Melittology (BEES) with Amanda Shaw

Hey, it's your old pal Alley Ward with another straight shooting episode of Ologies. Bees. Bees. Man, you're worried about them, aren't you. Good minute you've cradled a cup of warm tea, you've gazed out a window vacantly and thought, what the fuck are we gonna do about these fucking bees? Well, first thing, let's get to know them a little better. So now, I've wanted to do this episode for literally

I've always been interested in weird things.

Oh wait, I have to ask you right now, Harry, I'm gonna give you this one. Okay, You're the president of a beekeeping organization.

Yes, I was actually just elected in January.

What does that entail? Are you drunk with power? Most of the time, I try to use my powers for good. So it's urban beekeeping because we're in Portland. It's a pretty big city.

Yes, and there is there's an enormous backyard beekeeping community in Portland.

Do you think that Portland lends itself to backyard beekeeping because it's like kind of cool?

Yes, okay, yeah, and the climate is mild, and I think that people in Oregon are gardeners. They are more adept to organic, natural.

Right locally farms. Yeah, situations, Yes, they're like I'm gonna get I'm gonna make my.

Make my own, or go to the farmer's market.

Tell me about your love affair with bees. When did it begin? So?

I started keeping native bees about five years ago, uh, Mason bees. I call it the gateway bee now because I quickly, you know, became enchanted with keeping bees and planting my pollinator garden, and you just I became more in tune with what's going on throughout the season, and I was always looking out for other bees that were visiting my garden that I had never seen before.

What's a mason bee?

Mason bees are solitary bees. They're known as the gentle pollinator. They're native. They're also called blue orchard mason bees, and they nest in these little tubes and they're super easy. It's like bee keeping for anybody. Anybody could keep mason bees. And they're just they're fuzzy, and they're shiny and blue and cute, and you know, when they're coming back to their nest, you can see little packs of pollen on their bellies bringing it back and they're just they're really cute.

So a non yellow, non striped bee, Yes, they exist, there are a lot of them. So mason bees are this really beautiful kind of gun metal blue color. And in a lot of the one billion photos I just scrolled through while turning into a living, breathing, heart eyed emoji, mason bees appeared to be covered in pollen a lot like little dusty dummies. So I guess sloppy gatherers make

Yeah, So you can actually buy these little cardboard tubes on Amazon or pribay local garden store and you can just put out a little house to put them in, and you can buy the cocoons. They come in little cocoons and they hatch each spring and they you know, pollinate for six weeks and then they lay eggs for the next generation that will hatch out of their cocoons the following springtime.

Oh that's adorable.

So it's a short term. You know, you can only get six weeks of mason bee watching, and that wasn't enough for me. So I started studying really really hard and got my first beehives a few years ago, and it is just spiraled out of control.

This is a good addiction to happen. It is side note, an addiction to bees would technically be called ready for this melissaphilia. And I only know this because I researched addicted to bees and I found that this was a common self professed ailment of beekeepers. And then I looked up the fear of bees and found out it was melissa phobia. So we now know that one be addiction is common. And two, all of your friends named Melissa

One of the most surprising things about getting into beekeeping was getting connected to this great community of hobbyists, professional scientists. I am surrounded by really really wonderful beekeepers and there's been a lot of support there.

And did you like bees or insects as a kid or did you when did you develop an interest.

I've always been kind of into nature and and you know, all that stuff, but it wasn't until I saw this documentary called More Than Honey that I really felt the need to start learning about bees.

What is it?

It's well, it speaks to the challenges that our pollinators are facing, and like there's real trouble. People need to get on board and help. So I started. That's when I got into Mason beekeeping because that was something I could do immediately without a lot of pre study. And you know, planting my pollinator garden stuff you can kind of do on your own without a big investment or.

And now that this is partly I imagine the concern came out of colony collapse, colony collapse disorder, right and just in general, we got a problem with the bees, right, Like, y bees need our help right now. If bees could have a telethon, they'd be like you.

Guys, dial in all now, help would be So what is happening?

Like it's it's pesticides. So I know that one room was like cell phones are killing bees now, but like, so what's happening? So if we the bees are dying and then without the bees, we don't have things pollinated, which is important for agriculture and just in general botany. But like, what's going on with these bees.

So what we're seeing is, you know, bees are being put into nest boxes that aren't ideal. Oh and if you look at the industrial bee keeping complex, bees are being forced to pollinate and work outside of their normal cycle. Oh and and so they're being pushed to these limits and it's weakening their immune systems. And when there's monoculture and pesticide use involved, it causes them to collapse. There's verites, there's diseases that come with that because that also weakens ser immune system.

Okay, aside on these veroamites. Their genus and species name is verroa destructor, and they are like bedbugs to bees. They are these tiny, flat, kind of button shaped, rusty brown little nasties, and when they feed on bees, they drain them of fats and lymph and they leave these open wounds that make the bees more susceptible to fungi and viruses like one that deforms their wings. So these kind of mites, verromites, were introduced into the US in

Them, and so I think that it's a complicated issue. It's not just the pesticides. It's not just the monoculture, not just the flimsy boxes that were keeping them in. It's all of that together and trucking them around the country. That's not normal. That's not what they're designed to do.

What is their normal life cycle? Do? They only work in certain months and we're like, yo, we got stuff to pollinate, right.

It's February, got almond trees to pollinate.

Get up, let's go. So Portland is relatively temperate, and Amanda says that the bees do survive over winter and then they're up and at them in late March, early April, and then by November they start shutting down for winter again, living off the honey. And they have smaller colony numbers, but the summer bees are the most extra they're out there.

The summer bees only last about six weeks because they literally work themselves to death.

Oh yeah, and most of them are women anyway, ryes.

They needed to take a break, right.

It is like because most of the workers, the workers are all women.

The workers are all women.

Yeah, yeah, and so they work themselves to death to death?

Yes, good, yeah, I had no idea.

Yeah, someone needs to step in and be like, girl.

Just take a day off. Once in a while.

Don't worry about these flowers for to day, right, And so, now, what can a person do? This is one question that I got so many times that I can't even attribute it to a single listener, But like, what can we do for the bees? You started becoming interested in apiculture because of their plight, but you went like full hog and now you're the president of association like this and this in the scale of like zero to ten, Like what can the average person do?

I always tell people you don't have to be a bee keeper to help the cause. The biggest thing that bees need right now, honey bees and native bees is food that's safe, you know, Providing plant seeds that haven't been pre treated with pesticides and check the labels because a lot of them are pre treated.

Oh I don't know.

Yeah, and planting plants that haven't been pre treated with systemic pesticides. That's one of the big issues.

I didn't know what a systemic pesticide was because I live in la and my garden is a parking lot. But they're the kind of pesticides that live in the tissues of the plant instead of just being misted over the leaves. Man agriculture is a warfield. There are poisonings, sudden vanishing of tens of thousands of family members, There's billions of dollars at stake. It's like a candyland of microdramas.

Another thing that native pollinators are struggling with is habitat. So if you can have a corner of your yard where you know you can have that compost pile on the ground for bumblebees to nest in, or there, you know, there's lots of other ground nesting bees. So like having that awareness, you can make your yard its own little nature site and the bees will come. They will come.

You don't have to worry about like setting out a party and you're like, no, even care.

Right, you don't have to send it. Just plant the safe flowers, put out some habitat. They'll be fine.

And now you keep saying native bees, and I feel like we need to educate some people that honeybees non native species.

Correct, not native and we brought.

Them over from Europe for their for to use them as honey producers. But can you tell me a little bit about the difference between honeybees and native bees and should honey bees should we be should we be using honey bees in this environment.

With native bees, they're actually more effective pollinators than honey bees are. But honeybees sort of get all of the attention, and they can be used in the agricultural industry, they can be used as livestock to pollinate large crops. But

Oh, so the agriculture kind of cuts them off from the flora that would be out there. Now, yes, got it. Yeah, And so planting things in your backyard on your property that are good plants for them, is it helps them out?

Yes, And having variety and making sure that you have plants blooming as long as possible during the growing season.

And now what do you keep.

I plant a lot of oregano, mint, lavender and stuff that's really easy to grow. This kind of blooms long season. Borage is a really great bee food and it's super easy to take care.

Of and you can eat the flowers.

Yes, yeah, and they're deer resistant. Oh you have deer coming through your property.

Now what kind of bees do you keep?

I keep mason bees and I keep honey bees.

Okay, yeah, So the jump to honey bees where you're like, I'm going in like I'm becoming a bee keeper, like hardcore bee keeper. How did you approach that?

I started studying honey bees very shortly after starting my venture with Mason Bees. But the thing that really kicked it into high gear was early spring a couple of years ago. I was in my backyard and I hear a bunch of people calling my name, Mandy, Mandy, Mandy, got it, come quick, come quick. So we run out of the fry yard and there's a swarm of bees. There's a honey bees swarm collecting in the maple tree

Is thrilling, that's like finding a puppy. Yes, so exciting.

I have never felt that kind of exhilaration in my life. It was really special. And so I called the swarm hotline. There's a hot line that you could call and they'll let beekeepers know there's a swarm. And the sky came and he was like the Sam Elliott of beekeepers, so tough, and he had the mustache and everything. And the swarm was up high in this tree and he gets out

Myself ready before you go Amazon priming a whole be setup, which you can totally do for like two hundred dollars. You may want to check with a local beekeepers association first because they can sometimes rent or lend out equipment, which is very handy, or they can tell you which stuff is bunk and not to buy. One thing that Amanda always has on under her be suit is her bee tattoo, and it covers the entirety of her right bicep. It's this gorgeous floral mural featuring, of course, her favorite

I got my bee tattoo in twenty sixteen.

Oh so this is after you started keeping honeybees?

Yeah, shortly after. And it's funny because I had it done in four sessions, and I was doing it in the springtime, and after two of the sessions, I caught swarms that day on two occasions.

No way, that's kind of freak.

It's totally freaky.

So do you go help catch swarms too? Yes, so you become the Sam Elliot of bee keeping, the Lady Sam Elliott. So you use what a vacuum? Do you use? Is it like a modified black.

And deck girl, haven't. I don't have a bee back. I use other methods. But you can make a bee back. You just have to make sure the suction is not very strong, and you know, collects them in a bucket. But I use other methods. And the thing about going out to catch a swarm, you don't know what you're going to find when you get there. They might be really high up in a tree, might be wrapped around a tree trunk and a shrub. Or I caught one

Sometimes are they agitated? Sometimes? Yeah, do you ever see killer bees? Or I feel like no, no, they're it's too cold here for them. They're central northern California as high as they go.

Okay, yeah, I feel like we heard a lot about that those in like the nineties or like killer bees.

Yeah, yeah, we don't have them there.

And so when you're catching a swarm, have you been have been stung before?

Yeah? Yeah?

Which hurts more the tattoo or the beasting.

The basting is kind of an anxiety inducing adrenaline rush.

Okay? Is that because of the venom?

Yeah, it's your body reacting to it and keeping you from having a bad reaction. But the tattoo is a more long lasting pain, for sure.

It's more like a burn, right, Okay, So it's like a it's a I guess one is a quick poke in the other is a more systemic situation.

So what's in an angry b butt that's not in a tattoo gun is a good question. Let's break it down. So, b venom contains a compound called melatin, which makes red blood cells burst, which hurts, and there are other proteins that destroy cell membranes, cause pain, destroy nerve tissue. There's also histamine in b venom, which makes your capillaries and causes itchy welts. So when bees sting, they release a pheromone that says, hey, bitches, I'm in trubs, causing other

I've only been stung four times really, and last season I didn't get stung at all, which is kind of crazy. I'm trying to be really super careful and thinking about the times that I had been stung. It was totally my fault, really because I wasn't being careful. There were a couple of times where I grabbed a piece of equipment without checking underneath, you know, if I was doing an inspection and I pick it up and squash a

So you prevent getting stung just being really really kind of cautious about where they are at all times, like just kind of watching your back. Yes, okay, yes, and now when they're swarming, tell me what is happening.

So a swarm is like a birth of a new colony. And it happens in the springtime when bees are you know, coming out of winter. The queen starts laying eggs, the colony starts, they get brooding up, they start ramping up their their population production, and so they'll make new queens to prepare for the swarm. And so when the new queens emerge, the old queen leaves the hive with about half of the bees and they go off to find a new place to live.

Oh that's actually, that's fascinating because I always thought that it was a new queen that was like a bye, But really it's the old one.

That's like the old one.

Yeah that she's like, fine, we're out of here. I never knew that. Yeah, And so they go off. She takes about half the hive. How do they How do they decide who goes with her and who stays?

I don't know. It's it's amazing to me that they can even coordinate the move and find a new place to live and have the timing be just so right. I'm not sure how they decide who gets to go with mom and who gets to stay with the new mom.

I had to find out how these allegiances and betrayals were made, and I read a whole article about it, and at the very end it just summarized it with quote it's rather random. Yeah, it's almost like I wonder if it's like a stepmom s she's younger, like up, and so they swarm, they all leave and they just they they're in this like cloud and then they kind of will like gather at a pit stop on a tree and be like, Okay, where are we going? Where we're going?

Yeah, exactly, here's.

The weirdest place that you've seen hive.

I haven't seen hives myself and very easy places, but I follow some professional be removal beekeepers on Instagram and they've shown pictures of one beekeeper showed bees living in an elephant statue, like statue was hollowed out and the bees were living in it.

It's like a trojan horse, right, the weirdest trojan horse.

Compost bins, water meter boxes in the sidewalk. Yeah.

We once had a swarm inhabit a wall of arts when I was a kid, and it was the weirdest day. Was it Friday the thirteenth? It was good Friday. Our dog died that day. There was an earthquake and there was a bee swarm in the wall. It was the weirdest day it was. I just remember our whole fit was like it's very all at once. It was like it felt very biblical. Yes, but they can also they can also find an inn and hang out in your walls.

Right, yes, yeah, it's common for them to like if they find a little hole in this, Hey, this is a nice sized space, it's warm, it's high off the ground. Let's do it. They'll move into chimneys. Oh yeah, which is like, gosh, how do you how do you take them out of a chimney?

Yeah? How do you take them out of a chimney?

So I have a beekeeper friend that has done this several times, and he says it's like a slow strangle. He says, you just sort of lure them out in a way that they can't get back in. But often you have to give them a new queen because the old queen doesn't know to come out, and so it's it's complicated and it takes a long time.

Once you have a bucket of bees, not the bears, ah, do you then distribute those to people who are looking to populate hives.

I keep them when I catch them, and so it's always a race for resources, like, oh my gosh, I just kind of swarm. I need to make sure I have equipment ready for them. And in my first season that was the biggest surprise, was like a constant race to keep up with the demand for equipment. And it's not cheap. Beekeeping is not a cheap hobby.

I imagine it.

Costs a lot to get started. But once you do get started, then you know it's not so bad.

And do you ever have people who are like, yeah, I thought beekeeping would be for me, but turns out, no, here do you want my stuff? I've never had that, so there's not a big attrition rate. Okay, right, And so how many hives do you have? How many bees you have?

I have three traditional hives, traditional Lanx drat hives like you would see in the beekeeping operations.

Uh, what is a Lanx draft hive? Okay? Those are the square beekeeping boxes, usually white, that you see near orchards and in backyard beekeeping with the leaves that you can remove. So they were named in the nineteen fifties for their inventor, LL. Langstrath, and when I first saw the Wikipedia photo, I thought, oh, cool, a lady, But it turns out he was just an older dude with luxurious tresses. He was also a clergyman, and he passed away at the age of eighty five by dropping dead

And then I also have a tree hive. What which is So the tree is the bee's ultimate nest site, that's what they're really designed to live in. Is a hollow of a tree. It's insulated, it's alive, it has its own microbiome that is happening inside. So this tree was in somebody's yard and they had to have it removed. And I have a friend here in Portland. His name

Really yeah, And do you go in there and harvest any honey at all? Or do you just let them do their thing?

They it's a total totally hands off. I just sit and admire them, an ant farm.

Kind of right. And now with your other hives, do you do any honey harvesting as well?

I don't. And the reason is they work so hard for it, and I have not seen them have a surplus enough where I felt like I could take from them.

How sweet is that? No pun intended for reals, What exactly is the role of honey? Or walk me through a little bit how it goes from essentially like flowerges to honey. It goes from like flowerges to barf to honey, Like what's happening in nature?

Okay, So the bee goes out and grathers some nectar and they use their tongue. They're proboscis. It's like a straw and they suck that up and the honey goes in or the nectar goes into their honey stomach. So it's a secondary stomach that they have, okay, and they carry it in that and when they bring it back to the hive, they do this thing called trophylaxis, and it's they're regurgitating the nectar into another bee's mouth.

What what what what?

What?

Oh?

And they pass it back and forth and each time they do this they're adding enzymes to it. It reduces the moisture content of the nectar a little bit, because the nectar is very high in moisture, and so before it can become true honey, they have to bring that moisture content down quite a bit. So after they pass it back and forth, they'll put it into a little honeycomb cell and they fill that up and then they use their wings to sort of flap and get the

Really, now, when what are they using the honey for? How are they using that honey to feed a brood?

They feed their brood pollen. Okay, so when they're collecting pollen. They're bringing that back to the hive and they're adding enzymes to it, just sort of ferment it. And it's called bee bread.

Oh I didn't know that, Yes, bee bread.

And so they'll feed that to their babies and it's a protein source.

Got it. So then what's the honey used for for the adults.

They eat it? Yeah, it gives them energy. It's to carbohydrate and it sustains them through the winter.

Oh so are they collecting it more in spring and summer and then living off of it in the winter.

Yes, yeah, and before a swarming event they fill up on it. Everybody fills up before they leave the hive because they need they need that energy for when they get to their new home location to build comb, you know, because they won't have any comb where they're going unless they're moving into an old bee hive, so they have to start from scratch.

So they're carbo loading.

They're carbo loading, yes, like.

A week before a marathon. And so now where is the distinction between those who harvest honey in those in those who don't. And when you with the Portland urban beekeepers, do you do you guys have both We do.

Yeah, we have a wide range of beekeeping you know, philosophies and practices within our organization. We at our teaching apiary, we have harvested honey from those hives and we have a honey extraction party, and some people do practice be keeping commercially. We're on a larger scale than say, like your average backyard beekeeper.

And what was one of the first things they teach you and beekeeping classes? You mentioned that you sign up for some classes. Is it like how to suit up? Is it like how to be one with a bee and getting its zone?

It was a lot of just real practical information. There's honeybee biology, understanding they're different working parts. The social structure of the hive is important to understand. It meant how to choose what kind of hive you're going to keep your bees in. Stuff like that.

It is a dumb question, but why do some hives look like igloo domes and others are like white boxes.

I think you're thinking of a skeep, Okay, the little igloo dome. Yes, so traditionally that is what bees were kind of kept in for a long time, These woven baskets and they're caked with mud, or cow dung on the outside. So they're this breathing not box, but a breathing atmosphere for the bees to live in. But it's also really insulated and it's the right size for them. It's not too big, not too small. They can maintain the heat, they can maintain the moisture inside of something

And because there are kind of like volumes almost like file folders you can take out right like, yes, I have a little bit of an idea, but can you explain, like what's going on, Like what's the box, Like what's happening in that box?

So in the box, you'll have your frames of drawn out wax and they'll use it for storing honey pollen and also raising their babies. And generally you'll have two boxes. You'll have the one below, which is where it's called the brood chamber, So where the queen is hanging out and laying eggs, and that's where the brood is coming from.

And there is a queen, there are the female workers, and then there are the drones, right, yes, and so how do they determine who is the queen?

The queen is made a queen when she's still an egg three days old egg. And the change happens when they start feeding her. She's only fed royal jelly, so she doesn't get any bee bread. She's deprived of protein during her development, and that is what makes her a queen. Because she's deprived of she's given a totally different diet and so that somehow changes her. She grows differently than the worker bee.

And what's royal jelly exactly?

Royal jelly is this enzyme that the bees they have these glands that they oh, they screet it.

Yeah, so that comes from a bee face and not from a bee face, and so do a lot of different workers like like contribute to that or is it.

Nurse So what happens is, you know, if a bee lives out its full life cycle, it will achieve all of the different jobs within a colony. Oh, and they start out as nurse bees, so when they first are born, they come out and they start tending the young and the larvae. And then there's food processor bees. There's cleaning bees because they like to keep their hive really clean.

I understand that when they make a queen, they'll make a couple of them.

Yes.

Yeah, it's just like a fight to the death, it is.

And so let's say they make five queens and they all emerge around the same time. They will call each other out. They do this thing called piping, and so they it kind of sounds like a kazoo. They'll call to each other and then they'll fight side notes.

So the first queen out starts roaming around making this noise in g sharp it's called piping or tooting. It's like me, me me. Now a few of her sisters who have also been raised to be queens but are still sleeping in. They're little cells. They're just snoozed a little longer. They respond with a noise called quacking. It sounds like a dot honk. It's kind of like Marco Polo, but with newborns. Now here's the thing. When the sleepy queens quack back at the first one, that first one's like, oh,

Yes. And then she has to go out on her mating flight and hopefully, you know, doesn't get eaten by a bird. Oh god, Like, there are a lot of things that can happen. It's a very delicate.

And does she have a stinger or does she because I know a stinger is a an over positive.

She does have a stinger, but it's not barbed like a worker stinger, so she can use it in battle. But it's not like the workers stinger with the venom sack.

Because the barb also rips it straight out your body, right, yes, yeah, but I have seen videos where the beekeeper kept their cool and let the bee work the stinger out themselves, and so.

The bee is able to sting without losing its life.

Generous.

Yeah, that is so generous, like nerves of steel.

Seriously. And so the mating flight m hm, tell me a little bit about a lot.

It's also called the nuptial flight. And so the queen goes up to the drone congregation zone. So all these drones are hanging out high up at the tree level waiting. It's like the singles bar. And so the queen goes to the drone congregation zone and flies as fast as she can because she wants the fastest malem you know, fast genetics. So sho'll mate with you know, maybe a dozen or so.

Hello girl, Yeah, I love that. She's like going to the drone zone. Yeah, you know what happened, And so the fastest twelve or so will end up giving her sperm. And then she flies, she flies back and she's like, does she does she fertilize the eggs herself based on what she's gathered or it's amazing.

So she holds all of the sperm and it has to be enough for her lifetime, which can be up to five years. Queens, wow, live a very long time. She holds fertilized and unfertilized, so the unfertilized eggs are drones. She makes drones from unfertilized eggs, which when I first learned that, it blew my mind because I'm thinking, wow, how does that work? The drone doesn't have a dad, but he has a grandfather.

Whoa because he's what, Yes, that's crazy, that's crazy, so much family drama. There are a lot of skeletons in their closet, especially considering bees don't have skeletons. Well, they have excess skeletons, you know what I mean. And so she makes a smaller proportion that are drones because most of what she needs are female worker bees. Yeah. And does she have one nuptial flight her whole life?

Yeah, So she gets it on and if she doesn't mate, well the colony, like we won't survive. So it's really important that she you.

Know, it's a lot of pressure.

Yeah, it is that.

Can you imagine if they're like, here's the deal. You get one gangbang your whole life, and then you're celibate till you die, but you're never stop raising babies exactly. It's a different life.

Lot of pressure.

Oh my god. And so she can live for maybe up to five years. Oh, I didn't realize that they live so long. Yeah, and queens have a little bit longer abdomen.

Yeah, so once you can recognize the queen when you're doing your inspections, they're easy to find. They have the really long abdomen, so their wings are only coming down about halfway. And they're not as fuzzy as the workers are the drones, so their backs tend to be more shiny.

Why are workers and drones fuzzy?

It's my understanding that the workers have fuzz because it helps them to gather. The pollen will stick to them. They get a little bit staticky and sticky and it will stick to their fuzz and then they can clean it off and sort of push it into their little pollen packets.

Oh, it's like glitter in a fur coat. Fancy when you first see a queen in a hive? Do you get really excited?

Is it like it's like this my lucky day? Now?

What about your family? Are they in to be keeping as well? You mentioned before we start a recording of two kids a partner. Do you do the boys? Do your sons like bees as well?

They liked bees when I first got them. They're bee keeping suits because it was a new costume for them to put on.

Do you will you be keeping suit whenever you tend the hives? Yeah? I do. I do. And there's a that involves kind of like a hazmat suit with a mesh hood.

I wear a ventilated suit and it's three mesh layers that are breathable, but it still gets really hot in the summertime. I wear that. I wear my rubber boots, my leather gloves, and then I made my veil that I wear.

Yeah.

Custom.

And now the smoke, you're essentially the smoke monster. You're like, they fall asleep, they get drowsy.

So it confuses them. It masks their pheromones. So if they're really feisty, you can put a little smoke on them and it subdues their sense of smell. But It also tricks them into thinking the hives on fire. We got a load up on honey and get out of dodge.

Oh wow.

So beekeepers are like veiled ashton kutchers, gently punking this shit out of these bees. So do they kind of peace out for a little bit?

They do. It's really interesting. And I don't always use smoke. It's not always required, but you can tell if they're cranky or just not feeling it. You can use a little bit of smoke and there's this immediate shift in the overall sound of the hive and the overall movement. It's really strange.

And what exactly is it? Is it wood smoke? Is it vape juice? What is it? Fog machine? What's happening?

So we're using like newspaper and wood chips. You can get little smoke or pellets to put in there, and really you don't have to put a lot of smoke on them. Just a couple puffs will do you.

Oh okay, yeah, yeah.

Waggle dances, let's talk about it.

Okay. I love the waggle dance.

I mean, how do they know how to do it? What is it? Tell me everything?

So with the waggle dance they are are they're communicating locations of food, water, or even in a new place to live. And the orientation of the direction that they're doing the dance in correlates with where the sun is at whoa, So they're following the sun and they're using their waggle dance to tell you which direction, Like if the sun is you know, doe east, they'll do their dance due east And the intensity of the waggle tells

Right?

Get that message across?

Well, I mean, what a crazy complicated in advanced form of credications.

It's they're like, I'm just amazed at how intelligent they are. They're insects. I mean, they're so smart.

I suck at charades. I don't understand how something that has a brain the size of a pinhead can be like, let me tell you, I can't I don't know where I parked my car most at the time, Like how did they do it?

I call it BPS.

GPS? But yeah, oh my god, I have so many questions from listeners. Can I borrow you? Okay? But before we take questions from you, our beloved listeners, we're going to take a quick break for sponsors of the show. Sponsors. Why sponsors? You know what they do? They help us give money to different charities every week. So if you want to know where Ologies gives our money, you can go to aliworduck and look for the tab Ologies gives back.

Compartmental tupperware thing that I keep them in, and when I go and you know, do a presentation at a preschool or something, I can show them some different bees to look at. Oh, yeah, do.

You have different species in there?

So mason bees and bees, leave, cutter bees, drones, queen, I have a queen and worker bees.

If you too have a similar collection, feel free to tell me on social media, just use the hashtag my dead bees. Was it weird finding a dead queen?

It was, yeah, because it was a swarm that I had just caught like a month before, and I went out to just sort of check on things and she was dead on their doorstep.

WHOA.

So in the time that they moved into their new home, they made a new queen killed the old one. So I'm not sure what her defect was. Because I have just they won't just make a new queen for the hell of it. Yeah, there's got to be something going on there that the current queen is not fulfilling for them to do it like that.

So some mafia shit.

You know what, It was weird and she was still soft. I mean it just happened.

Yeah, yeah, that must have been a weird day.

It was really strange.

Did you sage the hive?

You're like, whoa, I started chanting and dancing around it.

For still Okay, Julia Rose wants to know, is there ever a situation where you'd need to kill off the queen and if.

So, why, Sometimes beekeepers will kill the queen if they feel that she is not vital enough, if she's not laying enough eggs, if she's getting too old, they will kill her off and replace her with the new queen. Or if they feel like the genetics of the hive aren't good enough, they'll buy a queen that's been bred for certain traits and install her in the hive.

How much does it cost to buy a new queen bee?

It depends on where you're getting her from. You can get locally raised queens for forty fifty Bucks. But I've heard that you can order very very specifically bred hygienic queens for several hundred dollars, so.

Like a pure red dog kind.

Of Yeah, yeah.

That's n I didn't even realize that the Emily Barnett wants to note. Do bees know they're going to die when they sting you? Or do they just sting people and then go oh, I'm nuts?

You know, I'm not sure if they realize that that's the end for them. I think that they're more driven by that instinct to simply protect. But it also makes me wonder if drones know that they're going to die after they meet with the queen.

They die after they mate? Yeah, they just drop dead.

They're so similar to the way the stinger and the venom sack get ripped out of a worker bee, the penis and his innerds fall out. And I've found a drone on the ground, dead and spent, and you could see that he had made it because his little man parts were hanging out.

Oh my god, so he made the cut, but it ripped his dick off.

Yeah wow, that is yeah, beer, it's brutal.

And I thought dating just an on Apps was bad that's rough. Oh you are so fly. I would rip my bicoff to father sixty thousand of your children. Eric Lonk wants to know, I want to help bees in the area. What's a good resource to find out the proper wildflowers to plant for them.

I would go to the local extension department at the University Jersey Society has a lot of resources. Pollinator Partnership also has a lot of resources, so you can find what's growing in your area.

Penguin Penguin and Carrie Steward both want to know have you seen the b movie and what are your opinions on it? Heavy sigh.

I have seen it. Really, I think that it's fulfillment of raising awareness on the plight of the pollinators and raising awareness of bees in general. Yes, thank you for that, But there's some serious misinformation.

What's the worst flim flam you'd like to debunk? The workers are not boys. I didn't realize that. I have never seen it. I didn't realize it's this off base.

Yeah, and the fact that they are so Jerry's bee character. It's been a few years since I've seen it, but I was seething with rage because of this. They he had to, like he wasn't born for the part of foraging, but he had to prove himself to be able to join the ranks of the foragers. Every bee, every worker, bea gets to be a forager.

And they're not dudes.

They're not dudes.

And oh my god, actually like winds up as one.

It does get to do it. But you know, they make him look different from the other foragers and he doesn't fit in. And it's.

Come on, guys, they shouldn't show together.

If you're going to put out a movie that's you know, a big, big movie like that that's going to reach millions of people, get some of that basic information, right, Is it just me?

No, No, that's infuriating. They should have shown him with tending babies, doing some cleanup, doing some food prep yep, and then go out be a soldier. Yes, that's a fine lesson in and of itself. I understand why that would be annoying. Yeah, Victoria Patterson wants to know is it actually good to keep bees? And is there a

Care if you can provide them a safe nest site and you help maintain that for them, because if you're going to put bees in a man made hive, they're going to need maintenance. You can't just throw them in there and walk away.

Fun fact, if a bee's colony is naturally occurring, it's called a nest. If it's human made, it's a hive.

But if you provide nesting for native pollinators, that's also really easy thing to do, and it's helping our native population.

Oh that's good to know. I didn't realize that it was that maybe simple to keep, Like mason bees really easy. Carpenter bees kind of easy.

I don't like keep them, but I see them, I know they're around.

They're so huge. I love them. Now, if you've ever seen those huge black bees buzzing around in the summer, they're probably carpenter bees, which drill out these perfect little tunnels in wood to raise their young. And the females are black and glossy and they rarely sting, and the males are this golden blonde color, don't even have stingers of course, because they're dudes. Now, these facts are helpful

Pr I don't know about that, okay, And I think that generally the wild honeybee population is doing okay. It's the managed hives. It's the ones that are used in agricultural practices that we're seeing the big issues with the colony collapse.

Dumb question, maybe do native bees make honey and bee bread and all of that or is it only social colonies to do it.

So bum bees they're sort of social, sort of solitary. They work in really small colonies, maybe twenty.

Bees or so.

Yeah, and they will make a little bit of honey, okay, But generally native bees are solitary and they don't make honey. But they do, they do gather pollen to feed their young. So for a mason bee, for example, when they lay their egg, they'll put a little pollen packet right next to it, and then they mud off its chamber, so it's in its own little crib with this pollen packet.

That wakes up and lunch is made.

Yeah, that's so adorable. You see the mason bees flying into the tube with the big pack of pollen on their belly. You know, they're they're providing for their babies.

That's so cute, like a little lunchibles. Yeah. Heather McCain, Oh, Heather McCain wants to know if you've ever seen a beehive like in an abandoned vehicle or something cool like that. No, No, I have not. Do you imagine You're like, that's a sweet old dots in and you're like it's covered in bees. No.

I did get a swarm call, but this kind of has a very sad ending. But the guy was at Costco and a swarm landed on his car and he didn't know what to do, so he went through the car wash.

Oh no, and.

Then went through again and the bees were still. You know, obviously a lot of them had come up, but there was still some hanging on. So he drove home. He's like going on the freeway and the bees are still hanging on, and he gets home and there's this sad clump of bees and then he calls the Swarm hotline. And I got the call, and I knew when I saw the description of it that it wasn't going to be good. But I thought, okay, well this is I

What kind of car was it?

Oh?

Some sedan, some sedan. Her level of raw disdain is honestly, deeply endearing. Did the bee? Did the queen bee somehow get caught in his sedan? And ever followed?

I don't know why they choose their their muster point. I don't know what the criteria is, but they happened to land there and maybe she had gotten stuck.

She's like death by Camriy.

Yeah.

Kimberly Brown wants to know how would I start up my own hive and are there better climates to have a hive. I have no idea where Kimberly Brown lives.

I have beekeeper friends all over the place. I have a bee keeper friend in Rhode Island and their winters are really harsh. It can be done. I would just try and find bees that were raised locally. If you're going to buy bees and do your research ahead of time, take some B classes, join the local B club, make some be friends. You'll be fine.

Our B friends pretty cool friends.

Yeah, oh, totally. Be friends are the best friends.

Have you made a lot of friends for the Portland Urban Y Yes?

Absolutely.

How many members do you have?

We have between two and three hundred members.

WHOA, Yeah, that's a lot of people. It's a lot of people and you're law president. Jill Curswell wants to know is the human consumption of honey good or bad for bee populations? On the one hand, we're farming them and creating safe spaces for them to live. On the other hand, we're stealing all their magical juices so we

Okay, Yeah, certainly you could that. I would wait until you have experience reading the hive, because one year might be very prolific in honey a nectar gathering, the next year might be a total bust. It just depends. It depends so much on the weather and the health of the colony. So once you learn how to read those things, then you can make your own decision of O can I take a little bit without hurting them too bad?

You're like, just do a waggle dance and be like, are you vegetarian or vegan at all?

Or I'm not vegan, but my tattoo artist is a vegan. And we had this discussion about what about honey. I mean, the same thing applies to bees wax as well, because it's a byproduct. And her feeling was, I might eat honey from your bees because I know that they've been treated well, but buying honey from the grocery store definitely no.

Okay, So know your sources. Yeah, and John Worster and Jessepo both had the same question, Well, eating honey that's been harvested locally help if you have seasonal allergies.

Word on the street is that it does.

So it gets your body used to maybe those pollens exactly.

Okay, I'm not an allergist, but yes, it's like you're inoculating yourself with the irritant and your immune system adjusted to that, rather than taking an antihistamine to just suppress any kind of response.

Right, that's good to know. I looked up some studies on the National Institutes of Health, and yes, apparently this does have merit. The control subjects were given honey flavored corn syrup and they had more allergic rhinitis symptoms than those given local honey, which, in terms of being in like a test subject in a medical lab, I had to say, like, eating honey seems like you lucked out. There's a lot of worse things someone could do to

In my own personal experience. When I wear my bright yellow coat, I do have bees land on me.

Wow.

Maybe it's because you look like pollen and I don't know. Well, okay, so there's some I think there is something to that.

Apparently, yes, it's just because you look like a flower. Folks. So a yellow shirt around a bee is kind of like wearing a salmon outfit and being like, what are all these bear staring at? Jared wants to know. I've read that bee species will gather in a ball and increase the local temperature in order to cook wasps and other invaders. Yes, Japanese hornets. So what is that mechanism and how do they not cook themselves in the process.

It's called bawling boom, Yeah, appropriate, And so they they'll use their body heat to cook the predator. They will also use this technique if they are trying to kill a new queen that's been introduced. If they don't like her, they will ball her. And I don't know how they don't cook each other. I imagine it's because they're moving around and they're not in the center of that heat sphere.

Oh my god, ball so hard. That is extreme. They cook them. They cook them and then they put them on the doorstep.

They're like out ow.

I've heard that Japanese hornets, that's one way that these can kill them.

Yeah, I've seen them do it to yellow jackets in my own yard.

How do you feel about wasps in general?

There are wasps that I like, when paper wasps. I have a few nests around my yard and under the eaves of my house. They generally stay very small, and they pollinate and they also eat aphids, so I find them to be very beneficial. But when it comes to yellow jackets, I draw the line.

Yeah, are they mean?

They're mean? They're not pollinating. They go after the beehive, and they will go in in numbers and they can wipe out a hive that's weak, oh dix. So yeah, And that's that's a hard thing because as a beekeeper you hear all these stories from people, Oh I hate bees. You know, they were at my picnic and they were stinging everybody. Those were yellow jackets. I could just say, hands down, I don't even need to see it. I

A lot right stripes yellow.

Yes, they're about the same size. They sting, But the reality is that they are enemies. Wow, they are enemies to each other.

It's like two women on the boucher who look alike, but they hate each other. Now, yellow jackets tend to go for like proteins and sugars and stuff. Yes, but bees are out there for the flowers.

They're out for the flowers. They don't eat meat. They're just plant loving insects.

I was a caterer for TV when I first moved to La and I learned this pickannick trick. So if yellowjackets, who are mostly carnivores, are trying to eat your food, it can help to lob a slice of lunch meat off to the side so that they all swarm that and then they leave your lunch alone. But you do have to look over from time to time and just to like check on this piece of bologny writhing with them.

I have an artist, so when I have spare time, I disappear in my art studio and make things.

Do you make a lot of bee art? I do?

And I have my tree hive is right outside of my art studio, so I can sit there and stare at it.

And she sent me a photo and it's amazing. It's just like a tree with this hollow, the edges of which are softly carpeted in bees. Her Portland life sounds idyllic? Is there a downside to all of this? And now, what do you find is the most annoying thing about bees, or about beekeeping, or about your role as president of the beekeepers?

If there was something super annoying about beekeeping, it would be that it just gets so hot in those bee suits. There is no other time that I sweat except for when I'm keeping bees in the summertime and I've got all my gear on. I have yet to be bold enough or comfortable enough to just, you know, go out and be topless with my.

Bees, my new beekeeping and maybe maybe in years and years, but it takes a while, I'm sure to navigate psychologically. What puts you in a little bit of danger? Right?

Yeah? Absolutely?

Do people ever put ice packs in their be outfits?

I've heard of this. Yeah, I haven't tried it.

I don't know. Maybe I should just like strap yourself with their ice vest underneath. And what is your favorite thing about bees?

I love this thing that they do called festooning.

What.

Yeah, I'm sorry, I don't know why I made that noise. I was surprised. What is it?

Festooning is when they're building new comb, so they have to work together to do this. And what they do is they join hands and they make this lovely little chain. And then bees gather together in the chain and they excrete the wax from their abdomen and they pass it up to the bees up top. So they are working together, while in contact with each other to make this calm.

What.

And they make the chain so that it's plumbed to the earth so it's straight so they know and it's just and and the calm when it's brand new is beautiful. It's very translucent. It's so delicate and perfect. Oh, they make it perfect.

In the wild. The honeycombs are the architectural really oddly shaped looks like draped fabric.

Yes, like, what is that called?

What is that call it?

It's it's just the way that they it's because of their their chain, their a little best that they make, so they use that to guide the shape. Now, in the b boxes that we keep bees in when they're building their calm, it does start out at that way, but then they end up filling in the extra spaces, so it doesn't keep that nice draped shape.

I always wonder about that. And inside of a say a tree hive, though it might be.

They can make it however they want. Yeah, there are no rules, that is, no rules in the tree.

I did not know if festooning was even a word. Just look this up and if the stuone is a chain or a garland of flowers or ribbons hung in a curve like a decoration. So if you google image search it, a bunch of Pinterestee photos of cute twinkly lights hung on patios comes up. And I'm not kidding. Twinkly lights and bees are like my favorite things. This episode couldn't be more my jam. Okay, speaking of favorite words. Amanda's beekeeping consultation company she runs on the side is

I love the waggle dance, and I think of myself. I'm not a queen bee. I think of myself as a worker bee.

Really.

Yeah, do you.

Think of people in your life in terms of kind of like different social structures of bees?

Sure or other insects. That guy's a total caterpillar?

Does that mean that get better with age? Yeah?

Cute.

I hope you don't encounter too many wasps. To find out more about Amanda and her bees, go to WAGGLEWORKSPDX dot com, or you can find Waggleworks on Facebook. And to learn more about beekeeping, both native and honeybeekeeping, definitely look around for a local club or try to connect to some other beekeepers online. And as always, links from this episode are up at aliward dot com, slash ologies, and you can follow the podcast ologies on Instagram and Twitter.

I have not.

Unpacked that bag. I'm staring at it. It has been packed for almost a month. I don't know what's in there. Apparently I can live without it, And every single day I look at that Duffel bag and I'm like, God, damn it. I like, just unpack that Duffel bag. And I'm like, no, not today, Maybe tomorrow, Okay, breyebye, pack of germantology, homeology or doo zoology, lithology. Yeah, duology, meteorology, paradology, anthology, zeriology, elithology. I'm the queen. Now match