The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Bee People and the Bugs They Love by Frank Mortimer

Episode Date: April 28, 2021

Bee People and the Bugs They Love by Frank Mortimer “A successful and funny book that is sure to swell the ranks of the world’s beekeepers.” —New York Times A fascinating foray into the obsessions, friendships, scientific curiosity, misfortunes and rewards of suburban beekeeping—through the eyes of a Master Beekeeper . . . Who wants to keep bees? And why? For the answers, Master Beekeeper Frank Mortimer invites readers on an eye-opening journey into the secret world of bees, and the singular world of his fellow bee-keepers. There’s the Badger, who introduces Frank to the world of bees; Rusty, a one-eyed septuagenarian bee sting therapist certain that honey will be the currency of the future after the governments fail; Scooby the “dude” who gets a meditative high off the awesome vibes of his psychedelia-painted hives; and the Berserker, a honeybee hitman who teaches Frank a rafter-raising lesson in staving off the harmful influences of an evil queen: “Squash her, mash her, kill, kill, kill!” Frank also crosses paths with those he calls the Surgeons (precise and protected), the Cowboys (improvisational and unguarded) and the Poseurs, ex-corporate cogs, YouTube-informed and ill-prepared for the stinging reality of their new lives. In connecting with this club of disparate but kindred spirits, Frank discovers the centuries-old history of the trade; the practicality of maintaining it; what bees see, think, and feel (emotionless but sometimes a little defensive); how they talk to each other and socialize; and what can be done to combat their biggest threats, both human (anti-apiarist extremists) and mite (the Varroa Destructor). With a swarm of offbeat characters and fascinating facts (did that bee just waggle or festoon?), Frank the Bee Man delivers an informative, funny, and galvanizing book about the symbiotic relationship between flower and bee, and bee and the beekeepers who are determined to protect the existence of one of the most beguiling and invaluable creatures on earth. “A very entertaining book.” —American Bee Journal “A playful storyteller… A compelling memoir.” —Foreword Reviews “A useful how-to guide as well as an affectionate ode to nature’s pollinators and honey makers.” —Publishers Weekly “This book includes great humor and a use of allegory that reveals tremendous background knowledge.” —San Francisco Book Review “Frank’s personal stories of his beekeeping journey are entertaining, well written, and will quickly have you happily lost in the world of bees.” —Paleo Magazine "Bee People and the Bugs They Love is the bee's knees and getting a ton of buzz. Bee smart, people, and read this un-BEE-lievably interesting look at the quirky world of beekeeping." —Harlan Coben, #1 New York Times bestselling author “A delightful portrayal for non-beekeepers of what life is like for those of us who are always thinking about bees.” —Tom Seeley, author of The Lives of Bees “A fun and exciting tale of the wonder-filled world of beginner beekeeping.” —Noah Wilson-Rich, author of Bee: A Natural History , and CEO and partner The Best Bees Company

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Hey, we are coming to you here with a real exciting, really interesting, really unique sort of author and an incredible book that's just come out.

And we're going to be talking with him today to see the video version of this because they have this new technology where not only can you listen on the podcast, but you can watch. It's like a whole screen. It's like TV, and it's free, too, on YouTube.com. Go there, hit the bell notification so you can see all the wonderful things we're doing. Go to our Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn. Just search for chris voss or the chris voss show you can see everything we're doing over there you can go to goodreads.com or just chris voss see everything we're reading and reviewing there as today we're going to be getting the big buzz we're getting the big buzz on what's happening with bees we have i guess you would call them you

would call them the, one of those, like a wine connoisseur of bees, maybe. I forget the name of the thing there. But anyway, we have him on the show. He has written a new book that just came out March 30th, 2021. Bee People and the Bugs They Love. His name is Frank Mortimer, and he's going to be talking to us today about beekeeping. So we're going to learn a lot of really cool things. We're going to get the lowdown and the buzz and all the sweet stories that he has to share from his new book. And this episode is brought to you by a sponsor, ifi-audio.com and their micro IDSD signature. It's a top of therange desktop transportable DAC and headphone app that will supercharge your headphones.

It has two Brown-Burr DAC chips in it and will decode high-res audio and MQA files. We're using it in the studio right now. I've loved my experience with it so far. It just makes everything sound so much more richer and better and takes things to the next level. IFI Audio is an award-winning audio

tech company with one aim in mind, to improve your music enjoyment of quality sound, eradicate noise, distortion, and hiss from your listening experience. Check out their new incredible lineup of DACs and audio enhancement devices at ifi-audio.com and he is an adjunct instructor at the Cornell University Master Beekeeping Program. He's the vice president of the New Jersey State Beekeepers Association and a certified master beekeeper. Frank is the author of this new book and he's written multiple articles featured in the widely circulated Bee Culture magazine.

This guy is everywhere in bee culture. He also successfully campaigned for his hometown of Ridgewood to become New Jersey's first Bee City USA. He's married, has three children, and beekeeping is something his whole family enjoys doing together. Welcome to the show, Frank. How are you? I'm doing great, Chris. Thank you so much for having me on your awesome show. I think it's going to be unbelievable and can't wait to get the buzz going.

There are going to be a lot of B's in this show. I just have a feeling. Welcome to the show. Congratulations on your new book. Give us your plugs so people can look you up on the interwebs. Sure. The best place that houses all the links is frankthebman.com. I'm Frank.

I'm the B-man. So.com can find it all. You know, you don't look like athebman.com. I'm Frank. I'm the B-man. So.com can find it all. You know, you don't look like a B-man. Shouldn't you be wearing like stripes all the time? Like the yellow and black? You should have your own black shirts and stuff. If you want, I could put on my B-mail to make it more authentic here. I carry it everywhere I go. Does that block coronavirus? That might be good too. What's funny about that is that we filmed a book trailer pre-pandemic and one of the scenes is i'm wearing a full bee suit pushing a shopping cart and we get into the pandemic and people really were going to the stores where they'll be keeping outfits

that would keep me six feet away from you because i'm like there's probably bees in tow somewhere with this guy he's literally he's clearly there's bees wherever he's going there's either bees or there's bees following him but he's got the suit on you've written this uh wonderful book and there was a term i was trying to think of what do they call the wine guys who like isn't like yeah that's what i was trying to call you in the intro as is one of those wine it's not a connoisseur it's a wine so many yeah so many so you're a bee sommelier, only hopefully you're not eating them because the stingers and stuff, but you're eating the honey. There you go. We'll get into some of that here in the show. What motivated you to write a book about bees? So what's funny is that as the

president of my group in New Jersey is the most densely populated state, and I live in the most densely populated area of that state. So a lot of different groups wanted to do present, have, hear presentations about bees. So I was doing all these bee talks. And then after about 125 of them, I was like, man, why am I doing this? How can people keep asking the same questions? But then what I realized is that people laugh at my jokes, which is people laugh at your jokes. You got to go back for more. And, but doing those talks, I refined how I explained things about bees and beekeeping. And that was really the impetus of behind the book, because people liked how I said it. Nice. A comedy is always something that people

love and aspire to listen to. Most people cry when I do my comedy, but that's another story. So give us an arcing overview of the book and what it's about. So it's the first book that focuses on beekeepers. So there's lots of fantastic books about the insect. But what I did is it's my journey from before I ever went hive diving through to the present. And then just how I got into beekeeping and focuses on a lot of the mistakes that I made along the way. Because you learn from your mistakes, Chris, right? And some of my mistakes have been so big that I think I can teach an entire nation on them. Wow.

And then also just I've met a lot of odd and entertaining characters along the way. And those are detailed in the book as well. That sounds fun. I don't usually learn from my mistakes. I like to keep trying them just to make sure they don't work. And after about 10 or 12 tries, I'm like, maybe I should try something else that fails as well. So this is really cool. Now, is this a book where if I wanted to get into beekeeping, I know a lot of people, especially with coronavirus, they're doing all sorts of new hobbies.

Is this something that would be a manual or if I wanted to maybe explore getting into that business, it would be good? There's a lot of stories, educational and facts about beekeeping that are combined in with the stories. So it certainly is something that would give you a clear picture of what it's like to do it, like from a cultural and what are the other people in the beekeeping tribe? And then what are some of the beekeeping facts? Yes, it is a book that it was written for the non-beekeeper to explain beekeeping, but it would also is good for beekeepers because it has so many facts in it. So let's get down to the bottom line of bees and how people feel about bees. I know a lot of people are terrified of bees and they're always

terrified of being stung. I know some girlfriends I've had, if they, if bee gets near them, they just lose everything. So what's the reality on bees stinging and is that really a phobia people should have? No. And I actually, I do cover that in my book that, but the thing is that anything that flies, we call a bee. And the reality is honey bees are very gentle. And then it's the yellow jackets, which are the ones that generally sting people. And the way to tell the difference is that honeybees are fuzzy. They actually have hair over their whole body. They even have hair growing out of their eyes. And then yellow jackets are smooth and look like they're made of plastic. So fuzzy, good, plastic, bad. And then two, we grew up watching the Bugs Barney cartoons. And in the Bugs Bunny, the bees would come out

in a big fist and hit you in the faceugs Bunny, the bees would come out in a big fist and hitch in the face. And that's not how bees operate. So generally what happens with people that are afraid of getting stung, when they finally get that first sting, they're like, oh, that's all there is to it because it's not as built. It's not as anywhere near as people have built it up in their heads. Yeah. I know a lot of people, they really freak out and start swatting it. I'm like, don't swat it. You'll just make it angry. In beekeeping, excuse me, in bee language, swatting means sting me. I'm a bear. I'm trying to eat you. Ah, that's really interesting. This is what we do on the show. We learn new things. So don't

be swatting at the bees. I watch these TikTok videos. I don't know if you've seen some of these TikTok channels and they're run by bee people. And one gal who's really popular on there, she's one of those people where if some bees decide to move into the siding of your house or something and you need to have it removed, they've built a hive in there. She goes through and removes it. And it's really cool. She captures the queen. But she'll, like, take her whole hand and just scoop it down in this whole thing of bees and lift them out. These are nice bees.

And then they're just like, ah! So I'm not supposed to do this. It's like a magician telling the tricks. But I am going to let you know the beekeeping trick to that. That worker bees, depending on their age, have different jobs in the hive. So the last job is forager. And that's when it correlates to, to when their venom sacks are fully developed. So a bee that is less than two weeks old, they don't have the venom sacks to sting you. So when you are, when she's scooping those bees up,

she's getting what we call the nurse bees and they really can't get you. So that's the trick. Well, nurse people are nice people. So I guess nurse bees are the really can't get you. So that's the trick. Well, nurse people are nice people. So I guess nurse bees are the same way. They're, they're just here to help. Yeah. They're here to help and take care of the kids. You tell some stories about some of the different beekeepers in there and stuff. Give us some of the stories that you share from the book. Yeah. So it's like, I have a full chapter on the one-eyed bee guy who is a legend in the New Jersey area, but he's in his nineties and has one eye and also practices apotherapy. And apotherapy is when you get bee sting on purpose because some people believe that it solves medical issues like rheumatoid arthritis and things like

that. That sounds painful. So you know how people will get cortisone shots? So when you get stung by a bee, your body naturally produces cortisol, which is the natural one that cortisone is based on. And so because of that, and the blood all flows to that area, the thought is that it can help reduce issues like rheumatoid arthritis or MS and things like that. And it's not scientifically proven, but that's what people believe. The only time I ever got stung by a bee, and I'm pretty sure it was a bee, I think I had to remove the stinger, was I was riding down the road with my friend in the truck and I had my hand out the window and doing this whole thing like this. And I back-ended a bee, evidently.

And that's how I got stung. And that's why you shouldn't swat at bees. Essentially, you're just doing it, but it's 50 miles an hour. Do you talk in the book about this thing where bees were having some issues with possible extinction or something like that? Or do you want to address that? Yeah, so the event was called colony collapse disorder. And that was like a perfect storm of a lot of different factors. But what was happening was a picture like a big apartment building, like in New York, and you go inside and there's plenty of food, there's kids

everywhere, but no adults. And that's what the colony collapse disorder was. And one of the main things, so that only existed for a few years and they haven't seen it in a while. But the main cause of that, which continues to be a problem, is there's a parasitic mite that's a non-native parasite called Varroa destructor. And the Varroa came, jumped species and came into the U.S. in 1987. And that's what's impacting bees worldwide. So what the mite does is it sucks nutrients out of the developing bee. So think like prenatal and imagine if a parasite was sucking the nutrients out of that baby. And additionally, it's a vector for diseases. So bees can't socially distance. So these mites are spreading more and more diseases and are actually getting more deadly

because they're spreading more than just one now. And so the big joke in beekeeping circles is that we end up talking about mites than we do about bees. Wow. And that's not a good joke. No, I'm just kidding. No, it's interesting. So they had their own sort of coronavirus outbreak then.

Yes. Yeah. And that continues to this day. It's, and it's, and the bee diseases only affect bees. They don't affect people, but like one of them is called deformed wing virus. So it looks like the bees wings are like shriveled up and so then they can't fly and other things. But the, yes, the problem with the mites is that they're, like I said, that they're, these, they're spreading these diseases or they're more efficient at spreading diseases than they used to be. So fewer mites can take out a colony of bees.

How important is honey? There was when this save the bees thing was going on, people were like, our world is going to collapse if we lose these bees. How important is that truly? And what do you want to tell people as to the importance of bees and why we should definitely have them? So one in every three bites of food we eat is thanks to a honeybee pollinating. And in the U.S., that there's over $20 billion in crops that are related, that have to have bees pollinate for those to develop. And the biggest crop is the almonds, which in this one area in Northern

California, over 80% of the world's almonds come from, and it's the largest pollination event in the world. And almonds represent $7.6 billion. That's how big that industry is. And almonds, like apples and oranges and many other fruits, are completely dependent upon the honeybee for the fruit to form. So without the bee, you're not going to get any of those things to eat. Would we collapse as a food system without it then? It seems like an obvious question or answer. I think our diet would be pretty boring because we pretty much would just have like wheat and corn and just that are air pollinated as opposed to bee pollinated. There you go. We'd all have to just start eating McDonald'sinated as opposed to bee pollinated.

There you go. We'd all have to just start eating McDonald's for Franken food all the time. I think I just lost the McDonald's sponsor. So what got you into this? What were you doing in your life where you're just like bees? Yeah, it's funny because I never was around bees. I never knew anybody that kept them, but there was something about being around 60,000 stinging insects that I thought would be fun. Now, hold on. Why? Yeah, I can't explain it. Like it's really like a normal person is, Hey, I'll go on the golf course or Hey, I'll go play hoops. But for me,

it was like, that just seemed fun. And once I got into it, when you're opening up a hive and you're going in to see what the bees are doing, I call it forced Zen because you have to be present or you'll get stung. And it's actually very relaxing because all of your senses are absorbed in what you're doing. You can obviously see the bees, but you can smell the honey and the wax that's in there. And then as you're touching the comb and bees, the bees are fuzzy so you can feel them too. So it's really like a full sensory experience that I ended up getting very relaxed by the time I'm done. You should sell meditation classes to this, but it, well, it sounds meditative to you. It's so I can imagine for some people, it sounds like full terror. Some people, they have a real bee fetish and I'm just like,

leave the thing alone. Just let it fly around and don't swat it. You just make it angry. You know? Yeah. And I like the story I tell in my book that makes me proud to be a beekeeper. One of the many stories, but this one, there was a child who had a real, an honest to Godness phobia. And so a therapist called and said, could I help desensitize the kids? So I, over a series of sessions with her and the therapist that I brought in pictures of bees. And then I brought in what's called an observation hive, which is like bees behind glass. So they can't get out. And then one of the last things that, so another bee secret is drones, which are the male bees. They don't have stingers. So brought in some drones for the the kid to

play with so she could see that they're not these scary monsters and so by the time we were done then she was all excited so this was a kid that was afraid to go outside and had overcome her fears nice that this is pretty cool now is this your whole family does this which i thought was interesting from your bio i was going to ask you is your wife cool with this obsession? Because some wives, they're like, what the hell are you doing this week, Bob? You're frank. I just, I use Bob as a general reference on everything. So I always use Bob as the external character in my jokes. Is she cool with this? And how does this help your family? Maybe this is good for other families. So I say that beekeeping, if you think about it, it's not like having a dog or a cat that's going to show affection back to you. You're taking care of this ball of bugs that's going to sting you if it has an opportunity to.

To be a beekeeper, I think it takes having a nurturing gene. And because it has this nurturing thing around it is why I think it's good for families to do. But yeah. And then the last chapter of my book is how beekeeping helped me have like a date and meet my wife. So I would say that I'm extremely lucky that she tolerates it to participate. And it's like, and there's so many other functions around beekeeping other than just going to hives. So like we bottle honey, we make lip balm and things like that.

But my kids love it. Like my daughters, one is six, the other is four. And when each of them was three years old, they were in the bee yard holding a frame of bees, which can be like 4,000 bees. And so they loved it. That's wild, man. You actually answered my next question because I'm single. I'm like, is this the way I can pick up chicks with being a beekeeper or something? I don't know. I have a face that belongs behind a bee valve, so it works for me. Yeah. I have the same sort of thing i have the radio face yeah the that's why probably more people listen to the podcast on the podcast itunes and stuff than they do the youtube video but that's

that but even then when they watch the videos they always tell me yeah i just listened to the video um i've seen what you look like but hey it's it's hard to come it's hard to combat with our beauty that you and I have, that mix between George Clooney and Brad Pitt. A lot of people are just confused because it's the mixture of those two elements. So this is pretty cool. Bees. And I see a lot of people like in my area that they sell their own honey. I think they're little farmers. Would you advise people to maybe set up bee things in their backyard? Maybe it'll help their garden or maybe it'll help flowers if they're one of those people that like having lilacs or something in their backyard.

Or maybe they just want to save some money on honey because honey is darn expensive these days. And that's like when you get into how much work has to go in, like we talked about the mites and there's a lot of other things that beekeepers do. Trust me, even though local honey is more than you're paying for, than the cheap honey mixture in supermarkets, it's worth every penny because of how much time that beekeeper is doing. And the number one thing I always tell people that if they want to help the bees is support their local beekeeper. Because by you buying his or her honey down the street, then they can keep maintaining hives that will make your garden and yard look good. But if, yeah, people are interested in keeping bees, I'd say the first thing is find a local beekeeping club. There's clubs in all 50 states. And then you can have somebody local that can direct you on where to get bees and act as a mentor to help you through it.

But, yeah, it doesn't take a big space in the backyard. Beekeeping is legal in New York City. And so they have over 1 a thousand beekeepers in there. So if you can do it in New York City, you can do it anywhere is what I always say. And yeah, if it sounds interesting to you and you're willing to put in the work, then I'd say, yeah, go for it. Do it. How many hours, say I set one up in my yard and I just had something small, nothing out

of control, but enough bees where I could stick them on my neighbors if my neighbors pissed me off. Asking for a friend. How many hours a week would you say something like maybe just one of those little boxes or something? So think of a hive like a filing cabinet and then each drawer of the filing cabinet has 10 file folders. And so that's in those file folders is what I call frames or beekeepers call frames. So you will, depending on the time of year is how many boxes you would have stacked up on top of each other. And again, depending on the time of the year, it could have as much as 60,000 bees or drop down to 10 or 12,000 bees. So if you had one of those boxes or hives or colonies in your yard, depending on the time of year is how much time you would spend.

So like when the, right now we're at springtime and everything's blooming, that's when you're putting in the most work. So it might be a couple hours, like one to two hours a week, every seven days. And then like in the winter time, you're not going out there at all. So it's zero. So really, and when you extract honey, like when you actually take the boxes off and take them in your house to extract, then that's going to take you several hours to do that as well. What's the best honey to buy? Because I've heard different things like filtered and unfiltered, and then there's the clover and there's so many different variations.

I'm like, I don't know. So honey is 100% dependent upon what flower it goes to for its taste and color. So like when you talk about clover, that means that 51% or more of that honey that the bees went to the clover flower. And bees are monogamous, so that means they'll stay on one flower for as long as it's blooming. So that's why if you have acres and acres of clover, the bees will stay on that until it's done. And what's interesting is it takes 12 bees lifetime work to make a teaspoon of tea of honey. So I mean, every time you sweeten your tea, that was 12 bees lifetimes work that it takes just under 1200 bees to make one pound of honey. And to make that one pound, they have to visit

2 million flowers. And to visit those 2 million flowers, it takes 56,000 flight miles, which is equivalent to going twice around the equator. Wow. All for some honey. All for some honey. Should I feel guilty about that? They're like a computer program. And as long as stuff is blooming and they have room in their hive, they're going to keep making honey. So it's just what they, it's a natural instinct that they have. So the, your first part of your question is that the flowers like clover, wildflower or whatever, that's specific to the type of flower. As far as what kind of honey to get, I say, buy it from your local beekeeper. We always say, know your beekeeper and that's gonna be the best honey.

And then as far as, because the local person selling it, it's going to be raw honey, which means that they take it out of the hive, they just scrape off some wax, spin it in a drum, which is called an extractor to get the honey out of the comb,

collect it at the bottom and put it in the jars. So it doesn't get fresher or more raw than that. Anything, if you go to a big box supermarket and you pasteurized honey, that's not honey. Honey is never pasteurized. It's the only food that never spoils. They found honey in the Egyptian tombs over 3000 years old that was still edible. Wow. I need to be the guy who had to test that. Hey, Chris, do you got a spoon? Can you taste it for me? There's a little dust in it. Sorry. I think King Tut, some parts of him got in there. Now, one of the guys that you talk about in your book, Rusty, the one-eyed dude, he believes

or has a theory that honey will be the currency of the future after governments fail. Do I need to move my currency from Bitcoin and Dogecoin now to honey? And it was really funny. It was at a beekeeping meeting. And I talk about my different bee meetings, which when I first went to one, I was wondering if they were going to do some kind of bee initiation or teach me some kind of stinger handshake. Be amazing. Yeah. But so he stood up once and cautioned people about selling all their honey and said that you should save it because like you said, it would be the currency. So, and that goes back to that. You can, honey does last forever. And so you can just store it

for as long as you need to. So if you're waiting for the governments to fail, then I say by all means get honey. I'm going to start hoarding honey. Plus, if anything happens to the bees, man, I don't want everything to taste like crap. I don't want that. I want to keep honey. I think honey is really important. I think one of the problems, and I've learned this through dining and stuff like this, is our body has a natural thing to break down sugar or honey and different things for sweeteners. And there's so many people that use these fake sweeteners that are chemical-based. And a lot of people don't realize that's not healthier. It's actually worse for you because your body really doesn't know how to break down those chemicals. And it's very natural to break down honey and natural sugar, like sugar cane, I think. And so I usually try and when I drink

stuff, I usually try and use a natural thing as opposed to some sort of chemical manufacturer. I would completely agree with you that it's better to have something natural than a man-made chemical. And as far as your body breaking it down, so when the nectar comes into the hive, it's sucrose, which is like sugarcane. And then the bees add enzymes to that, and they break it down to fructose and glucose. And anyone that's ever had Gatorade knows that's the secret, is that glucose is because it's a more simple sugar, our body can absorb it faster. So that's why bees break it down.

And so honey for that reason is I think even healthier because your body can use it faster. Should you make a point of making honey a part of your daily diet? I'm biased on that because I would say yes. Really? Yeah. We consume a lot of honey in my house. I just see you guys like drinking and the whole family's around the dinner table. You're like, Hey, can you pass some more honey? I'm almost out here drinking it. You're just like scooping it. You're pouring honey over like your potatoes, like gravy, and you have some over the turkey and stuff.

So you have been over to my house. I have been. I got a camera or something in there, but no, I just, I think it's great. And I love honey too. I love anything sweet. Seriously. Look at me. I have, I've never said no to anything sweet.

What are some other aspects of the book that people should know? It's for people that really like facts and trivia or like to go deeper that in the book I have called Bee Nerd Alerts. And they're little boxed areas that goes into like the scientific name for different things or just gives a little bit more information. And it's, like I said, it's boxed off.

So if you just want to skim through it and read the stories, you don't get bogged down in those extra facts. Is there like a single site for beekeepers? Like Tinder only, it's a, I don't know what you call it. You there like a single site for beekeepers like Tinder only? I don't know what you call it. You probably have a joke for that, but is there a place where beekeepers can meet and where we can swarm, get their buzz on? There's besides the local state and branch chapters of beekeeping meetings that beekeepers tend to swarm around some of the larger groups. There's a West Coast, there's a Midwest,

and there's an East Coast regional clubs that exist. And then there's some international ones as well. And it's also, these sites are free, but on my website, frank2beeman.com, under resources, I have all those listed out. So if you just remember that, you can get to wherever you want to buzz or waggle. The only problem is breaking up with BK Pierce when you're dating him. There's a bit of a sting afterwards, but this has been wonderful to have you on. Give us your plugs or people can find out more about you.

Do you have some YouTube videos, by the way, a YouTube channel or TikTok or Instagram or anything like that? I have all the above. My, my YouTube is Frank, the B man, but pretty much if you, if you Google Frank, the B man, you can find it or just go to is Frank the B-Man. Pretty much if you Google Frank the B-Man,

you can find it or just go to frankthebman.com and I have links to all the social media, which includes Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and the YouTube channel. There you go. There you go. Check it out, guys. It's been wonderful to have you on, Frank. This is pretty insightful. I'm going to go subscribe to all your social media channels because I kind of like it. Like I said, I've seen these people on YouTube and there is something meditative to it. Maybe it's that nature side of me going, that caveman, plant-eating person.

And they're innate to our nature. We probably couldn't have got this far without them, or at least. No, you're right. Because they found cave paintings over 30,000 years old and people were keeping bees. The ancient Egyptians kept bees in hives. So we've been doing it for eons. And I cover all that in the book, Bee People and the Bugs You Love, which is available

wherever people normally buy books at your local bookstore or on any of the online places. You can get my book internationally, wherever you want. There you go. So thank you very much for being on the show with us, Frank. We really appreciate it. And sharing all this wonderful knowledge has been fun. It's been great, Chris, and I wish you all the best. And maybe sometime we can come back and we'll swarm around some other topics. If I'm ever in your area, I might look you up and go check out the bees. Do you do bee tours or anything like that in your place? For you, I would.

Oh, okay. We'll film it and everything, put it on YouTube. That'd be great. And you can taste the different honeys in the way i do it you can actually taste the difference between the different floral varieties we can see how sexy i look in a bee suit yeah well i was built for a bee suit so it's great i'll probably get all the chicks then anyway thank you very much frank for being on the show thanks for tuning in check it out bee people the Bugs That They Love just came out on March 30th. You can check it out by Frank Mortimer.

Thanks for tuning in. Go to YouTube.com and see all the wonderful things we've got over there, great videos and stuff. Go to Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, all the different groups we have over there. Just search for The Chris Foss Show. It's over there. And also go to Goodreads.com for Just Chris Foss. Thanks for tuning in.

We'll see you next time.