The Joe Rogan Experience - #1908 - Erika Thompson

Episode Date: December 8, 2022

Erika Thompson is the owner and founder of Texas Beeworks: an organization promoting public awareness and education about the valuable work bees and beekeepers do. www.texasbeeworks.com

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out! The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day! This is your first podcast? This is my first podcast. Well, thank you very much for allowing me to be the host of you for the first podcast. Thank you so much for having me in the bees. My pleasure.

I became fascinated with bees when we did an episode of Fear Factor where we had to cover these people in bees. And it was this outdoor thing that we did at this ranch. And while we were doing it, a local hive of bees came over and interacted with our bees and we had to shut down production. And so I talked to the beekeeper. I said, what's going on? And he said, we have to shut everything down for an hour or so while they work this out. While the bees work it out. Yeah. I'm like, what do you mean? 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. And I go, they're going to communicate? Like, is it going

to be a bee war? He's like, no, they're going to sort it out. And I go, they're going to communicate? Like, is it going to be a bee war? He's like, no, they're going to sort it out. And I'm like, how do they sort it out? And it's kind of unknown, right? Like how? Sure. Well, what happened with those bees? They sorted it out. And the other bees went away and our bees came back and stayed and then we resumed the show. That's great. So what kind of communication are bees capable of? Do we know? We don't know everything there is to know about bees. Bees have been around for 120 million years. We've been keeping bees for maybe 10,000. You know, if I were to think I knew more than the bees, that would be so foolish of me. But we do know some of the ways that bees communicate. 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 super organism know what's going on. And so in your case, you know, you had one colony of bees. A colony is a collective noun, is the collective noun for a group of bees, whereas a hive is the box they live in. 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. And, you know, it sounds like you had a bunch of bees in one area and bees are social creatures. So they were attracted to the scents of these other bees and were there to see what's going on and you know they eventually figured it out and everybody went back to their respective places and and it was fine so what is happening though when they're

when they're figuring it out they're smelling that the is it that these other bees have a specifically different pheromone yes they will have a different scent and that's how they'll stay with their colony and it comes from the queen the queen has a queen mandibular pheromone? Yes, they will have a different scent and that's how they'll stay with their colony. And it comes from the queen. The queen has a queen mandibular pheromone. And so 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. Is it possible that bees who are like loner bees could integrate with another hive?

Absolutely. You know, it happens to me in my work all the time. I remove bees from places and, you know, I'll go in and take a colony and a hive out and relocate it to my apiary. And in that process, I don't always get every bee, of course. And the bees that are left behind, or if there's a loner bee, they can join another colony. And it's actually their chances of successfully joining are increased if they bring gifts of pollen or honey. Whoa. Wow. But, you know, bees live a very short lifespan,

so sometimes they'll just live out the rest of their bee life. And the bees that we see out in the world foraging, they're at the end of their short bee life. How long is a bee's life? 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. So in the spring and summer, when the bees are working their hardest, the female worker bees will only live about six weeks. 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 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. 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. And how long does the queen live? The queen can live the longest. She can live about five years. That's on the longer end. Most queens will

live a little bit shorter, but she can live significantly longer than all the other bees in the hive. And then we have the worker bees who live about six weeks, six months. The queen bee can live up to five years and the drone bees will live about six months, the male bees. And what is the ratio of male bees to female bees? A honeybee colony is about 95% female. And the amount of male bees can actually fluctuate throughout the year. 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. 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. So right now there are no male bees in most hives. And these bees that came along with me today, there's not a single male honeybee there. They starve to death. They starve to death. They have no way of foraging. They don't do the work of bees. 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. 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. So the male bees don't mate with their own females. Would that be like mating with the mother? That would be like incestuous, right? So

here's what happens within the colony when it's time for the queen bee to mate. 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. And she may go on only one, possibly two mating flights in her entire life. And she'll fly out of the hive and she'll go to a drone congregation area, which is exactly what it sounds like. It's an area where there's a bunch of drone male honeybees flying around just waiting for a queen bee to fly by. And these drone congregation areas exist about 100 feet in the sky, which is another reason you would never see a male honeybee. But 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.

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. Whoa. So they die during mating. They die during mating. Harsh life for a male bee. Depending how you look at it, I guess. Starve to death, die when you have sex.

Yes. I mean, but also, you know, his genes pass on and he's a successful male honeybee. But they also don't have to do a lot of work in the hive, you know. They don't forage for food. They don't build the hive. They don't have wax glands. They don't even have stingers. They don't defend the hive. They don't have wax glands. They don't even have stingers. They don't defend the hive.

So they have one role. So how does the males know? Is there a specific time of the year where the males know that the female queen is going to be flying around? Sure, in the spring and in the summer. And that's when, you know, that's their only job. So if they're present, that's what they're trying to do. And that's why the colony controls how many drones there are. So right now in the hive, there aren't that many drone bees because they're trying to conserve the resources they have. So the honey that we eat from bees is

their food source in the winter when nothing is in bloom and there's no for there's no flowers out there for them to forage from. Wow. So when what what are they they're the male bees when they're inside the hive? What's their specific job? Like what kind of work are they doing when they're in there? They're really not doing a lot of work. Just hanging out eating? There's some research will show that they're, you know, 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, you know, 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.

They're walking around different, you know, 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. You know, we have to keep in mind they only make up about 5% of the population, maybe 10, sometimes zero. So there aren't that many male honeybees. And I always love sharing with people that they probably have never seen one. 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.

So they fly up in the air and they put a pheromone out that lets the queen know that they're there? Yes, they'll put a drone. The drones will emit a pheromone. And these drone congregation areas still remain somewhat of a mystery. 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. There's some research that shows, you know, they're covered by wind. They're going to be a safe area for the bees to fly around. And they're massive. They can be 100 feet in the sky, but they can be about 500 feet wide. I mean, a ton of male honeybees flying around, just doing circles,

waiting for a queen to fly by. And how does the queen detect where they are, like in terms of like pheromones? I think it's just the chemical pheromones, and they're not flying that far from their hive area. So, you know, it's within a radius. Bees to forage will only fly about two miles. So, but, you know, they go every day. This is the males, the drones fly out of the hive and try to mate successfully every day. So they're always doing this. And most drones will never mate with a queen. You know, it's a small percentage of drones that mate with a queen because she only mates with maybe 15 to 20 drones. So do bees have a nose like we think of a nose? Is it? They in, you know, their world very much exists through sense, but it's not,

they don't really have a nose like we do. You know, they even have, they can taste through their feet. They even have a way to taste the difference between sweet and salty through their feet. And I believe it's just glands that they're doing this through. But, you know, they have antennae too, which their antennae help them, you know, move within the colony and talk to each other and clean themselves. But yeah, they're remarkable little creatures. It's so fascinating how they have this uniform structure, the hive. Yes.

With all these little catacombs and all these little combs that they create, and they all do it the same way. Yes. Like, how do they know how to do it? Do we have an understanding of how they teach each other? Or is it innate in their genetics? Well, the comb building is a really interesting process because we see it as hexagonal comb, right? We see little hexagons within the hive, but they actually start off building it as circles.

So the weight of the hive will bring it down. And the way that they build the comb is actually up at an angle so that the honey doesn't seep out. 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. 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 live with what's around them and then always leave the world better than they found it. They're amazing.

It is very fascinating. 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? I don't know if it's when it's time to create the combs. I mean, they start creating a comb as soon as they find a cavity to build in. Most of the comb building takes place within the first 40 days. The bees will build the majority of their hives. So I don't know for sure, but I would say it's just a natural instinct. When they find a place to live, they need safety and they need a place to bring up their young. The queen lays eggs in the comb. It's not just storing honey and food. You know, this is where the bees also raise their young. And I think

it's just they know that they need a safe place to live. And so they start to build a beehive immediately. And if the queen, it's a solitary queen in the hive, in the colony. So what happens when females are born? So the female bees are the worker bees, and they're the ones that make up about 95% of the population. And they cannot lay eggs that have been fertilized. So they can lay eggs that only result in drone male bees. So there's no competition between the queen and the worker bees. I mean, there's, you know, the queen has one job.

That's to lay eggs for the colony. She is essentially the female reproductive organ of this greater being that is the superorganism of a bee colony. 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. So does the queen, when the worker bees are born, and you said they lay eggs and they can only make males? They don't lay eggs. They don't lay eggs. So they can, and on occasion they will if a colony is queenless, but it doesn't mean the colony can continue. So without a queen, a colony can't continue. So as a last resort is the only time you will see female worker bees laying eggs in a colony. And they will lay eggs that turn into bees that look different.

colony. And they will lay eggs that turn into bees that look different. They're male drone bees. And so their larvae and their pupae look a little bit different than the worker bees. 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. And what happens then? So as a beekeeper, you can introduce a new queen to the colony and likely they'll accept her. You can also give the colony eggs from another colony that are female eggs. So female bee eggs, any female bee egg can be made into a queen bee. 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. 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, they're fed royal jelly. And then they're switched to a diet of pollen and a little bit of nectar. But if a baby bee is fed royal jelly through the duration of its development, it turns into a queen bee. But a regular worker bee cannot give birth or cannot lay an egg that would be a queen bee or even a female bee. Correct. So where does that female bee come from? Only from a queen?

Where does? Yes. So a queen can only give birth to a queen. A queen can lay both female and male bee eggs. I shouldn't say give birth. So a female can lay both female and male bee eggs. I shouldn't say give birth. So a female can lay a female. So when a queen knows that her time is short when she's about to die, does she make a successor? Well, it's not always the queen that knows, and it's more the colony that's making the decision.

So we often think of a colony of bees being a monarchy where the queen is in charge and making all making the decision. 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. It's the colony making the decisions. So it's all the worker bees. It's the collective of female worker bees making that decision. 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. So it's actually the group of female worker bees that's making that decision. And the queen bee doesn't always know when she's in her final days.

It's the colony that would know. 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. 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.

Oh, geez. And the best queen wins. And that's what needs to happen for the life of the bee colony. Wow, they fight to the death. What a ruthless world. They have figured it out, though, how to do this and how to live in these giant societies. And, you know, it all works. And it's remarkable. It is very remarkable. But it's also very ruthless, right?

I mean, it's kind of crazy that they fight to the death. Sure. Like this poor queen, she's done a great job. She's made all these bees and a lot of bees. A queen bee will lay up to 2000 eggs per day. I mean, she's an egg laying machine. That's all she does. A lot of bees. A queen bee will lay up to 2,000 eggs per day. I mean, she's an egg-laying machine. That's all she does. She doesn't feed herself. She doesn't clean herself. She's the only bee that defecates in the hive.

All the other bees defecate outside the hive, and she has bees that clean up after her. She has like a royal court of attendant bees that follow her around and take care of all of her needs. attendant bees that follow her around and take care of all of her needs. Is there ever a time where the queen, like something eats her or something attacks the queen? I mean, the queens will die naturally all the time. But is there like an insect or anything? There's nothing that would seek out the queen. But, you know, swarming is a dangerous endeavor and sometimes the queens don't always make it.

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. And that's a dangerous trip for the queen. That's why, you know, the queen 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. But without that, without you intervening, what would happen to them? Then the colony would naturally perish. Whoa. That would be the end of that colony. What a fascinating creature. You know,

I mean, it's a super organism. So that queen bee is really, you can think of her as the reproductive organ of this larger being that is the bee colony. And so without her, without that, it can't continue. 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. Yes. 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? A colony of bees? A colony of bees.

A colony of bees. So you would then you have to figure out a way to get them out and then find the queen. Yes. How do you find the queen? A lot of patience, a lot of practice. You have to take apart the combs? Yep. So, you know, I just start working my way through the hive and I'm always looking for the queen. 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. And once you find the queen and have control of the queen, you can control the colony. And so that's why it's so important for me as a beekeeper during these removals to always find the queen and have control of the queen, you can control the colony. And so that's why it's so important for me as a beekeeper on during these removals to always find the queen. So how much time will that take? So if you're in someone's attic? It's always different. It depends on the removal. 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 I mean it can take a long time some of these bee removals will take hours sometimes I have to go back the next day 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. She's bigger than all the other bees. She has a different job, right? She's the only bee laying eggs in the colony. So that naturally looks a little different. 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. So there's clues that the bees will give you on her location. And, you know, if I'm moving bees from point A to point B and I have,

and I don't know where the queen is, typically where most of the bees congregate. Oh my gosh. Here's a video. Wow. I never watched these again. And so that's like a little clip that you use. That's the queen in there. You've found the queen. I tell you what, that moment feels so good. It's hard to capture it in a video.

Oh, that's a bee telling the other bees where to go. She's fanning her Nazanov gland. So you can actually see the Nazanov gland in that video, in that little clip. So on the back of her abdomen. Wow. Thank you. Jamie on the bone. Yeah, the back of her abdomen wow thank you um jamie on the wall yeah the back of her abdomen you can kind of see it so see how she has all those little black stripes and then at the end you can yeah that's it's a little gland that's exposed and that's one of the pheromones the ways

they communicate and she is signaling to all the other bees where to go and she's letting them know you can see them start to move down and into the new hive it was getting dark i was raising daylight there but um and then they they will eventually do the rest of the work for you you're doing this with no beekeeper suit nothing on your hands nothing, this was a really great, great colony of bees. Are there bad colonies of bees? You know, there are certainly bees that can be more defensive, but... Why would that be? 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,

you know, a large colony tends to be more defensive than a smaller one because they have more resources to defend. 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. And they're much gentler, you know, in those cases most of the time.

But every colony is different. Every colony has a different, you know, behavior and is in a different set of circumstances. So it's, I never know what I'm getting myself into. So what would cause them to be there if they didn't have those resources? To be where? Like in the wall right there? Those bees had been there for a number of years. I don't know exactly how long, but those bees likely were relocating, looking for a new place to live because maybe their hive,

something happened to it, it got damaged. Maybe, 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. 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. And that's because it's a common place bees choose to live. It replicates what, I mean, it's so ideal for what the bees want in an environment. It almost is, you know, the same kind of width of a beehive, that space in between the floor. They like a closed environment that's climate controlled with a small entrance that they can easily defend. They like it, you know, protected from the weather and from the elements. And they need a lot of space.

So in those backyard sheds, people tend to not go in them very often. And, you know, the bees aren't bothered by people. So that's a pretty common place that I'll do removals from. So when you go to a place like that and you see them, that's how you know you don't need an outfit. Because you were just like, so now you're all suited up so i saw zod through that and sometimes they don't like the vibrations of the tools that i'm using and this is the first i have no idea what to expect of how defensive they'll be so so this is your first exposure to these particular bees so you're cutting through we're what for the folks that are just listening, she's at a shed,

and she's sawing through the side of the shed where the bees were. Since I was using my saw. There's your voice. Very calm and soothing. And are you getting stung here? No. These bees are not trying to sting me at all. Whoa.

This is wild. No, these bees are not trying to sting me at all. Whoa. This was a... This is wild. So that is, they've developed these combs in these almost like... And you can see the honey right there. Yeah, but it's almost like a commercial beehive sort of setup. You know, if you think of dividing that wall up and stacking them on top of each other. That's a traditional beehive. Yeah. So now you've gotten rid of the mask and you're still just handling this. Sure. You just took a bite of it. You're a psycho. There's bees there. I've been working hard. That was a long removal. I know,

but there's bees flying around your face and you're just biting into that honeycomb. There's bees all over that thing. There really aren't. I mean, they're not. What? They're not trying to sting me. There are a lot of bees there. I understand, but you just took a bite with bees to the left and the right of your mouth.

I tell you what, you're watching me at my most joyful moments. I love doing this. That's your most joyful moment to just take a bite out of their house? No, but this whole removal process, there's nothing I'd rather be doing. That's what you love to do the most? Find them? 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. I don't really know what to expect beforehand. So I get there and I see the hive for the first time and I go, wow, it might fill the whole wall. And sure enough, you know, then once I saw through the side and get through it, it does.

And there's definitely another dopamine hit when I first see that beehive. And just like you said, wow, look at that comb. I mean, for me, it's times 10. And for the folks listening, this is a massive comb. Like this, this whole thing is like, looks like it's about 12 feet tall. And the comb goes all the way up the side in six or seven different rows. So there's like, how many bees are in there? If you had to take a wild guess. I hate doing this, but I mean, maybe 200,000, 250,000. That is a large beehive. Those bees have been there for some time. And not only do we know because of the size, but also the age of, I'm sorry, the color of the comb. So you can see that it's darker. It's almost dark brown. And if you think of,

oh, that's a beautiful shot of the comb with a bunch of pollen. So it's full of those brightly colored different, see, there's even some white pollen at the top. There's white and orange and yellow and red colored pollen mixed in with some nectar. And the pollen is the bee's protein source. So pollen is actually a great source of protein. I think there's like two grams of protein per tablespoon of pollen. Pound for pound, it's a better source of pollen than beef or chicken. But most people... Better source of protein. Better source of protein. Thank you.

Is it as bioavailable? But most people aren't going to eat a pound of pollen, of course. Is it gross? It doesn't have much of a taste or flavor. To me, it kind of tastes like wheatgrass almost. It's not sweet. So it's something you put in a shake or something? Yes, it's very, very mild. Not much, not much flavor in my opinion. Is it as bioavailable as like chicken or beef? Because you know that there's certain plant proteins that aren't that bioavailable, even though there's a high gram of protein per ounce.

We wouldn't want to harvest as much pollen from bees as we do other protein sources, of course. And, you know, this is their food source. So we shouldn't really be taking this to consume. I'm not saying to take it from them. But I know that bee pollen is something that people do supplement their diet with. Yes. And I just was curious if you know if it's bioavailable. I don't know.

Okay. So as you are. I guess I don't know what bioavailable means. Bioavailable is like some of the most bioavailable protein is meat. Bioavailable protein is meat, whereas if you have 10 grams of, say, venison, it's more bioavailable than 10 grams of protein from, say, broccoli. The protein that is in plants is less bioavailable. Your body doesn't process it as well. Oh, meaning how we process it? Yes.

I have no idea how our bodies process bee pollen. You're only interested in bees. I like to spend most of my time with bees. You like bees more than you like people? I spend most of my time with bees. And I mean, I just naturally, I don't spend that much time with people. I spend most of it with bees. You kind of like bees more than people. I love bees. Wow. That sound, by the way, if everybody's listening, you kind of like bees more than people. I love bees. Wow. So that sound, by the way, if everybody's listening, you're like, is there a fan on? No, there's a hive here.

She brought a small colony. How would you call that? 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 of weeks ago. This is the entire size of the colony. It's quite small. And unfortunately, less than 25% of colonies or swarms like this make it through their first year. And this was just a swarm. So there was no hive, there was no beeswax, pollen, hive there was no beeswax pollen nectar baby bees um so everything within this hive was given to them by me from another colony from a donor colony so you found them in a mailbox i found them they were kind of hanging like on the outside of the mailbox there was like a post with four by

fours and and you notice that there's a queen there, so you took the queen, put her in this little hive thing. It was actually a pretty quick grab. 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 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. Whoa so you got her in a little prison. Temporary a temporary. She's in there right now in the little prison? She's not in the little prison in there

she's roaming about freely hopefully laying eggs and doing what she needs to do. 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. Is that when you're the most happy, when you can take the gloves off and take the headgear off and all that jazz? I don't know if it's when. I mean, I definitely love working alongside the bees without the equipment. It's definitely when I'm the most comfortable. But yeah, I mean, there's no place I'd rather be than elbows deep in a hive full of bees. Wow. How did you get involved in this? My whole life, I've just loved bugs. I sort of came out of the box, a bug lover and an animal lover.

And I was really lucky to have parents that encouraged and supported that as well. 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. My childhood idols growing up were Dr. Jane Goodall and Diane Fossey, and I wanted to be just like them. But, you know, as a 7- or 8-year-old, I couldn't exactly go to the jungles of Africa to study primates, so I went in my backyard and I collected bugs. They were everywhere. They were easy to find and easy to pick up. And my love of bugs just continued my entire life.

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. 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. So what was your other job? I was a communications director for various nonprofit associations. And I loved my job. It was a great job. I worked with amazing people, but it just wasn't bees. It wasn't what I wanted to do all every day. And I didn't understand, you know, it didn't feel right for me to like go and sit in an office. I wasn't that person. I wanted to be outside. So, so yeah, I started my business while, you know, I still had a full-time

job. And in 2018, I quit my full-time job and became a full-time professional beekeeper. That's amazing. So do you have a formal education in bees? I don't. So did you learn this from books? Did you learn this from videos? Like, how did you learn this? 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. When I started my business, I didn't really know what my business was. I just wanted to be a beekeeper.

And so it really started as organically as it could. You know, people would ask me for beekeeping services. So folks would say, can you keep bees on our property? We want bees, but we don't want to be beekeepers ourselves. Or can you give us a private lesson? You know, you've been doing this far longer than we have. We're first year beekeepers. I got asked to teach beekeeping classes and eventually I got asked to do live bee removals.

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. You know, it allowed me to learn more about bees and I could see I could see so much that I would never experience in the you know little boxes that we as beekeepers keep bees in so you know it really just a lot of experience and doing a lot of a lot of bee removals and you know of course books as well but this is one of the things you can't really learn from a book. You just sort of have to get out there and do and see bees and see how they work together. And I started small. I started not with, you know, hives that were that had eight feet of comb and removing them from a backyard shed. I started with water meter boxes. So water meter boxes are those things everybody

has in their front yard. You know, it's a 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. It's one of the most common calls I get as a beekeeper is to remove bees from these boxes. And starting out, I thought, you know, it was the most controlled environment. I could start with doing the removal process because you just never know what you're getting into but at least I knew this is always going to be the size right the hive is never going to be much larger I won't get surprises like taking paneling off a wall and finding eight feet of comb right 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.

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? Books, online, beekeeping conferences and events. I mean, talking to other beekeepers. Just, you know, I always like to say I'm an expert of my own experiences. You know, I'm not a bee biologist or I'm not an entomologist studying bees. I just really love bees and, you know, 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. It's so fascinating how different human beings are because that, I find bees interesting,

but I couldn't imagine that being my favorite thing to do. But with you, just the way you talk about it, you light up. It's so obvious. People are, we vary so much. It's so interesting to watch someone who is absolutely enthralled with something that just seems like most people would not be enthralled by. Yes. You know, I get that a lot. I mean, I, 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, and that's an element that doesn't always come through. Um, 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. I mean, 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. And that's a great feeling as well, you know, so there's, there's a lot of, I mean, that's why I love doing this. There's a lot of different sides of it. 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? Because a lot of people are terrified of bees. They see bees and they just want to run away. Whereas you come along and you're so calm and you're not like this gigantic, imposing, scary person.

You're very sweet and calm and then you're there touching them with no gloves on. So then maybe people are like, oh, maybe I need to rethink bees. Absolutely. 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. But a lot of times I show up and there was a fear of the bees. And then, you know, the folks will watch me work, you know, through the glass of their back door. I've had people in their cars before watch me from the safety of their car. 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.

And, you know, and I'm showing them the queen or whatnot in the clip. And it was interesting doing this work through the pandemic when 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. And us beekeepers were kind of like the original social distancers. We show up and nobody wants to be around us. We're used to being alone. I don't think it's an uncommon trait of beekeepers to be more introverted, you know, and just want to spend their time around these insects who may or may not be so happy to see them. But I would show up and I would have people during the height of the 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. What is your mindset? Like, 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? What is your mindset? Are you just at peace? Are you just in the moment? What's going on there? Like, what's going on there? There is something incredibly meditative about being inside of a beehive and with a colony. 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. 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. And that really

just makes you, it forces you to be in the present. 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 but it's not like that at all most of the time it's incredibly calm and orderly all the bees have a job and there's also a great sense of humility that comes with it and just watching these creatures work and do all of this all of this amazing work within within the beehive and you know knowing that these tens of thousands of creatures are all working together for the good good of the colony it's just a wonderful experience for me anyhow,

but I can understand how people, it would terrify people. When you're doing this, do you feel like you are in some way communicating with these bees? Like are you putting out energy saying like, I'm here to help, I'm your friend, I'm not a danger? Like do you have a mindset or are you just in the moment completely? Like, how are you? I think it's a mutual communication.

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. 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. And they're trying to read my behavior just like I'm trying to read theirs. It's no different than you reading, you know, your dog's behavior. They wag their tail, you know, they're happy. They put their ears back, you know, they're scared. The bees will send you signs and signals and communicate to you how they're feeling. You know, of course, they'll start stinging you if they're not feeling well and if they are feeling. You know, of course, they'll start stinging you if they're not feeling well and if they are feeling defensive.

But, you know, before that, they'll sort of ping you. And there's a frequency pitch that changes sometimes, you know, in a hive that's maybe a little bit more defensive. A frequency in terms of, like, the sound? Like the sound, sure. And so 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. 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. I certainly think that they do. So it's the movement, but is it also the mindset? Is it like a vibe that you're putting out? Are you like saying in your mind, I'm your friend. I'm here to help out. Like, are you? I'm probably not saying it in my mind.

I'm probably talking to him. Oh, really? You talk out loud to the bees? Yes, all the time. Really? It's just me and them, you know? I mean, you're really working alongside them. And I like to think that at some point during the removal process, they realize that I'm offering them something better.

You know, after I've opened their hive and removed half the wall or what have you, 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. So I hope they know that I'm on their side. I certainly, you know, try to tell them that. And yes, I talk to them. But I don't know, it's, I mean, it's a, it's just a wonderful experience, you know, and every bee removal is different. Well, at the very least, they seem to accept it. is different. Well, at the very least, they seem to accept it. Yes, they do. 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. But, you know, the colony all works together and it's

that super organism. So they all want to be together and they're all doing what's best for the good of the colony. 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. Now, as you've done this, have you become friends with other beekeepers? And do they have a similar mindset and similar experiences to the way you approach it? I have met some wonderful beekeepers and have some wonderful beekeeping friends and everybody has their own way of keeping bees. It's very much a craft. You know, it takes a lot of skill, of course. I think it's an art form, especially

the bee removal process. 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 and the beekeeping community can be you know divisive but um yeah just because everybody has a different opinion on what the best way is to keep bees and that probably stems from a lack of understanding that we all don't know all the answers to all the questions. So what's like the major points of contention? Between the beekeeping community, just different techniques for keeping bees. You know, some folks have different control methods for different pests and diseases. Some folks like to do it

more naturally. There's just, 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. But everybody has a different idea, you know, 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. Do you use, is it like the smoke? Is that like a point of contention? No, not at all. Don't use too much smoke? Don't use any smoke? No, don't use too much smoke, but always use smoke. Always use smoke. Yes. So the smoke, it will mask their alarm pheromone. 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. So maybe me, maybe a beekeeper coming in and that will make it harder for the bees to communicate. 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, but, or when you go into any beehive, but it's the best tool for moving the bees around. 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? Get away. You would move, and the bees react the same way. So, you know, there's a certain point where you know that the bees are not going to be that defensive. And, you know, 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. So it's, it's, you know, one of the best tools we have in beekeepers. We don't really use a lot of tools. It's pretty simple kind of, you know, there's simple tools and simple equipment, but the smoker is the most important. What is in the smoker? What kind of smoke is that? Whatever. I mean, for me, it's, yeah, whatever's laying around. You know, I like to use a lot of pine straw, pine needles, burlap sacks.

I get burlap sacks. So you just burn things and you put them in that device and then you just blow the smoke on them. That's it. and you put them in that device and then you just blow the smoke on them. That's it. 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? 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 just different every time. When did you start putting all of this stuff on social media? 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. But were you trying to educate people about it? Are you doing it just because it's fun?

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. But, you know, as soon as I started to kind of put these, 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, which is great because it's a fascinating process. And I mean, no one sitting here today is more shocked than me. You know, to have to have to put out a video and get, you know, 24 million views in 24 hours. Yeah. Is I mean, it's an insane experience. Is that on TikTok or what is that?

Yeah. TikTok is bizarre. It's the amount of views you get on TikTok is very strange. It's significant. I'll say, I mean, mind blowing. And, you know, you can see the numbers go up after you push that button. And it's I mean, the first time, you know, I had I started to post maybe in the spring of 2020 on TikTok. video in August that received 24 million views in 24 hours. And my life changed. I mean, with the push of a button, really, you know, not even overnight. It was I had emails from everybody that had a production company, it seemed like. And, you know, just having that many people

see you is a mind blowing experience. But then then what I thought was like the most viral someone could go, I thought that was it. You know, in March of 2021, about six months later, I posted another video and it got 50 million views in 24 hours. And it was just unreal. That's crazy. It's crazy. That's more than anybody who's ever seen Titanic. I'm just kidding. Is that true?

How many people have bought Titanic? I'm just guessing. Is that true? How many times, how many people have bought Titanic? I'm guessing. No, please. It's gotta be. I wonder. Definitely more than Black Adam. What would I say? Ticket sales? Yeah. Okay. I've had someone tell me that I've had a few videos that

more people have seen than the Super Bowl. Yeah, I'm sure. Well, what's the Super Bowl? How many people is the Super Bowl? It's probably close 50 million 50 million huge 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 I'm probably wrong about the Titanic. Oh, this is Was that the numbers amount of money that it's made? Yeah, that's a problem because it's hard to figure out

how much to ticket costs. But, like, what is the biggest hit show on television? Is there a hit show on television anymore? Television's giving way to the internet. Like, what's the... Well, so, like, at the height, All in the Family, most watched TV finales of all time, right? Yeah. All in the family, 40 million.

How crazy is that? I can't believe it. But there's more than I have to have higher, but I was just saying. Right. But that's a pretty good comparison though. 40 million and you did that in a couple hours on TikTok. With an iPhone. Nuts.

With an iPhone that I just happened to set up on a rock. And the video that got 50 million views in 24 hours, I had that bee removal I did six months prior. I had it just sitting in my camera roll. I just decided to post it. I think the weather was maybe bad that week. I don't know. And, yeah, it's crazy. I don't think anything can prepare someone

for that how is this the first podcast you've ever done then I would imagine people have already asked you I've had requests um yeah I don't know for us you know y'all made it so easy and efficient it was like are you interested this day? Just making sure you'll be there tomorrow. I mean, it was like if bees had a podcast. It was great. You made it hard to say no. Well, luckily we're in Austin.

Yes, that's convenient. And, you know, for me, I mean, again, I like to spend most of my time doing this work. And it's seasonal. It's cyclical. There's, you know, a time of the year where i can do a lot of it and there's a time of year where i can't do quite as much um and so sometimes timing doesn't match up i mean i'm terrible at checking direct messages that's how a lot of requests come through so i won't see them for like six weeks or six months yeah i know what that's all about and

this video has over a hundred million views you have a million. There's multiple videos. I saw. Oh, my God. That's so insane. A hundred million views. Wow. Erica, that's got to be so strange for you. It's incredibly unusual. unusual. Do you get recognized on the street? Are you the bee lady? You know, I live a pretty quiet life. So, I mean, I've got a little piece of dirt and grow some food, got 30 beehives, four dogs, white-winged dove, five chickens, a great husband. You know, I don't really go out that much. You know, I'm in beehives most of the time. But has it happened where people come up to you? It's happened, yeah. I mean, a lot of times. Well, and I don't do myself any favors because I pretty much wear the same thing every day. So, I mean, that's the truth. But, you know, people have recognized my truck before when I'm driving. Whoa.

So, yeah, it's happened. But I love it. 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. or want to tell me that, you know, they watch my video and now they're not afraid of bees anymore. 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? I mean, at first it just terrified me, you know,

but now I'm really embracing it and hope that, yeah, I love, 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. You know, I think that bees have been misbranded for so long. I mean, most people think that bees are aggressive and they're not. I mean, most people think that bees are aggressive and they're not. 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. But then there's another side of I get to show people something they've never seen before. So, you know, hopefully it's entertaining to watch someone do this work and be covered in bees or whatnot, but they've probably never seen people remove bees before or maybe not like I have.

And so I love showing people something that they've never seen before. And hopefully I can educate them and there's something they learn from watching a video. A lot of people will say, now I can find the queen in a colony. 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 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. Have you had those things come your way? Yeah. Yeah. What's that been like? 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. You know, I live a pretty quiet life that I love. I'm so happy and I get to do what I love every day. And it's on my own time. 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. And that's why they're there and they are just waiting for me to, you know, the bees get really defensive one day. And, you know, I just try to, you know, do what seems like is best for me and the bees and my family at that.

If I can help you in that regard, don't get involved with anybody else. Don't let anybody come along, executives and production companies. They're going to mess it up. You already have this immense audience and incredible amount of success getting that message out. All you have to do is figure out what anybody would want to do with you is do some sort of reality show. Just sort of ramp up what you're doing and just figure out a way to monetize it. And you'll be far more successful, completely independent, far more financially successful because you won't have a bunch of parasites sucking off of what you've done. Because all they're trying to do is capitalize on it. And I guarantee one of the things they'll do, because I've done some reality stuff before.

One of the things I like to do is they fake scenarios. They'll create a scenario. I mean, they might even want to place a queen somewhere. And then you have to, like, there's a dilemma. You know, there's a sorority house. You have to help these girls, and they're shrieking. You know what I'm saying? Yes.

They'll come up with some bullshit. Thank you. Yeah, don't. Don't. Don't get involved in the machine. The machine is filled with a bunch of, some of them are wonderful people, but there is a very clear mandate. They want to create problems and solutions, and that's what every reality show is.

And they fake problems, and they fake solutions. Don't want to be a part of that. 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. You're going to hate it. If you did do it, I guarantee you we could have a podcast two years from now, and you're like, you were right. It sucks.

Well, then I probably won't. You know, I think I've made that decision that TV isn't for me. Thank you for your perspective. You don't have to. 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 yeah you know just set up a couple iphones and do the best i can editing it and putting it together 133.5 million people look at that yeah you cannot get that on television. They'll just rob you. I wasn't even going to post that one with 133 million.

And it's my largest. It's my. It's the most popular. Why weren't you going to post it? Well, I'm in my pajamas. Happy Earth Day. You're in your pajamas? It was just.

It was some bees I got from the night before. And they escaped. 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, oh, no, you've got to post that one. So I just put it together and posted it. Yeah, listen to your husband. He's right. 33 million people watched it. See, that's a perfect example of why you shouldn't be on television because there's not a place in the world where you're going to get that kind of views other than social media. I thought if the goal was really to teach people, you know, I mean, more people will see it this way. And I mean, like you

said, it's it's kind of my way of doing it 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 um I very much felt like nobody you know I guess if I do it you'll know that someone had my health and wellness and and that of the bees at the forefront The problem is you don't know those people. You know, and that was so an interesting thing that's been part of my story is that this all happened to me during the pandemic. So, you know, the height of quarantine is when those videos were getting the 50 million views a day. And so I didn't get recognized for a while because nobody was going anywhere. And then I woke up and went out of my house one day, you know, so my life really changed in a weird, in a weird time where, you know, I was doing all these interviews and stuff. But it was from the study at my house.

You know, it was, I didn't actually go anywhere. And it was all very interesting to go through the process of receiving offers for doing things and working with people because, yeah, like you said, I mean, I never met these people. I didn't shake a hand. I didn't share a meal. And I was shocked that they would hire me without doing that, too. And it just didn't feel good. Yeah. Some of them are wonderful people.

A lot of them are wonderful people. But it's just that's their job. Like you can't blame a hyena for being a hyena. That's what they do. Yeah. You know, and those people, they find someone like you and all they think of is I can buy a bigger house if I can get Eric a show on television. I mean, that's literally all they do. Well, I met some great people.

It felt to me like it was just the process. literally all they do. Well, I met some great people. It felt to me like it was just the process. 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, you know, it just felt like that was what happens to people. And I met some great people and it wasn't the people. It was just, I mean, you know, I didn't know them and we'll see. I mean, never say never, but, um, know them and we'll see. I mean, never say never, but maybe now. Here's the thing is like, you can do more on your own and be, look, do you know who Mr. Beast is? Yes. Yeah. Great guy. Had him on the podcast for it. What he's done is amazing. He's done it completely on his own and everything he's done, it's been his decision. He has this enormous following. He does all his good.

He contributes to charities. He runs food banks. He funds all of his programs and all of his things through his show. He funds all of his new episodes through old episodes. He's doing it completely independently. He's so happy. And he doesn't deal with any bullshit. No one's telling him what to do.

I see a way where you could do something in your world that's akin to that. Like if you're getting this much response, you could do it completely independently. It's just it's a matter of if you want to monetize it. If you want to monetize it, you want to do it on YouTube and all these different places and have advertising and you can do that. And then you don't have to deal with anybody. I can just deal with the bees. I mean, that's what I really want to do at the end of the day, you know, and that's, I mean, he's figured it out. That would be the dream. And I, a lot of my process, I'm restricted because I have to edit or I have to do all these other things that I don't want to. And are you doing this all yourself? I'm doing it all myself.

Yeah. See, all you need to do is hire an editor. 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. That's all you need. And then you talk to the camera. You talk to that person. You have some fun. And you don't have to deal with anybody.

Yeah. 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. When you've got 133 million downloads, it's not difficult to find advertisers, especially something that's so interesting, so non-controversial, educational, wholesome. Everything's cool about it. It's really interesting. It's great for the environment. And I think it's very important that people understand, like, how important bees are to the ecosystem. If all bees died, all people die.

We have to really understand that. Like, there is a gigantic system that's in place. And I'd like to hear you talk about that because there is a crazy system in place with like how our food is made, how our plants are pollinized. It's all done through these magical little creatures that you're fascinated with. It is. 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. Bees pollinate one out of every three bites of food we eat. And it's not just, you know, the apple or the almond that you've had today or your cup of coffee. It's the beef that you're eating that grazed on alfalfa. 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 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. I read something about cell, more than one thing, about cell phone signals interfering with the way bees communicate. Do you know what that is? I have heard a little bit about that, or I've heard about that years ago. I haven't heard about that recently and I don't know if there's any merit to that. Oh, okay. Let's see if we can find something on that. 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, I would just imagine that that signal, whatever that is, that's in the air.

Obviously, we can't detect cell phone signals. You have to look at your phone to see if you have a signal. But whatever they are able to do is obviously so different than the kind of senses that we have. And I think the speculation was that or maybe theory was that there is something about these signals that is interfering with the way bees communicate. There could be, but that's certainly not the biggest problem bees face, you know. So I don't think that I don't think that, I don't think that's a challenge that bees are facing right now. I could be wrong, but you know, it's not a challenge as a beekeeper I face, or I see a problem with my bees and cell phone towers. I see a

problem with my bees not having enough food and with pesticides and, you know, industrial agriculture. So, um, what is industrial agriculture doing to bees? It's, it's killing our bees. It's, you know, we're putting these large monocrops, these, we're putting acres and acres of the same thing that need bees to pollinate. For example, almonds. Almonds are almost entirely dependent on bees for pollination. And so we would have no almonds if we didn't have bees. 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 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. They only have

it for a short period of time. So, you know, they can only collect food there for a little while and there may or may not have pesticides sprayed on this food that the bees are collecting. 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 to pollinate these these places where there's just one one thing living and we're forcing the bees to pollinate, you know, this one crop. So that's how they do it. They bring in bees. You know, the way that most beekeepers earn a living is through commercial pollination services.

So we need bees for food like almonds. And, you know, plants are pollinated one of two ways. And, you know, plants are pollinated one of two ways. They're self-pollinating or they're cross-pollinating and they need some help to reproduce and to fertilize. And bees are the best pollinator our planet has. So when bees go out and collect food for themselves, you know, they're pollinating plants and making sure plants are reproducing. And without bees, we wouldn't have, you know, many, many foods. But it's not just us. It's so many creatures who rely on bees for their food system as well. 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? From, you know, commercial beekeepers who keep them most often in the South will overwinter the, 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, the bees will stay in the hive. 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. So, you know, we'll have beekeepers from all around the country ship their bees and do this pollination circuit.

And, you know, they'll come from all different areas, Texas, California. We'll have some beekeepers. Florida is a big place for beekeepers. And what are they feeding their bees? Like, how are they keeping their bees alive? Well, they're doing this, you know, they're pollinating the almonds. So that is food for the bees. Once they get there. But when they acquire them in order to ship them, how are they doing that? As beekeepers, we're supplementing food for the bees all the time because there simply isn't enough. I mean, that's one of the biggest challenges facing bees is habitat loss. And that extends.

It's not just honeybees, but it's, you know, the over 20,000 species of bees that we share this planet with. They're all, you know, feeling the effects of not having enough food or not having a diverse enough diet. So we will supplement the bees feed with sugar water when needed. And it's trash. I mean, it's just like feeding your kids McDonald's every day, you know. What is the difference between what they get? Because pollen, obviously, you were talking about the protein. Is there a way to give them something artificial or supplement something exogenous that is akin to pollen? There is a pollen substitute. Yep.

It's mostly made of like a soy powder. But, you know, it's all. That's not good for them either? It's not natural food. It's not what the bees are meant to have. I mean, these creatures have been around so long. It's for us to come along and start feeding them artificial food. 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?

I don't know if any studies have been done that have exclusively fed bees artificial food. You know, bees need natural food to live. We wouldn't want bees to live on exclusively artificial food. You shouldn't have bees in that area. But yeah, we have people that live like that. But, you know, we certainly want to keep the bees as healthy as possible. And these sugar water diets are not what's healthiest for the bees. And they know best, you know. And so let's letiest for the bees and they know best you know and so let's let them forage naturally but they need to have things available to forage 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 there's a lack of places for them to find homes and what they need

to live their lives. So yeah, there's little things everybody can do to make a difference in the lives of bees. And the biggest one is everybody can plant food for bees. 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. And what would those things be? Flowering plants. So whatever is local and native to your area is best. And when you go to your nursery, you know, you can ask someone for help. Or what I like to do is I just look for the plants where the bees are on. So if I see a plant covered in bees, you know, I make sure it's native. But then, you know, I know it's probably a plant the bees will forage from and get food from.

So 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 planning 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. One of the things that I 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. Is that true?

That's completely false. That's false. There is no scientific evidence to prove that. And that true? That's completely false. That's false. There is no scientific evidence to prove that. And the idea, well, the idea of it doesn't even hold weight. So the idea is that, you know, if you are somehow exposed to the local pollen in your area, that you will gain some sort of immune response to it. And bees keep pollen and honey separate in their hives. So when you eat honey, you're ingesting a very small amount of pollen. Also, bees are not foraging from the plants that are causing your allergies. So like here in Austin, bees are not foraging from cedar or hay or ragweed.

So there is really no merit to that claim. Yeah, because that is a hippie thing. They say, oh, you need local honey to protect you. You know, honey is great. It's antibacterial, antimicrobial. 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. Do you know that it's how they used to use it to preserve psychedelic mushrooms? I did not know that.

Yeah, they used to preserve psychedelic mushrooms in honey because it keeps them from rotting. Yeah. And then they went on to create mead with honey. 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. And they think that it stemmed from initially that they started to preserve mushrooms in particular in honey.

Wow. Yeah. And then preserving them in honey is obviously a very effective way to preserve things. And then they went from that to creating mead with honey, which is alcohol based. And then the alcohol changed the way that people behaved and changed the culture. And, you know, lowered inhibitions, made people more aggressive, changed like a less thoughtful, less sense of community. Do you know if the process of the mushrooms in the honey was part of discovering mead? Was it because they left it for so long and it fermented?

I don't believe so. I don't believe so. I don't know though. I don't know much about mead myself. Mead is weird. Yeah. It's like a weird kind of beer-like thing. My friend Maynard, he has a winery. He owns Vineyard's, you know Tool, the band Tool? Yes. My friend Maynard's the lead singer of Tool, and he owns Caduceus Vineyards. 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, and he makes different kind and he makes uh different you know kind

of sparkling wines and stuff but they make uh you know it's alcohol based out of honey sure have you had that i have i have had it before do you like it i do like it yeah do you like it just because it's honey like if you didn't know it was honey i'm definitely pro honey you know but i'll say one thing that i am curious to try. Have you ever heard of Mad Honey? Yes. I ordered some. No. Yeah.

Yeah. I bought it online. You want it? Is it here? No. I wish it was. See, you get excited. No, I haven't even tried it. I just got it like a little while ago.

Wow. It's at my house. Yeah. You can buy it on Amazon. Where did... Might be bullshit though. Well, you'll have to. I mean, I'm so curious to find out what is your source?

Because I know it comes from, I think, Turkey and Nepal. I don't know if it comes from other places. We've covered it on the podcast many times. Oh, you have? Okay. Because it's such a wild way of extracting it, the way these guys have to get it off the side. Let's pull that up so people can see it. Oh, by the way, did you find anything about cell phones? There are, it seems like, two studies.

This comes from 2009 2011 in the 2011 one i'll put up on the screen this guy put two cell phones in a beehive and then studied them with like what they were doing after a couple minutes but most of what i got to the abstract and the conclusion of all these studies is like they just need to do more research to find out exactly what it's doing 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. This is a person putting cell phones inside a beehive.

Correct. That's what I'm saying. These studies only come from over 10 years ago. 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. 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. sound known as piping. This sound usually is usually a signal, it says single, but I think they meant signal, made by the bees to announce swarming or that the hive is in danger. However, even after the cell phone signals running for 20 hours and the piping sounds continuing,

the bees did not swarm. Within only two minutes of the cell phones being turned off, the bees calmed down to their original state. But that seems like you're introducing a lot of other things other than just a cell phone signal. You're introducing electronics, heat, there's a lot of stuff going on, sound, vibration, right? I'd have a lot of questions about that, yeah. I mean, I don't know if that tells us too much. Go back to that article, Jamie, to the very top of it. Because this is the title of the article, which is what's interesting to me. It says that it might be contributing to honeybee population decline.

So that's what they call it. Shit, I lost it. 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. Beekeepers are replacing those colonies. So the populations are stable, even though hive loss rates. Go back to that, Jamie, what I was just going to point to, what you just had. Right here it says 2009, Dr. Sainudin 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 are sensitive to EMR, which would affect their navigational skills, physiology, changes in their antennal sensilla, sensilla? How do you say that? Do you know? I don't. You're a big lady. They might have made that word up.

They might have made it up. Brain proteome neurotransmission and development. The orientation of honeybees is connected to the Earth's magnetic field. And for this, they possess localized particles called magnetites. 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. Sainuddin. So that previous study you read about the cell phones in the hive was what this guy did.

That's that Favre guy. This says that substantiates that, but that's not exactly what you just read. So I feel like they're drawing conclusions a little bit. Maybe they're just trying to scare people. I feel like that's what they're trying to do. So that's fascinating, though, that they use the Earth's magnetic poles to navigate. Yeah. Do we understand how they do that? They also, I mean, they use the orientation of the sun with where their hive is located to

tell the other bees where to go. So, you know. How do they do that? Well, they, one of the ways they communicate, you know, in addition to the pheromones and through touchingage 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 it's a series movements. It kind of looks like a figure eight pattern and it's the bee waggling her abdomen up in the air and doing this dance and telling the other bees. There's a waggle dance right there. Yeah, there we go. So she's telling, well, there's usually other bees around her, but she'll tell the other bees where to go based on the

direction or the position of the sun. She tells her nest mates that the food is 270 degrees or to the left of the sun on the horizon. Whoa! Yes. So you'll see the other bees around her, and they are obviously getting her messages, reading the dance. And if she is announcing a place to live for 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. And the more bees that choose the nest site, the more popular it is. And essentially, you know, the bees are all voting together on where to move to. So would they move the entire colony, including the queen? Yep. Well, that's a swarm. 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. 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. Would they start a separate colony with a new queen or would they only move the queen?

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, you know, go on and create more baby bees and have a great healthy colony in their new nest site. 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. Wow. So if they have the female, you know, a female bee egg, they can turn that into a queen bee. And so the swarming process is the natural reproduction process for the colony. 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. So, you know, if we have one bee colony and we need two, that's how it happens in nature. Is it dependent upon the resources that are available in the area? Will they go out and find a new spot and go, hey, we found a good spot, and the other bees will stay there, and then they'll create a new queen, and they just keep expanding their numbers that way? They certainly make sure they have enough resources, you know, in the area and they want to find a nesting site, a hive location that has resources around for them to build. But there are things that they look for. They actually have, you know, pretty more stringent requirements than we thought for building these sites, which is, or for choosing

a site to build a new hive, which is why I do bee removals from the same places over and over again, compost bins, water meter boxes, things like that. The bees will look for, you know, an area that's climate controlled and the right amount of space. 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. They like a small entrance that they can easily defend. We've learned that it's about an inch, inch and a half big, I think, is their preferred entrance size. There's a wonderful professor of biology, Dr. Thomas Seeley, professor of biology, Dr. Thomas Seeley, who's done an immense and incredible amount of work regarding how bees choose their nest sites. 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. You know, everybody gets a say in the colony. Hmm. Fascinating. So let's take a look at this because you brought one. Oh, the hive? Can you bring it up there? Yes, certainly. Can you put it up on the table?

I would be happy to. Please do. May I move around with this? Yeah, sure. Yeah. You can take your headphones off and make it easier while you're doing this. And is that honey that is from that particular group, the honey that you have there? What is this? That's honey from another colony.

And that's really just for them to have a little bit of food. They have food in this hive, but that's just a nice kind of, you know, is this honey like a slow drip or something? Can I lift this up? What would the bees come out? You will see bees when you lift that up, but you are more than welcome to lift it up. And do you see them in there? Oh, there's a net. You can even put your finger there. And those are their little proboscis. Hi, guys.

Or girls. Excuse me. Sorry. Sorry. And so you have little dots, little holes here, folks. You can see that. Little holes in the bottom of this honey jar. So it's like a slow drip to them.

Wow. And, you know. the sound they're making so this sounds incredible is that okay i'm sorry yeah no that's great yeah it's kind of blocking me but yeah uh it's okay well anyways I can see it over this way. I'm using this camera right now. Oh, are you? Okay, cool.

So there is a queen in there, and this was a swarm, so they didn't have anything with them. So this is all stuff from another hive that I donated to them. But these are all female bees. I haven't seen a single male bee in here. And if I open this door, Jamie will panic and run out of the studio. I would. You would? Yep.

You haven't learned from her what she said? I was attacked when I was a younger child. Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness. Were you attacked by bees or hornets? I don't know. It was inside of a grocery store, and I didn't see it coming. A grocery store?

Inside of a grocery store. Yeah, I was in the frozen food section, and something flew up my shirt. Next thing I knew, I was swollen. So that's probably hornets, right? I got lit up by hornets in Utah this September. So the thing about honeybees is once they sting you, they will die. The stinger is, you know, attached to their abdominal cavity and it'll rip out of them and they'll die shortly after. But, you know, a lot of hornets and wasps well all they won't they can sting you multiple times without dying which also the queen can she is the only bee that well the male drone bees don't have a stinger the female worker bees their stinger is barbed

which makes it stick into your skin and rip out um they can sting other bees and it won't rip out and they won't die but the queen, her stinger is not barbed. So you could be stung multiple times by a queen in theory. But the queens rarely have an occasion to sting. Is that because the queen is ready to fight to the death? Yeah. That's right. I can pull that out like that, that way.

Wow, that's so cool. And so there's, you know, on this side we have a lot of, and you can feel them too. I mean, you can just feel their warmth. So they always try to keep their hive at around 95 degrees. And that's just body temperature that's causing that? That's just their body heat. Up here we have a bunch of honey that's, you know, capped honey. That's going to be their food source during the winter.

And then over here there's a lot of pollen. It may be hard to see. Are these holes, could they get out of there if they wanted to? Well, it's screened, so they cannot. But, I mean, you could, they react to carbon dioxide. So earlier I was trying to show the gentleman the queen, and I, you know, blew in the hole a little bit so that they could kind of move around. And it disrupts them a little bit. And we saw her down here where there's brood.

This is where the baby bees are. So it's more likely that she would be down here. But I also selected this piece of comb to bring out of this hive because 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 their little legs are all linked together and that's how they build comb so you're seeing them build more of this beeswax comb i don't know if you can see that yes there i mean if you how long is the process you can see that group of bees there. I mean, if you shake the hive, you can see it move. Yes. How long is the process to make, like how much comb can they make in a day? I don't know how much comb. It would depend on the size of the colony, but you know,

every bee or the female worker bees have these little wax glands on the underside of their abdomen. They have eight of these glands and the wax comes out, you know, I mean, like we do, like we produce wax, but they don't have ears. Of course, they have these glands on their, on their stomach and it'll come off in these sheets and they'll chew it up and, and form it in, into the beehive structure. Wow. One of the things that I saw that was really wild was these, uh, hornets that would come and kill honeybees. They'd swarm in and just a few enormous hornets, they would chop off the heads of these honeybees. 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. Yes, they will. That's

actually how the bees will or can kill a queen. 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 balling all over the hornet or in some cases the queen. And in that case, that's what they're doing is they're overheating it to death. And that's their way of taking care of these, you know, northern giant hornets that made the news last year a lot. Murder hornets, right? That's what they're calling them? Yes. Great word. You know, it plays into the fear of bees, that media.

There it is right there. Yes. So why are these hornets killing these honeybees? Look how they just jump on top of them. That's remarkable. I mean, that is incredible. Yeah. Can we see that on the camera?

Yeah. Okay. So they just know what's going on. Okay. And so they know what's going on, and they just jump all over it. So this is a common thing that these large hornets will do this, or they just instinctively know that they can heat them up. Look at that.

That's so crazy. And so by being on top of them, how long does it take for them to overheat them? I wouldn't know. This is a hornet that we hopefully don't have in the U.S. There's been no sightings of these hornets this year. So I've never seen anything like that. Why do hornets kill bees? They are probably, you know, they're a predator of the bees.

They will eat the bees or go after the honey or the pollen. 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. But as we can see, the bees have their own management techniques to take care of these hornets too. It's fascinating because they're totally different things, bees and hornets, but they're so shaped yes that we put them in the same category but they're very different they're very different um but you know people people get them confused all the time it's just you know we don't yeah people not knowing and i get a lot of calls that turn out to be

hornets or wasps and you know i try to do my best beforehand to gauge like make sure that i'm showing up for bees but people just don't know the difference a lot when they are hornets what's the protocol like what do you do you just murder them no um i'm not an exterminator that's not what i do and i hate hornets they're you know they're not. Oh, you want me to move this? Yeah, let's put this down now. Yeah, I got it. Thank you. Well, I've just been stung by them so many times. When you, in Utah, where I go in September, there's a ton of them up there. And you can just get too close to their hive and they decide to light you up.

Like, they're not nice at all. They're not like your cute little honeybees. They're allowing you to touch them. And the thing is like once one of them stings you, apparently, they release a pheromone that makes all of them swarm toward you. Well, I mean, that's the same way with bees. It's a chemical marker. It's a pheromone, yep, that you're marked as a threat to the colony

and all the other bees need to go after you. In Texas, here a lot, we have, I can see a lot of paper wasps. Everybody has paper wasps under their porch. Look at all these bees riding them and dragging them to the ground. It's so fascinating. I mean, that's a remarkable creature, that hornet.

Yeah, it's definitely remarkable. Like a monster, like a giant monster that comes to chop your mom's head off because they're just chopping everyone's head off. It's horrible. I mean, they go in there and they can kill thousands. There was a swarm of hornets in this one documentary I watched that wiped out an entire colony of bees. They just swarmed in and cut all their heads off. And so I guess they're eating them. This is so hard to watch. It's like these are your people. Look, see, they're going in and they're eating the babies.

Is this difficult for you? I mean, it's not enjoyable. You're like, Jamie, shut it off. You feel very connected to this. Yeah, I mean. That would be a real problem if those things became invasive. I mean, it could be. Yeah, if they come over here.

Well, they have been found here. Colonies have been found here. The nest, as I understand it, have been completely eradicated. And we don't even know if they could establish themselves here. Climate-wise? Climate-wise. I don't think any new nests were found in 2022. It was in the Pacific Northwest, correct?

Yes. Why there? Is it become shipping containers? I believe they were from shipping containers, but also climate. So that is one place where these hornets could live and reproduce, you know. And it was, I mean, I was on the news here in Texas because the news here in Texas was covering these hornets. You know, the amount of press that they got was just incredible. It was I mean, it was just all about the fear of of these hornets coming over. But, you know, it's similar to what the fear around Africanized bees is from. Yeah, the killer bees. Yeah. I mean, that's that was also media induced fear.

Yeah, the killer bees. Yeah. 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 could track their progression. 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. What is this, Jimmy? They eat the hornets? Yeah.

They fry the hornets up to eat them and put them in sake. What? Dr. Kawahara said that it's just treated like a regular insect. 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. It's a craze. Interesting. Of course.

But that's what we do. We fuck everything up. Yeah, I would say, well said, sir. Yeah. Or ma'am. I'm sorry. Whoever it is. They.

They, them. So killer bees, what's the difference between the Africanized killer bees? So the Africanized bees, I won't use that word. It's not a bee? Well, no, I won't use the term killer bees. I'll try to not use that. Why do they use that term? It's just the same thing as murder hornets? It's the same thing as murder hornets. But, you know, the Africanized bee, that is a hybrid bee of our Western honeybee that we have here and a bee from Africa that a biologist brought to Brazil to breed a better bee.

Oh, wow. 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. Bees are not native to the United States, you know. They're not? They're not. No, they were brought over by the colonists because we needed them. Wow. So honeybees are not native to the United States.

So what pollinated plants before honeybees came here? Here in the U.S. or here in the sense of here? Here in the U.S. Because bees evolved from wasps, actually. As wasps became vegetarian and figured out that pollen was a good food source, bees evolved from these predatory wasps. So wasps went vegan. That's right. And they became this much more peaceful creature, which is the honeybee.

How long did that take? I don't know how long it took. You know, this happened well before we were here, about 100, 120 million years ago, I think. So, you know, there's when I, I mean, 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. So bees were brought over to North America. Yes. And, but what pollinated... In South America. In South America. What pollinated plants before the

bees? Other bees. These are just honeybees we're talking about. Oh, they're different bees. So there's over 20,000 species of bees. But also we have, I mean, we have other bees, but we have other pollinators as well. So we have butterflies, bats, birds. Whoa, look at these creeps. Wow, look at that crazy looking blue bee. What's that thing off of its abdomen?

I would guess that's an orchid bee. Oh, there it is. Oh, yes, thank you. Wow. South and Mesoamerica. Look at guess that's an orchid bee. Oh, there it is. Oh, yes, thank you. Wow. South and Mesoamerica. Look at that creepy little one to the left. The ground nesting bee. It looks like a ground nesting

squirrel. Creepy little squirrels. Wow. Look at that. How do you say that? Crepuscular? Crepuscular bee from the southwestern U.S. So those bees were the bees that used to, but they didn't create honey? So most bees do not create honey, which is one of the reasons that we have kept the honeybee, right? Because they create a massive amount of honey. And that's

because they're in a larger colony. a lot of bees are solitary bee solitary bees whereas honeybees are what we call social bees so they live in these giant colonies 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 so So these other bees would just buy them. They were like lone wolf bees? They're solitary bees. That's right. Out there pollinating.

So a lot of them are even better pollinators than honeybees for some plants because they're specialty bees. 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 generalist, I would say, and do, you know, a lot of plants. 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 and humans are not replenishing or really even

thinking about, but 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. So is the way that bees pollinate, is it a secondary effect of their foraging? Yes. I mean, it's just a great byproduct of bees doing the work that bees do. 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. And they don't even know they're doing this.

So when they go and collect pollen and nectar from a plant, they're bringing that pollen to another plant. So plants have the problem when it comes to reproduction that they can't move. So they need help to reproduce. And that is what bees are doing. And are they the only insects that pollinate? Do wasps pollinate as well? Yes, wasps pollinate, you know, butterflies, birds, bats. There's lots of pollinators. Birds. Birds can be pollinators when they feed on, you know, a plant on a flowering plant and go to another flowering plant.

They can take the pollen from one flowering plant and make sure it meets the female part of the other plant. You know, anything that's feeding on these flowering plants can can be a pollinator. Wow. What a fascinating sort of symbiotic relationship. That we never think about or see. You know, I mean, and plants and bees evolve together. sort of symbiotic relationship. That we never think about or see. I mean, and plants and bees evolved together. 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. And so they became more showy and vibrant and colorful. And, you know, they have a mutual relationship. So, you know, it's so incredible. 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. I mean, you know, they're outside and they put food on our table and they mean so much to our world, but we just, we, 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. One of the things that

we covered really recently is the large amount of wasps that will inject their larva into other creatures and use these parasitic relationships with caterpillars. Do you know about all this? Not from the wasp's family, no. Go to that caterpillar that we showed the other day where it implants all the larva into the caterpillar. all the larvae into the caterpillar. And then the caterpillar will die, and these larvae exude from its skin. Is that the wasp's only way of reproduction? Yeah, there's a bunch of different wasps that do this,

a large number of wasps that have parasitic relationships with other ants and different creatures, and they sting. You know the tarantula hawk, right? Do you know about that one? Oh, yeah. That's crazy. It stings a tarantula, embeds the tarantula with its larva, and then the larva eat the body of the tarantula and burst out of its body.

Go to a tarantula hawk because that's one of the ones that my friend Maynard sent me. Sent you? Do we have that guy? Is that? It's probably in our box somewhere from our old studio. Yeah, he got one from his farm and he sent it to me in a glass vial. It's huge. They're huge.

They're like a finger. Oh, my gosh. Look at the size of that sucker. Gigantic. Gigantic. So they'll sweep down Jack a tarantula Sting it See if you can find a video of it

Because it's pretty amazing When the larvae come out of the tarantula's body Paralyzes a spider Video from Arizona Yeah, Arizona, that's where Maynard lives So the tarantula hawk Will swoop down Get a hold of this tarantula.

I think it already got it. Oh, it already got it. It already stung it. It's freaking out. Now he's just hanging back, waiting for it to die. And once it paralyzes it, it injects the body of this thing. Look at that. It just crawls back like it was getting under a car.

Yeah, like it's under the hood. Let's check the exhaust system here. And injects its body with its, look at that, it's on its back. Look how it's doing it. That is amazing. Isn't that wild? Look at that. Wow. And then it dies. And so it falls over onto its back and then the tarantula hawk just sort of keeps jacking it. I'm amazed that you didn't know about this. I'm so happy that we could show you something.

Thank you. Yeah, apparently there's a very large number of wasps that have these sort of parasitic relationships with other insects. I mean, there are a lot of, I mean, bees have a parasite that lives on them and harms them. What is that? 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. We've known about this pest in the beehive for a long time, since the early 1900s, but it wasn't until 2018 that Dr. Sammy Ramsey found out what the biggest, or arguably the biggest threat facing bees is feeding from. We thought it was feeding from kind of its blood forever, but it's not. 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 on us so it's huge on the bee i mean you can see them they're usually on the underside the the undercarriage but um you know it's it's awful for bees but it's it's like that it's an exo parasite that lives off another animal 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. Sure. And you know how they're all, of course, they all have their own job. They're all suited for these different climates. And yeah, it's amazing. Have you seen the one that has a really long needle like thing thing that comes out of its abdomen and it injects larva into wood? I don't know.

Yeah, what is that called again? The wood wasp, I believe. But it has, almost looks like a ruler or like a needle coming out of the back of it. Well, you know, if it's the stinger, the stinger is a modified ovipositor, something that, you know, lays and positions eggs. 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. So I don't know if that's what it is. Makes sense. It could be that.

Because it goes into like logs. Oh, wow. And this long thing allows it to inject its larva into these crevices. And it's really long. It's like half the size of its body. That's amazing. That's beautiful. So this wasp deposits parasitic

larva deep inside its trunk. Look at the size of that thing. It's way longer than its body. It must be curled up in there when... That is amazing. So it finds a little crack, and once it finds a crack, then it starts... Watch how it injects it. It sort of like dunks it into the crack, and it's dropping off larvae.

And look at the back of it. Wow. That is incredible. It's this large... It looks like a translucent bubble, like a large water bag. Oh, my God, look at that. Look at it. It's injecting them.

So it's injecting these larvae. There's a 3D artistic rendering of what it looks like. It almost looks like he's drilling for oil. She's drilling for oil. Look how deep it gets. That's crazy. It goes all the way deep into the log, and then it drops off its larva in there,

and the larvae survive eating the tissue or eating the wood. This is crazy. These relationships that these things have is so bizarre. There's so many bizarre parasitic relationships. And then there's relationships that fungus have, parasitic relationships that fungus have with insects, which is like the cordyceps mushroom that infects ants and causes these ants to explode. And these ants release these spores that will then infect all the ants around them. 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.

Do you know about that? No, but we see it in the bee colony. 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. 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. Get that one. The fungus that infects ants. It's cordyceps mushroom. It gets bees too, apparently. Does it? I mean, same kind of... Same sort of situation? It's so crazy.

Well, the ants, once it does it, see these fungus... Look at it. Mushrooms grow out of the body of these bees and ants. Oh, my goodness. But with some, they get to a certain point where the heads of these things will explode. It looks like a head, like a ball. And it will explode and release millions of spore into the air. And when it does that, then everyone's doomed because they'll all get infected by it.

This cordyceps mushroom, in fact, is used as a supplement. It actually increases oxygen utilization in humans. So there's a thing that my supplement company on it sells called Shroom Tech. That's what it looks like when it pops out and then that thing will explode. Shroom Tech 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. 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.

And so then they started eating them. And the way they farm them, it's wild, they farm them on caterpillars. They farm the mushrooms on caterpillars? Yes, they farm's wild. They farm them on caterpillars. They farm the mushrooms on caterpillars? Yes. They farm the cordyceps mushroom on caterpillars. Why? Because that's the way they grow the best. Wow. Yeah, because they're sort of a parasitic mushroom. The same sort of mushroom that's exploding. And see if you can find a video of them exploding because it's pretty wild.

Do they only have to grow them at certain altitudes still? Have they figured that out? I think they grow. I don't think they have to be at altitude to grow them. I'm not sure about that. But I do know that they grow them on caterpillars. Because when we were supplementing or when we were sourcing them for that supplement, we were like, what?

Like they're growing them on caterpillars? This is fucking crazy. That's so interesting. Yeah, it's really interesting but that relationship that they have what it's it was really fascinating to me is that the ants seem to recognize so this is there yeah this is the great one so these things grow all over this ant and they take over the ant's body. And once they get to a certain size, they it's look at this is a we're watching a time lapse. This is actually from Netflix. What's the show that it's from?

Look how cool this is. Look, it sprouts out of the body like a tree. I mean, it also also looks like just little hairs are growing all over its body. Also, this is happening like very slowly, right? But if you watch it the way we're watching, it's so creepy. It's like a scene from the movie Alien. It does. So this ball, which contains all the spores, grows off of this stalk.

And notice how it goes high in the air. Is that at the end of that? Oh, unfortunately. So it grows high in the air so it can catch wind. So it can, when it blows up, it sprays all over all the other ants. So if it happens in the colony, the ants realize, oh, we're all doomed. So let's drag this away. So if it happens in the colony, drag this ant way out of town and let them die out there. I mean, it makes sense though, right? You know, 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, you know?

But how do they know? That's crazy. I don't know how they know. Like how do these ants know? Obviously, they've only been alive for like a week, right? So where are they getting the information? How do they know that there's a fungus growing on this ant that is going to kill everybody if they don't get it out of town? And they know so much more than we do.

I mean, they knew that this, they knew this was the process. Is that one going to blow? Oh, see, look. It's a longer clip. Okay, good. So look at all these little balls that are hanging off of its body. Is that crazy? I've never seen anything like that.

That's extraordinary. It's so extraordinary. And fungus, by the way. Wow. Fungus is more, it's closer to us than it is to plants. Fungus breathe oxygen. 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.

Look how that thing is. Isn't it crazy? How it just grows into this weird looking tree. And it's all just these little branches. Look at that. That's insane. That some beetle got jacked. Look how tall.

It's so much bigger than its actual body. Oh my goodness. Look at that. Amazing. And that's these mushroom stalks growing out of the body of this beetle. And it's a whole world existing on this little insect. God, that's so fascinating. See if you can find cordyceps mushroom farming on caterpillars.

See if you can find a video on that. Because I've seen that, too. Well, that's what I got, too. But I mean commercial production of cordyceps mushrooms because they grow on caterpillars. Look how wild that is. 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.

Oh, really? Oh, interesting. There's just so much symbiosis, right? There's so many relationships going on between these organisms. Look at that. So that's cordyceps mushrooms. Wow. They call it Himalayan Viagra.

Whoa. Well, that makes sense, right? Because nitric oxide and transportation of oxygen and muscles. But it improves athletic performance. Like you can really tell the difference when you work out with this stuff. Look at that. Sounds like the cows could too, you know. Yeah, well, they definitely, they noticed it, like I said, from high altitude herding populations.

Well, the cows probably knew better than us. They figured that out. Somehow or another, right? That's what's so bizarre about information. I mean, I think about that all the time with my dog. Because I have one dog, and he doesn't have access to other dogs until my daughter brings her dog over or my friends bring a dog over. But he knows all this dog stuff. No one's telling him that he has to pee on these certain trees no one's like he he has this thing where

he rolls in fox poop it's so disgusting but we have this fox that comes and visits our yard and the fox is really cool the fox they've you ever heard a fox bark yes they have this weird sound right well we have a video this guy in our yard barking i don't know where it is i'll try to find it but um this guy lives in our girl lives in our yard sometimes comes in and barks and takes a shit in the yard and my dog when he finds that shit he's like oh yes and he rolls around in it and he'll come in the house and i'll let him inside i'm like what's going on, man? I'm like, what is that?

Oh, you fucking dummy. And he's happy as a lark, right? So happy. And proud of himself. So happy. Yeah. Just. Yeah, this is a fox.

I think my dog loves a fox. I think he's had some interaction with foxes. Because fox and people become friends in the wild. Have you ever seen the documentary Grizzly Man? Yes. Amazing. Yes. Right?

Well, here's that noise they make. Here we go. A little bit before that, I think. That's so weird. It's such a weird noise they make. I bet Marshall could tell us what he's saying. Yeah. He's like, oh, yeah.

Hey, what's up, man? That's Freddy. Freddy the Fox. 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. Like right next to him. Remember one of them stole his hat? And they were playful with him they just hang out with him. Yeah. Like right next to him. One of them, remember one of them stole his hat and they were playful with him. They're playing with him.

I feel like most creatures just want to live peacefully on this planet, you know? 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. Sort of. Depending upon how big you are. Did you see the video that was released from Woodland Hills today where a coyote tries to eat a toddler? No. It's horrible.

This guy is opening up his car door in a suburban neighborhood, regular neighborhood. 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. A coyote comes and snatches the baby and is dragging the toddler away. Please. Yeah. No. Don't show her. Don't show her.

She had a hard time dealing with the bees. That's terrible. Coyotes are assholes. I mean, you have them. We have them where we live here on the river. Yeah. Yeah. They're creeps.

They're, and yeah, they. But they're small wolves and they're wolves that have been persecuted by gray wolves. And so because of the adaptation, there's a great book called Coyote America by Dan Flores. And he detail details how coyotes because of the persecution of with gray wolves, coyotes are related to they're a type of wolf. We think of them as coyote, but they're actually a small wolf. And they're related to red wolves, but they're they don't breed with gray wolves. So when you hear about coyote, but they're actually a small wolf. And they're related to red wolves, but they don't breed with gray wolves. So when you hear about coy wolves, that's an eastern wolf is breeding with a coyote, not gray wolves. Gray wolves kill coyotes. 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. And that's how they call. Yeah, it's like roll call. I can hear that at my house all the time. They think they do that to communicate when they've killed something. And they also think they've done that to do a roll call. And when one of them is missing, it causes the female to have more pups. And then they spread their boundaries. So they move into new neighborhoods. 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, where they reintroduced them from Canada to Yellowstone. But during that time period, when they were killing the wolves,

coyotes started spreading. And coyotes were spreading a little bit because they were persecuted by the gray wolves. And then people started killing coyotes. And as people killed coyotes, they spread even wider. It had the exact opposite effect they wanted by people killing coyotes. Now coyotes are in every single city in North America. Every city. And 100 years ago, they weren't. 100 years ago, they were confined to the northwest or to the southwest, rather. And I guess the northwest as well.

I guess they were mostly in the western coast of the United States. They were like Montana and Arizona. Well, now they're everywhere. They're in New York City. Coyotes are in the Bronx now. I had no idea. Oh, coyotes are in Central Park. Wow. They're in every city in North America.

They're in Florida. Coyotes are literally everywhere because they have this unique ability to move and adapt. And they're just very smart. They're very cunning. They tricked one of my dogs into breaking into a chicken coop so they could steal chickens. They tricked the dog into doing this? Yes. I had a giant dog.

He was a mastiff. And he was a real sweet dog. And he's way too big for them to eat. And so what they did is they honeypotted him. And they decided, like, I'm your friend. And he's like, I like dogs. You're my friend. See, he doesn't know that it's a coyote.

He thinks it's a dog. So my pool guy had left this gate open and we had a chicken coop. And I don't know if you've ever bred chickens. I have chickens. Okay, great. So you know about brooding. Yep. 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. And she can't sit in the nest. There's a post. And because she's in this stand with 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. That's what the brooding is. And they'll sit on this egg.

They just decide that this is going to be the egg that gives them a chick. It's kind of sad because there's no rooster, so they never get fertilized. Well, when the coyote recognized that this was a smaller pen, they had been trying to get in the big one, and it was too fortified. But the smaller one, they're like, you know, I can get this big, dumb motherfucker to break into this. So this coyote tricked my dog into destroying that pen. He had never done that before.

I was in my house with my family, and we were playing some board game. And I look out the window, and I see a coyote running across my backyard with a chicken in his mouth. And I'm like, what the fuck is going on? And what was your dog doing? Was he just standing by? He destroyed the pen. So he was over by the pen that he had torn apart because he's 140 pounds. He was huge. So he just destroyed this pen. Was it going after the chickens? Yes. The coyote talked him into it. And was the dog going after the chickens? Yes. So he, but it was only one chicken in this one smaller pen. So he destroys this pen.

The coyote's like, thank you, grabs it, and hops over the fence. I'm like, what? And so I go over. I'm like, what the fuck happened? I go over there, and I see Johnny. His name is Johnny Cash. And Johnny is standing there going, what's up? And I go, what did you do, man?

You fucking let the coyote into the— And I realized, looking at this pen, there's no way that little coyote could have done it, this 35-pound coyote. It was him. He did it. And, like, he had one job. And then he realized that it's fun to kill chickens. Oh, no. So, unfortunately, then he also realized that he's strong enough to go through the large chicken coop.

So he tore a hole in the large chicken coop and went on a rampage and killed, like, nine chickens one day. Oh, I'm so sorry. That was a bummer. That must have been traumatic. That was a bummer, but at least it was him. 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.

Oh, my goodness. So we went to the yard one day and it was just feathers everywhere and just dead chickens. It was a mess. Do you have chickens now? We do not. But we want to get chickens again. Do you have coyotes now? Yes. Yes, we have coyotes, but I've got some mitigation

techniques that I'm going to use to get rid of some coyotes. Is Marshall, is he helpful at all? I don't think he's helpful. I was hoping he would be here. I'm a big dog fan. I would have brought him if I had known. I was going to bring him, but he was tired. We threw the ball today and he was a little exhausted i didn't want to throw him up hey sometimes don't get out of bed for me marshall it's not that

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 he's weird like he won't throw up in the car if I'm touching him. 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. But as soon as I stop petting him, he's like, bleh! Oh, my goodness. It's something about being in the car. Well, it sounds like something about you, too, and the comfort and you petting him.

Well, he's a love sponge. Golden Retrievers are love sponges. That dog just wants to cuddle with you all the time. You should get another one. I think so, but Mrs. Rogan is not so convinced. She thinks it's more work, another dog. I think it's the opposite. I do, too.

I think it's less work because then they have a buddy. We have a theory in our house. It's like a sourdough. So Marshall can be like the starter. And I have one really great – I have four really great dogs. But my first dog, Shelby, is just like quintessential great dog. And so we've just got to add to the starter. And now we're up to four.

But 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. Right. You know, and it's, yeah, it's just the sourdough. Maybe I'll talk her into it. It's, you know, we had five dogs at one point. Wow. And so I think she's a little traumatized by the five-dog experience, which is a little crazy. Five is a lot.

It's a lot. There's a lot of dogs running around. Also a lot of joy. Listen, if it was up to me, I can't even go to like a dog pound. I'd have 100 dogs. I really, I would, I love dogs. Me too. But, you know, got to pick your battles.

Be practical sometimes, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I love animals, period. I would love to live on a ranch. I think living on a ranch and living with animals, both domestic and wild, that's what I would like, I think. I'm like you. I'm not as fascinated by bees, obviously. But I, like you, am just very fascinated by wildlife in general.

And something, it changes you when you move out and can live more alongside nature, or at least it did for me. I mean, I am from Texas, have lived in an urban area my whole life, have 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 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. And yeah, I think everybody should have a little piece of dirt and grow some food. And I think that's how I think it resonates with people, because I think that's how humans have existed forever. And when you live like that, your body's like, oh, this is better.

Because I think your body, when it's in Manhattan, it's like, this is great. There's so many cars and so many people, but your body's like, what the fuck, man? Can we get a break? When there's some calm and nature and there's no calm or nature unless you go to Central Park and even then it's like a weird little... Coyotes, apparently.

Have you seen them there? I have not. Show the video because it's kind of crazy to see them running around central park and there's a lot of them wow yeah they're in the bronx they're in like abandoned buildings and shit like people find them and what's disturbing is their their diet is a large part of it is house pets i mean it must probably have to be in that sort of environment. Cats and dogs. Yeah. Well, in urban areas, like there it goes. Look at that. Roaming around Central Park, small wolf.

Wow. How strange. It's like that movie, I Am a Legend. It's almost like nature can't wait for us to go away, and then it'll just repopulate, and we're never here. I mean, that's what I think about the bees. They've been here so much longer than us well those i mean they that's what's crazy is we i did not know that that's probably the most interesting thing that i've learned today is that we brought them here yep honeybees are not native to the united states

or to north america so how difficult is it if someone, oh, by the way, shout out to my buddy, Steve, Steve Ryan, who is a beekeeper. He's one of the first people that I know that I've ever met that like taught me or told me how he raises bees. And he gave me some of his honey from his own bees. I'm like, that is cool. I've always thought that would be a cool thing to do. But how difficult is it to have your own little hive and colony and the way you do it? It's really not that difficult. 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. 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. learn a lot and you do that through spending a lot of time with bees with your bees but depending on how many colonies you keep you know it it can be not that labor intensive and a wonderfully fulfilling hobby or profession as far as you want to take it and when you extract honey you brought us some honeycomb so thank you for that yes when you extract honey from, do you feel like you're stealing from the bees? 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. This is a little bit of honey that I harvested in the summer. And this is the last of our summer harvest that the bees had.

that the bees had. 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. And, you know, that's as much as I personally want to take. 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. And, you know, at the end of the day, didn't make me feel that good. So this is their food source. It's their food source during the winter. And we can't predict the weather, of course, and don't know how long the winter will last and, you know, when the spring will come. Perfect example is here in Texas last year when we had the major snow apocalypse you know and everything that was about to bloom those early blooming plants that the bees really rely on to

get them to spring snapped back none of it bloomed everything died you know and it was a it was a horrible year for for bees and 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 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. And so when we harvest honey in the summer or fall, you know, it's before the time the bees really need it.

So we just need to be careful and mindful about how much we take. And, you know, you can certainly harvest honey responsibly and most all beekeepers do, of course. And, you know, there's no reason you can't happily harvest honey from your backyard hive if that's your choice. You just have to figure out how much to take. How do you guess that? 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 and you know depending on the time of the year how much they need to make it to spring but also as a beekeeper you can intervene and give them the resources they need to do their job well right so you can give them that artificial food that we talked about and you know supplement their food if you need to but but it's never ideal.

So I can even take honey from one hive and give it to another and put it in another hive and give it to another colony if, you know, there's a weaker colony. So the way that we've kept bees in these boxes allows us to manage, you know, their space and their resources. So we can give, we can donate things from one colony to another colony. Could you buy commercial honey and introduce it to, like, if you bought honey off the shelf? Sure, absolutely. That's okay? Yeah, absolutely. 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. Oh, really?

Oh, of course. I mean, it was a big problem. Oh, my God. So it's like drugs? I mean, you know, you can not always know what you're getting sometimes. Wow. I never even thought they would do that. Do you ever imagine they would cut honey?

They do everything. People are so gross. For sure. Isn't that crazy? It's crazy. They cut it with corn syrup? The demand for honey is at its height. It's higher than it's ever been probably because because people, you know, like that it's like a natural sweetener and it's, you know, part of a healthier lifestyle.

But, you know, the world's demand for honey is so high and the supply sometimes can't meet it. And we had a there was a situation where beekeepers or there still is. But people from other countries were importing honey that would be cut with other things. And you were essentially getting funny honey. It was fake honey, and so the best way is to buy honey from your local beekeeper who is not selling that adulterated honey. Or just buy it in the comb like this, and you'll know that. What's going on here? Honey is the world's third most fake food, according to this article.

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. The importation of Chinese honey was specifically banned because it is so often adulterated. Oh, China. And so people got around that by shipping the honey to a different country.

So they would ship it to Malaysia and then import it from Malaysia. But it would still be Chinese honey that was cut down. So is there like a test you could do with drugs? You can certainly test honey. Really? How do you do it? You know, there's tests you can do to even, there's pollen analysis. So you can figure out what the bees were feeding from. And every piece of honey is going to be different. Every bite of honey is going to be different. Every frame of honey you take from a hive is going to have different, you know, food sources that the bees were foraging from. So it's going to taste different and maybe have a different color. And, you know, it's all very unique. And there's,

there's tests that, 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. 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? I don't know if there's a commercial test. Like a drug thing, like you dip it in and see if it's fentanyl? I don't know. I don't know. Talking to you has made me feel guilty about buying industrialized honey.

Well, I mean, industrialized honey. I mean, buy honey from your local beekeeper. It's a great way to support beekeepers. I never thought of that until today, though. I would just see honey on the shelf. Oh, there's honey. Let me grab that honey. Please don't do. I would just see honey on the shelf. Oh, there's honey. Let me grab that honey. Please don't do that.

Don't buy honey from the shelf. Well, no, please always support your local beekeeper who is pulling this honey, you know, with the bees in mind. Who's, you know, my motto is hives before honey. And, you know, I'm always going to put the health and wellness of the colony and what's going on in the hive before harvesting honey. what's going on in the hive before 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. So please don't, 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. Or just go to your farmer's market and buy honey from your local beekeeper or your friend who is a beekeeper. I mean, that's where you should be. He lives pretty far away, unfortunately. He does now. Well, now you know me. I do know you. Is there a resource that

people can go to where they can find local honey is there like an online website that can direct you to local beekeepers that sell honey 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 and so just ask your local beekeeper. 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. Most, you know, beekeeping is so not only local but really hyper-local.

I mean, bees forage for up to two miles. So beekeepers have a great sort of local community built and 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, hey, I'm looking to buy honey and buy honey for the year from one beekeeper, buy it for gifts for your friends and family support, you know, a beekeeper that way. But if you Google your local beekeeping association, most, you can find someone very local because again, it's beekeeping itself is just, you know, 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. You know, even here in Austin Hives on one side of 35 versus the other, it's different soil, different, I mean, it's just a completely different environment for the bees. So always support the local beekeeper. That's the best thing you can do. And like you said, a farmer's market is probably a good resource or something. Absolutely. Why is some honey dark and some honey light? It's just what the bees are foraging from. Why is some honey dark and some honey light? It's just what the bees are foraging from. You know, honey has different, has a different flavor profile in addition to having different colors. There's... Dark stuff has like kind of a rich, weird sort of like tangy taste to it almost. I mean, a lot of it does, but I've even had

like avocado honey or cotton honey that, you know... at that oh that's some oh yes that is some colored honey that I found inside one of my hives that I think the bees it was after um it was after fourth of July and I think there was a large parade I think it was actually a snow cone machine just because of all this so there's really there's there's green honey, there's yellow, there's a reddish color in there. And I think it was the different flavors of maybe like a snow cone machine. But you know, I, 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 they have a hummingbird, where people have a lot of hummingbird feeders oh because people will dye the sugar water red and the bees will feed from the hummingbird feeder why do they dye the sugar water red i think people think it attracts more hummingbirds to

their feeder does it i i mean i have a hummingbird feeder and i don't dye it red so look at that so that's amber ok are those eggs in there that That's actually pollen. They'll store the pollen. They'll pack it in as much as they can. Those little balls, it looks like. Those are balls of pollen. 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. They have these little divots and they'll pack it in in these little balls. 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. And that's just exactly how it came off the bee. 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. And so you're getting pollen that was from the plant on the bee's legs, right, into your, you know, protein shake or whatever. And so it'll come into little, 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. And they can carry an insane amount of weight. They can carry over half their body weight in pollen and for up to two miles.

So, you know, they're incredibly strong little creatures. What is royal jelly? Royal jelly is a special secretion that comes from the gland of every worker bee. And it's a food that's fed to the baby bees in the first stage of their development. 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,

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. So it's just the food source for younger bees or bees that haven't developed yet. But a lot of some folks will harvest royal jelly. You can harvest royal jelly kind of scraped out of the cell and harvest royal jelly for cosmetic purposes and whatnot. There's. That's what it's for cosmetic purposes. I thought it was like a food source. Well, it is a food source for the bees. But I thought for humans. I thought people eat it.

I have heard of people eating it as well. But it's not common? I thought it was available at like health food stores, like Royal Jelly. I don't know who the number one. Royal Jelly. Yeah. So when you see that, like bee pollen, click on that stuff. That one right there, yeah.

How do they get that, like bee pollen, click on that stuff. That one right there, yeah. How do they get that, Jazz? Royal jelly in honey. Oh, interesting. Like how much royal jelly and how much actual honey? Royal jelly. So it says there's 625 milligrams. And then there's bee pollen, 570 milligrams. Interesting. And there's's bee pollen, 570 milligrams. Interesting.

And there's also sugar. Yeah. But is it, it says raw honey, though. Is the sugar just the active sugar that's in the honey itself? Can you click on that again? Yeah, so it says sugar, 8 grams per serving. That may be. But it says other ingredients, raw honey.

What are the ingredients? I don't want to know other ingredients. So is it just... So are they saying that it's just royal jelly and honey? Korean ginseng. Oh, there's a lot of jazz in that. Yeah, yeah. There's ginseng in that. I don't know what those people are saying.

That's a mess. Most local beekeepers you can't buy royal jelly from. Oh, okay. No, most beekeepers are not harvesting royal jelly. Because it would be bad for the hive. It's not something that helps the colony to harvest the royal jelly. You seem very opposed to royal jelly. Yo, look in your face.

Don't do that. No, I just, you know, I mean, there's... Other ingredients, none. So that's just organic royal jelly. It's the same company, too, so I don't wonder. Interesting. So that one doesn't have the ginseng and all the other jazz in it. So the ginseng is a stimulant.

So you probably eat the ginseng and you think, like, oh, my God, this royal jelly is really good for me. But you're just jazzed up from caffeine. I don't know what people claim the merits of eating royal jelly are. Do you? Whoa. Wow. What happened there? The skull fell over.

It's upset at us. Fucking jelly talk. Nature upset at us. The skull fell. We were talking about eating royal jelly. It's nature going, don't eat that. Don't support that. Leave it for the bees.

Leave it for the bees. Yeah, it's not going to do it. So what would be the benefit of it cosmetically? WebMD says it's possibly safe. Possibly safe? Yeah. To ingest? When taking my mouth, it says it's possibly safe when used short term.

What does that mean? Doses up to 4.8 grams daily have been used safely for up to a year. Safely? It's usually well tolerated. Boy, they're really hedging their bets. safely. It's usually well tolerated. Boy, they're really hedging their bets. Jamie, may I ask if we can, do you know if we could find

out what, like, the biggest who is the biggest purchaser of oil? I was just trying to see. No, I'm just wondering, like, is it the I'm curious if it is the cosmetic industry or I don't know who What would be the benefit of it cosmetically?

You know, I think there are Is it work or is it just nonsense? I've never used it. I don't know who will be the benefit of it cosmetically, you know, I think cream or something Does it work or is it just not I've never used it. I don't know I mean he's PMS and more Oh PMS, please let's get more of it PMS diabetes and more supporters seems like a grab bag does it does? Yeah, how convenient what else stops It makes you less gullible. Eat it all. It makes you less gullible.

Oh. Well, listen, Erica, I really appreciate you coming in here. It's been very, very educational. It's really cool. I love that you're doing what you're doing. 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. Thank you so much.

Thank you. My pleasure. Your Instagram page is? Texas Bee Works. Texas Bee Works. And TikTok? Texas Bee Works. And website?

Texas Bee Works. Everything Texas Bee Works. All right. Anything else? You good? Thank you so much. Thank you. B Works. Everything Texas B Works. All right. Anything else? You good? Thank you so much. Thank you. My pleasure.

It was really fun. I enjoyed it. All right. Bye, everybody.