The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - Hilary Kearney Interview, Author of Heart of the HIVE, inside the Mind of the Honey Bee

Episode Date: September 26, 2024

This is the audio track from today's YouTube video:  https://youtu.be/GVJKWP2LZEo

So hello and welcome to another episode of interviews with experts. I'm Frederick Donne, and this is The Way to Be. Today, my returning guest is Hillary Kearney, the author of Queen Spotting. In this interview, I talk with Hillary about her newly released book about honeybees, titled Heart of the Hive, Inside the Mind of the Honeybee and the Incredible Life Force of the Colony, with photography by Eric Turnerett, and published by Story Puffey. We're also going to talk about narrating her book for Audible. Here's Hillary.

Thanks for joining me, Hillary. I'm so glad that you're here and able to Zoom and talk to us from San Diego, California. Girl Next Store, Bekeeping. Is that what you're called there? Honey. Honey. Girl next door, honey. And Bekeeping like a girl, does that still apply?

Yeah, you know, I still write in the blog sometimes. You write in? Oh, there is a blog. It's a blog called Bekeeping Like a Girl. Where do we find that? Bekeeping Like a Girl.com. Oh, it's its own website. I don't know why when I did it.

I thought it would be smarter to like brand it separately. But all it's done is just confuse people and they think I'm two different people now. So your biggest traffic is girl next door. People know me as Girl Next Door from Instagram and whatever. Okay. And the reason we're talking today is because your book's finally out. And I have it, of course. You know what?

I thought it was going to be bigger. You did. Like a coffee table book. Because, you know, when you see the pictures, you get the, I saw the prelim, right? How do you decide the size that your book is going to be published? I don't get to decide. You don't get to decide that. Now, I was already pre-prepped for my previous experiences.

I did not expect it to be a big book. You know, when I did queen spotting. Yeah. I expected it to be a big coffee table book. And then they wanted to make it really small like that one. And I had to fight them really hard to get it to even be the size that it is now. So, you know, the publishers, I don't know how they decide things, but it's all about their costs and selling books and, you know, investment for them.

So these are big, I mean, these are. there's a lot of photos in the book and I imagine that's more expensive to print so reducing it to a smaller size I know they wanted it to be like a national geographic kind of feel more like a nature writing kind of book

so I don't know if that's what it's informed where we're recording is this the podcast right now are we still pre-tled? Oh yeah no this is it we're not deleting anything this is for it Okay. So, yeah, this is, this, everyone is watching this. Okay. Okay.

So, but I do like, as you mentioned, queen spotting, I'm really glad they didn't make it any smaller because it is a fantastic, I have grandsons that are beekeepers and making them race to find a queen on those pages is a huge amount of fun. And you took those pictures, right? Yeah. The pictures of clean spotting are all mine, except for the ones of me. And some of the really, you can kind of tell when it's mine or not. Like the really dreamy looking ones are by the lifestyle photographer.

Okay. Lifestyle photography. And all the photos in this book are by Eric Turner-Rat. Did you take any pictures in this book? No. Did I say his last name, right? I don't know. I didn't.

I didn't say anything because I was like, I don't know how to pronounce this last thing. Okay, well, it's, if people want to know, they can look down, of course, they can look up the book, which, where should people buy this book? Where's the best place? Ideally, from my website, girl nextdoor honey.com. Okay. People don't realize, like, when an author is selling their book on their website, they make the markup. So that's when we actually make money. When Amazon sells it, we make like five cents or less. You're kidding. I didn't know that.

Yeah. So a lot of authors don't want to bother. You know, they're not going to bother selling their own book on their own website. They don't want to do the shipping and stuff. But since I already sell posters and stuff that I make, all my books are on there. Okay. You know what? I'm glad you just mentioned that since you sell posters and everything because I didn't even know that. So I'm learning too. But it's a story publishing. How did they do your last book too? They did queen spotting and then has shot or sorry. Harper Collins, UK, did the Little Book of Bees, which was my second book.

And the Little Book of Bees is all art. So, yeah. Is that your artwork? No. Because people may not know, you are an artist. Yes. I didn't get the choice. I didn't have the choice in that book or this one, you know.

Originally, actually, originally when I pitched this book, it was going to be illustrated by me. And they agreed to it and paid me. And we were going to do illustrations in there. But then when they got the writing, they decided that the writing was too good to go in that direction and that they needed to elevate it with these kind of higher level photos. Wait a second.

Yeah. So the writing was too good. That had to hurt your ego. That's what they said. I honestly think they said it to, less in the blow of me not getting my illustrations in the book. You really think so. Were they building a switch?

That's what they said. I'm going to read. Give the hit flattery. Grain of salt. Grain of salt. But yeah. And then I said, well, can they be my photos? And they said no.

But did they think about it before they said no? Or they jumped right on that. They already knew. I think they had already made up their minds and decided on Eric and had gotten really hyped about that. I can understand from the sales perspective, you know, different, different fan base for him. So combining the two of us might sell more books. Makes sense. It does like for selling books. But my like artistic soul was sad. But it's okay because I hope that people actually appreciate the writing. I felt like in queen spotting, I was pretty proud of my writing, even though

there wasn't that much of it, but people were just hung up on the photos and never said anything about the writing. Well, because, yeah, the writing was good in queen spotting, but I will say that the main feature was the full out and spotting the queen. I mean, it really, you know, it's up. So I was like, oh, maybe people actually appreciate my writing this time. Well, I do. I mean, I like the way it's written. But now the writing, yes. If anybody's sitting there wondering what I thought of the book, I obviously like it. That's why we're having this conversation. If I didn't like the book, Hillary and I, we wouldn't be talking.

So I would just be like, hey, thumbs up, good job. But no, it's a great book. And I do like the writing. I like the way you're describing these behaviors and everything, because it's not a straight scientific and bees do so many circuits of a waggle and bees to a grooming dance and all these other things, which are very interesting to me. So this book, this book hits on all, it's like my list of things that I find cool about bees, which leads me to another thing that a lot of people have maybe not learned about, but I want to talk to you about this. It's beyond the book. You, because I did a survey recently, you probably don't know. I did a survey of my listeners. How many of them bought a book, a bee book in last year? How many of them read books about bees? And then we get this percentage.

although I realize that's a little bit altered because different YouTubers attract different types of people to watch their work. So I figure a lot of my people are book readers. There are a lot of academics. And I was really surprised about 48% read books. The rest are going for their information today through social media.

But there's a key comment that I got that is really good. People listen to Audible. So you see, this is a dovetailing of what I'm going to walk into with Hillary, which is that you had to audition to do the voiceover, the narration for your own book. I want to know about that process. Like, first of all, how do they decide to even make it available via Audible? Oh, I'm not sure how they decided that. They just told me that it was happening.

They just said, hey, we're doing an audio version of the book. And then they were basically like, we really don't. recommend that authors narrate their own books because it doesn't really work out most of the time and the sales won't be as good and we really kind of discourage you from it but if you really want to apply then you can and um i honestly didn't really want to apply but my friends um talked me into it and i have one friend who's kind of like i guess she's done some voice work or she knows about public like speaking in that way and so she kind of like coached me and we were sending voicemails back and forth to each other where she would be like do it again with more you know

so she on how to do it yeah and then um I sent the best of those as just a audition to them and I honestly thought they would say no but they said yes so so give me an example of an audition piece how long would it be and what was the content uh they asked me just to read like the intro. Okay, so the book itself. Yeah, yeah. No, I read the actual book. Okay, so the intro of your book,

you don't even have it in front of you. Yeah, but it's like, you know, in stories. Did you memorize it? Hidden worlds. I'm down rapid holes. Is that I just got it? Because I read that one about a million times practicing. And you're right, this is a thing

because there are people that voice over work is exactly what they do. They have voiceover coaches and everything else. Yeah. And all of that. I don't want to think it's not easy. It's really not easy. It was one of the harder things I've done. Like I'm glad I did it and it was a very cool experience. But I was so tired. It was two days of like nine hour work. And I'm just in a booth. And the microphone is so sensitive that you can't move. So I'm sitting there just like frozen and like I can hear like every little mouth sound I make like I don't hear like my stomach gurgling and that picks up on the mic. So we would have to re-record. It's like my stomach would gurgle and we would have to re-record

whatever I had just said. So it was like me and my director just on the other side of the glass who is a super cool guy and you know just going like do that again do that again. You know, oh, with a little say it a little differently or try it more like this um the thing that I really struggled with I can't remember he had all these industry terms that were really funny to learn but he would say I think he would say you've got to button it and I'm like what that what does button it mean and that's like the end of the sentence at the end of the sentence like at the end of a section the way you and you want to make it sound like an ending so you kind of come down with your voice towards the end like and that's the end. But I'm

my California accent so I want everything to go up and like up up up up up and so I kept messing that up and having to re-record like the last sentence of but the funniest thing that happened is that you spend all this time recording and then the director of the audio book like the other people the people who are producing it get it and they edit it and do whatever with it and then they decide like what what they want re-recorded. And then I had to go back into the studio for what they call pickups, where I'm just re-recording like little things they wanted differently. But I would say about 99% of the pickups that I had to do was just the word larvae. Because I can't remember,

I think I said larvae and they wanted me say larvae or something. It was like a larvae. Larvae. Yeah, they want to say larvae. Yeah. But everything. there were so many words in the book that were a weird plural like that and some of them you could say both ways and it was correct so we just decided to be consistent and say I larvae you know like camera antennae but apparently larvae it was

the correct form or it's what they wanted I don't know that's what the entomologist would lock in on my god so I don't know how many times I had written that word in the book but many many times because I had to be in the studio for like another hour just re-recording every sentence that had that word in it which was funny but did you ever want to throw in the towel and just say just get your narrator no once I started doing it I thought it was fun

you know it was just a really interesting like fun world to join temporarily and do I was mostly scared of like I listened to audiobooks like I don't have time to read and so I mostly just only listen to audiobooks now and people are very harsh about the narrators and I'm really harsh about the narrators too like if I start looking at an audio book and I don't like the narrator I just will read the book I'll just turn it off

so I've been pretty worried that people were going to really come after me in the reviews because I've had people complain about my voice before just on social media. So I wasn't sure how that would go over. What on earth, let's pause on that. One on earth would they say about your voice on social media? Like what don't they like about your voice?

You know, they don't specifically say they just say, I hate your voice or whatever. Non-descript, okay. Yeah, just an overall blanket. Which, by the way, for the listeners and viewers, the things that you say to people that are in social media, media do land. And that's why I regret listening to people or reading people's comments like that. Yeah. Because they are pretty harsh. And that's what stopped me. I would like to go back. I have over

1,100 videos on YouTube. I can't go back and voice over a bunch of them that I wish I did because I was putting text in there. Just because somebody launched out there and said, your voice is stupid, don't talk over that. We want to hear the beats. And I'm just thinking, You want, okay, fine. So then I took that to art. I took my narration. I didn't narrate anymore and just had these little texts. And then you have people, I don't want to read it.

Why don't you tell us what's going on? Your video is stupid. So, you know. You just can't be everyone happy. You can't. And so stick with. Like for some reason, and I know that it's illogical, but for some reason, just that one negative comment or those two negative,

there will be 50 positive comment. And just one or two negative ones. But for some reason, the positive ones just don't feel true. And the negative ones really go, really make you question everything. And it's so dumb. I don't know why it's like that, but it is. Well, I think people want to improve. I mean, if what you're doing requires that you speak,

Have you had someone who has seen your picture or seen your face but never heard you speak? And then they're a little bit surprised at your voice quality when you do talk? I don't think so. But I was just at this conference over the weekend at UC Riverside. And I stood up to, I got there late. So I kind of snuck in the back. And then there was a presentation going on. And I stood up to ask a question.

And I think there were about 10 people in the audience who just recognized my. voice probably from Instagram and turned whipped around like I know that voice so that was kind of funny and then they came up to me afterwards like I heard you and I knew who it was immediately um yeah I didn't realize like I had that recognizable of a voice yeah well I would say I would know I would pick your voice out you know even if you weren't talking about these but it seems natural though that if you wrote a book about bees with all of you know all the terms that are associated with that, to do an audible version of the book, it would make sense to have it done by a beekeeper. This happened to Tom Seeley, because I questioned him, I interviewed him the way I'm interviewing you now about his new book with Buzz Runners and all that.

His narrator mispronounce Serani, you know. I thought he narrated them. He did not, and that really bothered him that that guy. So I didn't know if Tom really wanted to narrate his book and didn't get to. he would be a great narrator for his books. Yeah. But no, so when some terms really jump out, you realize, ah, the narrator doesn't know anything about bees, really.

Yeah. Just an actor, it's a voice actor. Well, I think in my case, they're just, they also don't know what to be passionate about as they're saying it. And so what was cool doing it was that I got to kind of emphasize the things in my mind that were exciting, like with my actual tone of voice. And it's really hard, but what I was trying to do is try to, you're like reading the book. I'm reading it off of like an iPad into the mic, but I'm trying to say it as if I am

telling you in a conversation. Right. Which is actually really hard to do. Don't you stand up and gesture and everything as if you're. I don't know, maybe if you're doing Disney. I was just me. Not me. I was sitting in a chair and I wasn't like allowed. They let you sit. Oh, you were there for nine hours. I was there for nine hours. I was sitting in a chair with the mic. I couldn't have moved. Like even if I just turned my head the slightest, the angle of the mic would be off and we would have to fix it. So yeah. So describe the space you're in. How big is? Just a tiny dark room that has glass windows and then I'm looking at my director through the window. Would you say phone?

Is that a computer? What? No, like, you know, like six phone booths. Oh, six. So that's big. Yeah. Was it an actual whisper room or was it something else? I don't know.

It was all padded. What's a whisper room? Whisper room is a room built for narration. It's a completely, there are plenums that run your electrical wires through and stuff. And it dampers out any venting noise and stuff. I guess, yes. but I'm not 100% sure. Darn, I always wanted a whisper room.

I think it wanted to be a narrator just so I could have a whisper room and be in a quiet spot. Okay, so did you have to, so you said you had to maybe overact a little when you're narrating? Well, the thing that was hardest for me, actually, is that I had to speak really slowly. Because I don't naturally speak slowly. So, like, he kept having me re-re-re-re- He's like, ah, you got too fast, like, go back, say it's slower. So like when I listen to the audio recording, the audiobook, it sounds really slow to me. It just sounds so slow.

But I realized you have to be able to absorb what you're hearing. And, you know, you do have that nice feature on Audible, though. So if it sounds slow to you, too, you can speed it up and then maybe it'll sound normal. You can do that on YouTube, too, I guess. Yeah. Well, that's really interesting. So would you do another narration if someone asked you? Yeah, I guess I would.

Yeah. I think it would be a lot more comfortable if I weren't pregnant during it. I mean, that was the other part of it was like just already uncomfortable on the net, have to sit pregnant for like nine hours doing it, running out of breath. Do they coach you on anything to drink or not drink, like no milk and things that would, you know? I had water and they told me to bring like lip balm to get your lips get dry and then you start having like a weird kind of tacky sound while you're talking. So I'm like it's like putting on a look at the whole time and drinking water. And he would like tell me to take a drink.

He'd be like get a drink because he could like apparently hear it. Yeah. And they because they have what's called wet mouth sounds and things like that too. That's all great. I'm sure that's fascinating to everybody that's listening. So I personally, I want to know about these things. I don't know. I'm not cutting anything.

They're stuck listening for this. So because these interviews are for me. I'm just inviting other people to sit with me and talk to you. And they don't get to ask any questions. I do. So we'll talk about the book first. If anybody's wondering, I love the book. I think it's fantastic.

And if you get a bee book, whether you're beekeeper or not, that's the beauty of it too. Somebody, there are a lot of wild moments. and things that I personally use in presentation to kind of wake people up to how amazing it really is. Because there are, as we know, beekeepers who have been keeping bees for decades don't know too much about the bees themselves. They understand, right? You already know what it's going about. So who's your book for?

Well, I do think it is for beekeepers. Everything I do, I try to make four beekeepers. and for everyone. So it's always kind of like a goal of mine because I'm trying to like suck people in. But I think, you know, the original idea was that we have these how to bekeeping books. Everyone's like,

when are you going to write a how to bekeeping book? Why would I? There's already plenty of great how to be keeping books. It feels like it would almost be for no reason. So I was like, what can I do? Because a lot of the how to bekeeping books, have just a tiny section on honey bee behavior biology in the beginning, maybe a little bit sprinkled throughout, but it's not really the focus at all because you have to spend so much time on,

you know, what kind of equipment to buy and how do you make a split and how do you make, how do you feed your bees and all that kind of basic stuff? So I really feel that the first step to beekeeping is not what kind of equipment should I buy. It's what, what, what, What are bees? What do they do? You know, I think people need to understand the animal without a beekeeper and how it lives first. And when you have that solid understanding of them, then you go to what kind of equipment do I want? Because ideally, what you know about how they live should inform your decision of what kind of equipment you want to use, at least partially. And I always tell my students like there's so many decisions that you have to make in beekeeping there's so many

different ways that you can do things and especially as a new beekeeper that's really overwhelming you kind of freeze and go what do I do you ask all these beekeepers they give you a million different answers even just asking one beekeeper they usually give you more than one answer and you have to choose and you don't know how and so I always tell people if you know about honeybees and what they would do it's like a guiding star for you you can take that and you can weigh based on what they would do. And you're not always going with what they would do, but at least when you're going against it, you have to defend it kind of in your head. It's like, why am I not doing it the way the honeybees would do it? This is why, because I don't want

them to do this, you know, and you kind of go through that logic. And then you can feel a lot more confident about the decision you made. And so I think that it just gives you this basis of understanding of honeybees that gives you this foundation of being a better beekeeper right from the start. Yeah, no, I think that's great. And you're right. It's overwhelming. And the problem with making that decision or having a bunch of different opinions is beekeepers have different approaches and different opinions. And here's why they work. So you pick the one that you like the way it works best for you, right? Because it's not that one person is wrong, one person is right. There's, you know, we don't need to get into that whole, that's a quagmire of all the equipment. I was watching

another YouTuber one time, smaller channel, and I realized when I looked at his B-shed, he had everything I'd ever recommended in a video. Like everything I'd ever mentioned, every piece of equipment kit, tool. And I felt a little bad about that because I thought, I'm not mentioning, things to get people to buy everything I mentioned. I want you to know about it so that you can then distill it down the way Hillary's talking about, which is what do I need? What are my bees need? And then the rest of it is just fluff beyond that, right? What kind of tools you have around your apiary that you don't need, but they're just cool to have? Well, I'll admit some of the things like that are things that I found out through you. I got that one B vacuum.

that you... Me? Yeah. You're so convincing. But it's like, you know, you don't need it, but it's fun and it's fun to experiment. So I don't usually use B vacuums

in my removal work. I don't love them. I think they take some of the fun out of it, personally. But there are times when having a vacuum is really useful. Like if there's a queenless swarm and they're not settling,

or if they're in a hard-to-reach place, or sometimes when it's just a massive, massive colony and you're going to end up with a lot of casualties all over the ground. It can help to have a vacuum. So anyway, I got, I can't even remember the name of the vacuum, but it was the one did a video about. The one with the screen that you can set on top of the box and then just pull that sheet.

Yeah, the Colorado V-Vat. Yeah, I love that feature that you can just set it right on top of an existing, you know, set it on top of the board, whatever, or underneath it or whatever. I yeah, a lot of fun. Yeah, so I got that. And then I also played around with the queen isolator frames, those cages that go around the frame. Yeah.

And where did you learn about those? I think for you again. You know, I didn't even know you watched my videos. I just do sometimes. I'm not on YouTube a lot and I don't actually have a lot of time. and when I have time, I don't necessarily want to spend it all doing B stuff. You realize Hillary that makes it even that much more of a compliment because I have this much time for YouTube and it's mine.

Yeah. So I'm actually really happy about that. Okay, it made my day. I can end this interview and be very happy right now. So I do have some of the sets that's in your book. You want to talk about some of the topics that were covered in there? because I highlighted some key points for me, but you obviously have to do research.

You didn't walk in with all the answers that are now included in your book. Is that right? So you had to like send out your feelers, say, yeah, I'm researching a book. Would you give me some information about this and that? What was one of the mind-blowing aspects that really hit you?

Like, oh, wow, I didn't even know. It was like that. And like, who? Like, was it Heather? Rockard Bell, who brought something to your mind that ended up in your book that you thought was just kind of a wow moment for I had no idea that beats were like that. I mean, everything was kind of like that. But I didn't actually like reach out to the researchers so much. I did a little bit, but almost none of them actually got back to me. They wouldn't get back. I didn't get a response from some of them. them.

All right. Let's talk about the researcher reached out to you that stormwalt you. This compound. Which researcher actually responded to was the most helpful? Let's do that. Well, okay. So here's the thing.

Like, I don't remember. It was a three-year writing period. Heather and I did a presentation together once. So we're like kind of friends. And I always go to her for random, like, just bounced off the wall. ideas or whatever, just like randomly we'll do that. And sometimes she'll ask me more beekeeping questions because she's more of a

researcher than a beekeeper. But now she actually has hives. Now she's in a new space and now she actually is more of a beekeeper. But at the time anyway, so anyway, so what I kind of did was read a ton of research papers, things that I had read before or just kind of

tucked away and then I had to find that paper again so that I could cite it and like put it in. And then I would reach out to her and be like, do you know any, like anyone who's researched this topic or what do you know about this? And often she didn't really know about it because she's more just like neuroscience based. And then I would and then I sent her the whole draft of the book and said, can you just flag anything that seems wrong or whatever? And, you know, she's so funny. She's so scientific.

and her and I always, we always get to this point in our conversation where, like, I'm asking her questions. And she's saying these really frustrating, like, things. Like, I'm not even sure how to describe. It's like, we were talking about Honeybee, HoneyBree thinking and learning and that kind of thing, right? And she's saying, like, okay, well, or the way that's kind of post is, like, are they these just little automatons that are just reacting to stimuli with this preset? you know, behaviors, or are they actually like cognitively like problem solving and blah, blah, blah. And where we get to at the end of that debate, because she's on the side of like, kind of like, they're automaton's, you know, they're not intelligent in the way that I want to frame it.

But where we always get to is like, humans are like that too. Humans are animaton. We could classify them like that. We could just say that we are all responding to stimuli. lie. And so she always takes it there. And then I'm just like, all right, Heather. Like, all right. I mean, we could just go on like that forever. It's almost like you can't really debate her because she always takes it to that level. And so that's why I put her in my acknowledgments. Like, thanks for always challenging my like, challenging my thought, you know, because I'm always wanting to frame it in the way that I find most exciting and compelling. And then she's always like putting the

wet blanket on that and like keeping me down from getting too far fetched or whatever. But it was important to me to include not just the science and the research, but also like my experience is as a beekeeper and questions about what could this mean. Because we don't, the answer is we don't really know. The scientists don't really know and we don't really know as beekeepers. And nobody can make like a stern claim on how intelligent or not intelligent honeybees are. and so it's fun to pose those questions and just think about it. And of course, for me, as like a beekeeper and someone who loves honeybees and some of the experiences I've had,

I'm always leaning more towards, I think they really are. I think they really are this smart. And I don't think they're little robots responding to stimuli. I mean, it's hard to think of them that way when you have these experiences where it's like you piss up hive. and they come for you, but no one else for like the next three days. Like you walk out the back door and they come for you. No, because we know that they recognize or remember us. And if that experience was, and that's an area, by the way,

challenged by a lot of hardcore science types. Yeah. Do they recognize individual beekeepers? Do they respond differently to individual beekeepers? I would say that they do because I can prove it. I can prove it. And I also know that they'll recognize me, even though I show up in a place that I don't normally show up. So because we can, there are some great experiments.

Have you done any experiments to test honeybee intelligence? And whether they respond, yes, and specifically to you. No. Well, then how are you going to put Heather in her place if you don't? Like, can I get a staff, an unpaid intern staff for these experiments? Because then I would love to do them. Well, it would be great to have a morning meeting and say, okay, Jimmy, today you're going to walk around with honey in your hand and you're going to wear a blue shirt, you know. So, I mean, that would be fun.

Have you done them? I do experiments all the time. All the time. So I, because I like to challenge not just the science, but I think in terms of backyard science and very basic experiments, and I bounce these off of Ambirto Bon Cristiani, who has inside the Hibes TV, and just the structure of an experiment, because what we want to do is remove the argument. Because if the method is scientific and if the results are repeatable, then what on earth do you have to argue? about. I have a video that shows it because so it is fun to find out. Now, I don't want to go too far down the rabbit hole. You don't even want to know all the areas that I've gone trying to understand what happens in an apiary or around bees in general because there's a whole other

levels that we can talk about, not part of this interview. So, so she's hard science. Also, for those who don't know, Heather Brockard Bell, she's at USC. She's working for Oh yeah she works for Nod Yeah she works her Okay but her research was High of Communication and things like that Right I met her when she was at the UCSD

The research lab under James Nye Okay So she was working with him And a bunch of other cool people doing Like she was studying the stop signal, the beeping Yeah A lot of like communication stuff and just brain function. And I got to go, you know, I got to go visit their one of their eight theories.

As part of your research for this book? No, just like before. Before I was even working on this book. Just for kicks, they invited you over? Yeah, because I had done the talk with her. The natural history museum of San Diego just out of the blue contacted me and said, we want to put together this talk with a bee scientist and then we want you to be like the layabout person you know we want you to be like the beekeeper and do like a joint talk now you said

layabout but i think you're saying layperson right layperson yeah you don't want to be a layabout it felt like that it felt like because i was actually on the phone with them and i was like why am i involved in this talk when you have heather like why do you need me like what I'm going to contribute? And Heather was like, oh, no, we need you for your practical experiences. You know. We did use all my photos and the presentation and stuff. So it was actually really fun because she would get up and say her science bit about the research they're doing.

And then I would just relate to it with some story about beekeeping or I would dumb it down or like translate it for everyone, you know, into beat or into. Yeah. So you are the bridge to make it relatable to the later people. Yeah, so we kind of became friends to do that And then, you know, I came out to the research Center a few times And I did some bee removals for them too actually Or at least near them

And then Yeah, and then we keep in touch Even though she's in Canada now She's in Canada? I didn't know that Yeah, she's Canadian originally When did she move to Canada? Within the year? A few years ago Oh, because I...

When she took the NOD job or right before. Oh, I just interviewed her and I thought that... So for those who don't know, Nod is they do Formic Pro and stuff like that, right? Yeah. Okay. Back to the book. All right, so now talking about or be intelligence recognizing people, there is something in your book that covers that because you didn't believe it yourself.

You were at the zoo, the San Diego Zoo. And which, by the way, it was very unapproached. impressed by the reptile collection. Moving on. So at the zoo, they had you come and do a bee removal, right? Yeah. And then they told you that one of the people that worked at the zoo, the bees just go after this individual that's a zookeeper or something? Yeah. Do you want to relate that story? Yeah. So, you know, I'm usually working with the entomology team at the zoo, which is a whole bunch of people. And, you know, usually like one or two of them will assist me when doing a removal.

In this case, the removal was in a different department. And it was actually in the Panda exhibit, which was an off exhibit. Like it wasn't active at the time. And it was this massive, massive, like open air colony, probably three by four feet kind of mass, just hanging. Like, it looked really wild. Really cool. And it had been there a long time.

And it was right above a door that people had to walk through. all the time. And so the story they told me is that it had never bought, it wasn't really bothering anyone except for this one woman of which who they would always come after. And I didn't really, yeah, I didn't really believe it. And I

was asking all these questions and kind of quizzing her like, well, did you do what, did you swat? Did you you know, were you wearing strong perfume? Did you bang the door? Like, you know, just trying to come up with like, why, you know? Um,

and then we couldn't find anything. She denied all of my suspicions. And I kind of just went, okay, whatever, didn't really believe her. And then we're doing the removal and we're in the middle of it. And, you know, for those who don't know when you're doing that kind of cutout, oftentimes, you know, the bees are not defensive until you actually touch them and start basically taking apart their hives.

So a lot of times you can approach these hives and they're not going to care about. you, but then once you start actually pulling down their calm and moving them, that's when they usually become defensive. However, these bees were really docile, which made her story even more unbelievable because they were hardly reacting to us at all. They were really calm bees. And so somewhere in the middle of this, I realized I needed duct tape. And so we got on the radio and said, can someone bring us duct tape?

And she brought the duct tape. And I swear I could hear them change the sound as she approached. The sound shifted and they started getting defensive. And they started kind of zipping around and flying faster. And then she just took off running. I think one went for her. And I turned to the woman I was with and I was like, was that her? And they were like, yes.

You know, okay. Okay, so now that we know that she drew fire from the bees, was she by chance any taller than any of the other people at work there? I don't think so, no. Darn it. Okay, was she high contrast? Did she have, like, dark hair and pale skin? She did have dark hair, but so did some of the other people that were working with the.

Pale skin? Yeah. Okay, because here's why I'm asking, because I like to make jokes like that. Anyway, the taller people draw fire and high contrast people draw fire for no reason. They can just get out of their car. And here's why I say it. So I was making fun of that at one of our field days. And one of our board members' husband is a really tall guy.

He has really dark hair, dark eyebrows, pale skin. And I said, do me a favor. Just walk with me. pass these bees over here. We're going to see if you can draw fire for the bees to see if they go after tall people that are high contrast. And his wife even said,

I think you're going to end up in a YouTube or something. But when we started walking, he drew fire right away. So he's a good, he's probably six, three. I'm five, nine, and three quarters or whatever. And so it was like the perfect example of why he gets hit. And so if you could just make yourself shorter than the people around you,

do you ever do that? I am short, so. I'm five five. Maybe this is why you don't get sun as much as when you're next to taller people, do you find that they, wait, how tall is your husband? He's six foot. Okay. So when he comes out of the bee artist, he ever get negative attention from the bees,

even though you've been out there for a while. Yes. He always gets it before me, but he also has dark hair. Right. So, I contrast. I do You know because I do tours and I do classes I do notice that tall people

tend to attract more defensiveness From the bees It's really strange because we're standing in like a half circle And I'm the one working the hive And they're all over this guy And they're not over anyone else They're like all on this face mask and stuff But those are like really big guys

Like the six five guys are like kind of big and like burly. And my theory was that not that they were tall, but that they were breathing out more CO2 maybe. Because they're like I don't think so. Because I thought about that too. Nervous people talk a lot and they

get they chillow breaths and everything else. And so maybe that would anger the bees. You know, but I also, okay, so I do a mentorship program. And so I'm with these people for like eight months. And there was this one woman in the mentorship program who was not tall and who was not high contrast. And no matter what, the bees were all over her. They were always on her. And I trained her really well.

And I would watch her work the hive. And she was making no mistakes with like her movement, her use of the smoke, the way she lifted. She was doing everything exactly as I would have done it. Only they were pissed. But if I did it, they were not. And we never figured out why. And she even like went through all of her shampoo. and her lotions and stuff and couldn't figure out.

We never figured it out. Maybe she has really bad karma. She did end up becoming allergic and had to stop. Oh, that's bad. Yeah. Okay, so moving on to other things, talking about the book, this is all super interesting. Oh, because you're in San Diego,

the plants that you have there differ from, you know, here in Pennsylvania, for example, You have very limited space on your property. What do you plant specifically for bees of the bees most use where you are? So on my property, I planted this whole row of prevalia bushes that get about 18 feet tall and bloom all year. And it's an Australian native. I don't know if you ever seen. They have that kind of curly queue weird flower, like a really long curly flower.

and they're very nectar rich the hummingbirds like them I've seen bumblebees on them and stuff so I planted that and then I planted the first thing I did was plant trees on the parkway I planted New Zealand Christmas trees which were the only tree approved on the list

that seemed like a good bee tree and everything else I plant sunflowers periodically which I do think has an impact just because of some of the properties of the sunflower pollen, but most everything else is mostly just for, like, for fun and for the native bees and stuff like that.

So I plant, like, Cosmos and Dahlia's and stuff. Oh, you plant Cosmos there. Those things could grow just about anywhere. Yeah. So given your climate there, when are your cosmos finished for the year? It kind of depends on when I plant them. I might be able to grow them all year.

they kind of get a powdery mildew at some point. Right now they're blooming like crazy, and they're like about to, some of them are like about to go nuts and some of them are just starting. But I'm on my like third round of the year of Cosmos. So you just feel it out. You can get away with a lot.

Okay, so part of publishing the book, do you have to go to book signings anywhere? I don't have to. but I you know it's encouraged I have a publicist who's like trying to set things up all the time and we met several times to like brainstorm things like she was really like you got to talk to Fred again he wants to talk to you and she got me an interview with like Bcraft magazine which we really had to chase down and I think she has been pitching me but like there's not many bites happening. I did a bookstore in Minnesota the other day. We did like a Zoom thing and it was just

the bookstore owner and her husband like one lady showed up and my bummedist. I would think you'd want to be there. Like you know, yeah. So I did you know, I did a class at like a local nursery on this past Sunday. There were like 15 people there and then I did a I'm doing a talk on Friday at an actual bookstore, which I did last time. When Queen's Spine came out, I did one there. And people started up last time, so hopefully. Didn't you meet? You ran into Tom Seeley at a book signing at one store.

It was at his talk. He was giving it. And afterwards, he was signing books. And I, like, got in line and met him, had him sign my book. Oh, so you weren't there to sign your book, too? I brought my book for him. Oh, that's. So that's like he was looking at queen spotting, right?

Yeah. But it was his event and he was signing books and I just show. Yeah. So if somebody wanted to have you come in at, you know, Walden Books or something. Oh, yeah. How would they, they have to get in touch with your publicist through story publishing. They go to your website. I mean, they can contact me and I'll link them up with the publicist to set it up.

Okay. Because then you could do like you could read a chapter or something and I mean it's cool and it sounds cool but it's kind of nerve-wracking because it's not it's a free event and everybody's so busy and Oh yeah they're watching they're looking at other books while they're while you're talking Or they just don't show up so it's really embarrassing when you do an event like that and just like no one comes so I kind of hate them because because you just never know if they're going to show up

and it's like just you and like one person. And it's like, hi. I'm going to give an author. In a way, though, you would have an opportunity then to speak just to that one person and make their day. I guess. They would. I find the whole thing very embarrassing.

I do them, but I'm looking forward to not doing them. I'd rather pay to be there and like know that. know that people paid to be there and have some idea of how many people are coming. Okay. It's just like, it's a free event and then nobody comes. I mean, I learned that very early on in my business because I used to do free beekeeping classes and everyone with RSBP and no one would show up and it was horrible.

Yeah, they have no investment in it. Yeah, and as soon as I started charging, then they actually came. That's really interesting, actually. Yeah, so that's actually how my business happened. Have you ever been invited to walk into, like, you end up in this huge auditorium and like there's one person in a scene? No. Do you have any? Not that bad.

Yeah, I don't like it when I go in and it's a, it's a, I want a small room that you can fill rather than a giant room that has 10 people in it. There's a sweet spot in the middle, right? because like when queen spotting came out I ended up doing like kind of a book tour in Australia and I spoke at like the Sydney beekeeping conference and the Melbourne beekeeping conference in like a two week period or like a one week period. It was like back to back weekends or something and the Melbourne beekeeping conference was just huge. It was a huge auditorium and there were just like so many people and it was so nerve-wracking to get up there and speak in front of them.

I'm usually not nervous. I'm usually not nervous about speaking. But it was different being in another country and speaking. It felt just a little bit, I don't know. Like, I found out the Australians don't think that's funny. So that was a hard lesson to learn in front of a lot of people. Like my jokes were not landing. And I was like, all right.

I don't know if it was like dead silent. Like, you didn't even have been. I don't know. I don't know. There were definitely like a few things I said where I like paused for laughter and no one laughed. And I was like, okay. Give me one of your funny lines. I don't know. It's it's a sperm the moment thing. So you have to feel the group and then you know what to say based on what you're seeing in the audience. I'm almost always winging it. Like I have presentation slides, but I'm just freestyling up there. Yeah. I don't. memorize anything and I don't even really plan to say anything. I guess, okay, so when I was at the conference, the UC Riverside conference over the weekend, they split us up into small, like, speaking groups. I wasn't a speaker at this conference. I was just attending. But when they put us in the small groups, I was like a big loud mouth with all my ideas. And so at the end, we're supposed to present the ideas that the group came up with to the whole crowd. And so,

they were like Hillary you're the you're it you had most of these ideas so like you do it um so I went up with the mic in front of everyone who had to like recite all of the things and they had given us this framework of questions like should we form a southern California be collective what should it do who should be on it and then the last question was how should we um you know make decisions or how should we decide like what should we do to just come to a decision when we have to make a decision. And we hadn't even talked about that in the group. So I'm going through everything. And I'm like, okay, and we didn't talk about this last question, but I think we should decide via waggle dance. So I think we should just be having a dance wagg for like dance off. And that got a laugh, right?

Oh, good. Okay. That's like the kind of thing that I would throw with Australians and they would be like, watch. Like, no one laughed or whatever, you know. Is there a video of that? I want to see the video of you like just bombing. I don't know. I don't know. It probably was recorded. So do you have any big speaking engagements coming up here in the U.S.? Yeah, I'm going to be speaking at the same conference as you at the Pennsylvania. Oh my gosh, I had no idea. I don't even know why I just brought that up.

At the Pennsylvania State Beekeepers Conference, this is not. just for Pennsylvania Beekeeper Association members. It is for anybody who wants to come to it. That's why I'm mentioning it now. And you are going to be one of the presenters there. I am too, which is really funny because after reading your book, I feel like a lot of my presentation is in this book. So what are you going to talk about?

Because I'm going first. No, you can only look like a copycat if you talk about any of this stuff I talk. about. So what's up Lynn? What's yours on? I'm asking you. This is about you. All right. Well, mine, I'm trying to remember. One of them is on queen spotting, like just on green spotting. Okay. One of them is on mistakes, like common mistakes that beekeepers make. And one of them is on like Africanized bees or killing bees. Oh, wait. Are you giving multiple talks of these segments? I have four different talks I'm doing. You have four. Yeah. That's outstanding.

I think that's great. Yeah. Yeah, I send them a whole list of like talks that I have given or could give, and they picked those. That's good. I think I'm doing just like a hive inspection one. Like where you're going to do a hive inspection. You're going to do slides on how to do an eye inspection?

I'm hoping I can steal one of the vendor's props and use it in the front. That's what I did last time. did this at the Arkansas conference. Well, I can tell you one thing. But then I also had a physical hive that I was like, I am going to be in the front row

at every one of those talks. No, that's going to be great. So for those who want to know where that is, what it is, you go to the Pennsylvania State Beekeepers Association website and you're going to see what the schedule is, what it costs,

and who's presenting, and there will be really good vendors there and everything else. So Hillary is going to be there. You can meet her in person. Are you going to bring your books? Will there be any books? I will have my books there.

They said I could sell my books. I'm going to have my husband with me too, so you can evaluate how high contrast he is. Yeah, so we could use him to see if the bees go after. Maybe we could march him in front of some hives and just find some things out. It's Pennsylvania. By that time, because we're talking October. Yeah.

It's, yeah, there's no bees. but I think that's going to be a great time. So we covered that. This is one thing I like to talk about because it freaks people out a little bit. This is in your book, Zombie Flies. Thank you. So have you actually seen this behavior?

Or did you have to do research and you learned about it too? I see it all the time. And we see at the San Diego Zoo, I also manage the hypes there in our entomology house, and we have identified the actual flies in the hive, which is pretty cool because there isn't actually any research on that. And according to the entomologist there, she has a friend who works on that particular fly, and they were unsure of whether they actually

parasitized the bees in the hive or outside of the hive. And so she wrote to her and was like, they're in the hive. Like, we see them in there. That's amazing. Now, what, are they all over the country? Like, these parasitic flies? Where are they? I believe they are.

I don't even, I mean, I don't think they're from here because they parasitized honeybees. They must have just hitched a ride over here. I'm actually not sure about the flies themselves so much. I can only attest to the fact that we found them inside the hives and that the bees seem to go to the lights a lot. So I mean, I was told that every bee that was attracted to lights at night is probably infested with that, is probably, you know, parasitized. I don't believe it. I'm with you.

I'm not tested it. Yeah, I'm with you on that too because, first of all, there's another example, scientifically proven very easily. You know, you go out there with a white light, the bees fly at you, you net them, you dissect them. So, because anyone who's walked into a bee yard with a white flashlight at night already knows that those can't be zombies. Yeah, I think, you know, when it's hot out

and the bees are bearding at night on the entrance, if a bright light comes around, they're going to be defensive towards it because they're out there on the front. It doesn't happen as much during the winter because they're not on the front. And so, I mean, the reasoning goes that they're disoriented and it makes them fly at night and honeybees don't fly at night. Yes, they do. Well, you hit on something too in your book that was really interesting to me because it also validated another thing where bees that are disoriented by the source of the light, which should be the sun and nothing else in the real world.

they fly with their backs towards the light. So in other words, if we had bees in a totally dark room, it had a light bulb that's four feet off the floor. They actually fly back and thorax towards the light because they think that's up, which is weird because they also do have sensors that sense gravity. But you had an experience that's described in your book where you had a reflective beehive top

and bees were inverting onto it. Is that right? Yes. And actually, since I wrote that, that was really hard to write about. And Heather helped me a lot with that section. Because I realized as I was writing it, it was actually something my husband had seen. And then we were trying to figure out why would they flip? So there was this hive with a really shiny top and it was a sunny day.

And what was happening is that every bee that crossed over the top of it was flipping upside down very suddenly and falling on her back like flat onto the lid. And so our theory was that they were getting that the reflection was disorienting them and making them think that the sun was below them and they were flipping, flipping their bodies and then falling to the ground. And so, you know, I had to talk to Heather about explaining polarized light and the navigation and all that. I wrote it up and then I sent it to my friend to read who's very smart. She's very sciencey math major, whatever, but she went, I don't think I really understand what polarized light is. And then I was like, well, oh, crap. Now I have to explain that.

And I realized that every beekeeping book and every blog that talks about Honeybee Navigation just says polarized light and nobody explains in more depth than that. So then I had to figure out a way to understand it myself and then translate it to a way that would make sense to people. And then I would keep, I think I said like three or four different versions to Heather like, is this accurate? Is this metaphor accurate? Can I say this? You know? And yeah, so that was really challenging to write. But that was actually one of my favorite parts to write because it was so hard and it was really fun. And I hadn't seen anyone else write actually explain it. And I have since duplicated that experience.

We were experimenting with insulation on the hives at the zoo. And so we have top our hives there. And so we had these long, we had those, yeah, we had that. And so we had set it on the roof of the neighboring hive. And then all the vies flying over were flipping on their backs again. And I tried to film it, but it was happening so fast. And I couldn't get it in a focus. So I couldn't really capture it.

But it was definitely happening again. So I was able to recreate it. Yeah, that's really interesting because what happens here that does not happen there, we get snow banks. And the snow, the zarked out bees will invert onto it. And they spin around on their backs. So it does happen. It's very interesting. And you're the first to write about it.

So I thought that that was really cool. And what was the roof of that hive made out of? Was it just aluminum or something? It was just metal. It was just one of those typical, like, telescoping metal. But it was brand new. Like, we had just peeled the plastic off. It was almost like a polished stable.

Yeah, like a polished. Yeah. That was really interesting to me, and I was glad that you covered it. In fact, that happened to me going all through your book. There were so many validation points in your book for things that I partially knew. So I did learn from your book. I was really excited. That made it so weird.

That's what I wanted to know if you learned anything new in there. Or was it all just valid? Was it what now? Was it all just validation stuff or did you actually learn? No, no, there were some new things. So if I can pick up a book, because I'm a curious mind, so I read everything I can get my hands on. If I can pick up a book and find one new behavior in it, the entire book is valid. You know, for me, that just, no, seriously.

I'm just laughing because I feel the same way. Yeah. So, you were doing. B encounter groups in San Diego, like people could hire you to come and have a bee experience? Do you still do that? Yeah, I call them like B hive tours and people come to me and I suit them up and then open hives with them. And we pass frames and bees around if anyone's brave enough to hold them.

And then I like take pictures of them. And I just, you know, I just riff as they're as we're as I basically just do a hive inspection and teach them all about bees as I'm going through the hive and answer questions. step. So you just riff. What's that mean? I just improvised. You know, I just improvise telling them about bees. So, oh yeah, here's one I wanted to know about San Diego. When I was there,

because I used to live there, the street lights were all like amber colored. Is it still like that? Sadly, no. When did that change? In the last like five years, I want to say, they switched them to LEDs. So now they're these really hideous bright, like blue light. That's annoying because that was going to tie into my, would these zombies fly to these amber lights?

I don't think they would. Yeah, see? Yeah. I'm with you, those jerks. I can't believe they did that. I mean, there is actually studies on these LED lights, like really messing up insects, not just honeybees. No, I was so impressed that they did that and I used to

be in a parking lot and ask people to take out a color photo and look at it and it would be black and white. It would be a monochromatic image. Yeah. Which felt like a magic trick, but it was just light spectrum stuff. So it was really interesting. So I would think

I'm very interested in the lighting aspect. So here's something else you mentioned. And let me know if you're getting tired and we need to wrap up. I'm going to hit you on one more thing. No, we can keep going. The bees. This means I don't have to.

to take care of my four-year-old. So you're letting me out of the book right now. I'm going to make this rude one. You even dedicated your book to him. I know, but, you know. Okay, so anyway, let's talk about the bees again at the zoo. They were not in the cavity, so we're saying that the cone was fully exposed. Is that right?

Yes. Okay, so what a great opportunity, because so much of what we talk about, you hear it over and over, the behavior we're seeing only happens in the dark. So now we've got an opportunity, we've got a hive that's exposed because a lot of these bees, where they come from originally, don't even see cavities,

especially the African-Eyes or the African-original honeybees there. They often are just exposed on branches with lobe after lobe of comb. So were there bees on the outer cone just on it, or were they seeking, like, cover between? Well, this is actually really fun because I came and checked out that hive during, it was February or January, and then came back to do the removal in April. So I got to take a picture of it early in the season and then again three or four months later. And so just like what happens, you know, inside the man-made hives is they were, there was not a lot of bees on the,

the outer combs. They were withdrawn to like the inner combs. I mean, you could see them in the scenes, but they weren't like covering all of their comb and they had abandoned the outer pieces. The outer pieces were empty. They didn't have bees. They didn't have honey. They were just like, mostly empty. And then by the time I came

back in April, you could see the outer combs were being used again. Not completely. But I think eventually it would have been more covered fully. But it was such a huge hive that it's hard to imagine that they would ever get to the point where they were fully covering. it because they probably would swarm before they got to that point.

But yeah, it was more, there were bees on the outside of the combs in April. They were covering. Did you post photos of that? I don't know. I use it in my classes. I'll send it to you. I hope you bring, like, I hope that somehow is part of one of your presentations at the state. But if you want to just send them to me and let's ignore everybody else, we can, I could

just look at them. Yeah. Yeah. My own interest in that. And even put them on this, you can edit this and put them magically on your screen. Oh, post-production. What? My interviews are very organic and straight through kind of thing.

So back to the book. By the way, I love your closing statement in your book also, which talks about, you know, beekeepers should reach out beyond and appreciate more than just the honeybees. why did you is this honey for thought it's right before that it's the picture of me oh yeah this one

yeah that's a great closing statement because these are all my thoughts too so yeah I think it's because I become really annoyed with beekeepers specifically when they want to like demonize wasps because I feel like it's very

hypocritical when you listen to to speak about wasps. A lot of the things that they're saying about the wass are the things that other people say about bees. And it just feels so dumb. I don't understand her. They don't see the parallels there. And they haven't bothered to learn anything about the wasst. So they just accepted that wasps are evil and out to get them and serve no real purpose in the environment. when in fact wastes are incredibly important pollinators and they're also helping keep a balance in other species, oftentimes species that damage crops and things like spiders and grasshoppers and caterpillars.

They're specialized hunters of these certain groups of animals and they're bringing a balance. Everything has like a place in the ecosystem. We can't just pull out our favorites and say these are the good guys and these are the bad bugs, you know? and I hate that phrase and that happens all the time in like this Facebook gardening group that I'm in a lot where the people are like, is this a good bug or a bad bug? And it's like there are no good and bad bugs. Like they're all good bugs. Well, I guess another way to say it with, can this hurt you or not? Should I stay away from this bug? Right. Can you give me an example of something that you used to dislike or be afraid of? And then once you studied and learn more about, it, you actually kind of warmed up to the species. Well, I think wasps for sure.

You know, I thought I had an impression that they were more defensive than honeybees. In fact, they're often less defensive than honeybees. I once had this top bar hive it was divided into with a follower board. And on one side was the honeybee colony. And on the other side was these paper wasps. Yeah. And paper wasps were nicer than honeybees. It's like, I could pick them up with my hands and they didn't try to sting me.

So, yeah, I think wasps, I also think like mosquitoes, you know, no one likes mosquitoes, but they are pollinators and serve in for, you know, flies, flies. No one likes flies either, but they're, they are very important pollinators. And so, you know, there are certain species that I actually did go and learn why we should like them. And sometimes when I have the instinct to dislike something, I'll try to. look do a little research and find out why should i like this creature like what is their purpose you know but it's very sad because a lot of times um the only information you can find on them is how they're an agricultural pest or you know from an exterminator's website telling you why they should be

killed and there isn't actually anyone defending them right i agree with you on that too and often i'll go to research the species and the only authority on the species is a pesticide company yeah control company. And judging from how their honeybee information is, I don't trust any of the other information they're putting out there. Yeah, and also

when people, and I think we should be educated because we're looked upon often to educate the public. So we need to be able to talk about more than just honeybees. And one of the reasons is, you know, we get a call and everything's a bee to the public. Everything's a bee. I just got

stung by a thousand bees. And then you go there and it's a bunch bald-faced hornets or it's the yellow jackets or something like that. And it's really interesting, but most people don't realize who kills more people annually in the United States? Honeybees are wasps. I would guess honeynees, but I don't know. It's true. Honeybees kill more people than wass and hornets combined. So just food for thought for the haters out there. Just, no, I'm not. I should probably say, I'm not trying to get you after the bees either, because there are some people that don't want bees around at all. That could backfire. That's why I wanted to make a scary movie, but it dealt

with bees because that was where I had the most knowledge, and I thought it would be irresponsible as people were killing a bunch of sharks after Jaws came out, and so that would backfire. Can you give me, first of all, why should people buy your book, closing statements, know? And what thoughts do you want to leave our listeners and viewers with. Well, I think if you're a beekeeper, I hope I've made the argument for having that foundation of understanding about honeynees. Even if you have been a beekeeper for a while, I think it's important to go back and try and understand them.

Even if you feel like you have a grasp of what you do in your kind of system, coming back to understanding them independently will often give you ideas and like fresh inspiration for new things to try, new ways to help keep your bees alive. And I think that's always something that we should be looking at because we're having to adapt a lot right now with how to keep our bees alive. But then also for the non-beekeepers, I mean, I assume everyone listens to this as a beekeeper. But if you have someone in your life who is down on your beekeeping, then you can give them this book and help them fall in love with honeybees so that they are more accepting of you

as a beekeeper that I tell people that too. And I'm very proud of this. Rusty Burlow made a, she did a review in the American Bee Journal. And she writes that blog, Honeybee Sweet. And she said at the end of her review that if, she said something like if every beekeeper understood what was written in this book, their success would be assured. And I was just like, yes, that is what I wanted to go for.

And I also think that it would be useful at many levels when I was speaking with the woman who interviewed me for beecraft. She pointed out how incredible it was that the book is really relaying different levels of depth of information about honeybees kind of all at once. Often you get a book and it's just for beginners or it's just for experienced beekeepers. But this book has this kind of layer in effect so that you could read it as a beginner and just absorb what you're ready to absorb. and then you could read it two years later and absorb totally different things. And that's kind of my style. Like I don't feel, I can never just tease out like one level of intricacy of the bees. I always have to try and create this complete picture.

So I hope that people will read it. I hope they'll read it again in a few years and see if they learn something different. I think things will pop out at you when you're ready to hear them. And so my goal is to inspire people to maybe. update some of their beekeeping practices or try new things or have new ideas. I'm hoping one of you will just, you know, make a business with insulated hive boxes or something that's going to benefit all of us that I can then buy. And so I don't have to DIY it anymore. So I don't have time for that. So yeah, that's what my hope is for the book that it'll inspire people and that then someone will do

something that becomes useful to all of us. That's great. That's well. said. So that's it? I think so. Okay. Well, I want to thank you, Hillary, for doing this interview, and I hope that a lot of people find it interesting. And of course, go down in the video description, and there'll be links there to Hillary's website. You can order this book and remember buy it through the website. I'm not going to say, don't get it from Amazon, but if you want Hillary to benefit the most, do you go to her website? I think that's great support. Your money. Okay.

Beas to have it or me. That's long. Yeah. So thanks a lot for doing this interview. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me back. Okay. And that wraps up another episode of interviews with experts.

You can find this entire playlist on my YouTube channel, Frederick Dunn, or listen to the podcast titled The Way to Be. I hope you've enjoyed learning more about Hillary and what it takes to create a high-quality book about bees. Please visit the video description for useful links. I'm Frederick Dunn and this has been The Way to Be.