The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - Honey Dew Honey VS Manuka, is one more medicinal than the other? Interviews with Experts, Robyn Underwood Ph.D. explains

Episode Date: January 23, 2025

This is the audio track from today's YouTube:  https://youtu.be/G62GqOFAP7g

So hello and welcome to another edition of interviews with experts. I'm Frederick Donne, and this is The Way to Be. I'm sure you're familiar with the medicinal value of manuka honey and the high prices manuka honey fetches around the world. In this episode, Dr. Robin Underwood shares some of her ongoing research involving the spotted lanternfly and the honeydew it produces while feeding on various plants in Pennsylvania and beyond. Does Honey-Doo Honey have any value as a medication? Does Honey-do-Hunny outperform

Manuka Honey? Let's find out. Hello, I'm Robin Underwood. I am Penn State Extension's educator of beekeeping or apiculture, and I'm physically located in the southeastern part of Pennsylvania. I mostly work out of my home in Kutztown, PA. My office, however, is in Allentown, the Lehigh County Extension Office. That's my mailing address. But I teach beekeepers all over the state. So I'm everywhere. You're omnipresent as a teacher.

Okay, so, well, thanks a lot, Robin, for being here. This is our second, this is just our second interview. Is that right? I think so. And I want to welcome you to The Way to Be. And we have a super interesting subject today. And I want to thank you ahead of time for your time. You mentioned that you're working at home.

Are you at home right now? I am. Oh my gosh. Let's talk about the weather. They say if your subject matter breaks down that you divert to weather discussions. So what are the current conditions there where you're living? There is about four to six inches of snow on the ground, not going anywhere because it's very cold. and my weather app says it's 15 Fahrenheit,

but there was definitely a minus something when I woke up. Yeah. So this is January the 22nd, and it was minus 14 without the windshield here in the northwestern part of the same state of Pennsylvania. So you already introduced yourself on what you do. What are we focusing on right now? The subject matter of this interview is really about the spotted lanternfly and the production,

the honey that we get from honey do, which a lot of people talk about, but I have some beginning questions about this just in case someone listening or watching is unfamiliar. Is Pennsylvania one of the first states to get the spotted lanternfly, for starters? It is the first place, and in fact, Berks County, where my home is, is, where they landed. They came here on a palette of rocks as egg masses from China and got delivered to a quarry where the eggs hatched and they became established and have been spreading ever since. So we're ground zero. That's not good. We are. So these rocks were for someone's patio or landscaping or something. Is that right? Yes, apparently it's cheaper to bring rocks from China.

than to have our own rocks. Okay. So now that we have the spotted lantern fly here, we know it's a fly. What else can you tell us about it? Nope, no. It's not a fly? Nope.

It is a plant hopper. Okay, so break that. Okay, so break that now. First of all, so people understand, you are an entomologist, and you know things on a much deeper level than the standard beekeeper might. So what is a hopper?

So first I'm going to talk about the naming conventions and entomology because it also applies to honeybee. I very adamantly spell honeybee as two words because honeybees are actually bees. Right. And honey is a type of, okay. A butterfly, a dragon fly, or a lantern fly, all one word with the flies squished together, not flies. Oh, fly, two words is a fly. Got it? So if anyone wants to duke it out, the honeybee is two words. I'm in.

Let's do it. Two words. Oh, no, I agree. Honey. Okay. Because there are other bees. There are mason bees and there are blue orchard bees and all that stuff. So yes, I'm with you.

Totally. Good. I will continue this interview then. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So there are two groups of insects that have like a, pokey mouth. Like their whole mouth is a big straw. They bend it down. And then when they want to

eat, they bring it out and poke it into something. Some poke into other insects and like make a protein soup and suck it out. Others poke right into plants. And that's where lanternflies fit. In fact, they poke into the plant and they know exactly when they have reached the flow them. And that's what they want to drink. So let's talk about plants. Plants have water that comes up from their roots and goes to the parts of the plant. That is a like a circulatory system for plants called the xylem, X-Y-L-E-M, minerals and water from the ground coming up. Then you know that plants undergo photosynthesis. So that happens with the leaves, with chloroplast, sunlight, oxygen, blah, blah, blah. And so they're making sugar from sunlight. And then there's

parts of the plants that don't do photosynthesis that still need the energy from sugar. And so there's the flowam, which is the blood flow of the plant with the sugar water going back the other direction. And so it's the sugar water in flowam that lanternflies are interested in. And so they have this miraculous and I don't understand the mechanism for sticking their mouth in and tap in right into that flowem. So they're drinking sugar water all day long, but they don't really need that much water or that much sugar, right? They just need, like, a little bit of sugar and some trace minerals,

so they have this specialized digestive tract to kind of shunt that sugar water out of their body. So lanternflies tap into their preference is, like, high pressure flow on, so they love, I tell people it's like drinking from a fire hose is attractive to them. They want it to be like, right? and so they're drinking sugar water all day, which means they're peeing all day.

So honey-dew is their version of pee. But it's not even really digested. It just kind of passes through them while they filter out these trace minerals. Oh, that's a good statement too, because a lot of people that want to make it sound as bad as possible, just like the people to say honey is bee vomit. That's a different thing. but the fact that we're eating honeydew is insect poo. So no digestion has happened.

They're trying to express. Is expression a good term too? You said shunt. That's kind of interesting. That's like in their body. Excretion. They excrete. Excrete.

Okay. So they're excreting the excess waters so they can concentrate the sugars they're collecting. It's even too much sugar. So sugar and water are both coming out. But there's like trace minerals. you know, like in your diet, you have like micronutrients kind of thing. And another cool thing is that you may have noticed if you've seen a picture of a

lanternfly adults with their wings out, they have bright red hind wings and they have yellow on their sides. That's a warning, right? It's like birds don't eat me. I taste bitter. So they also from some plants can get those bitter substances. For example, Tree of Heaven, who's just. genus is Ilanthus makes a compound called Ilanthone that's actually an herbicide so the tree can

like thwart its competitors from growing around itself right and but so lanternflies can use that chemical to make themselves bitter so that's the kind of thing they're interested in from the plant like these micronutrients and bitter substances and things like that so the other part of this description you said they have, they're like under wings, right? That red set of wings? Is that, are they two sets of wings? Two sets of wings. Okay.

So that disqualifies them as a fly right there. Boom. Indeed. Okay. So that's all right. So this is good. And in what way? Because it sounded a little bit like overgrown aphids to some degree,

like the way they access the plant's resources. Can you explain the differences maybe between an aphid and the spotted lantern fly. Yeah, that's a really good description. If anyone's, most people are familiar with aphids, you may have had your car splattered with aphid honeydew. Not a big deal because they're tiny. These are like an aphid, an inch long. They do gather together. Like you may have seen aphiz just like covering the stalk of a plant. They, lanternflies do that as well, at least as adults, which is late in the season, August, September. And they can be like obscuring the entire. trunk of a tree. There's so many of them. That's a striking thing to see when I see it in pictures.

So do they intentionally cluster? And if they do, why? It's all about mating. It's about mating. Okay. They mate while they're eating? I'm a scientist going to take that literally. They do mate on the trunks of trees. They do gather there. Find a mate. I don't know if they're eating at the same time as mating. Like literally. That's really interesting. And so, and just to be clear, because they're new to the United States, we're going back to like 2017. When did they get here?

If I recall correctly, we noticed they were here in 2014, and they thought they may have been here for two years before that. Oh, so even farther back than that. Okay. And so the way they get around, they're spreading, and that's one of the things where, so I'll ask you this too. There was that study where everyone was supposed, everyone that participated was supposed to submit honey samples and we could find out if the spotted lantern fly had reached different apiary zones just by submitting your honey to find out of it at honeydew that was measurable in that. Charlie Vorsuch participated in that, is that right? He did. So what did we learn from that?

like how does that help for us to know how far they spread and how much of that honeydew is represented in our honey? It was just a small scale study, but what I think we learned is that the bees probably are feeding from honeydew from lanternflies even when they're not adults, which I thought that they weren't interested in them until they were aggregated on tree trunks. or our tests are so sensitive that they can, you know, find the DNA if it's just in the environment. That's sort of a technicality. But either way, the bees did help us know that lanternflies are in the area of Charlie's bees.

It also complicated my study of this honey because I was really hoping and dreaming that you know, if we found spotted lanternfly DNA, we would have this honey of this distinct color, flavor, and odor. And it's not the case. It's not a yes, no situation. So it's super complicated now. So because people are obviously people that are in agriculture, the vineyard owners and things like that are very concerned about the spotted lanternfly. Beekeepers kind of look at it as a positive in some ways because they're getting sources of nectar for their bees that's being turned into honey that's from unconventional or plants to bees otherwise wouldn't access for that resource. Is that right?

Yeah. So let's make sure to tell everyone that story. So we talked about lander flies and how they aggregate on trees. We talked about their digestion and how they're spewing out sugar water all the time. Well, that's interesting to bees. So they are peeing, peeing, peeing all over each other, the tree trunk, all the plants below them, your car, your patio, whatever happens to be there. And honeybees can come and collect that. Eventually, the sugar water grows mold.

Everything turns black and it's really bad. Like the plants can't photosynthesize anymore because it's like they're in the dark all the time. You can see big swath of black around these trees that have had a lot of land. lantern flies. And even years later, you can tell which trees, you know, they had been on even when they're not abundant anymore. So that mold is a, you know, an ag issue. But for bees, luckily, honeybees aren't really that interested in like fermented and moldy stuff, right? Like, as you know, you don't want to give them one-to-one syrup that you let sit out for two weeks that's growing mold. They're not going to, it's not going to be good for them. They know that and they

don't collect it at that point, but before that point, it's really great sugar water. So they're going to come and collect it and take it back to the hive and really process it as if they just collected nectar, make it into honey, fill supers with the stuff. And luckily, you're correct. So they're filling up for winter and they do well on it over winter. Like they survive very well. you might be wondering, you know, well, why wouldn't they? So in Europe, honey-do honey is quite common. The people are used to it. It's a, they call it forest honey.

If they leave that into the hives over the winter, the bees will die because there's this ash content that is particulate matter that hurts the bees' digestion system, gives them dysentery and all that. So they die. And so the beekeepers have to strip out all the honey-do honey in Europe and feed them sugar syrup from sucrose. Here, that isn't happening at all. They're doing just fine. Now you're going to be like, so are you testing the ash content?

Well. Did send some samples for ash content. And the, I'm not sure it was the right type of testing for what I was looking for because the results made no sense. like the ash content was really high even in spring honeies and it didn't make any sense and I haven't found another lab to do that but I feel that I need to now so the honey-do honey honey overseas in Europe was that from spotted lantern flies as well or was that something else it's from aphids and scale insects and in fact honey-do honey can also be straight up plant sap that didn't go through an insect so it's there's somehow access to

it leaking down a tree or something like that. Because that is super interesting. So there are different sources for this nectar too here in the United States. Can we talk about what the spotted lanternflies are really attracted to? Yes, they really, really love Tree of Heaven, but they're also quite happy to feed on different species of maples and black walnut. And I'm focusing specifically on late in the season for adults. The nymphs will feed on over 172 different species of plants, which is why, number one,

they've spread so far. And number two, that, you know, when you think of insects laying eggs, usually the mom lays the eggs on a host plant, right? Like a monarch is going to lay her eggs right on a milkweed. leaf. Land or flies don't. They'll lay them on rocks or wood or, you know, rusty part of your car or the palate under your hives. They don't look for a host plant. And I think it's because they're such generalists that they know they're going to find something wherever they are. Well, and so when those eggs hatched, they must be very mobile, right? So they can run around.

they wiggle along. What's their? Yep, they run around. So let's have another entomology lesson. Yeah, let's do. Honeybees have a complete metamorphosis, so egg larva, pupa, adult. And things like aphids and lanternflies have incomplete metamorphosis. So it's egg, nymph adult.

So a nymph is just basically the same body structure with six legs and no wings. And so they shed their skin. several times and all the while they're quite mobile. Kind of like how a duck is born to just run off with its mom immediately. Right, and it can't fly yet because it doesn't have flights, doesn't have flight feathers. True. Right. That's interesting.

Yeah. So they're running around. So how fast are they spreading across the state or even the nation? Well, I would encourage people if you want to see the extent of the infestation. you go to Cornell University's web page. They're the people keeping up to date with the map. Every time there's a new report, they update the map. So it's not like it's once a month.

It's like whenever there's a new record. So they have certainly gone in every direction, north, south, east, and west. Of course, when they went east, they hit the ocean. North, you know, throughout New England. They're, you know, definitely in Ohio, Indiana. they've reached Michigan, going south. There's certainly records in North Carolina, you know, close to maybe South Carolina.

I would have to look at them up again. I can send you the link. Are they doing studies that show that they're limited sometimes maybe by the temperatures like winter right now. Would we be wiping out significant numbers of lantern flies here in Northwest PA at minus 14? or does the frost, you know, the frost line, if we're at 35 inches into the soil, are we taking them out? Are they going to be limited to warmer zones? That doesn't appear to be the case. I know.

I do remember having a wicked cold winter since 2014 where we had hoped to that and they seemed to be just fine. So far everywhere, they only have one generation a year. So I suppose it's possible if they go far south enough. They could have two generations. That remains to be seen. And I don't know what they do in Asia. But that would be bad. Early on they did do some projections.

There's actually a paper predicting how, where they will end up. And it was largely based on where Tree of Heaven is because guess what? Tree of Heaven came here from China. So they're very familiar with it. And it has been here for over 200 years and well established. And it's considered an invasive species. Is that right? Yes, it is.

So are some people not upset that it's feeding on or maybe reducing tree of heaven? Or does it have enough of an impact where a tree of heaven would dwindle or slow down? Because it looks a lot like Sumac, right? Looks a lot like Sumac. And of all the trees that lanternflies feed on, tree of heaven is definitely, one that it can kill by its feeding. It loves it that much. They love it to death.

I haven't seen that happen with maples. So that's good, right? Early on, they tried to keep them in Pennsylvania by going to, say, a woodlot that has a lot of tree of heaven, cutting down most of the trees and then leaving a few trees that they would treat with a systemic pesticide. And I mean, it killed a lot of insects, but it was super expensive and they spread anyway. And probably not very targeted. In other words, when you said kills a lot of insects, maybe there are a lot of species that are affected by that other than the lanternfly?

Yeah. I mean, it killed a lot of lanternflies. There were like piles of red and black under the trees. But you're right. There's a lot of non-targets, which is why I entered that research. to begin with because people had started seeing bees on these trap trees and wondered if they were taking the pesticide back to their hives. And in that research, I saw lots of ants, lots of fruit flies. There were Asian hornets and things coming to eat other insects. I saw butterflies, slugs,

you know, all kinds of things attracted. I'm quite sure they're not even doing that anymore because like the cats out of the bag, they're not really trying to stop it. Okay. I mean, did it have the devastating impact that vineyard owners thought it would? Is it really hard hitting those vineyards? Yes, vineyards are the most important crop affected by lanternflies. And it's mainly the focus now of like extension efforts and things like that. my understanding is that they tried lots of pesticides and they could kill them but then they

the next wave would be there like within a couple a day or two so that wasn't effective in the long term yeah so i believe now the the most common thing is to actually like put up netting um and i think that these lanternflies come in from the treeed areas so you even only have to net kind of like straight on the tree line Okay, so a transitional area. Yeah, like these insects are not that smart. Thank goodness. They just like leap off of a tall pole and glide as far as they can.

And I guess if they hit a net, they're like, thunk, and they go down and they just go back up and try again. And I did see a video of a child walking around with a plastic water bottle and just put it over the top of a lantern fly and it would pop right into it like it was loaded with spring. Yeah, I mean, you can walk right up to them and just like. grab a handful off the tree. Can they bite people? Nope. Okay, I just wanted to put that out in case somebody goes, I was bitten by one and I'm in a lot of trouble. Anyway, okay. So they can't bite people, just like stink bugs can't bite people. Is that right? Right. I know I threw in a stink bug sidelineer there, but I'm settling the hash of my nine-year-old grandson who argued with me on that. Okay. So moving along. So now we're talking about the,

upside. So the topic of the discussion is really the medicinal value of honey that's strongly based on honey do. How do we make that transition and why did that become a point of interest? Sure. Yeah. As I said, I started looking at this early on since I met Ground Zero, Berks County, PA. And the first paper that I published was basically that honey bees don't care about the stuff and they're never going to collect it. So I retract that statement. By 2019, that's when beekeeper started to call. They found this strange honey in their hives. It's dark, smells a little bit smoky, has a bitter aftertaste. It's very, very different from a floral source. So at that time, you know, I was like, well, I better figure this out. So since then, I've been

trying to do my best to confirm that this strange honey does have to do with lanternflies officially and try to understand everything about it. I just in the past two years was very lucky to be connected with a collaborator. His name is Fairhot, Us Turk. He's at... Texas, CNN? Is he at Texas? The University of Texas San Antonio.

so technically UPSA. I just met him. I'm so glad, yes. So his whole research program is about honey and medicinal property of honey. And he's exactly the collaborator I needed for this project. Because previously it was like me begging a lab. Can you please just run my samples? I'm not a chemist.

I don't even know what we're looking for. Like I'm a honeybee researcher, mostly with management. Like I work with colonies, not like tiny lab stuff. So we're working together. He has many, many samples that I have part and he has part. And he's doing the medicinal properties. And I'm doing, I have sent my parts to the Penn State Honey and Pollan Diagnostics Lab. And there, anybody can send a sample to get information about the plants,

represented in the honey, which is really based on pollen. And you can pay an additional fee to quantify spotted lanternfly DNA. And so all my samples have been run through that because I'm really interested in, I feel like there's almost different versions of this honey. Like some are smokier and some are fruitier. And I think it likely has to do with what nectar were available at the time and or what the lantern flies were feeding on in the area. So that's what I'm trying to kind of like piece out.

So I have that information for like 35 samples, like all the plants that are represented. Remembering, though, that it's based on pollen. So if it's tree of heaven, flow them, it's not going to show up, for example. Or if it's not weed, which did you know are all female plants and never make pollen here? Not weed. Not weed. That will also not show up.

So it's, you take from the test what it gives you. I also have a set of honey somaliers that are helping me to classify the flavor profile so that I can describe it to people, right? Who did you get? Who are your honey sommoliers? Uh, so I have, one of them named Heather. No. Um, they're all Pennsylvania beekeepers. One is Christina Newman.

She's, she's the most expert of them all. She is really, really into this and has lots of training with, uh, Marina Marchese or McKenzie, who's like the national expert, I would say. Um, and then I have two others who have taken their trainings. So James Rockaseca and Nancy Simpson. She's from North Carolina. So between the three, what I wanted to do, like, as a scientist, I'm like, I need three opinions so I can form an average like I do with all my data. So we're working together, you know, to just try to use the color wheel thing that they use for tasting and like fit it into, like, we want to come up with like a summary.

flavor profile. As I said before, like the amount of spotted lentrophila DNA in these samples does not seem to be at all correlated with anything that I can tell. So that's frustrating me, but we'll figure it out. And then in for Hot Osterx lab, they're doing pH. They're doing the official color with a spectrophotometer, which is similar to the P-Fund scale, or it's the same, but it's like a fancier machine. Ph. P-fund, sugar analysis, and then a whole list of medicinal tests.

So you want to talk about this test? I do because I want to know what makes honey medicinal. Sure. So what they're focusing on is antimicrobial, antibacterial properties. So one of the tests they do is measure to what they call the zone of inhibition. So if you can picture a petri dish, that circle that has auger, and you cover it with bacteria, and then you put a drop of honey in the center, it kind of infiltrates and doesn't allow the bacteria to grow for a certain kind of circle around where that honey was. So the bigger the circle, the larger zone of inhibition, the more antibacterial it is.

And so they'll run that for my honeys and then they'll put that right alongside manuka, right? Because manuka is the gold standard. And there's different bacteria that you can choose. Like sometimes the test is with E. coli. Sometimes it's with MRSA, staff orias, like you've heard of a staff infection. So really these are focused on like wound healing types of tests. There's something else called DPPH, and I'm going to misspeak here unless I open up my talk from ABF, which I was supposed to do before I got on. You can look at glucose oxidase and peroxide activity.

These are all highly related to wound healing and medicine. So really with the zone of inhibition testing, the spotted lanternfly honey-dew honeies have really, really beat Manuka. Like if Manuka had a zone of inhibition of seven, my honeies have 13, 14, 12. That feels like a very significant change, right? And then for E. coli, Manuka had a one millimeter zone of inhibition. My honey's had 2.25, 2.75, 4.25.

That's like four times more antibacterial than Manuka. So that is just super exciting. There's also something called radical scavenging activity. So like, it's like seeking out free radicals, which are always bad, right, for you and destroying them on par or better than Minooka. Phenolic compounds, like people that are into, you know, alternative health, really care about things like that. And it's just showing really, really great promise. Which people just refer to as phenols. Yep. Yep.

And so I've given talks to various groups. I was at the Expo in 20204 and I've been giving talks to clubs. And oftentimes I have people say, oh, I'm going to try that to heal this wound that I've been struggling with. And I have, like, I got a call one time that, like, completely made me cry because I, like, impacted somebody's life. There's a man who, and I am not a medical doctor and these are not official medical tests or anything like that. He's just like, what do I have to lose? I'm just going to try putting this on my wound every night.

And he had a wound that, you know, he goes to his doctor in a special clinic because he has poor circulation in his leg so it's like hard to heal wounds it hadn't been healing for two years and they're like keep it dry was like their advice right so he puts this honey on every night and in three days 50% healed and then he kept doing three days three days yeah can you describe this is because i bring every time i get a chance to talk to a physician i bring it up say how about honey Yeah, we use that. And they're completely unfamiliar and they'll say some random things. Yeah, that's what bees feed to their baby bees and everything.

And so, well, no, that's not true. But anyway, because it's long been understood. I thought that it was great for, you know, reducing scarring and treating a wound. How do they actually put it on the wound? Like, is it put on a cotton sanitized dressing or sterile dressing first? Do you know the method that they use? I do. So I did hear a doctor talk about this one time at a scientific meeting,

and he suggested that in his trials, he liked to mix it 50-50 with a petroleum jelly just because we're so warm that we like melt the honey, right? And so he suggested doing that and then putting a dressing on it. but the people that I'm talking about just straight up slathered it on and then put some gauze on and they just did it overnight, you know, while they were sleeping. And yeah, it had amazing effects. Okay, so since that's actually been going on for a long time, we're saying now that this honey-do honey is even improved.

In other words, somehow it acts quicker, better, it's stronger. these the honey-dew numbers that you used a minute ago, 14, 15, and 12 compared to Manuka 7, are we going apples to apples? Is it what they're also using Manuka honey for? Are they trying to use it for something else? And then now Honey-Doo Honey is, are they being used in the same way with more effective results with honey-do honey compared to Manuka? Okay.

So, yes, we're comparing apples to apples. Yes, Manuka is the medical grade honey officially approved for use in hospitals and whatever in the U.S. We hope to get there with spottedlander fly honey do honey as well. But there's a lot of testing that has to happen, right? So we're still just doing the lab testing that will show that it should be good at wound healing and then for hot will have to help me get it to some sort of human trials. And then there's a whole gamut of red tape to get something to be called them, you know, a medical product. And it may have to be manipulated in such a way that it's like infused into something and sold that way. Like I don't,

they're not going to just straight up by the honey. Right. It's more complicated. Yeah, they need to quantify everything and guarantee what's in it. That's why I was wondering. So they go after the tree of heaven. They're also on black walnut trees and things like that. Would one tree source, we know that just based on published studies right now, that Tree of Heaven, honey,

is better reproduction resource for those lantern flies. They get a higher reproduction rate from that tree. But since they also go to these others, when will we know, like, if it comes from black walnut tree, trees that that would be better or that we really want to get the tree of heaven and we don't want to kill those trees anymore because now it's a potential medicinal benefit. Like, I know there's a lot of moving parts, but will we eventually know like one source of

honey-do honey for one tree type or one plant type would be better? Yeah, that's where I'm hoping to get to with my work. One thing I started doing this year is actually collecting the honey. do like straight out of the insects. Okay. So it's really fun. You take a little lid, you know, like from a milk jug or something, although I have sterile ones and a couple of pins and a piece of cardboard and you set it right under the butt of

the insect that's just like happily has its mouth stuck in a tree. And they pee out a drop almost every single minute. Like that's how prolific they are. I have video, of course. It only took me about a minute to get that on. You know? Okay. And so I collected it directly in these things, capillary tubes where you can like suck up

small amounts of liquid. And I'm going to be testing them because I want to see what's exactly in honeydew and then correlate that with what ends up in the honey. So that should give us some clues as to the properties of the honeydew itself. And also the fact that I, you know, I ran these samples. through the plant ID stuff, we can sort of correlate that then with what's the results of these things and just try to piece it out. And then, you know, research is called research for a reason, right? It's re, re, re, like, do it again and again, or every answer makes you ask

10 more questions. So I don't know what the timeline is of figuring out everything. but I'm very thankful the Pennsylvania Department of Ag is funding what I'm doing right now. So that's a really big help. The real expense is a lab testing, you know. And that's being performed at the Penn State Lab that you mentioned earlier? Or is that going down to Texas? Well, I have the honey-dew because I had to get it in fall. I was like, I just need to get this right now.

and then I'll figure it out. I haven't quite figured it out where to send it. I may be sending it to Texas. I could potentially also be working with Virginia Tech because they have some grad students that are very interested in spotted lanternflies. And some of the things they have done is they've collected flowum, honeydew, and the insect to kind of see like what was in the flow on, what ended up in the insect, one ended up coming out the other end. So that'll be super interesting. I love when people do the research I'm interested in. I'm like, do that, publish it. I'll cite you. So I don't have to do it. But they only did Tree of Heaven, right? So I'm interested in the maples and the walnut and stuff. But if we could work together, that's my hope. Is there a current publication either out now

or about to be published that is related to this that we could link down in the video description? Nothing ready for prime time, but for Hatt and I and some students are working on like an initial publication of the first like 25 samples to talk about the potential. So hopefully within a few months we'll be able to submit that. Okay. Sorry. Yeah, he's got a lot of students that are really rolling on that. Would you spell his first name? F-E-R-H-A-T.

Thank you. That makes my job easier. O-Z-T-U-R-K. Okay, that part. That was easy. Okay. So other than topically, is there another, I know that honey is, you know, Cite as being good for anti-inflammatory treatments? Like, are there other, other than topically, are there other medicinal benefits to honey or this particular honey that you know of? There are, and I am not an expert, but for Hot tells me that it's better than fluoride at, you know,

keeping your teeth strong. And I know that. He said that because he was talking about having someone with a brain tumor, eat this at bedtime, because when you're sleeping, your body uses certain sugars and your brain heals. And so he was hoping that by eating it at bedtime, that the sugars would go to the brain and help with this tumor. I don't know anything about it. And then I was like, oh, well, I guess it's okay to have honey at bedtime as long as you brush

your teeth. He's like, no, you shouldn't brush your teeth. It will help your enamel grow. And I was like- Wait a second. Even with all the sugars, like we're putting people in bed now with a globation. with a glove of sugar on their teeth. Please have him on to explain this.

I am. Yeah, I'm going to reach out to him this afternoon because he came and introduced himself to me and talked about cursory, you know, about a number of the things that we're talking about when I was down at Austin at the state beekeepers convention there for Texas. And he had all these students with them, like a whole collection of super eager students all doing little brackets of research for him. And so it is a very interesting area. glad that you have this collaboration too because it's a great tie-in.

So what else can we talk about? I couldn't do this without him. I couldn't do it without him. Okay. It says my internet connection is unstable. It better not be. Hang tight. That's why it was lagging.

Now we're on a super fast fiber optic connection that it should have been connected to the entire time. Okay. Uh-oh, was I choppy? What? Did I get choppy for you? Well, I think we did okay. It's still a like six megabit per second one,

but now I'm on 970 megabits per second with no lag whatsoever. So, and everyone loves hearing about this right now. But that's my, it might have been a little chopping at the beginning. So if we could just start over. All right. So, yeah, so the medicinal benefits. Now, you mentioned that pollen ties. the samples into what the honey-do is,

but the way they're getting this resource from the plant, they bypass pollen. So like a walnut tree, they wouldn't, how would we know that's from a walnut tree other than physically seeing them on it? Right now we wouldn't, but we would know what maybe what other plants are represented in that sample,

like what other nectar maybe are represented because, you know, there's bees flying all different directions, collecting all different things and mixing it all together, right? So if it can help explain the flavor differences because they were feeding on Goldenrod at the same time or something like that, that may be something we get from it. Also, once I do analyze the honeydew, we can start looking more specifically for those chemicals that may be present from certain plants. So that's in the future. So is there a prime time of year for honey to honey? Like is it better in spring, better in fall?

Yeah, pretty much this specific honey is a fall honey. So it's August, September, where for me it's usually a dearth. And that's why it was so noticeable because it's like, why are you guys making honey right now? You've never made honey at this time of year for the last 20 years. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so it's a very late season honey. And it correlates with when the adults are aggregated on the trees. Say that again, I'm sorry?

The large volumes of honey-duty honey collected by the bees correlates with the timing when the adult lanternflies are aggregated on the trees and doing their mating and things. Because the adults, July through December, it says, and then egg laying September through December. But really it's August. They're adults for quite a while. They have to kind of feed a lot and build up fat and everything

before they even start like mate or produce eggs. So plus they have to fat each other and aggregate. Do they survive? Do the adults survive winter? Nope. They lay eggs in the eggs. So 100% die off of adults. And so they're starting fresh with eggs, which hatch.

in what time of year? When should, there are activists watching and listening right now, and they just can't wait to get out there, and now they're torn. Do I kill the lanternfly or do I benefit from the lanternfly? What should we do? Do we want them or do we hate them? Now we have a potential medicinal benefit.

What are we supposed to do about them? Well, I'm going to be honest with you. You can stomp as many as you like. There's still going to be plenty more. and the bees will still make honey. So you can go ahead and kill them if it makes you feel better. Save the grapes.

It's really going to have no impact on their population. Okay, so we can quote Dr. Samuel Ramsey and say he recommends violence. Yeah, let's do it. Okay, now you find a whole patch on their cover in the base of a tree that you come across, and you're like, whoa, those are the lanternflies have heard so much about.

If you wanted to kill them, what's the best method? Captured them and freeze them somehow. Collect them and freeze them. So now we're talking BVACs. Ooh, that would work. Yeah. It just struck me right now. Let's see how that just everything BVAC, everything includes lanternflies now.

Yeah. I do have a red maple. I have a red maple in my front yard. And when they were a problem, just every afternoon I'd like finish work for 430. And I'm going to go in the front yard and collect all the lanternflies off the maple. that I can reach. And I would just like pick them up and stick them in a Ziploc bag,

put it in the freezer next day, take out the zip block, add some more. And then I had specimens. Like I like to, when I talk about this, I often bring lanternflies, especially if those beekeepers, you know,

have never seen them or if it's somewhere where they haven't been yet. Like, watch for this bug. It makes this honey. So. And if you're looking to stomp them, right? They only have three good hops, right? So if you try to get one and it jumps away from you, just find it, scare it again and again.

And then by the third time, it's like, okay. Wait, I'm saying, they jump three times and they're tired. Yep. So give me a sense. How much ground do they cover in a single jump? I mean, we have a superhero that can leap a tall building in a single bound. What does a spotted lander and fly do? I mean, for me, it jumps like six feet.

Okay. Really, that's a good jump. Six feet is a good. Yes. Yeah. I mean, they're pretty big. They're an inch, so it doesn't feel that far. But what they do to move geographically is they climb up as high as they can,

like up a telephone pole, and then they launch and glide as far as they can. Yeah. And they did like dispersal studies where they would just chuck them in the air and see how far they could, because they do flap their wings, but they really are not considered a flying insect so much because otherwise they could fly 1,000 yards, right? Yeah, they're gliders more. Yeah, so they kind of, I think they were saying they go six yards or something, if you throw them up high.

Have you done these dispersal, throw them in the air tests at different times of the day? No. No, I have not. I have to ask the questions because I don't know somebody sitting there going, he didn't ask how far they can go. Okay. Now, do they make a noise? Do they, how do they attract a mate?

That is a good question. It's become pretty clear that, like most plant hoppers, they don't use pheromones. So it's not chemical. There's some belief that they make a vibration. So like a sound that we can't hear? Oh, no. So it would be either a really high frequency or a really low frequency. Are we saying over 20,000 cycles or something?

I don't know. I'm depending on you for these answers. I do not know. Okay. But we think they're making a noise that we just humans don't hear. Yes. Maybe. Maybe.

Or so then are they visual, which maybe they just need to see those fancy wing colors and that distinctive pattern. Yeah, the other question, like they aggregate on certain trees. And you can have like a clump of five tree of heavens and they'll all be on the same one, right? And usually that one has really high trigger pressure. Like I told you, they like the fire hose. So do they like try them all and say, oh, this one has the most pressure? I don't really know.

But they all do seem to be on that one tree. That's very interesting. That is interesting. Okay, what else do we need to know about the future of the spotted lantern fly? here in the state of Pennsylvania and elsewhere, or other ag departments trying to keep them concentrated, or are they kind of relaxing their stance on it? Maybe they're not as bad as they thought they would be.

What's the consensus? I don't know that I want to pretend that I know the answer to that question. My personal opinion is it's out of the bag. I don't see us stopping them at this point. like I said, I don't think they're trying to poison them anymore. Of course, education, we don't want to spread them where they aren't already. We don't want to increase the speed of their spread, of course. If they're seen in a new area, it should be reported.

It's really important to know where they are. So for listeners, the state of Pennsylvania, they should be reporting where they see them? What's their response? Like, where should they report? How should they report? report. Well, you should definitely share the Cornell website. Okay.

And I believe there must be a button to press on there. So the website has spotted lanternfly reported distribution map. Where are they now? And then there's a click, report a siting in a new area. So everything at Cornell website is where I would direct people. Okay, so somebody finds a tree covered in spotted lantern flies and they report what happens next? Anything? Someone will probably need to do some confirming with that person.

I don't know if they would send someone out in person or ask for a specimen or pictures. I have not reported any new sightings. That was in Ohio given a B presentation. in a country setting and we went outside there were spotted lantern flies all around the gutter. Those are the first ones I saw in person.

Oh, look at that, you know. It was interesting, but nobody really understood what they're supposed to do now that they see them. It probably wouldn't change much, but, and I know that I have a friend

that owns a vineyard and one of their trucks came in and they had spotted lantern flies in their truck and they just went in there and walked them with two by four. I said, I don't think that did it. I don't know. No, we got them.

We smashed them with boards. So we're trucking them around without knowing. I mean, I don't think you're right. I think that cats out of the bag, the spotted lantern fly is flying, traveling, hitching rides. And we're going to benefit from that as beekeepers. Is that the bottom line? Seems like it. But the other, you know, there are beekeepers that have pails of this stuff.

They don't know what to do with it. They're afraid to sell it. And I just want you to know that all my research has shown that it's safe. It's not full of pesticides. There's nothing in it that I'm aware of that would hurt a person. You can treat it like regular honey. You can sell it. You can have some pretty clever marketing around it.

Why do they say that they're afraid to sell it? It just doesn't. So it doesn't taste the same. Like, yeah. I would caution them. Don't sell it like, oh, this is the same as my wildflower honey, right? It has to be designated as something different. Maybe you have them taste it first, you know.

But I've done a ton of taste tests and 85 to 90% of people think it tastes great. Well, it's a strong flavor, right? It doesn't compare to anything else. So I think it's pretty distinctive if somebody gives you a same. sample. You have a sample there. And what, how would you describe it for people? They're tasting it for the first time. What distinguishes that? Put it in really fancy honey sommelier terms. Okay. I have some notes because my Somaliers have been this, you know, we've had, so what they're doing is they'll taste it on their own and try to classify it. And then we get together and we like taste it

again and we're like, do you taste this and this? And mostly I just listen. But on the color wheel, there are these overall designations. And this falls into, so here I'll show you the wheel. So Honey Connoisseur. Well, you totally disappeared. Okay. Oh, you're disappearing.

This is a great wheel. This is from a book called The Honey Connoisseur. Okay. from the late Kim Flottom. And it falls into the animal or woody part of or vegetal. And sometimes it tastes what they call gamey, warm flavors, earthy kind of stuff. So those words don't sound like honey to me. Right. Honey is like sweet, floral, fruity, whatever, and this honey, and it's on the wheel, so it's not like it doesn't exist in other honeies.

Give me the title of that book again. That's by Kim Flodham. Yep. It's, well, Kim's a second author. It's Marina, Mark Casey, and Kim Flottom. The Honey Connoisseur. The Honey Connoisseur. That's a book worth having, I think. Yeah, it's very interesting. And they describe the whole. whole honey tasting thing and how to do it. Not that it's a training. It's just an intro.

Right. But yeah, so it's, to me, this honey, it has a different smell. It smells smoky. Now, it's interesting talking to Christina Newman because she's like, well, in honey tasting world, it's like a deficit to smell smoky because it means you messed up. Either you heated it too much or you oversmoked your,

super's and like I didn't do that and neither did all the beekeepers that sent me samples right so it's it's it's a new thing for honey to smell smoky um it it is a bit bitter and the in the aftertaste lingers for a really long time which is unusual also um it's dark so like a 140, 150 on the P-fund scale. Yeah, it's a complex flavor that's quite unique. So it's a lot more than just saying, ooh, taste this. It tastes terrible. You know, oh, this is terrible stuff.

Try some. You shouldn't read them with, it's terrible. Yeah, I don't know why people always see that. This is really bad, honey. Take a taste. You're like, ooh, let me put that gross thing in my mouth. Once you've gotten on this track of trying to understand honey-do honey and everything, was there a piece of information or something that you learned that was just like, wow, that was mind-boggling?

Like, was there a real, like, epiphanal moment or something that was just, I didn't expect this to be a part of this spotted lantern fly issue? So far, I would say that I just generally am confused and kind of annoyed that I haven't had an epiphany yet. Okay. Is that okay? I'm like, how many years do I have to study this before I can have a definitive thing to say? Right?

It's like, is, you know, the ash content results were confusing, the Ilanthone results were confusing. The DNA testing isn't telling us what we want to do. know. But the greatest thing is just seeing the zone of inhibition results and thinking about how this could be a really great boon to the, you know, American beekeepers. That's the thing I'm most excited about. Do you think we're going to see, Manuka honey is incredibly expensive. Do you think we're going to see examples of honey-to-honey being marketed as a medicinal at a very high price point?

Absolutely possible. Absolutely possible. Okay. The problem is, was that a non-answer? Well, I'm going into the honey business. I'm just letting you know. I didn't care until now, but now that I know it's good at the Nuka. I mean, just kidding, in case somebody's listening, just kidding, I'm not going into the honey business.

Okay. I can also actually draw your attention to a one published sample. Okay. That showed the medicinal properties. and I will send you that link. You can put that in the notes. Great. And it's really woke up.

Go ahead. It's what got me going on this because one beekeeper sent their sample in, got really amazing results, like beat Manuka. And I was like, oh, I guess I better do some more testing. And then I did five different samples in the UK. And they came out really great. And then I was like, okay. And then I met for hot.

And I was like, let's do a really big study. This is going to be so great. But the one immediate. resources, that one sample. So I will share. Yeah, and you did make this comparison that the honey-do honey in Europe had a lot of material in it that caused the bees to have dysentery. We're not seeing that with our lantern fly, honey-do honey, just to recap that.

So final words, final statements, anything you want to share? And just for people listening and watching, as the publications come out, if you're watching this, you know, this is right now January of 2025. Somebody may be listening to this in the future. We will be updating any new publications down in the video description for you. So any closing. Can I have some shameless self-promotion? Yes.

Do all the self-promotion that you want. Okay. I will be at the Western PA Bekeeping Meeting coming up in a couple of weeks, talking about this honey, and there will be some to taste there. So if you're just dying to learn more, you can come and see my talk. Okay, so let me pause that. If you're not a subscriber, you should subscribe because I'm going to interview Robin at the Western Conference. And we're going to talk about that.

Go ahead. Okay. So come to that. The other thing is I have some extension things coming up that I'd love to share. For the third year in a row, we're doing beekeeping around the world. and it's starting on February 6th, I believe, which is hopefully that's a Thursday. And it runs for six weeks every Thursday at lunchtime. So noon Eastern, all free.

We're going to literally go around the world. This is our third time. And all of the last two series, which also went around the world, are recorded and available to watch for free as well. So please partake because it's free. Why not? it's really fun to learn about what's happening in other around the world to me and there's definitely one other thing I wanted to promote and I can't remember it's terrible oh well we're going to talk about there's a free education sign up for veterans in the state of pennsylvania

well that's a good idea yeah if you are a veteran active active military and veterans in Pennsylvania, go to extension.psu.edu slash military and you get all kinds of free stuff. I think they could even take Bekeeping 101, Bekeeping 102 for no cost. So sign up before the end of the month and you get a whole year of access. That's fantastic. That's a great benefit. On behalf of veterans, thank you for that. Did you remember the thing that you'd forgotten? No. Okay. It's okay. Well, I want to thank you for your time, and it's always nice to have you here. And this is a very interesting area of study and testing and learning new things.

So I want to let you know that we appreciate it. And hopefully we won't hate this brought-and-lander flies as much as we did, but also we're not going to give them a pass. We're on the fence right now. Right. Thanks. Well, thanks so much for having me on and spreading the word. Yep, absolutely. Anytime.

Thanks, Robin. Thank you. And that concludes another. episode of interviews with experts. I hope you found today's interview with Dr. Robin Underwood as interesting and informative as I did. Please don't forget to visit the video description for links and updated information. If you're enjoying this series, I invite you to subscribe so you won't miss a single episode. I'm Frederick Dunn, and this has been The Way to Be.