in a world brimming with complexity few creatures embody harmony like the honeybee with tireless precision she dances from bloom to bloom each motion guided by millennia upon millennia of instinct each act in service to the whole and then There are the beekeepers, watchful stewards
of this ancient symbiosis. Part agriscientist, part poet, they move along their hives with the efficiency of mow, levy and curly, tending to the bee's needs as best they can comprehend, and with the infrequency of a waterfall in the Sahara, sometimes running off flapping and flailing like a penguin on a hot sidewalk. This is their journey. Welcome, welcome to Be Love, Be Keep being presented by our best friends over at Man
Lake. Today we're going across the pond to Scotland to have a fun discussion with a natural beekeeper who's originally from Budapest. That's a combination. We discuss everything from propolis tinctures, to bee nutrition, to dealing with bee death, times to smoke your bees, and times to smoke yourself, and a whole ton more. And in our invention mention segment we'll be trying on Man Lake's new ventilated bee suit and putting it to the test. It's a full program, so let's jump right
in. I'd like to welcome today our very, very special guest, Tita Kish. How are you this morning? Hello, Eric. I'm very well. Thank you very much for inviting me. I'm very happy to be here. All right. I say good morning, but I know it's evening for you and I appreciate you being here. Tell us where you are right now and where and a little of your background, where do you come from? So I live in Scotland, in southwest Scotland to
be exact, very close to the sea. The nearest big town is Glasgow and Our little location is special because we are on an elevation of about 200 meters above sea level and as we are very close to the sea and essentially to the Atlantic Ocean we see some interesting weather here. So it's a lovely area and I am absolutely in love with Scotland but Probably you can all pick up that my accent is not really native to Scotland. You don't sound like you grew up in Scotland.
No, no. I grew up in Eastern Europe in a country called Hungary. And I was born in Budapest, so my mother tongue is Hungarian. And even though I spent over 10 years in the UK, you still can hear this Eastern European route. That's okay. Your English is very good. And I've been to Budapest or Budapest and a lovely city, beautiful buildings. bridges right on the river right there and just a lovely place. We really enjoyed ourselves and a lot of history. Yes, over a thousand years.
So we've been in the Carpathian basin. My country is famous for agriculture. We do a lot of beekeeping in Hungary, but I am not coming from a beekeeper tradition. Also, it's not entirely sure because my grandma said that my grandfather's grandfather used to keep bees. So I do have some beekeeping history there, but none of my immediate family keeps bees. I think you picked up some genetics.
was passed down to you because from our earlier discussion it seems to have come to you very naturally and something that you automatically love and I think some of that DNA gets passed down but I'm gonna just throw a little bit out there for our listeners as one of the things that got me interested in speaking with you and in looking at your Instagram profile and stuff is I don't even know how to explain this because you're your beekeeper and a historian and a death
doula and I don't even know what else fill in
some other ans. Well we all know that you know honey bees are so different and they they do so many different roles in their life in a short amount of lifetime and I am a little bit like them in that sense because yeah I've done so many things before beekeeping we run a restaurant and catering business with my chef husband and then the pandemic happened and we kind of had to reimagine our life and lifestyle and we just wanted to get out from hospitality and, you know,
do something meaningful with our lives. And my husband started to work in forestry industry, so he's planting trees across the UK and I learned beekeeping. So it's been five years with the bees now. one year with my mentor who we met on Facebook. He just recently passed away so I'm still a bit tender over this loss because I just feel like I didn't get enough time with him. We met when he was turning 81 and he needed
some help with his bees. He is A generational beekeeper, his father and grandfather used to keep bees and he still kept bees but then he ended up in a wheelchair with reduced mobility. After a very short season that we spent together, I ended up having his hives. He gifted me a couple of his hives and that's how I became very quickly a beekeeper. And you know, I felt it like I'm
not ready. But the bees had other plans And none of us are an expert after four or five or ten or twenty years of beekeeping But that's okay. We all have something to learn from each other And one of the things that I love the best is just your attitude about bees it's all over what this podcast is about which is about the love of bees and the fun and the joy that can come from beekeeping and being around bees. So I'd like to jump into that aspect of it, but just
one quick thing I wanted to fill in first. You mentioned that you're by the Atlantic Ocean. Yes. And I believe your word was that makes the weather interesting or something like that. Tell us what that means. Does that mean you get a ton of rain or ocean breezes and because weather so much affects our beekeeping and our bees. So give me a little background on that. Oh, where to start? You know, in the UK, weather is always
amongst the top topics. We talk about it very regularly over here because it changes so quickly. So in a day, sometimes we see four seasons. And here, where I live, it is so true more intensely. we are one of the wettest part of the UK, so we see a crazy amount of rainfall and we also quite close to the Arctic, so we can actually see some Arctic storms, not often, but recent years I have to say it happened more frequently than. before and like following the Met Office
report. So the weather is definitely getting a bit stranger and maybe more unpredictable. Yes, it makes beekeeping quite challenging in the sense that you constantly have to be prepared for anything, big storms. big, big winds that are coming from the ocean. I mean, I constantly keep blocks of things on the hives that it doesn't get blown off. Around February we had another big storm. The whole village were like upside down, you know, garden fence, beans, everything
was blown all over around. So, you know, you just never know what to get here. We can see snow, we can see ice, but also we can see heat waves, we just had a week of really warm weather. It just makes me appreciate the bees even more, if it makes sense, because you know, they go
out in weathers that I wouldn't. And I think it's down to the fact that I have mainly dark bees, you know, these are the native genetics to Scotland and to Western Europe, and they evolved in ways that they can just cope with big winds and rain. They are much fluffier than the Italian breed, and you know, the ones that you generally see. Yeah, tell us a little bit about the breed. Does it have a name? Yes, so it's Apis mellifera,
mellifera. the Western European dark bee and they have been around since the ice age so they evolved in weathers that are strange and cold and wet and you know they've been around when mammoths roamed the continent and they have some really amazing adaptability so their wings is a bit longer so they can fly in strong winds.
I find it incredible. I mean, I just filmed them, we had a big storm, we had weather warning out by the Met Office, so we were not really going anywhere, but I was checking on the bees and some foragers were out and about. You know, we didn't go out because it was so dangerous to be out on the road instead of flying debris, but that didn't stop the bees, they were still
bringing in pollen. That's crazy. We had a big wind come through on Saturday afternoon where I live and I happened to be out with the bees when it did it was just a storm front coming through and Wow, I mean they hunkered down as fast as they could we had some 55 mile an hour gusts and And they can't fly in that at least most bees can't I don't think yours can either probably but what comes up what that makes me think of what you were just talking about is
we're always talking about how beekeeping is local and that's primarily because our weather is so local and is different everywhere and so we talk about different things that we can do.
We can put up windbreaks, we can put up shade if it's in a place that's super hot or insulation in a place where it's super cold but we don't very often talk about bee genetics and I think that's because we don't most of us don't go okay well here's my climate so I need xyz kind of bee and I know where to get it and that's really cool that you do in that those are native to
that area anyway which totally makes sense. Man if we sent you some bees that were raised in Houston Texas they'd probably just die where you are I would guess because they're just not climatized to it. I could be wrong but I think that's pretty cool. What else do you find that in that kind of weather that you can help the bees with? One of the biggest difference that I do in my apiary is that I completely phased
out wooden hives. I mean I still have two but I'm planning to move them into a polyester hive, which makes me a bit, you know, natural beekeepers will not generally say that they use plastic in the bees. I don't put plastic in the hive, but these polyester hives have been absolutely amazing. You know, they are thick, they are well insulated, they are lightweight, they are easy
to clean. They keep the bees mold -free, mold is a big issue here, you know, all that rain and moisture, it's really hard to keep mold out from the hives, but these polyester hives do that job, and they are great in really cold weather too. So apparently the side of these polyhives mimic 15 centimeter thickness of wood. That's what, four or five inches thick, something like that. Yeah, so like, you know, like a real trunk
would be. Because that's also something we don't often think about as beekeepers, that yeah, we are using these wooden boxes, but they are not exact replicas of wooden trunks what bees genuinely, you know, choose when they live in the wild. So they're not going to be as insulated as a tree trunk would be. If you're a beekeeper like me, we're getting into that favorite time of year, honey harvest. But it can be a lot of work.
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So in climates like my climate, it can become a serious issue straight away. As I said, I did have some wooden hives through the years and yeah, they just got really moldy and weathered in just like a season. So, you know, that's something that can stress the bees, you know, if they constantly have to battle mold issue on top of all the other things that they have to battle, you know, it
just weakens the colony overall. So I kind of had to put down my philosophy in that sense about plastic and that how we should not really use plastic around our bees. if we are following the natural beekeeping methods, but I think what you are wrapping your bees into, that doesn't really matter in that sense, that you know, like putting plastic within the hive. If it protects the bees and keeps them healthier and safer, then put them in there and it worked really well.
And from a practical beekeeper kind of standpoint, all that rain can bring a lot of rot and those hives can just fall apart pretty quickly too. Do you find in those poly hives that they put a lot of propolis in the inside? It depends on the hive. you know sometimes some hive produces a lot of propolis and you see hives that they
barely so it really depends on the hive. There is always some propolis because I like to put the boxes into hot water and soda crystal you know to sanitize it and you know it always changes the the color and I love working with propolis, so I don't... Is it why you are asking? Sorry, Eric. Is it a good thing you think? It just seems like if you're concerned with the plastic or polypropylene, if they were to put a layer of propolis over it, that would kind of shield them
from it. But a lot of those that I've seen they're so slick or smooth inside that the bees don't tend to propelize them. They tend to propelize rough things. Like you've probably seen some of the wood hive bodies where they've purposely roughed up the interior and they find the bees put a lot of propolis then inside, which of course we know is really good for them and sort of an
antibiotic or antibacterial for them. So they do tend to put a lot of propolis on the frames and yes some on the side, but what I noticed that they don't really spend too much time. on the edges, like what they would do in a wooden box. I don't know if it's because they're constantly trying to fix the wooden box from rotting. I mean, as I say, rotting was always an issue in our apiary. Yes, I'm very grateful that it's
gone away. Part of it is they're trying to fill the gaps, especially if it's windy, if there's any little gaps between boxes or crack in a box. They love to propelize that to to fill it up and make it one big secure cavity. A few minutes ago you used the term natural beekeeping. Tell us what that means to you. Natural beekeeping for me is about a lot of listening and observing
and less control. So when I was doing my apprenticing with my mentor Bob, pretty soon I could see that I personally will struggle to carry out sometimes such invasive looking things with the bees. You know, I could just see that as me When I'm alone there with the bees without Bob, I will not be able to cool drones or things like that. And I even said it to my husband at the time that I just don't think I will be able to do this, Craig. And he was like, well, you will have to.
That will be your job. I said no. And that's when... I sat down in the computer and started to look into what are my options. I mean, Bob was the sweetest, kindest soul. He loved his bees, but he also didn't shed a tear if he squashed a bee. You know, I did. I was there and I slowed him down so many times. And you know, he just said that it's a part of it. You know, of course you're going to squash some bees, but you sometimes squash more bees when you are trying to save
one. So you just have to kind of. And I know he was right, but I also knew that I had to find my own way that, you know, I am comfortable to show up for the bees. And as to say, The internet is so magical, with very little research I found
beekeepers who do things differently. I actually enrolled to an online natural beekeeping course that was designed for women, so I found myself in a very nurturing community of female beekeepers, experienced beekeepers who aren't afraid to go against the flow and, you know, do things differently. I really like that and I really liked how we've been introduced straight away to the BT, you know, instead of giving chemicals to the bees,
we work with herbs. It's such an, I don't know how you say it, maybe it's because I am a woman in that sense, you know, I love working with plants and flowers and the fact that I can make something for the bees. from my own garden and it's just such a nice feeling, you know, I'm making an effort with my own hand to nourish and support the bees, you know, that's something I can do for them. I think When we stop for a
second, because we all love bees, right? That's why we keep them, we love to be around them. And so many times I think we just get into this autopilot mode because we learn this way and, you know, often when you are just like in an autopilot, you don't really think, you just want to like crack on because you have experience and you know what you do. But In natural beekeeping we try to let that go. This is the hardest, you know, like not stepping in. Not being in control.
Yes, yes. I think even, well, in my own experience this summer, one of my hive had really high Varua count, so I was worried. You know, I was keeping a close eye on them, I was putting the tray under the hive every other, every four or five days I was checking, checking and I made the tea.
But I didn't make it when the numbers were high, I thought I will wait and wait and still wait because even this herbal tea is something that other bees don't receive, you know, the native bees are not receiving, that the bombo bees, the wasps, they don't get any tea from anyone. So it is also a kind of treatment if you think
about it. I was waiting and I kind of allowed myself to feel worried because the bees didn't look stressed, you know, that brood looked okay, there's lots of them, lots of bees bringing pollen
in, you know. it's just another day in the beehive but for me it was hard to see but now when did I do my last count was it last I think the last time we spoke and it started to go down so it is less than it pegged and it's gone down a little bit and I'm hoping that by September it will it will go more so sometimes the bees need time and they forever show me that You know they know what they do. Tell me about this tea that you're talking about. What do you mean you make a tea
for them? It's a herbal honey tea that's been created by a German natural beekeeper, Günther Hoik. I hope I pronounced his name correctly. He is quite a renewed natural beekeeper in Europe. So if anybody types his name into Google, you're going to find him. And we've been given this recipe in this natural beekeeping course. And I have to say that when I made it, my bees didn't want it. They didn't touch it. I get all offended because I am not a great cook, but I can make
a tea. You know, I was like, I can make some tea. Come on. The downside with this tea is that, you know, it can ferment because you add tea, I mean you add water and herbs into raw honey. So of course it gonna start ferment. And I made a portion, I had to throw it away because the bees didn't touch it. I made another one, they
left it again. So that's when my chef husband came to help and check the recipe and he said, It might work for others, it's not like that whatever you do, but I know how you could make this recipe better. I mean more desirable for the bees, because this original recipe doesn't include sugar syrup. You know, in natural beekeeping we are not giving sugar syrup to the bees, we
only give them raw honey. But my husband kind of explained that I have to stop thinking about sugar syrup as something evil in this scenario, because sugar syrup can make the tea last longer, you know, it can... it can stop the fermentation process. So I have to think about it as a substance that I need to prevent spoilage in my tea. So we started to add equal amount of sugar syrup to the raw honey and to the tea, to this watery
substance and the bees absolutely loved it. So ever since we've been using it this way but we're still using the same herbs that is written down in the original recipe and last year was special because that when I started to add mushroom extract to this tea following Paul Stamets research, I don't know if you heard what what he's been doing on his bees and with his mushrooms. It's also on the internet. Check it out, it's amazing,
it's very promising. So on that note, I started to get some human -grade mushroom extract and with the help of my chef husband we managed to make that mushroom powder suitable to go into the tea. so that the bees can drink that. So it's like, yeah, it has 10 different herbs, mushrooms, and I also add hive alive, you know, these algae syrup things as a bonus. Yeah, I'm familiar with
it. So this is how you make your sugar syrup into the next level, when it's not just a sugar syrup, it's not just something that's going to keep the bees alive from starvation you know it's something that they will really enjoy eating because it's full with honey which is their food, it's full with nutrition that the bees need, and then you have all these herbs that we are all familiar and we are not allowed to call them anything, but these are the herbs that our ancestors
would have been keeping in the garden, right? These are plants that the bees are familiar with and forage on, and these are herbs that are familiar for us humans because we've been using them for certain things through history. Can we share the recipe? Yes, the recipe is on my Ko -fi page so I can send a link. We'll stick a link in the show notes and you ask a small donation for that too. I don't have a problem with that. This is
so funny because I'm just picturing. First of all, you're trying to throw a tea party with the bees, right? So I imagine they're little tea cups and then you've got your husband, the chef making it taste better for them. And then you've got some kind of Mary Poppins going on with a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down for him. tonic, herbal tonic for the bees. But it's part of your IPM. So your belief is, I can't really do anything to kill the mites.
I'm going to make the bees as strong, as healthy as possible, and they'll take care of it. Am I reading that right? Yes, you know, the mites are here. You can't keep them out from the hives. They are in the hives. We like it or not. they're going to get into your bees' hives. It's sad, it's what it is, but that's our reality. Hey, if you're worried about whether a new bee suit will actually keep you safe from being stung, might as well let someone else try it first,
right? Just kidding, of course. Actually, I was doing my son Will a favor recently, letting him be the first one to wear my new Man Lake vented suit on a hot day that the bees were going to be upset while I wore something much less impressive. I have the new Man Lake bee suit on today. We're headed out to harvest some honey. Last time we were doing this last year, I had the very first bee suit that he owned on. It had mice holes in it, duct taped. It was hot. Oh my gosh, I
was so sweaty coming out of it. The veil, I had to wear a hat under it so it wasn't falling down on my eyes and on my face. This Man Lake suit is amazing. This is an extra large. I'm, I don't know, 5 '10", so I'm not the tallest. But it covers the ankles well, it's nice and versatile, super breathable, lightweight. It's really amazing. I'm excited to go put it to the test, see what it's got. Since harvest day, I've also worn the suit a few times and can tell you it is super
well made. If you're beekeeping in warm weather and you've never had a ventilated suit, oh my gosh, you don't know what you're missing. And I've never seen one quite like this. The designers put a layer of rubberized netting between two layers of finely woven mesh. And I absolutely love the clear view veil. No wrinkles, no sagging. I can literally see the bees better. I wear a size large in most clothes, but usually get an XL in bee suits just because I like them to be
a little oversized. I would say that an XL is plenty big. In fact, I may size down to a large next time around. There are beekeeping days where I only wear a jacket or veil, but if I were a new beekeeper, had aggressive bees, or just knew that that particular day they were going to be angry, this is the max protection, max ventilation
suit I'm putting on, period. What I do believe, I do believe that if we give space to the bees, they will find ways to cope with it, because the native species of Asia, where this mite is originated from, the Episcarana, the Chinese honeybee, they evolved together and this bee species is very successful at keeping the mite
count in check. you know, it shows that the species itself can learn coping mechanism, but if we're constantly interfering and propping them up with these chemicals, we are taking away the option for them to naturally find ways. And you know, I know it means that, maybe that's how we can actually tie in my death doula thing, that, you know, we don't like as our modern society, we are very uncomfortable with the concept of death
and dying, you know, it's a human problem. But the bees are not scared to die, you know, they reborn so fast, you know, they reproduce really fast. And if we want Darwinian evolution to continue to take place in the bees' life, we have to let the weak colonies die. And it sounds really hard and harsh and it's really difficult watching bees perish. I do get that. But we also have
to give them space and honor their dying. Because in the long term, in the bigger picture, that will help the bees to be strong to thrive and take over the place of the weak. So let me make sure I understand. so you believe in natural selection and Even though you're a natural beekeeper you do believe in IPM in some kind of intervention Just with natural types of substances, right
versus harsh chemicals. Yeah Because I think everybody out there is trying to find their way through this maze Not only what they're comfortable with but what will work for their bees and your bees are different than my bees and somebody and somewhere else, their bees are different than that. And so it's just, it's part of the journey. It's part of what we need to figure out, experiment with, hopefully do it wisely. But I don't think natural beekeeping ever means
just stand back and do nothing. Yes, I think that's a misconception that we think that's what it is when it's not, you know. I am around my bees a lot. I spend hours with them. I make the tea for them, you know, so I made so much teas in these last three years. It's unbelievable. I think last year I added up and it was over 50 litre in these months and, you know, that's
not nothing. As bee tenders, of course we want to be there and support our bees wherever we can, but we also have to, you know, to realize that there is a point when you just kind of have to let go. And I think that's the scary thing for us. And we don't want our bees die, but sometimes they have to die, sadly. That's the sad part. I had my first loss. this year, after three years
of beekeeping this spring, I lost a hive. And it was not down to Varoa, it was a late swarm, they swarmed early August, they didn't really build out as much, and they just didn't come out from the winter. And I had the chance to give them a new queen, and I decided not to, because that swarm was too weak to overwinter. Even with my help, you know, they received help. I gave them honey from other colonies, and I
gave them the tea, and they did not manage. In my eye, that was the sign that they are not suitable for my Scottish landscape. So I was there when they died. It was really it was really deep. I had the queen in my hand, there was still like a handful of bees and they were still tending to her and you know in a couple of days they
all died and it was very sad. I was crying, I was you know it was very emotional but in the same way as a death doula whose job is to to teach about death, you know, it was an honor to witness that, that I could actually be there, support that handful of bees with my presence, with my warmth, you know, I moved them into a small hive on a, you know, I cleared out all the, because there was a lot of like dead bees
under, you know, it looked so sad. So I moved these survivor bees into a little hive on one comb, so that, you know, they had a nice last couple of days in a clean space, and yeah, it was very sad, but I also know that it was the right thing to do. I didn't see the point of getting them an artificial queen from somewhere, that Anna, born on my little hill with my weird, strange weather, you know, like, I could get another queen, but what if they would perish
again next season? Yeah. So but you did it with respect yeah and honor for them Wow, it was really moving and bees even when they die They teach us and show us something. I know the commercial beekeepers listening or just thinking we're a little bit crazy, but For those of us that do beekeeping on a smaller scale We can take that time and we can invest that emotion and that's an okay thing. Yeah, do you use smoke? I do use
smoke, but that's for my own benefit. rather than the bees, I believe that whenever I go to the bees I put on my suit and I handle that as you know that this is how I start my ceremony with the bees. So the the suit and the smoker puts me into that mental space that I am coming into the apiary. It's time to forget about my shopping list, that what we gonna eat tonight and so this is now me suiting up for the bees.
So I use herbs from my garden and and sticks and pinecones from the forest that we have just nearby and I start to smoke myself, cleanse my aura, you know, I'm walking in with my intention to see the bees and learn from them and I also use the smoke when I close the hive because I don't like to squash bees and that's the only thing that makes them go away from these edges.
That's, I didn't find any other way, so if you have any method to keep them away from the the edges, please tell me, because it was just the smoke that I can move them away. Just the wet towel method, which I've recently heard about. Okay. I take a towel like a beach towel, get it all wet, wring it out. And then when you, as soon as you take the lid off your hive, you put this wet towel on top and the bees tend to go down a little bit like they do with smoke.
And then you just peel back like a frame at a time that you're going to work on and then cover it back up. That's so interesting. Something worth trying. I had not heard of that before until a couple of friends, new friends of mine from Denmark that were on the show recently, they were saying that that's how they do it, they've gotten away from using smoke by doing that. Anyway, I'm gonna try it, see how it works.
Because I do use like a cotton, well it's more of like a tea towel that I cover the hive when I am inspecting frame so that you know the whole hive is not exposed to the light and so but I never heard of the making it wet would actually
make them go down so I will try that. So you're halfway doing it so just get it a little bit wet not dripping you don't want to get the bees wet yeah that's why you wring it out so it's just damp and probably it makes it just a little bit cooler too I don't know if that's why they're moving down or something else but interesting idea So lastly, I wanted to ask you about have you gotten into the medicinal uses of honey bees and their products yet? You mean beyond the beyond
honey? Yeah, for yourself. Have you used honey or propolis or bee venom or something else for your own health? Yes. So I'm a big advocate for for raw honey. I eat it every day. with intention. I put it in my fruit smoothie, you know. Yes, I love it. I know beekeepers who don't. I don't know if you ever met beekeepers who don't like honey. I actually know a couple. Yes, I love honey. And the other thing I really just got
into this year is making propolis tincture. So, you know, the propolis that I scrape off from the frames, I collected them in this past years and finally I had enough to mix it with alcohol. It's like a high grade alcohol. It's from my village. We do very strong alcohol in Hungary. I don't know if you had the chance to taste any of them when you were visiting. We have some really strong alcohol in Hungary. One of them is called pálinka, which is like a fruit schnapps,
essentially. But when they made in villages at home they are very strong like over 70 percent. So anyway we've been gifted a bottle from our village and we knew that we will not be able to drink it ever. So I put the propolis into, again my husband have. work out the measures. But yeah, it is just getting ready. So you need to mix it and then shake the bottle every day while the propolis and the alcohol dissolves. And I think you're going to get a really nice
tincture in about three, four weeks. And we all know propolis is a wonderful thing to have at home. How much propolis do you use per alcohol? Is it like two to one, two times alcohol to one propolis or something along those lines? What was the measure? I think we had about, we had about 50 gram of propolis and we infused it with about 200 milliliter alcohol. And then how do you like to use it? For sore throats and things
like that? Anytime you feel a bit off, I would, and it's also great for if you have any cuts, you know, you want to sterilize, heal something on your skin, and yeah, anytime you feel a bit off, you have a cold, recovering from something, couple of drops under the tongue. But I also heard that actually the most effective way of using propolis is actually breathing it. So inhaling it to your lungs and that's where it gets the best observation from your body. But tincture
will work too. But if you have the chance to just sniff it, because I keep it because it just smells lovely. You just breathe it? Mm -hmm. So I try to have a sniff before I go to sleep and when I wake up. Speaking of that, if you've never done this, and I'm just talking to people out there, If you've never taken off the lid of a hive and before you do anything, just kind of bend down and take a nice breath and just smell it. It can be a great experience. It is.
And sounds like a healthy one too, from what you're saying. Even if you walk into the apiary without opening them on a nice warm sunny day, you do have that sweet honey scent in the air, I think. It is just so warm and lovely and you just feel home instantly. Yeah, someone told me recently that the best smell there is in the world, the most like heaven, is in their honey house when they're processing honey. Yeah, I
completely agree with that. Well, we can't give medical advice on this show and anything we talked about is not medical advice. We are not doctors. But it's fun to experiment with some of this. We've talked about some other apotherapy things.
Previously on the show I had an experience with something just recently I got a burn on my hand just taking something out of the oven I had read and talked to someone about the medicinal uses of honey for burns and I thought I'm just gonna try it and I Painted a little honey on this thing put a band -aid on it to keep the honey on it Shocked at how fast it healed It's amazing. I mean, I could not believe it. It was a bad burn
and it healed so fast, it was crazy. Well, we healed a sunburn with it when we were just down in... Really? Yeah, so we had a raw honey from the island where we stayed and well, we got a bad sunburn. Even though we weren't out in the heat, you know, we just, yeah, we got a face and shoulders and... I was telling my husband that we have this honey now and it will work, it will work. So we kept putting it on us and we never peeled at all, you know, it just healed
it. i don't know how you do it on a big area though because you're all sticky now yeah you're gonna get very sticky so just be prepared you have to have a towel and put your hands up if you have long hair uh you only need 15 20 minutes and then you can go to shower this is what i we did 15 20 minutes just sitting still and trying not to make your furniture or covered in honey but it does work and We actually, I have to tell you this as well, last year my cat Gimli, he
came home with a big scar just under the ear.
It looked awful, it was... oozing, it smelled, so I was waiting for an appointment from the vet but in the meantime I was like I'm gonna put some honey on it and I had some chamomile from the garden so my granny said that just put honey on it and wipe it with chamomile water and in two days the cat healed it looked absolutely disgusting that thing you know it was oh And yes, two days later, it all closed up, all the stuff came out from it, and that was solely down
to raw honey from the bees and some chamomile from the garden. We didn't need to go to the vet. He did say that if it doesn't fully close in three, four days, I will need to take him in, but it fully closed the wound. You just saved a couple hundred dollars on a vet bill, too. Yeah. Nice job. All right. We are totally running out of time. Do you have a wild and crazy beekeeping
story for us? I did have a swarm this year. It was very shocking, you know, swarm usually happens, this is what is in the book at least, that it happens on a nice sunny day when the weather is just dry. Now, not with these dark bees, you know, they can just go in storm. This hive, they swarmed on a day that was cold. it was cloudy and it was big wind and they got scattered all
over my garden fence. It took me about five hours to collect them and hive them and they anyway just flew out and gone back home you know to the original hive that they came out from. And I was like, well, that was a waste, wasted five hours that I will never get back, you know, because they will just swarm again. But anyway, there were still bees all over that hive. So I kept bending down and picking up the bees. And suddenly
what I picked up was the queen herself. So there was this queen bee in my hand who got lost and separated from her bees. So I guess that's why the bees decided to go back home anyway, so I reunited them after like a couple of hours and I put the queen bee back to the original hive and the bees were so delighted, you know, you could just hear the sound of the hive change. So it made my wasted afternoon not wasted, you know, I still managed to save the queen, so that
was quite cool. That's fun. And by the way if you want to learn more about swarming behavior we recently had Tom Seeley on the show. Episodes 232 and 233 they are very well worth listening to as he knows more than anybody on this planet about swarming behavior. All right any last words you can teach us today Tija and then we'll let you go. I just want to say that thank you for everyone who keeps bees and loves the bees and you know willing to willing to listen them I
think that's cool. All right thanks a ton have a great afternoon in Scotland and I need your husband to make me a meal sometime. Okay I think he will be very happy to do that. Thank you very much for having me Eric. Thanks for joining us on Be Love Beekeeping presented by Man Lake. If you like this content I hope you'll share it with a friend, follow and subscribe to this podcast and even sign up for our newsletter at
BeLoveBeekeeping .com Also, just a shout out to Vita B Health for their support, we appreciate them. Vita's Varroa Control range of products includes Apistan, Apigard, and now Varroxan, Extended Release Oxalic Acid Strips. Thanks guys, and remember, if you're not just in it for the honey or the money, you're in it for the love. See you next week.