The Way To Bee with Frederick Dunn - How are honey bees doing in trees without us? Interview with Dr. Margarita M. Lopez-Uribe from Penn State. What field studies tell us.

Episode Date: August 28, 2025

This the audio track from today's YouTube Video:  https://youtu.be/5cFKjpGOYF4

So hello and welcome to another episode of interviews with experts. Today, my very special guest, Dr. Margarita Lopez Yerebe, is an entomologist who serves as the Lorenzo-Langstroth early career associate professor of entomology at Pennsylvania State University. She also works as an extension specialist in pollinator health. Her research and extension work focused on understanding how agricultural practices, impact the health and evolution of bees with the goal of developing more sustainable management and breeding programs for both crops and pollinators. Her research uses molecular ecology to study how human-driven environmental changes affect both wild and managed bees. She has worked with different bee species, including honeybees and squash bees. She's also interested in using

citizen science to engage the public in pollinator research. Dr. Lopez Yerebe holds a Bachelor of Science degree in biology from the Universidad de las Andes in Colombia, a Master of Science in Genetics and Evolution from the Universidad Federal de Sal Carlos in Brazil, and a PhD in entomology from Cornell University. Before her current position, she was an NSF postdoctoral fellow at North Carolina State University. I hope you'll stick around for this very interesting conversation. I'm Frederick Dunn, and this is The Way to Be. First of all, I want to thank you for joining us and being here on the Way to Be interviews with experts. And we just want to remind people that this is also a podcast.

So if you're driving somewhere and you're watching this, please don't wreck your car. Just Google the Way to Be. podcast and you will find today's episode. So I want to thank you for being here and I appreciate because I have wanted this interview for a very long time. And so if you would, please just take a moment and introduce yourself and tell us where you are, what you do. Hi, Fred. Yeah, so my name is Margarita Lopez-Uribe. I'm an associate professor at Penn State University Department of Entomology and I am also the extension specialist on pollinator health here at Penn State. And so that was brief.

So thanks a lot. And one of the things I really want to talk to you about is one of the studies that I don't know if it's concluded or if it's ongoing, but this involves feral colonies of honeybees that are existing in different tree cavities. Is it around the state of Pennsylvania or just please describe kind of the scope of that study? Yeah, so well, the study that you're mentioning focused on, you know, like colonies we found across Pennsylvania and it involved community scientists in the project. So yeah, but the root or, you know, like the origin of this study was actually, it started when I was a postdoc at NC State in the lab of Dr. David Tarpy.

And so I was involved in a project that was actually comparing parasites levels and immune responses in federal and managed colonies in urban settings. And they found that the overall, they didn't really see huge differences in terms of parasites, but they capture something similar that we also found in these other study in Pennsylvania regarding differences in the immune gene expression of feral and managed colonies. So basically that led me to become really, really interesting, interested in feral bees because as an evolutionary biologist, right, like thinking of feral colonies had, you know, like a very, like, you know, like spark some interesting questions,

particularly because, you know, like colonies that living federal environments have, you know, recent connection to, you know, management and domestication. So I was really puzzled by this idea, right? Like, how is it that these colonies that escape these management settings are dealing with pathogens when we manage colonies in apiaries, beekeepers are actively trying, well, there's a lot of variation in this, but generally speaking, beekeepers are actively managing parasites in, you know, like pathogens. And when these colonies escape these settings, right, and establishing the wild, they don't have

beekeepers, you know, like helping them with, you know, like these natural pressures. So we were wondering, you know, what are the bees doing? And so that led to this study, but one of the challenges of studying ferral bees is that it is very difficult to see them and find them. So this is where we heavily relied on beekeepers across the state. So we did a lot of outreach. We dissemination when we gave talks at, you know, clubs or the state meeting. And we just had a great response. We had dozens of reports for the three years that we were collecting data.

And we're able to follow about, you know, like 30 colonies over the course of the study. Ferro colonies. Many of them died. Many of them were reported. And, you know, like we would go and visit the, you know, like the trees or the location where they were. reported and in the spring we would find empty cavities. But the ones that survived were able to sample them over time and analyze levels of viruses and immune gene expression to compare them. So what was the time frame? When did this actually start after people reported the colonies

that they knew about? Are we talking specifically in trees or were they also feral and abandoned buildings and things like that? Yeah, everything was included. So, yeah, there was a great variation in the cavities that they were, that we found them in. And so let me think about this. So we started the project in 2017. So we started the outreach and communication for the project starting in 2016. And we, you know, received the first report that winter. so we checked some of the colonies in 2017 in the spring and the ones that were alive,

then we recorded them as feral because they had, you know, survive at least one winter in, you know, in the wild. And so the same colonies were sampled in the spring in the fall of 2017. And then, some of them survived that second winter and were sample 2018, you know, spring and fall. And we had new reports. So actually, the sample sizes for the second year are a little bit, you know, like larger. So what was the number that survived percentage-wise, if we're talking, you said two winters out of 30 initial colonies? How many made it through the second winter? Yeah.

You know, like I think that the survival rates were similar for both. So that was one of the interesting findings of the study. That, you know, like our prediction was that because of the lack of pest control and management in the colonies, we were going to see greater losses in feral colonies. But what we found was actually very comparable. And I think I want to say that it was somewhere between like 40 and 50% for both years. There were some differences, but it was pretty high for both years. Did that surprise you and went three, four, or five years?

We, you know, we did not follow colonies. on, you know, like the second year for logistical reasons. But yeah, I mean, I think it would be extremely interesting to do that. And in some ways, we, because of this project, we connected with beekeepers who have been keeping colonies alive without, you know, like treatment for breeding purposes. And we know of a few beekeepers who, yeah, have shared stories of colony surviving, you know, multiple years without any treatment. Usually, you know, like there are certain characteristics like they're quite isolated and the colonies are kept very small, right?

So I think one of the key things to keep in mind when we're talking about keeping colonies without treatment is that oftentimes those. Those colonies are used for breeding purposes and not, as you know, like honey producing operations. And I think there are big differences in, you know, like what you can achieve for one or the other. So you're saying that they're people that are doing treatment-free management are selecting from their overall stock, finding the most successful colonies using those queens as their breeder queens, not necessarily using these colonies for production or honey or pollination services. It's mostly focused on providing queens and genetics.

I mean, the couple of beekeepers who we have worked with for a couple of other projects, yes, that would be the right description of those operations. And indeed, we actually, at a very recent, you know, like similar time frame, We started another project on organic bekeeping, and we actually compared the outputs of, you know, like organic versus conventional versus treatment-free for honey-producing operations. And yeah, and the results were pretty, you know, like, convinced us very, you know, like, clearly that it is very difficult to keep honey-producing colonies without any mite treatments. without my treatments. And it seemed like didn't the organic, or I think that study was reported on by Dr. Underwood, is that right? Yeah. So the treatment free, the organic treatments, so management of mites through organics like oxalic acid formic and things like that. And then, of course,

the probably synthesized chemicals that were used for treatment. And the organics outperformed the other two, is that right? Well, it, they did. really outperform in terms of survival of the colonies. It was very comparable, right? And so I think what we learn is that for, I guess I just want to be mindful with, you know, like the scale of operations and the purpose of operations because I don't want to, you know, give generalizable statements. But for kind of like mid-size operations, honey producing, non-migratory, you don't really need to use synthetic mitocytes to keep your colonies, you know, like mital check and, you know, healthy, you know, like productive, you know, like colonies.

So that was the big take-home message for that study. But then we just published another study a few months ago where we actually did an economic analysis of, you know, those same colonies of the same experiment. And we actually see a small but significant difference in honey production. So indeed, the organic colonies in that experiment produce more honey than the conventional colonies. And so when we did projections over time, what that meant is that the organic management system was more profitable than the conventional one. So there are, you know, we do see some differences.

Again, these are, you know, like smaller operations, non-migratory. But it's very exciting because it indicates that there are some options for, you know, like smaller beekeepers out there to produce honey without any synthetic mitocytes in their products. And so going back to the bees and trees. I tried to track some of them here. I live in Erie County, Northwestern PA, and we had 10 colonies in trees, and I thought I would be excited just do my own, you know, take a look at them with an endoscope and see what's going on, and hopefully they would be around. But I had similar results to yours, except that by the second year, they were all gone, like the trees that I was looking into, they were just empty and didn't repopulate. The other thing is often they're repopulating in spring from, you know, managed colonies nearby that are going into these trees again and starting over.

So one of my questions, I guess, is was there any way to identify the queens that were in those colonies that we were monitoring in trees to know that those are the same trees or maybe they had been superseded or they had swarmed and been replaced? How would we know that that might have occurred or not? Yeah, so at the time of the, when the study was published, we did not have that information, but we did follow up. This is not published yet, but we sequenced the genomes of workers of these colonies in collaboration with Brock Harper from Purdue University. And we found some, you know, like interesting patterns, you know, like in some areas of Pennsylvania, the details are a little bit blurry right now. But, you know, something interesting we found where there were some indication of higher proportions of A-Lineage parts of the genome in the feral colonies compared to manage colonies. So, you know, like, there are some, there could be some interesting processes undergoing in these, you know, like, feral colonies.

But going back to your question about the identity of the queens, one of the things that we learn is that we included two colonies that in this paper are described as colonies that survived both years. But with the genetics, we actually found out that the queens were different. So at some point, you know, throughout those two years, the genetics of that colony actually, you know, like were replaced or, you know, probably the first colony died and, you know, like a new colony moved in. It's unclear. But yeah, so I think what you're describing is probably something very common. One year survival, you know, happens often. But I think, you know, rarely the colonies really make it, you know, over multiple. years. So what was the final kind of takeaway from the study? The study's concluded, is that right? So it's not ongoing. Yeah, I mean, this study again, like led us to like other lines of, you know, like research inquiry, but we are not currently studying fair colonies anymore. But I think it was, it was, you know, like something that was very clear from data. And I was actually just, you know, reading a recent paper, going a little bit, you know, like farther with, you know, like what I'm

about to share is that oftentimes these feral colonies evolve mechanisms of tolerance, right? And so what they do is that basically they can cope with the presence of higher, high levels of viruses while reducing, you know, like, the fitness consequences of these infections. And so that, you know, like, you know, like leads to maybe colonies being able to survive, you know, one or two winters, right? But the problem is that then you can think about these colonies as, you know, machines that are just, you know, like helping these virus, you know, like replicate a crazy. levels, right? And so, and this is one of the problems that we have right now with, you know,

like mites and viruses, right? Like the mites have helped deforming virus and associated viruses. Just, you know, these are machines of replication. And we have so many of these viruses in the environment that, you know, we find them, you know, they're insects, right? Like not only other bees, but roaches, wasps, beetles, right? Like anything around, you know, like honey bee colonies is probably, you know, like exposed to these viruses. So, so yeah, it's an ecological bigger. That's kind of, it's interesting that you say that because, so with the fact that honeybees have such a potential for rapid reproduction and therefore gene selection and the next generation just keeps coming out. Likewise, these viruses are living organisms that are adapting and changing,

right? So they're kind of, are they outpacing the bees? Well, I mean, they are definitely evolving more rapidly than the bees, right? Like we have new strains, more virulent strains, right? And so keep in mind that for, you know, I don't know exactly what the number is, but for every, like, B generation, that are probably dozens of generations, of the viruses, right, occurring. So, yeah, I think the replication rate is, you know, like significantly higher, which means that they have more opportunities to change and adapt than the bees to.

That is not good news. It's not. Because, you know, that my audience is largely backyard or sideline beekeepers. And, of course, they're all chasing, you know, the idea that we could someday have genetics or something where we wouldn't have to treat the bees, but integrated pest management as far as physical management equipment and screen bottom boards and things like that, would someday be enough? What's your kind of off-the-shelf opinion about can you be a backyard, small-scale, treatment-free beekeeper and hope for some success as far as, you know, maybe you just

don't ever get honey, but you're going to have so many swarm cycles that they somehow magically survive every year. So these smaller colonies, but kind of based on what you're saying is eventually these virus loads will catch up because they're progressing faster than the bees themselves can genetically adapt and resist so they become tolerant. And so we have these mite tolerant bees also that are survivor stock, but would it eventually they would end up dying? out? I mean, can we go to the one surviving colony that's on its own and have a hope that that will ultimately see the remaining genetics that would recover somehow? They talk about the Arnott Forest that Tom Seeley discusses this survivor line or Darwinian, you know, let them die and let those

that live live, but you could eventually end up with no bee stalk. Yeah. And, you know, and I think from, you know, I stopped reading about the art of forest these a few years ago, but, you know, like up to maybe like 20, 22. My impression from the work that Tom Silly published was that colony size seemed to be a very important trait of those, right? Like those colonies in the art of forest, right? So one of the big findings was that the tree cavities were really small, small. And so, you know, like just the capacity of those three cavities was, you know, like they

couldn't really let the colony just go, you know, crazy large, like what beekeepers can keep, you know, just stacking more boxes, right? And so, you know, in that sense that, you know, like, again, all of this is important for beekeepers to consider the context of, you know, how is it that you can keep Darwinian, you know, like be keeping going. Are you going to be reducing the size of your colony? Are you okay with losing 50% or more of your colonies every year? Because the losses are high, right? And that's something that, I mean, going back to our organic study, we started the project with 96 colonies in each treatment. So the treatment-free treatment had 96 colonization. on year one. I think we had, I don't remember the exact number, but we had something like

five or three colonies that were able to survive without any treatment the three years, right? So it can happen, right? It does happen. But if you're a beekeeper who, you know, is trying to, you know, get some honey out of the colonies or not spend, you know, like hundreds and hundreds of dollars every year replacing your colonies, is that something that you can afford to do, right? And so I think this is where, you know, all of these things are important to consider when you're deciding, you know, what type of beekeeping you want to have, you know, like incorporating your operation. So if I throw a curve all at you. So you have a country home now and you've decided to keep bees in your own backyard.

Do you currently keep bees, by the way? No, I don't. Okay, so now you've decided to. With all that you know, let's start with how would you set up the four colonies that you want to keep and what would your just basic outline of your management practices be in the state of Pennsylvania with a tiny backyard apiary of four colonies, what line of bees would you choose and what would be your treatment plan?

Yeah, that's a great, you know, like I think the first thing that I would do would be to, and this is very hard, you know, like from a practical, you know, like perspective, but I think it's an important consideration, right? Like one needs to think about whether your landscape has enough flowers to keep your four colonies, plus all the other bees that are out there, right? So I think that's something that I call, you know, be keeping a stewardship

for the environment, right? Like, you need to be sure that you can keep your colonies, you know, alive and give you honey, but also, you know, be friendly with everything, you know, else that is using flowers. So, you know, let's assume you have, you know, like a place with lots of floral resources. I would definitely buy, go for, you know, for queens locally, you know, like produced, right? We also have some research indicating that local queens are better than things that come from other places, at least, you know, like here. So that would be my other recommendation.

And I would definitely stick to organic treatment. So, you know, at least one treatment a year, right? you know, like late summer, that's generally a must. But doing monthly mite washes and when your mites are above threshold, rotate organic treatments. Now, what do you consider the threshold for treatment to be? Usually it's like two mites per hundred colonies. Two mites per hundred colonies? Sorry, per hundred for hundred mites, per hundred bees, not colonies.

Sorry, two mites for 100. Two mines and 100 colonies, I would take it. I'm sorry. That's like that. Yeah. And so for your preferred organic treatment, is that kind of match with Dr. Underwood that you would use Formic Pro? Or what's your impression about exhalic acid?

Or do you know anything about the new application of extended release of Roxanne, for example, that people are using the strips? Yeah. You know, I've heard, I have not, you know, like use them myself. but I've heard mixed results. And so I think the keepers need to be very careful because, and I don't know if it is driven by climate, you know, like, or the type of B that you use.

I don't know exactly what it is. But it seems to work really well for some and not work at all for others. So, yeah, I think, you know, like we probably need more, more experiments to inform, you know, like our local begin. keeping community about whether those treatments are effective or not. And you mentioned Purdue. Are you involved at all with the Purdue ankle biter genetic line? Yeah, we were, you know, we collaborated with Brock on actually a queen comparison project

that, you know, included some ankle biter survivor stock and some Pennsylvania survivor stock And that's the study that, you know, like for us was clear that our regional queens, broadly speaking, regional, right? Like outperform compared to queens that we bought from California or Georgia. So now let's backtrack to the pests that you found because we made reference to pests loading in these feral colonies that were in the trees or other cavities that just weren't managed by people. what kind of pests are we talking strictly the bro-destructor mite? Are we talking about other pests as well? Well, I wish we were able to count mites, right? But for the thorough colonies that are really limited, you know, like making observations

without disrupting the colony is very difficult. So what we did was basically collect samples of workers, foragers, coming in and out of the cavities. And then we use molecular techniques to quantify several viruses and immune genes as well. And so indirectly, what I can tell you is that in general, the feral colonies had higher levels of deforming virus, which indirectly tells you that probably my levels were also, you know, like higher in feral colonies, as you would expect. So, yeah, that's how we figure out that, you know, like those colonies had a higher pathogen burden. And this is where I think beekeepers and those that manage or don't manage honeybees kind of come under fire with those who are trying to protect the native populations of bees.

being that the deformed wing virus is not species specific, so it can move from our honeybees to some of the native bee populations. Did you do any kind of studies or do you know of any studies in the state of Pennsylvania regarding how DWV may be spreading and what, you know, natural bees are being impacted? Well, I, yes, we have, we have looked at that. And, you know, like, I don't want to downplay the importance of controlling before my virus. Because as we all experienced during COVID, right, like we don't know when a new, you know, like, variant of a virus is going to become pathogenic and can, you know, like, end. that being a pandemic and, you know, like killing a lot of, you know, like individuals. So, so, you know, it is important to control the forming virus because of the potential for,

you know, like that spread. But in my research, what we have observed is that deforming virus is very prevalent. And what that means is that when we look at other bees, we find molecules of deforming virus in other bees. But when we looked at the infection levels, right, like whether the bees really sick and the virus is replicating in other bees, we find like weaker evidence of that. Right. And so I think that that's something that is sometimes, you know, is not really well explained in the literature.

There are a lot of inferences about risks, about these, you know, pathogens spill over, and and, you know, like problem with diseases from honeybees to other bees, I think there is a potential risk, right, of pathogen spill over. But for the most part, right, like one of the big differences is that there are no other bees that can, that have varroa mites, you know, like attacking them or using them as hosts. And that is a big problem with deforming virus in honeybees. right, that we have the mites helping the virus replicate in honeybees. The other bees are getting, you know, like sometimes infected through kind of like oral

fecal route, which means that, yes, you know, like sometimes the virus can find bees and, you know, like they can replicate, but the infection levels never get like what we see in honeybees, right? So I don't know if that is a common answer to your question, but That leads me to a follow-on question. So when we look at those virus loads, the reform wing virus on other bees, how are we sampling that? Are we getting that from a bee that's out on flowers? Are we getting into their nest material? And what about Vespidae?

What about the was species and things that also may have it? Yeah. So in general, bumble bees have been much better, you know, studied. And I think because bumblebees and honeybees are closer evolution, you know, like they share a more recent common ancestor than, you know, like with other bees. There is evidence that the four wing virus can, you know, like use bumble bees as hosts and replicate and have, you know, like very, you know, like negative effects on bumble bees. but you know for other bees some studies have actually done what we did which was assessing the levels of these viruses in in non honey bees and non-bubble bees but a lot of the literature is only giving information about the presence or absence of the virus

which again given the number of of, you know, like molecules of these virus that are, you know, are out there because of the mites. It doesn't surprise me that we're finding it everywhere, even in wasps. So regarding your question of wasps, I don't remember from the literature seeing a study is quantifying viral levels in wasps. I know they have been detected in wasps. But I don't know if there is strong evidence that they can really get infected with the virus. because I was taking apart a wasp nest, as many people do, the yellow jackets, and I found deformed wing virus on some of the specimens that were in the nest.

Oh, wow. I did video it, by the way. If you want that, I'd be happy to shoot it your way. If anybody's interested in a lot of them. You should have collected samples and some of them next time. Now that I know. But, yeah, I was very curious because it was clearly not just that. that it had engaged and been chewed by another wasp or something.

It was a lack of development of the wing. So it was very interesting to me. And that was a few years ago, but I record, you know, photographically and with video everything. So do you actually go out in the field very much? Or are you stuck at the university? What are you doing? I'm trying to get more to the field.

And usually my field work is based actually in Colombia where I run an undergraduate and is a funded project where I take students from the U.S. to Colombia to do research for eight weeks. So that's usually the only time when I'm, you know, like dedicated to doing research with students. What kind of bees are you working within Colombia? Still apis malifera? Are you looking at those stingless bees and things down there? What are we doing? Yeah, so it's a lot of wild bee research. You know, like working with honeybees in Columbia is not pleasant. Let me tell you that because they're super defensive. So, you know, it requires a lot of, that's something that I don't think, you know, like a student who that has

not experienced, you know, like with bee research would be, yeah, I think it would be difficult to get students excited about bee research when you have, you know, thousands of bees trying to stay you anytime you open a colony. Can you give us a story about when you encountered a highly defensiveness and what happened, how you managed that, how were you addressed, what happened to the students that might have been with you? What should people know if they encounter? Because this actually in some parts of the United States is on the rise. So people are engaging with honeybees that are behaving disproportionately aggressive. We used to say, just defense. but I don't know, this is

starting, this is bridging into aggressive territory. Can you share a little bit about? Yeah, I mean, so again, I have not really done, you know, research with colonies, with honeybee colonies in Colombia, but I did actually my first ever, you know, course about beekeeping was in Colombia with, you know, African-I's bees. And, you know, you need to wear a, you know,

like full-body bee suit. and you need to tape, you know, your wrists and your ankles. And, you know, like, I think the experience as a novice in, you know, like the world of honeybees was, you know, my adrenaline was, you know, through the roof the entire time that, you know, I was manipulating colonies because, you know, like, and you see the stingers in your veil, you know, like, it's, yeah, it is overwhelming. Yeah, yeah. And could you smell bananas? Did you smell that banana smell? Yes. Yeah. That is very interesting when you get them angry enough that there's enough of that in the air that really does smell like bananas. Yes.

But it has nothing to do with actual banana oil, right? It just happens to be because based on that, people have said, don't eat bananas around bees. You'll get a response from them. So how do you, how do they calm bees when, because clearly they're trying to manage these really hot, colonies. What is their best kind of practice for keeping them calm? I mean, you know, it is less management intensive, right? Like beekeepers don't, you know, it's minimal, right? Like you go, you extract honey, you do, you know, like you check your colonies every now and then, but you don't do a two, every two week might assessment, you know, like or anything like that.

and they have to be, you know, like pretty separated, you know, like spatially, right? It is a very different world to work with highly defensive bees. And so I realize this isn't a focus of your study. But I'm curious, just based on the feedback that I hear from people that are thinking, well, those bees don't have any mites and those bees don't have any pathogens. And so it's a tradeoff. You get these really hostile bees that will kill all. all your livestock, but they are healthier.

Is there any truth to the Africanized genetics being more resistant to varroa mites and the pathogens that they carry? Well, so, okay, so here's the thing, right? Resistance is a word that is commonly used, but is often misused, right? Because resistance implies that the colonies or, you know, the host. can reduce the level of a parasite, right? And so in my experience, and what I hear from beekeepers is Varroa is there, right? It can be a problem, but often, you know, like beekeepers are not treating as frequently as

beekeepers need to treat here, right? And so I honestly think that there is a need to, you know, like have more research, understanding mechanisms for, you know, like why that is the case. I guess I can tell you from the shared experiences with, you know, beekeepers in Colombia that varomites are less of a problem for beekeepers there than, you know, here. So whether that means that they are more resistant or not. I mean, they're there, right? It is not like Varroa gets into an African-Iced colony and, you know, does it reproduce?

No, they're there. You know, they get infected. Some get really high levels. But, yeah, it is less of a problem for beekeepers in that region. Now, are there colonies kept smaller? They have behaviors that are, you know, some of the European bees don't. example, supersedeer, no, usurpation. Yeah.

It's something that the Africanized genetics are prone to do. Do they stay smaller because they swarm more frequently? I think so. I, you know, like thinking of, you know, like, apiaries I've been to, I, you know, I don't think I have ever seen the size of colonies that we can reach here in Pennsylvania. I have a, yeah, I have a photo of, you know, like Charlie Worsack. I don't know if you know him.

Oh, yeah. Charlie's in our club. Yep. Yeah. So Charlie had, you know, like for one of our experiments doing the queen comparison, he had like, I don't know, eight, like, I think something like eight, you know, boxes piled up in one of his colonies. Produced an incredible amount of honey that year. So, yeah, I don't think, you know, like bees in South America could get that big.

No, I don't think I would want a colony that size personally. Now, so back to the, if you had your own backyard collection of bees, what style of hive would you prefer to keep based on what you've seen and know? Would you do a vertical Langstroth? Would you have horizontal Langstrath? Do you maybe think about Lance hives or top bar hives or what would be your preferred? Yeah, I think what I know best is, you know, the vertical Langstrath. Yeah. Yeah, we are just, you know, we just completed an experiment.

And I don't want to like say the wrong thing because I have not run stats on the data, but we compared honey production in single versus doubles. And what do you guess what we found? Yes. Yes. Any guesses? Which qualities produce more honey? The single breed.

You got it. Yeah. They seem to produce more honey. Yeah. I'm cheating because Steve Rapasky. Well, you know, Steve Rapasky was the instigator of this experiment because we were very skeptical of, you know, like, you know, like we need an experiment, you know, like showing this. But I think, you know, Steve doesn't know this, but I think you will be happy to see our results. Okay.

He does it out of pure convenience because he just wants all his brood in one deep box. Yeah. And he's got a queen excluder and everything's above that. And he's south of us here. so I'm in a tougher climate. I'm doing, I have one colony that has two, it's a two colony system, two queens, central, shared super. And I regret doing it because now I have to do work

and take honey off when I don't want to. But those are highly productive for the single brood. So when will that study be published? You know, we have the data, but I cannot predict You know, like there are so many things that, you know, for example, this queen comparison study, we have not published it. And we have so much valuable information for beekeepers. So, yeah, who knows? But hopefully soon.

Okay. So for those who are listening and watching, when these studies publish, you will find that link down in the video description. And then you can follow up and do a deeper dive. So that'll be cool. So what are you focused on? on now. Is that your current study? Is the brood box management size? What else is going on? Yeah. So right now, the size of my honeybee research is, you know, like shrinking and other aspects of my research are, you know, like going in the opposite direction. But the main honeybee

project is around organic beekeeping. So basically we have kind of like the phase two of these project where, you know, Project One was all about organic beekeeping management and whether we could do that successfully and whether the profitability of something like that would be, you know, like something attractive for beekeepers. And we show that you can do it and that it is highly profitable. Then the next question is, can you actually get a story? certification for your products if you're using organic bekeeping management in your colony, right? And that is mainly driven by existing regulations, you know, like coming for the organic board standards. And they, you know, like one of the requirements is these, you know, like huge

area that needs to be pesticide free or your colonies to be any product of your colony to be certified organic. So, yeah, so we're focusing on studying foraging, because, you know, like one of the things that we would like to demonstrate to policymakers in the world of, you know, organics is that the use of maximum foraging distance for honeybees is probably not really relevant for you know, like the production of organic honeybee products, right? So what I mean by that is that the fact that honeybees can fly very far away from the colony does not mean that most foragers are doing that, right? And we're collaborating with Maggie Cuvion from Virginia Tech,

who has done beautiful studies on honeybee foraging behavior. and all of the, like her studies show that most bees are really foraging about 800 meters outside of the colony, right? So he's not 10 kilometers like, you know, like what these people are basing on, you know, like all the policy. And so, yeah, so we're, you know, like studying foraging behavior. And one of the things that we wanted to study was whether smaller colonies, because they would have, you know, like lower energetic demands because they have, you know, like smaller brood, would actually forage, you know, closer to the colony or not. I don't have, you know, an answer for you about that yet, but that was the, the premise of, you know, like the study comparing single versus doubles. But yeah, we are, you know, like the results of this study are very interesting. And I don't want to spoil it. But I think we have some beta suggesting. that it is probably feasible to establish organic beekeeping operations in continental U.S.

And we just need, you know, like support from policymakers and actually from beekeepers because one of the things that we need to do and we haven't really been very good at it yet is we need support from stakeholders to demonstrate to the organic bore. but there's enough interest in organic beekeeping for them to even pay attention to any of these research. Yeah, and just for some of the more beginner, you know, listeners, they're wondering what we're talking about, but the point of getting an organic certified honey,

like we don't see that on the shelf. And the reason being what you just described, they speculate that, well, they can go two and a half miles in every direction. So that means every floral source they would encounter within that range would have to be certified organic as well. well, otherwise you can't get it. So then we find out, well, there's no place like that where we're not in range somewhere where they're engaging with something not organic.

So you're saying this may change that the regulations or the parameters as far as how we prove that. Do you think that's also going to improve based on the new technology in honey testing that you would be able to know if they were visiting plants that were not organic? because now they have these nuclear test systems where they can find components in the honey with greater accuracy than they ever have in the past. So I wonder if that actually is a quicker way to certify someone's honey. If they're a sideliner or 500 or more colonies, then that kind of testing would get you that label through our... Well, this is something that I've learned with the very few interactions with policymakers in the world of organic agriculture.

the emphasis is on the process and not on the product. Okay. So you do need to follow standards that they define. And sometimes they test products, but they cannot be testing everything. So this is why the emphasis is on the process and not the product. So we do need to have, we do need to convince them that, you know, like the data and the science shows that you get close. comparable products here in Pennsylvania or New York State under certain parameters compared to, you know, like things that we are importing and have the certified organic label.

So you mentioned that your studies and focus on honeybees is shrinking and you have other areas of interests that are expanding. What are you moving into? What are you looking at? It's a little bit all over the place, but we have you know like there are like three major

areas in addition to organic beekeeping in my lab at this time one is we are we have been running a monitoring project for wild bees across the state and basically we have been

collaborating with community scientists across the state to characterize bee biodiversity, you know, across space and time. So now we have a much better understanding of who are the wild bees of Pennsylvania and, you know, where they're found. Actually, I have a flood. We just published this new book. Yeah, I was just reaching for mine to have a bunch of those here. Yeah. So, well, you know, like this is, this is a major, you know, like a lot of effort goes into that project for a lot of reasons. We're collecting a lot of interesting data. And we are about to seek funding to basically launch these projects at a national scale. So yeah, that is taking

a lot of, you know, like my effort and, you know, attention at the moment. We also do a lot of work with the squash bees, as you mentioned at the beginning, because those bees are extremely interested. we are actually demonstrating that the bees have adapted to the recent changes in the landscape as, you know, agriculture has expanded and intensified. So it's kind of a very interesting model system to, you know, demonstrates that bees can adapt to add and that, you know, not for every species agriculture is necessarily bad. and, you know, like, we can have, you know, like both things coexisting. And we are doing a lot of work with pathogens as well. So that's the third other theme. We're trying to do all the boring work that people don't want to do,

trying to understand what these pathogens are really doing in other bees that are not honeybees. And so that's the other major research theme. So then how are you selecting your? citizen scientists that are going to participate in this kind of information or sampling? We're very biased. Because, you know, like, I feel like of, I've done, I mean, and we've talked about at least two other projects where, you know, we've had participation from the public. But, you know, working with the beekeepers is great because beekeepers are invested in,

you know, like the science that we are, or the questions that we're trying to. to answer. In a similar way for all of these projects with Wildbees, we have been working with master gardeners who, you know, dedicated volunteers. They, you know, they spend a lot of time working with us on these projects. So we have been able to demonstrate that you can work with community scientists and not compromise the quality of the data, which is always the challenge with community science and some people are very skeptical of it for that reason. Okay. All right.

Well, I'm not going to keep you a lot longer, but I would like you to share one thing about yourself that most people will not know. Some hobbies, some skills, some talent, something that you do or know about that people normally would not assign to you. I don't know. I guess I speak three languages. I play the piano and I recently became a weightlifter. You're a weight lifter?

I want to focus on... What's a new thing. So are you... All right. Why are you lifting weights? Is this to put off osteoporosis? What are you doing? Are you a power lifter?

What's going on? Yes, I started lifting weights about a year. ago and I'm completely, you know, like hooked with that. And why I'm doing it, I guess I've read science that, you know, says that it is important to build muscle to have not only to not live longer, but live better. Right. So that's my motto for this. Quality of life. Absolutely. But you don't, so you don't want to give us your combined lift score or anything like that. No, you know, I'm, I am a I am an amateur, but, you know, like, I'm very dedicated to it. Okay. Well, I really want to thank you for your time today and for sharing all that's going on

and give us some insights to what your world is as far as research goes and what we're finding out. And I hope that people will come back and look in the comment section and will link studies that you have already published as well as when the others finally get in the public arena here that we'll be able to learn much more. So thanks so much for your time today. Thank you, Fred. Yep, absolutely.