a rich, weird, sort of, like, tangy taste to it almost.

02:23:17.000 I mean, a lot of it does, but I've even had, like, avocado honey or cotton honey that, you know...

02:23:22.000 Whoa, look at that.

02:23:23.000 Oh, that's some...

02:23:24.000 Oh, yes.

02:23:25.000 That is some colored honey that I found inside one of my hives that I think the bees...

02:23:32.000 It was after Fourth of July, and I think there was a large parade.

02:23:37.000 Fireworks?

02:23:37.000 I think it was actually a snow cone machine.

02:23:40.000 What?

02:23:41.000 Really?

02:23:41.000 There's green honey.

02:23:43.000 There's yellow.

02:23:44.000 There's a reddish color in there.

02:23:45.000 And I think it was the different flavors of maybe like a snow cone machine.

02:23:50.000 Wow.

02:23:52.000 That's crazy.

02:23:53.000 I 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.

02:24:05.000 Oh, interesting.

02:24:05.000 Because people will dye the sugar water red and the bees will feed from the hummingbird feeder.

02:24:10.000 Why do they dye the sugar water red? 0.73

02:24:12.000 I think people think it attracts more hummingbirds to their feeder.

02:24:15.000 Does it?

02:24:16.000 I mean, I have a hummingbird feeder and I don't dye it red.

02:24:19.000 Look at that.

02:24:20.000 It's like an amber.

02:24:21.000 Are those eggs in there?

02:24:23.000 That's actually pollen.

02:24:24.000 They'll store the pollen.

02:24:26.000 They'll pack it in as much as they can. 0.77

02:24:28.000 Those little balls, it looks like.

02:24:29.000 Those are balls of pollen.

02:24:31.000 You 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.

02:24:40.000 They have these little divots, and they'll pack it in these little balls. 0.62

02:24:45.000 So 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.

02:24:52.000 That's just exactly how it came off the bee.

02:24:56.000 Because 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.

02:25:12.000 You're getting pollen that was from the plant on the bee's legs right into your protein shake or whatever.

02:25:18.000 And 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. 1.00

02:25:25.000 And they can carry an insane amount of weight.

02:25:27.000 They can carry over half their body weight in pollen and for up to two miles.

02:25:33.000 So they're incredibly strong little creatures.

02:25:37.000 What is royal jelly?

02:25:38.000 Royal jelly is a special secretion that comes from the gland of every worker bee.

02:25:45.000 And it's a food that's fed to the baby bees in the first stage of their development.

02:25:51.000 And 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,

02:26:09.000 and 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.

02:26:21.000 So 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.

02:26:31.000 You can harvest royal jelly, kind of scrape it out of the cell and harvest royal jelly for cosmetic purposes and whatnot.

02:26:38.000 That's what it's for, cosmetic purposes?

02:26:40.000 I thought it was like a food source.

02:26:41.000 Well, it is a food source for the bees.

02:26:43.000 But I thought for humans.

02:26:44.000 I thought people eat it.

02:26:45.000 I have heard of people eating it as well.

02:26:48.000 But it's not common?

02:26:49.000 I thought it was available at like health food stores, like royal jelly.

02:26:53.000 I don't know who the number one...

02:26:56.000 Royal jelly.

02:26:57.000 Yeah.

02:26:58.000 Yeah.

02:26:59.000 So when you see that, like bee pollen, click on that stuff.

02:27:03.000 That one right there, yeah.

02:27:05.000 How do they get that, Jazz?

02:27:08.000 Royal jelly in honey.

02:27:10.000 Oh, interesting.

02:27:11.000 Like how much royal jelly and how much actual honey?

02:27:16.000 Royal jelly, so it says there's 625 milligrams.

02:27:21.000 And then there's bee pollen, 570 milligrams.

02:27:25.000 Interesting.

02:27:26.000 And there's also sugar.

02:27:28.000 Yeah, but it says raw honey though.

02:27:32.000 Is the sugar just the active sugar that's in the honey itself?

02:27:37.000 Can you click on that again?

02:27:41.000 Yeah, so it says sugar, 8 grams per serving.

02:27:43.000 That may be...

02:27:44.000 But it says other ingredients, raw honey.

02:27:47.000 What are the ingredients?

02:27:48.000 I don't want to know other ingredients.

02:27:50.000 So is it just...

02:27:51.000 So are they saying that it's just royal jelly and honey?

02:27:54.000 Korean ginseng.

02:27:55.000 Oh, there's a lot of jazz in that.

02:27:57.000 There's ginseng in that.

02:27:58.000 I don't know what those people are saying.

02:28:00.000 That's a mess.

02:28:01.000 Most local beekeepers you can't buy royal jelly from.

02:28:04.000 Oh, okay.

02:28:05.000 Most beekeepers are not harvesting royal jelly.

02:28:08.000 Because it would be bad for the hive.

02:28:11.000 It's not something that helps the colony to harvest the royal jelly.

02:28:14.000 You seem very opposed to royal jelly.

02:28:15.000 Yo, look on your face.

02:28:16.000 Don't do that.

02:28:17.000 No, I just, you know, I mean, there's...

02:28:20.000 Other ingredients, none.

02:28:22.000 So that's just organic royal jelly.

02:28:28.000 Interesting.

02:28:29.000 So that one doesn't have the ginseng and all the other jazz in it.

02:28:32.000 So the ginseng is a stimulant.

02:28:35.000 So you probably eat the ginseng and you think like, oh my god, this royal jelly is really good for me.

02:28:39.000 But you're just jazzed up from caffeine.

02:28:42.000 I don't know what people claim the merits of eating royal jelly are.

02:28:45.000 Do you?

02:28:46.000 Whoa.

02:28:47.000 What happened there?

02:28:48.000 The skull fell over.

02:28:50.000 It's upset at us. 1.00

02:28:51.000 Fucking jelly talking. 1.00

02:28:51.000 Nature is upset at us. 1.00

02:28:54.000 The skull fell.

02:28:55.000 We were talking about eating royal jelly.

02:28:57.000 It's nature going, don't eat that.

02:28:59.000 Don't support that.

02:29:00.000 Leave it for the bees. 1.00

02:29:02.000 Leave it for the bees. 1.00

02:29:03.000 So what would be the benefit of it cosmetically?

02:29:06.000 WebMD says it's possibly safe.

02:29:09.000 Possibly safe?

02:29:10.000 Yeah.

02:29:10.000 To ingest?

02:29:12.000 When taking my mouth, it says it's possibly safe when you short-term.

02:29:15.000 What does that mean?

02:29:16.000 Doses up to 4.8 grams daily have been used safely for up to a year.

02:29:20.000 Safely?

02:29:20.000 It's usually well tolerated.

02:29:22.000 Boy, they're really hedging their bets.

02:29:25.000 Jamie, may I ask if we can...

02:29:26.000 Do you know if we could find out what, like, the biggest...

02:29:30.000 Who is the biggest purchaser of Royal?

02:29:33.000 I was just trying to see.

02:29:33.000 Oh, okay.

02:29:34.000 I'm sorry.

02:29:34.000 You want to shame them.

02:29:35.000 No, I'm just wondering.

02:29:36.000 Let's take them down. 0.97

02:29:37.000 I'm curious if it is the cosmetic industry, or I don't know who...

02:29:41.000 What would be the benefit of it cosmetically?

02:29:43.000 You know, I think there are...

02:29:43.000 It's like a skin cream or something?

02:29:45.000 Does it work or is it just nonsense?

02:29:47.000 Supporters claim it affects diabetes, PMS, and more.

02:29:50.000 Oh, PMS. Please, let's get more of it.

02:29:54.000 PMS, diabetes, and more.

02:29:56.000 Supporters claim.

02:29:57.000 Boy, that seems like a grab bag, doesn't it?

02:29:59.000 It does.

02:30:00.000 Yeah, how convenient.

02:30:02.000 What else?

02:30:02.000 Stops dementia.

02:30:04.000 Makes you less gullible.

02:30:08.000 Eat it all.

02:30:09.000 It makes you less gullible.

02:30:11.000 Well, listen, Erica, I really appreciate you coming in here.

02:30:15.000 It's been very, very educational.

02:30:16.000 It's really cool.

02:30:17.000 I love that you're doing what you're doing.

02:30:20.000 It'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.

02:30:30.000 Thank you so much.

02:30:31.000 Thank you.

02:30:32.000 My pleasure.

02:30:33.000 Your Instagram page is...

02:30:36.000 TexasBeworks.

02:30:38.000 TexasBeworks and TikTok.

02:30:40.000 TexasBeworks.

02:30:41.000 And website.

02:30:43.000 TexasBeworks.

02:30:43.000 Everything TexasBeworks.

02:30:45.000 All right.

02:30:46.000 Anything else?

02:30:47.000 Good?

02:30:47.000 Thank you so much.

02:30:48.000 Thank you.

02:30:48.000 My pleasure.

02:30:49.000 It was really fun.

02:30:49.000 I enjoyed it.

02:30:50.000 All right.

02:30:50.000 Bye, everybody.

The Joe Rogan Experience - December 08, 2022

Joe Rogan Experience #1908 - Erika Thompson

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Summary

Transcript