Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's me Josh, and for this week's selects,
Speaker 1: I've chosen our episode on Beekeeping from October two. After
Speaker 1: re listening to this one, I dare say that it
Speaker 1: could be my favorite episode, and not just because I've
Speaker 1: been hoping to use dare say in a sentence lately.
Speaker 1: Sure it doesn't have the sexy thrills of the dB
Speaker 1: Cooper Live episode or the loveability of the Elephant episode,
Speaker 1: but it's got a mellow homeliness that makes me feel
Speaker 1: like I'm wearing a comfy sweater, sipping tea at the
Speaker 1: kitchen table, and a beautiful mourn. I hope it does
Speaker 1: the same for you. Enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Should Know,
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles w Chuck Bryant,
Speaker 1: there's Jerry over there, and this is Stuff you should Know.
Speaker 1: The Mellow Gold Edition were talking about Beck Ah, Yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: but I think beck was really talking about a m
Speaker 1: soft rock from the seventies, which I gotta say is
Speaker 1: like right up my alley these days. I love that.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've always loved it, but I'm I'm really
Speaker 1: on a streak right now. Yeah, you were championing, uh
Speaker 1: the yacht rock thing, which I just I discovered Kenny Loggins,
Speaker 1: like I knew Kenny Loggins only from the top Gun era,
Speaker 1: and then that one Caddyshack song, which I was not
Speaker 1: crazy about. But then even further back, before the caddy
Speaker 1: Shack thing, it was just beautiful stuff Loggins and Messina. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I've heard any Messina stuff, so
Speaker 1: I think I'm catching him right after the Messina part,
Speaker 1: right before the Caddyshack part. Okay, that's pretty narrow Kenny
Speaker 1: Loggins window, that's niche right there. But anyway, I'm talking
Speaker 1: about mellow gold because I think you and I can
Speaker 1: both agree, Chuck, that even just reading about bee keeping,
Speaker 1: let alone actually engaging in the act of bee keeping,
Speaker 1: is about the most mellow, just relaxing thing that you
Speaker 1: can possibly do on this planet. I think it's just
Speaker 1: above bird watching and birding because birds don't sting you. Okay,
Speaker 1: So so it's less mellow than bird watching. No, no, no, yes,
Speaker 1: it's less mellow. I think bird watching is the most
Speaker 1: mellow thing on the planet, Okay. And I think because
Speaker 1: there's a threat of stinging then bees have to be
Speaker 1: just slightly more stressful. Yeah, we should probably just go
Speaker 1: ahead and cut to that particular chase. Like, if you
Speaker 1: are a beekeeper, you're going to get stinged. Like the
Speaker 1: bees don't necessarily know you exist, and they certainly don't
Speaker 1: learn to love you or anything like that. Um. There's
Speaker 1: just certain tricks and techniques you can do too vastly
Speaker 1: cut down on the chance you're going to be strong,
Speaker 1: but you're going to be stung, like from what I've
Speaker 1: seen several dozen times a year from working very closely
Speaker 1: with bees, handling them, interacting with them. Um. And so
Speaker 1: if you have a b allergy, you probably don't want
Speaker 1: to take up bee keeping. But but don't turn this
Speaker 1: episode off because, as we were just saying, even just
Speaker 1: reading or hearing about bee keeping is relaxing. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's a it's a great thing to do, uh for
Speaker 1: the environment now because bees are super important to the
Speaker 1: environment and they're dying off because people spray for mosquitoes
Speaker 1: and use herbicides and things like that in their yard
Speaker 1: and that's not cool. No, But it's not just that.
Speaker 1: Remember there's there's the Colony clips Disorder episode that we did. Um. No,
Speaker 1: one ever got to the bottom of what has been
Speaker 1: the cause of this. There's like so many different culprits
Speaker 1: from like round up to um to yeah to uh uh,
Speaker 1: pest sides to cell phone towers. Was a culprit there
Speaker 1: for a little while, or suspected culprit, but as far
Speaker 1: as we know, as far as I know, we don't
Speaker 1: know exactly what it is that's leading to colony claps disorder.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it is a good thing to say, you
Speaker 1: know what, I'm going to oversee a colony of bees
Speaker 1: and make sure that they are just in hog Heaven
Speaker 1: as far as um their little lifespans are concerned. That's right.
Speaker 1: And we did a full episode on bees in January.
Speaker 1: What else did we do on We did a a
Speaker 1: TV show episode on bees. And I sent you a
Speaker 1: clip from that episode today and uh we we both
Speaker 1: had a good laugh. I thought it was good. I
Speaker 1: was like, this is actually pretty good compared to how
Speaker 1: I remember it. Yeah, I thought it was so bad. Really,
Speaker 1: that's funny. That's how I used to feel about it.
Speaker 1: Like I couldn't watch ten seconds strung together of that show.
Speaker 1: I was so cringe. E to me, I guess enough
Speaker 1: time has passed where now I look back on him like,
Speaker 1: this is actually not nearly as bad as I remember
Speaker 1: it being. Nostalgia has kicked in. It's the show On effect,
Speaker 1: I guess. So that's fun, you say, Sean, Not because
Speaker 1: I was just listening to Sean on yesterday. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: that bottom mine half effect, that's what's going down. It's
Speaker 1: even more astounding because I was listening to bid or
Speaker 1: bidom Mine Half this morning. So, uh, beekeeping in the
Speaker 1: United States is becoming more and more popular these days. Um,
Speaker 1: here's the stat and this was this is an article
Speaker 1: from the Old House Stuff Works website, but it's from
Speaker 1: Dave Rouse, from Dave Ruse, from our very own and
Speaker 1: that's how I found it because I'm looking for Ruse
Speaker 1: specific material. Now it's it's just bona fide good stuff,
Speaker 1: it is. But he had a stat here from where
Speaker 1: there were about two point six seven million honey bee
Speaker 1: colonies in the US. And of course a lot of
Speaker 1: these are from you know, uh, from Big b Big Honey,
Speaker 1: but there's a lot of backyard bee keepers doing their
Speaker 1: best work in going out there with their mellow gold,
Speaker 1: smoking up those hives and and getting out that sweet
Speaker 1: see nectar. Yeah, and actually those are good people to
Speaker 1: buy it from if you believe in immunotherapy like I do,
Speaker 1: which apparently is still considered unproven. Who do. But it
Speaker 1: makes so much sense that you could introduce small amounts
Speaker 1: of like local pollen that you may develop an allergy
Speaker 1: to to prevent from getting allergies, Which means that you
Speaker 1: want to buy honey that's been produced within ten twenty
Speaker 1: miles maybe of where you live. Um, so you would
Speaker 1: want to go find one of those small beekeepers who
Speaker 1: sells their honey. Yeah. If you're on your your Facebook
Speaker 1: neighborhood page or your next door neighborhood page, chances are
Speaker 1: you will see someone pop up every now and then
Speaker 1: it says I've got honey or eggs or something like that,
Speaker 1: or goats milk. Just go get that stuff and eat
Speaker 1: it up right? Who wants goats milk? Who wants goats milk?
Speaker 1: You know? The traditional Facebook posts? Um, you can also
Speaker 1: go to like say what like a street festival in
Speaker 1: your town or something like that, like a little community festival.
Speaker 1: You're probably going to find local honey there, or health
Speaker 1: food store something like that, or goats milk, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and while beekeeping is for sure fun and this made
Speaker 1: me want to do it, and I may do it
Speaker 1: one day. You gotta have some time. It is not
Speaker 1: the easiest thing in the world to do. It's it.
Speaker 1: It kind of came across to me as one of
Speaker 1: those things that like a lot of like a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff like this. Your your first batch may not
Speaker 1: be the best, but like you learn and you learn
Speaker 1: and you get better and better at it. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I want to shout out to also to some of
Speaker 1: the great resources in addition to this house Stuff Works article,
Speaker 1: I actually called a guy from Honey Harvest Farms in Glendon, Maryland.
Speaker 1: His name is Jeff, and Jeff helped me out with
Speaker 1: some info that I just couldn't find online. But some
Speaker 1: of the sites I came across include Carolina Honey Bees,
Speaker 1: Iron Oak Farm, and Scientific Beekeeping, and all three of
Speaker 1: those are great resources. But there's a lot of really
Speaker 1: good resources on the internet to help explain how to
Speaker 1: do this and um answer more like arcane questions, and
Speaker 1: there's tons of forms like people who are really into
Speaker 1: beekeeping I found are called beaks geeks for short, um,
Speaker 1: and they they are definitely into this. So there's tons
Speaker 1: of resources out there UM to to kind of get
Speaker 1: started and just kind of dive in. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: got the impression that, like, there's always more to learn,
Speaker 1: and each colony over the years is um probably has
Speaker 1: its own personality, I guess, is how you'd put it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Should we go back in time though and talk about
Speaker 1: the history? I think so? Because they found honey that
Speaker 1: is fifty years old where in Georgia, not our Georgia,
Speaker 1: the other Georgia. Yeah, and honey is very famous for
Speaker 1: not going bad. Um. You know they say if you
Speaker 1: find old honey like that, you can just heat it
Speaker 1: up and it will go back to being just delicious honey,
Speaker 1: even if it's crystallized, right, because yeah, the crystallization is
Speaker 1: just kind of an unavoidable consequence of aging. But it's
Speaker 1: easy to reverse, right, just for a little bit of heat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's got honey again flowing. Right. So did they taste
Speaker 1: that honey. I'm not sure if they tasted that honey,
Speaker 1: but they found other old honey that they've tasted, and
Speaker 1: it's supposed to be pretty good. You know, that's honey
Speaker 1: tasted like honey I think, right, And it doesn't stores
Speaker 1: its stores, right, tastes like chicken and its stores forever
Speaker 1: like literally from what we understand, because it's sterile and
Speaker 1: it stays generally sterile. Um. But the the earliest depiction
Speaker 1: of actually rating a bee hive or of bee keeping
Speaker 1: is is not really bee keeping. It's basically just a
Speaker 1: picture of a guy in a cave in Spain, on
Speaker 1: the cave walls, sticking his hand into a bee hive.
Speaker 1: And it's from something like, um, I believe eleven thousand
Speaker 1: years ago, yeah, nine thousand b c E. And uh yeah,
Speaker 1: stick in his hand in that honeypot, as far as
Speaker 1: real bee keeping goes, and on a domesticated at level. Um.
Speaker 1: We all know that they did it in Egypt and about.
Speaker 1: But of course people think China probably beat us, uh
Speaker 1: or not us ony chuck casts is a lot with Egypt. Everybody,
Speaker 1: it beat us to it here in Egypt. Um. So
Speaker 1: in Egypt, though eventually, um, they have something like on
Speaker 1: in Hiero glyph they have like bee hives, clearly depicted
Speaker 1: honey pots. Um. And then they've also found hives that
Speaker 1: were human built, clearly human built, made of clay and straw,
Speaker 1: from as as late as years ago. In Israel, so
Speaker 1: we've been into honey for a very long time, and
Speaker 1: at some point we figured out that you could probably
Speaker 1: um suffer a lot fewer beastings if you kind of
Speaker 1: um what's the word insinuated yourself into this bee colony.
Speaker 1: And that's ultimately what beekeeping is. We'll see it's humans saying, okay,
Speaker 1: I kind of get this life cycle of the bees
Speaker 1: and the bee colony and what's going on here. I'm
Speaker 1: going to kind of manipulate this or oversee its supervised
Speaker 1: I guess that's how you put it, um this natural
Speaker 1: process in order to basically steal the honey from the
Speaker 1: bees at the end of the summer. That's right in
Speaker 1: a way that where they can keep making honey. Because
Speaker 1: in the early days, the very first bee hives that
Speaker 1: people domesticated, we're holloud out stumps and tree logs and things,
Speaker 1: and they would destroy these. They would get that honey
Speaker 1: and then be like, all right, let's just destroy it
Speaker 1: and kill everything that gave us this delicious honey. There
Speaker 1: was a better way forward, uh later, But it also
Speaker 1: took the skep s k e p. If you've ever
Speaker 1: seen um, what looks like a a turned over basket
Speaker 1: with a hole in the bottom as sort of the
Speaker 1: symbol of beekeeping. That's called a skep, and they still
Speaker 1: use them today here and there. I think like the
Speaker 1: most hardcore old school naturalist beekeepers might use a skep hipster, Yeah, hipsters,
Speaker 1: he's yess or they outside the developing world. Um, we
Speaker 1: we rarely use them these days, but they're still around,
Speaker 1: and you can find pictures of them. And if you
Speaker 1: look at on images online and uh, they have pictures
Speaker 1: of them turned over and you can see the combs
Speaker 1: stuffed in there. It's kind of cool looking, right yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And like you said, it's basically like the international kind
Speaker 1: of homespun symbol of of bee keeping in honey raising,
Speaker 1: that's right, But that was not any better for the
Speaker 1: bee because you had to destroy the hive with those
Speaker 1: as well, right, which is it's bad for the bees,
Speaker 1: but it's also bad for the beekeeper because you have
Speaker 1: to re establish a new callony every time you harvest,
Speaker 1: and you can keep a calling you going for a
Speaker 1: lot longer than just one year, you know. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: things really kind of took a leap forward in Switzerland
Speaker 1: in the eighteenth century with a man named Francois Huber,
Speaker 1: who had the first movable hive, the leaf hive, which
Speaker 1: was it was sort of like a book. It turned
Speaker 1: like a book would, and uh, this was a good
Speaker 1: design because you could get the you can get the
Speaker 1: honey and not the brood, and you can remove these
Speaker 1: leaves without killing the colony, which was a great step forward.
Speaker 1: But it still wasn't like the best design yet, and
Speaker 1: that one never really caught on. It didn't catch on
Speaker 1: despite Hubert's um efforts to promote it. He would go
Speaker 1: into town and say, oh, well, let's see what's on
Speaker 1: the next page, bees, what's on the next page more bees?
Speaker 1: Everyone and town folks just never really caught on. But
Speaker 1: in the nineteenth century there's a guy named Thomas Wildman
Speaker 1: and he started working with what are called bar hives,
Speaker 1: which I have also seen called Kenyan bar hives. So
Speaker 1: I suspect that Thomas Wildman got the idea from Kenya.
Speaker 1: But it's like basically a long trough for like, um,
Speaker 1: you know those standing planters that you can keep a
Speaker 1: number of plants in, But it's just basically like a
Speaker 1: long rectangular raised box. It's like one of those. But
Speaker 1: then if you lift the top of the box. There's
Speaker 1: just a bunch of bars that stretch across the top
Speaker 1: inside and that's it. They have like a notch hanging down.
Speaker 1: But if you pull that that bar up, you see
Speaker 1: that the bees have have created combs dangling from those
Speaker 1: those bars. Which is this This bar hive is still
Speaker 1: very much in use today, it's just not nearly as
Speaker 1: widespread as when we're about to talk about. Yes, that
Speaker 1: would be a man from Pennsylvania, minister named Lorenzo Langstroth,
Speaker 1: who said I will one day be the father of
Speaker 1: American beekeeping. That everyone's like, what are you talking about?
Speaker 1: He said, just pay attention because I have discovered what's
Speaker 1: called the B space. And everyone's like, what are you
Speaker 1: talking about? Is this a sermon? He was widely questioned,
Speaker 1: Like everything he said, he'd be like, I have to
Speaker 1: go to the bathroom and people be like, what do
Speaker 1: you mean. So what he discovered is there's this magic
Speaker 1: space called the B space where bees can really do
Speaker 1: their things successfully. And he found out that bees would
Speaker 1: not even build a comb in a space tighter than
Speaker 1: one centimeter. And so he's said, this is the B
Speaker 1: space where they can produce uh, the comb and the
Speaker 1: right amount and not enough be glue is going to
Speaker 1: get in the way, Like this is the magic area,
Speaker 1: and I shall declare it be space and it shall
Speaker 1: be fruitful. Yeah. And it was like, believe it or not,
Speaker 1: Realizing that bees don't build comb or glue in anything
Speaker 1: tighter than a centimeter revolutionized bee keeping because now with
Speaker 1: that b space, you could build these, um, these bee
Speaker 1: hives so that on the edges of them, they were
Speaker 1: just a centimeter between the sides of say, where the
Speaker 1: combs were built. Um, you could keep these these frames
Speaker 1: or these bars separated by a centimeter, so there's enough space,
Speaker 1: like you're saying, for the bees of work, but not
Speaker 1: enough for them to glue together, which was an ongoing,
Speaker 1: apparently millennium millennia old problem of having to harvest and
Speaker 1: getting a bunch of combs stuck together at once. With
Speaker 1: the space, now all of a sudden you had little
Speaker 1: bits of comb that you could manipulate a lot more easily.
Speaker 1: And that was like a huge contribution to be keeping.
Speaker 1: Strangely enough, that's right, And he got a the first
Speaker 1: American patent on a movable frame bee hive in October
Speaker 1: of eighteen fifty two, hooked up with a cabinet maker
Speaker 1: from Philadelphia, U named Henry Borkwyn and started building these things,
Speaker 1: started selling him and dead okay, but he found out
Speaker 1: that his patent was way too hard to enforce. He
Speaker 1: tried to for a little while, but it was basically
Speaker 1: a waste of his time and the patent was just
Speaker 1: walked all over and he ended up getting no royalties
Speaker 1: but did revolutionize bee keeping. So a Langstroth hive then,
Speaker 1: is a proprietary eponym. Is that what you're saying. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean he got the patent right, and he couldn't
Speaker 1: enforce it, so it just became like Kleenex sort of
Speaker 1: or aspirin. Yeah. I mean if you if you buy
Speaker 1: a Langstroth hive today, then for sure he's not getting
Speaker 1: any dough. He's long dead, long dead in the ground.
Speaker 1: But so this this high this is really cool and
Speaker 1: we'll talk more about it later, but just put a
Speaker 1: pin in it that this is the most widespread hive.
Speaker 1: Like lyon Strouth figured out how to make a bive
Speaker 1: that's so close to ideal that since the eighteen fifties
Speaker 1: that's gone virtually unimproved, which is pretty pretty significant. Accomplishment
Speaker 1: if you ask me. Yeah, And I looked at these
Speaker 1: uh war or wear hives W A R R E,
Speaker 1: which is another kind um, but I didn't. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm sure there are differences once you dig in there,
Speaker 1: but it didn't look that much different to me than
Speaker 1: the Lyon Struth. Yeah. I couldn't really tell much of
Speaker 1: the I mean I saw, oh, well this the Lion
Speaker 1: Struth doesn't have this this quilted thing of like you know,
Speaker 1: cardboard shavings or whatever. So there's like, I think it's
Speaker 1: the very small differences that make a big difference and
Speaker 1: differentiating between these hives. Yeah, so should we take a break.
Speaker 1: I think we should, and then chuck. When we come back,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk a little bit about B society. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's do it all right, So I would direct everyone
Speaker 1: to our ten of ten TV show stuff you should know,
Speaker 1: and in particular the B's episode, which, by the way,
Speaker 1: I wrote, I have an executive producer credit on that
Speaker 1: show from writing that episode. Executive producer credit on every episode.
Speaker 1: That's true, because that I really earned it on that one. Well, listen,
Speaker 1: so that's funny because that's how it was explained to me.
Speaker 1: At the time. But Chuck, I just want to go
Speaker 1: on record here. I went to Herculean Links to keep
Speaker 1: you from getting stung by a b in that episode,
Speaker 1: and they said, absolutely not. Chuck has to get stung
Speaker 1: just to make the episode worth watching. He has to
Speaker 1: get stung. And I thought it was a better idea
Speaker 1: if you didn't, if we kept building up to it
Speaker 1: and it never happened, But they said, no, no, we're
Speaker 1: not going with that. But I tried really hard to
Speaker 1: keep you from getting stun that's right, And we had
Speaker 1: a little fake bees that they put on my eyeball.
Speaker 1: But I would direct people to the January podcast episode. Instead.
Speaker 1: Why not? Both? Sure, but if you really want to
Speaker 1: learn about bees, that's where we dive into it super deep.
Speaker 1: So I guess we'll just consider this a bit of
Speaker 1: a recap. Okay, okay, so um. In the in the world,
Speaker 1: there's something like twenty thousand species of wild bees, but
Speaker 1: in honey bee or bee keeping, you're going to find
Speaker 1: usually one species of b APIs mellifera, which is either
Speaker 1: the European or the Western honeybee, and there's different varieties
Speaker 1: they call him races, you know, with like breeds of dogs,
Speaker 1: we call them breeds, but they're all still the same
Speaker 1: species Canis lupus. But with bees, they're all the same
Speaker 1: species APIs mellifera, but the races are different. So you
Speaker 1: have like the Italian honeybee or the Carnolean I believe,
Speaker 1: Carnolian honeybee, the Russian honeybee, but they're all races of
Speaker 1: European or Western honeybee. That's what you're gonna find everywhere. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and these things are amazing. I remember at the time,
Speaker 1: we were just sort of obsessed with bees after that episode,
Speaker 1: so much so that we wanted to do it for
Speaker 1: the TV show. Uh. And one of the main reasons
Speaker 1: is because they're what's called a super organism, which basically
Speaker 1: means you take a western honeybe out on its own,
Speaker 1: and that thing isn't gonna do anything worthwhile with it.
Speaker 1: Kuldn't order dinner at Roy Rogers restaurant. It's so dumb. No.
Speaker 1: But when you put all these things together, all these
Speaker 1: bees have very specific jobs that we're gonna go over
Speaker 1: here in a second, and all these coordinated actions, and
Speaker 1: that is the super organism. They are one hole like
Speaker 1: sixty thou honey bees acting as one in order to
Speaker 1: produce honey. Hive mind. It's a hive mind, right, So
Speaker 1: I mean we get so many hive mind worker bees.
Speaker 1: All these like things that are in like the our
Speaker 1: lexicon are all taken from the way bees do their
Speaker 1: thing right exactly. And so when you put them together,
Speaker 1: this larger super organism an emergent property of the collective
Speaker 1: actions and the instincts that these bees are following. If
Speaker 1: you put it all together, they interact and form this
Speaker 1: larger hole and that's the colony. And so on the
Speaker 1: individual level, you have three different types of bees. You've
Speaker 1: got worker bees, which make up the vast majority of
Speaker 1: the population. They're all female, They're all sexually undeveloped females,
Speaker 1: and they do almost all of the work um as
Speaker 1: usual around the hive. Um. That includes everything from raising
Speaker 1: the a to um creating wax. Um. Uh. They what
Speaker 1: else do they do? They make the honey, they go
Speaker 1: collect the pollen, They defend the hive, They serve as
Speaker 1: guards at the entrance, like they do almost everything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they take care of that queen, which is the biggest one.
Speaker 1: A literally so this all made me nervous. Uh, when
Speaker 1: I was reading this again, because so much depends on
Speaker 1: the queen. It all depends on this one. B Wait,
Speaker 1: it made you nervous. Yeah, it's not, because it's not like, oh,
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of queens, so if one of them
Speaker 1: dies or something happens, then you're fine. You gotta have
Speaker 1: that queen and there's just one of them. I can't
Speaker 1: remember where we heard it, but like somebody said somewhere
Speaker 1: that like the queen is their slave, and that's actually
Speaker 1: like kind of true because the queen's whole job, chuck,
Speaker 1: is to basically keep the colony going and optimistic through
Speaker 1: this pheromone that she may creates, but also to like
Speaker 1: lay all of the eggs and fertilize them. Um, but
Speaker 1: that's a lot of eggs. It's a ton. Like apparently
Speaker 1: a queen can lay up to a million in her lifetime, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's over a few years. But that's about fift
Speaker 1: eggs a day. But my point is this, the queen
Speaker 1: is their slave because she does this for them, She
Speaker 1: keeps the population going, but they decide when it's time
Speaker 1: for another queen to be born. As far as I know, sure,
Speaker 1: is that correct? I think? So? Okay, we'll find out
Speaker 1: the in the listener. Male. Uh, then you got your drones.
Speaker 1: Of course, those are the male bees, and they it
Speaker 1: is funny you have one one queen, You have these
Speaker 1: males that all they do is mate with a queen,
Speaker 1: and then these female worker bees do it literally everything
Speaker 1: else right. But on the other end, the the female
Speaker 1: worker bees are the ones who get to decide like
Speaker 1: who lives and who dies, and if you're a male
Speaker 1: own once you've mated with the queen, which happens in
Speaker 1: mid air outside of the hive, it is super sexy.
Speaker 1: The queen mates with multiple males at once, gathers their
Speaker 1: sperm and stores it in a little sack which she
Speaker 1: then goes and like lays eggs and fertilizes the eggs
Speaker 1: as she sees fit, because I believe unfertilized eggs are
Speaker 1: drones and fertilized eggs are workers. So the queen is
Speaker 1: actually keeping an eye on how many of what are needed.
Speaker 1: But the drones, once they mate, especially when it comes
Speaker 1: time for winter and all of a sudden, they're starting
Speaker 1: to hit up their food stores and things are getting scarce.
Speaker 1: The drones get pushed out into the cold to go
Speaker 1: off and die by themselves. That's right, that's a pretty
Speaker 1: ignomious end. Yeah, and you know that's it's a good
Speaker 1: time to point out that at different times of the year,
Speaker 1: bees are going to be more well fed, uh naturally,
Speaker 1: And as you'll see, when you're beekeeping, you have to
Speaker 1: keep track of what time of year it is, because,
Speaker 1: like you said, in the winter it's gonna be super scarce,
Speaker 1: but even in the fall and early spring, you're gonna
Speaker 1: need to supplement their food and take right exactly. Because
Speaker 1: here's the thing. So so just with this life cycle
Speaker 1: of bees, in the spring, when the flowers start to
Speaker 1: bloom and the bees are going crazy, it's what's called
Speaker 1: the nectar flow. Um, they are producing honey in overtime.
Speaker 1: And so what you're doing is the bee capers, you're saying, okay,
Speaker 1: well here, I want to make sure you have plenty
Speaker 1: of room to store as much honey as you possibly can,
Speaker 1: because what the bees are doing is storing honey, literally
Speaker 1: storing energy away to help get them through the winter.
Speaker 1: And you're going in and saying, I'm going to take
Speaker 1: these honey stores that you plan to use to make
Speaker 1: it through the winter, and I'll leave you some. I'll
Speaker 1: leave you hopefully just enough so that you don't need any.
Speaker 1: But I'll also, as the beekeeper, this human who's insinuating
Speaker 1: himself for herself, I'll hit you up with some food
Speaker 1: to to make sure you guys survive happy and comfortably
Speaker 1: through this winter in exchange for letting me take this honey,
Speaker 1: because I got some toast inside that's just popped out
Speaker 1: of the toaster. Man, I had some creamed honey for
Speaker 1: the first time today. I mean, like, I'm a big
Speaker 1: time honey guy, but I had not had cream honey before.
Speaker 1: And it's like spun honey or is that different. It
Speaker 1: is a combination of crystallized and liquid honey that's highly
Speaker 1: spread herble and I got it. It's like just Trader
Speaker 1: Joe stuff. Who knows where it was made, but um,
Speaker 1: it's very tasty. At least he's doing nothing for my
Speaker 1: immune system, but it's doing a lot for my um
Speaker 1: my limbic system. Yeah, I mean, honey honey sort of
Speaker 1: one of nature's miracles. It is. And you start talking
Speaker 1: about Manuka honey and things add like these healing properties
Speaker 1: and it's it's pretty great. Stung by a jellyfish put
Speaker 1: some money on it. Oh yeah, I bet it couldn't hurt. No,
Speaker 1: at the very least, you can eat some while you're
Speaker 1: doing that, and it makes things a little better. So
Speaker 1: should we talk about equipment for a bit? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think so so, because this is about beekeeping. That was
Speaker 1: our brief be overview. But again go back to Janu.
Speaker 1: Do you want the full scoop on bees? But this
Speaker 1: is about beekeeping and if you want to be a beekeeper.
Speaker 1: We also did a little short on beekeeping one of
Speaker 1: our little shorts that we used to like for the
Speaker 1: car commercials when we would go around the different locations,
Speaker 1: we did a little bee keeping bit because I remember
Speaker 1: we had smokers and we wore the hat and veil.
Speaker 1: I remember that too in gloves. I just had forgotten
Speaker 1: what the context was for. But yeah, it was for
Speaker 1: one of those shorts. I can't remember what we call
Speaker 1: them interstitials. That's right, the most dry, scientific clinical name
Speaker 1: for those things. Those were good. Surely you like those those? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think those? Hold up? Those are fun. So, uh,
Speaker 1: here's what you're gonna need is new equipment. If you're
Speaker 1: new to bee keeping, Dave here recommends you get new equipment. Oh, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know what you have to because if you get
Speaker 1: inherited equipment, like once you're on the scene, somebody might
Speaker 1: be like, hey, like I got an extra smoker, or
Speaker 1: here some frames I can't use. They open their trench,
Speaker 1: they've got a bunch of bee boxes hanging inside. What
Speaker 1: do you have? What do you want? But as you
Speaker 1: will find out later on in our section on disease
Speaker 1: and bacteria and stuff, it's pretty prevalent. So you want
Speaker 1: to get your new equipment going if you're new to
Speaker 1: be keeping, just so you start out on the right foot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because once a specific kind of bacteria that causes foul brood,
Speaker 1: once it's in, once it's in your boxes, like your
Speaker 1: colony is toast in your boxes are done forever. There's
Speaker 1: like you need to burn the boxes so they don't
Speaker 1: end up in somebody's hands because it'll kill just stay
Speaker 1: in linger and kill everybody. So it's not good. So um,
Speaker 1: as we kind of said earlier, far and away, the
Speaker 1: most popular hive among beekeepers is the Langstroth hive, right,
Speaker 1: So we're gonna just kind of focus on that one.
Speaker 1: But it is a lot of fun to just go
Speaker 1: look at exploded diagrams of the different kinds of bee
Speaker 1: hives out there. Beekeepers use and see all the different
Speaker 1: parts or whatever, but there's there's too many of them
Speaker 1: to really go into. So we're just gonna focus on
Speaker 1: the Langstroth high even though it's just the length of
Speaker 1: this introduction to how we're just going to pay attention
Speaker 1: to the lyngstrave hive. I could have covered two or
Speaker 1: three other high but we're gonna stick to just the
Speaker 1: lionstrave hive. Okay, So you could build one of these
Speaker 1: things if you were good at this kind of thing,
Speaker 1: But what I recommend is that you go online or
Speaker 1: you go to if there happens to be a local
Speaker 1: apiary store in your village, go buy one there. If
Speaker 1: you live in a village, there's an apiary store for sure.
Speaker 1: But yes, they also still sell mustash, wax and beard oils,
Speaker 1: handmade axes and made axes. Um so yeah, but it
Speaker 1: is true, like if you have like a quaint hardware store,
Speaker 1: that's probably a good place to to look. And then also, um,
Speaker 1: I guarantee there's a million places online to get them too,
Speaker 1: and they're relatively cheap too. Yeah, not not too much.
Speaker 1: You can get into bees for you know, it seems
Speaker 1: like including the bees for less than five bucks you
Speaker 1: can kind of get going, right, That's that's what I'm getting.
Speaker 1: Probably if you really, you know, watched what you're doing,
Speaker 1: maybe half of that. Yeah, alright, So you get your
Speaker 1: your Langstrath hive. And this thing has a big box
Speaker 1: on the lower half called the hive body or the
Speaker 1: brood chamber, and this is where the bees are mainly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and even even below that, you have a um a
Speaker 1: stand that the things sitting on. It raises it off
Speaker 1: the ground and usually it's kind of angled, so it's
Speaker 1: like a landing pad for the bees. And then it
Speaker 1: also improves circulation. Then you have the bottom board, which
Speaker 1: is the floor of the hive, which protects the high
Speaker 1: from invaders from above. And then you've got the brood
Speaker 1: chamber above that the hive body, that's right, and that's
Speaker 1: where they're gonna be building net comb. That's where the
Speaker 1: queen's gonna be layer eggs. That's where're gonna they're gonna
Speaker 1: raise that brood up, and that's where they're gonna store
Speaker 1: the honey that they think that they're going to be
Speaker 1: eating in abundance, Right, and then you've got a really
Speaker 1: important piece of equipment that it would be very easy
Speaker 1: to overlook if you don't know what you're doing, but
Speaker 1: you're gonna have shoes if you don't get it. It's
Speaker 1: called the queen excluder. So you remember, Chuck, that you
Speaker 1: said that the queen is about twice the size of
Speaker 1: the workers. I don't know, but you definitely did. I'm
Speaker 1: here to tell you when, um, when when you added
Speaker 1: queen excluder. All it is is basically like a mesh
Speaker 1: or slats or something like that that are space far
Speaker 1: enough apart for the workers to easily make it through,
Speaker 1: but it's too close together for the queen to make
Speaker 1: it through. So the queen won't leave the brood chamber
Speaker 1: to lay eggs. She'll just use the brood chamber for that,
Speaker 1: which means though, that the workers can go lay honey
Speaker 1: in the chamber above the brood chamber, which is called
Speaker 1: the honey super the box above that. That's right, the
Speaker 1: honey super not the supper, No, just the super And
Speaker 1: I didn't see why they call it that, did you know?
Speaker 1: The honey super position. Maybe it's a nod to quantum physics.
Speaker 1: Maybe so, But this is where they're going to store
Speaker 1: that surplus honey when when the plants are blooming in
Speaker 1: that neck are is flowing and you're you're skimming some
Speaker 1: off the top as the beekeeper. Yeah, and like if
Speaker 1: you did not have that queen excluder, the honey super
Speaker 1: would be just another brood chamber because the queen wants
Speaker 1: to use as many places as she can to lay
Speaker 1: eggs and then they lay honey around it. So the
Speaker 1: the eggs, which is where which also serves as the
Speaker 1: nursery for the brood um and the honey they're all
Speaker 1: like together in the same combs. But because you put
Speaker 1: that queen excluder, she's not laying eggs in that honey super,
Speaker 1: which means it's just sweet, delicious honey in all of
Speaker 1: the combs. On the frames, which we haven't talked about yet, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: these are the frames. These are frames that you can
Speaker 1: take in and out. They hang vertically and these days
Speaker 1: it's pretty amazing how far they've come. They are actually
Speaker 1: pre printed with bees wax or some sort of foundation
Speaker 1: made of plastic that's just sort of says, here you go, bees,
Speaker 1: here's a little head start, right, um, But you found
Speaker 1: some extra interesting stuff about the bees and and their
Speaker 1: wax making abilities to yeah, I did actually so like
Speaker 1: it takes about a table spoon of honey to make
Speaker 1: an ounce of wax, and bees make wax through a gland, right,
Speaker 1: they eat the honey and secrete wax instead, And so
Speaker 1: whenever they create a new brood chamber, they make it,
Speaker 1: they secrete it as wax and basically a circle, and
Speaker 1: then they use their body heat to shape it into
Speaker 1: a hexagon. And the reason they make right, and the
Speaker 1: reason that they make hexagons is because they don't know this,
Speaker 1: but structurally it is the most structurally sound um shape
Speaker 1: in nature. That um uses the least amount of material,
Speaker 1: which is just astounding that bees instinctually know to make
Speaker 1: an um hexagon hexagon right, not octagon right, So they
Speaker 1: but they use but they start with the circle and
Speaker 1: then use their body heat to melt it into the shape. Well, anyway,
Speaker 1: would they have to do this for each a that
Speaker 1: they put in a brood chamber. They have to do
Speaker 1: this for each um, each cell that they put honey into.
Speaker 1: And then they they also make wax to cap the
Speaker 1: honey off. So it requires a lot of honey to
Speaker 1: make that wax, which means logically, if you can give
Speaker 1: them a leg up, either with preprinted honey or plastic
Speaker 1: or leaving as much honey as you can from the
Speaker 1: honey harvest, or leaving as much wax there as you
Speaker 1: can from after the honey harvest, they don't have to
Speaker 1: make new wax. They can reuse the old stuff, which
Speaker 1: means that's less honey that your bees are eating to
Speaker 1: produce wax, which means it's more honey that you're getting. Yes.
Speaker 1: And by the way, if you're typing an email to
Speaker 1: me right now because I said hexagons or five sided,
Speaker 1: please stop. It is six sides. Yes, everyone knows that
Speaker 1: five sided. Uh, structure is a circle. Wait what is
Speaker 1: a five sided one? Huh? What's a five sided one? Uh? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right pentagon. I played enough Dungeons and Dragons as
Speaker 1: a youth that I should know this, but I don't remember.
Speaker 1: I get my guns. Uh confused sometimes everyone, Well, Chuck,
Speaker 1: i'll teach you a little cheat here. Refer to all
Speaker 1: of them as polygons, and you're covered real. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: so like every hexagon, it's a polygon, that kind of thing, hexagon, triangle,
Speaker 1: anything with three sides or more. It's a polygon and
Speaker 1: someone no, not a polygon, that's a circle. But ask
Speaker 1: someone to debate you. It can't. You'll just shut them
Speaker 1: down every time. Yeah, and also make new friends at parties, right,
Speaker 1: come at me, fight me, polygon. Uh. So you're also
Speaker 1: gonna have a feeder in this thing. We talked a
Speaker 1: little bit earlier about the fact that you're you're skimming
Speaker 1: this honey and taking some for yourself as it's um
Speaker 1: made in excess, and at other times of the year
Speaker 1: when it's like especially late summer and winter, they're pollen resources.
Speaker 1: Resources are gonna be lower obviously because things aren't in
Speaker 1: full bloom. So you're gonna have to help feed these
Speaker 1: little little fell was and little ladies. There are feeders,
Speaker 1: um Dave here says something about a zip block bag
Speaker 1: with sugar water with a slit cut. But I've seen
Speaker 1: that's the most rudimentary thing I can imagine. One small
Speaker 1: step up is like, uh, sort of an aluminum pan
Speaker 1: with sugar water that slides in and out of this box. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know those like pet feeders of pet waters
Speaker 1: that have like the water something look like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So that's specifically called a boardman feeder, and it's just
Speaker 1: a mason jar filled with sugar water and um screwed
Speaker 1: into the mason jar cap which is inverted in a
Speaker 1: little wooden thing with some slots for the bees to
Speaker 1: get in and out of, and the cap is perforated,
Speaker 1: so the sugar water just slowly drips out, and so
Speaker 1: it's a long, steady supply of water that you slide
Speaker 1: the wood part that the cap is is inserted upside
Speaker 1: down into um into the front entrance of your beehive.
Speaker 1: So all you have to do is unscrew the mason
Speaker 1: jar and put more sugar water in every once in
Speaker 1: a while, and the bees need. It's a really easy
Speaker 1: way to feed bees, that's right. But specifically you mentioned pollen.
Speaker 1: I saw something that I didn't realize. But when you
Speaker 1: reach about the fall, you don't want the bees to
Speaker 1: have any pollen if you're feeding them. It has to
Speaker 1: be like pure sugar water, because if they eat pollen,
Speaker 1: that will produce solid waste, and bees are really clean
Speaker 1: and they won't go in their hive. They leave the
Speaker 1: hive to go evacuate their bowels, which actually ties into
Speaker 1: that yellow rain short stuff we did remember that. But
Speaker 1: they'll go fly away from the hive, but if it's
Speaker 1: too cold, they can't leave the hive, so they will
Speaker 1: actually die rather than poop in the in the colony,
Speaker 1: or some of them will be like, forget it, I'm living.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna go ahead and poop. But now the
Speaker 1: whole colony is spoiled. And the reason why it is
Speaker 1: because they've eaten too much pollen and they can't make
Speaker 1: it until the spring to go outside and poop. So
Speaker 1: you don't want to feed them any pollen in the fall.
Speaker 1: That's right, And that is the opposite of our wives
Speaker 1: who would rather die than poop in a public place.
Speaker 1: Exactly me too. I basically would as well. Oh I'll
Speaker 1: put anywhere. I know. Man, it's a it's an admirable quality.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't love it, but I certainly won't
Speaker 1: put myself at risk. What's your technique to you go
Speaker 1: to like a happy place and just pretend you're not
Speaker 1: you're not there, like you just leave your body for
Speaker 1: a little while. Uh No, I just go kind of primal,
Speaker 1: you know, Oh yeah, like a lot of grunting, kicking
Speaker 1: at the walls, just you know, it's like that. You
Speaker 1: gotta do it. It's the most primal thing you can
Speaker 1: do to force feces out of your body. And Jerry's
Speaker 1: eating them very sorry, I know, sorry Jerry Themisa is
Speaker 1: just drooling out of the crack of her mouth. I'm
Speaker 1: not doing it is So let's let's keep going here
Speaker 1: because we need to move on to the tools, because
Speaker 1: that's the box. That's the langstroth hive. UM, get a
Speaker 1: get a good one, make sure it's solid. Yeah, and again,
Speaker 1: you don't have to break the bank. There's there's a
Speaker 1: there's you know, a cheap basic langstroth hive isn't going
Speaker 1: to put you in the poorhouse. And plus one other
Speaker 1: thing about langstroth hive before we move on. That's so ingenious, Chuck,
Speaker 1: is the um. It's modular and scalable, so you can
Speaker 1: easily like remove the top boxes and put another brood
Speaker 1: chamber on, put another honey super off, and you know,
Speaker 1: harvest more and more honey. Um. It's if you break
Speaker 1: part of it, you can replace parts exactly. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's like a really good inventor, Like it makes
Speaker 1: sense that it would have been invented in eighteen fifty
Speaker 1: and not, you know, really have been changed that much.
Speaker 1: I agreed. Uh. So we talked a little bit about
Speaker 1: the protective clothing that is that veil. You can have
Speaker 1: the cool little uh sort of safari pith helmet with
Speaker 1: a veil um, but usually they will just fit over
Speaker 1: any kind of wide brimmed hat. You want to make
Speaker 1: sure it's snug. Uh. They some people, you know, it
Speaker 1: depends on who you are. If you're really used to this,
Speaker 1: you can build up sensitivity to be stings and you're like,
Speaker 1: forget the gloves, forget covering my body, I'll just wear
Speaker 1: the veil. Some people might not even wear the veil
Speaker 1: because they're so cool. I think at least they wear
Speaker 1: the veil. Oh no, I've seen people handling bees without veils. Friend,
Speaker 1: that's crazy. Yeah, you think old time beekeepers are putting
Speaker 1: on a veil. All the videos I watched, everyone was
Speaker 1: wearing veils like they might not have been wearing anything else,
Speaker 1: but they had a veil. And they had the second thing,
Speaker 1: a smoker. Well, yeah, you gotta have that smoker. And
Speaker 1: that is a very cool device. And I always wanted
Speaker 1: to hold one, and finally we got to when we
Speaker 1: made that little video interstitial, and it looks sort of
Speaker 1: like they've compared it to a elongated metal teapot. Not
Speaker 1: a bad descriptor. Um. It's just like a metal canister
Speaker 1: with a with a spout pointing upward, and it's got
Speaker 1: a handle that has a little little bellows built into it.
Speaker 1: And what you do is, and I always wonder what
Speaker 1: the heck was in there, You're just burning something. You're
Speaker 1: burning cardboard, or you're burning leaves or something, and use
Speaker 1: that bellows just to pump a little smoke out, right,
Speaker 1: And the reason you're pumping the smoke out is to
Speaker 1: calm the bees, and it calms the bees by masking
Speaker 1: the pheromones that they that there, say the guard bees
Speaker 1: or eoting out, which means that the other bees aren't
Speaker 1: picking up on this alarming pheromone and so they're all
Speaker 1: remaining calm. Actually, So it's an essential tool of the trade,
Speaker 1: is a smoker, that's right. And you're also gonna need
Speaker 1: a hive tool if you look those up. It's if
Speaker 1: you've ever used a wonder bar. I think that's probably
Speaker 1: proprietary name, but it's it's kind of like a kind
Speaker 1: of like a flat crowbar, and that's exactly what it
Speaker 1: looks instead of a beefy round crow bar. I atly
Speaker 1: suggest you get a wonder bar too, because those are
Speaker 1: just great to have a run the house. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: have one of those. You got a wonder bar, I do.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's wonderbar, wonder Bar, trademark, pride bar,
Speaker 1: but it is exactly that. Yeah. Yeah, So this hive
Speaker 1: tool is sort of the same, and it is used
Speaker 1: you know, I think I mentioned be glue earlier on.
Speaker 1: That's propolis and that is uh saliva and bees wax
Speaker 1: and other like materials from the garden maybe, and they
Speaker 1: use that to seal up gaps in the hive. But
Speaker 1: you're gonna need to pry open stuff, uh like get
Speaker 1: that be glue loose, and that high tool is what
Speaker 1: you use because it doesn't destroy your beautiful, beautiful hip box. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I mean the frames are where they build these honeycombs,
Speaker 1: and you need to get the frames out to get
Speaker 1: the honey from the honeycombs. So yeah, you're gonna need
Speaker 1: to pry the frames out sometimes because everything the bees
Speaker 1: doing is saying please don't take my honey exactly, and
Speaker 1: we're like, oh, but we have a tool that allows
Speaker 1: us to do that, right, Yeah, including it up to
Speaker 1: stinging you to say, please don't take my honey, but yeah,
Speaker 1: we don't listen. You want to take our second break, Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's do it. Okay, we'll be right back, all right. So,
Speaker 1: if this whole thing has really floated your boat as
Speaker 1: it did us, because Chuck, I guarantee you both of
Speaker 1: us are going to be country folk beekeepers by by
Speaker 1: the time we're dead in our retirement. Right. Um, So
Speaker 1: if that, if you've been bitten by the bug, the bee,
Speaker 1: if you've been stung by the beekeeping, Um, there's actually
Speaker 1: just a few things you want to do to get started.
Speaker 1: It's not hard to get into. It's one of those
Speaker 1: things like, um, have you ever taken scuba diving lessons?
Speaker 1: You learn how to scuba dive and it takes about
Speaker 1: thirty minutes, and then the rest of like say, the
Speaker 1: week long course is to teach you how to stay
Speaker 1: alive as something goes wrong. Beekeeping is kind of the
Speaker 1: same way, like it's really easy to get into and
Speaker 1: learn the basics, but but it takes years of just
Speaker 1: understanding and learning and picking up new things to to
Speaker 1: really become an advanced beekeeper. Yeah, and and it's you
Speaker 1: can read books, and you can go online and you
Speaker 1: can take courses, but like with everything, there's nothing like
Speaker 1: firsthand experience ants. And like you said, it's it's gonna
Speaker 1: be a while, be a while, I mean to do that.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, but in a couple of seasons, you know
Speaker 1: you you're gonna really know what you're doing to a
Speaker 1: large degree. Yeah, Dave Rus says, Man, go find a mentor.
Speaker 1: There's plenty of beekeepers out there who are They're not
Speaker 1: gonna yell at you for asking. They'll probably be happy
Speaker 1: to pass along this knowledge and information. I think. So
Speaker 1: it seems like a hobby slash job that people want
Speaker 1: to spread the love of right like creamed honey. So
Speaker 1: Dave says, though, just there's some basic things to start. Um,
Speaker 1: you want to pick a location for your hive, and
Speaker 1: one of the first things you want to do is
Speaker 1: make sure that you're allowed to have a hive. Depending
Speaker 1: on where you live. If you live out in the country,
Speaker 1: there's probably very few ordinances. Most most ordinances either say
Speaker 1: you can't have bees here because this is a city
Speaker 1: and within the city limits, no bees are allowed. They
Speaker 1: say bees are farm animals, so they belong on a farm.
Speaker 1: Or bees are non domesticated animals, so same thing. Or
Speaker 1: heaven forbid you have an e joe, just forget about it. Yeah, literally,
Speaker 1: forget about it if you have an h O way. Um,
Speaker 1: there's one place called Champlaine, Minnesota, and they say, at
Speaker 1: least as far as the University of Minnesota says that
Speaker 1: they allow bees so long as quote the neighbors are
Speaker 1: on board. That's the official from what I understand. I
Speaker 1: don't know if that's in what in the city code
Speaker 1: or the county code, but that's that's how it was
Speaker 1: put on the University of Minnesota website. So that is
Speaker 1: a good point, though. You want to make sure your
Speaker 1: neighbors are cool with it, or at the very least
Speaker 1: that you have enough land that your neighbors aren't gonna
Speaker 1: be bothered by the bees. Yeah. But if you have
Speaker 1: a neighbor that says, you know, I have a I'm
Speaker 1: definitely allergic to bees, and then I mean tell him
Speaker 1: to move right. Either that or it's time for you
Speaker 1: to get into like r C planes. That's right. Um,
Speaker 1: So you you get your local ordinances all settled, you
Speaker 1: pay off your neighbor. And then you want your the
Speaker 1: the uh you want to direct that be traffic. You know,
Speaker 1: like where you set it up on your property is important.
Speaker 1: You don't want to have the hive entrance and exit
Speaker 1: facing your neighbor's property, right, Uh. You want to have
Speaker 1: it facing your house, and you want it ideally facing
Speaker 1: south or southeast. Yeah. And the reason why you want
Speaker 1: to have a facing south and southeast is so it
Speaker 1: gets Also it's a really good morning sun, because that'll
Speaker 1: wake the bees up and get them going and saying,
Speaker 1: get off your duff's lazies and get out there and
Speaker 1: start foraging and make me some honey. That's right. They
Speaker 1: also say that it's goodbye if you have a like
Speaker 1: some bushes or a privet or a fence near the entrance,
Speaker 1: because when they when they leave the hive, that's gonna
Speaker 1: make encourage them to go upwards, yeah, rather than to
Speaker 1: your neighbor's pool. That's right. Um. So you also, in
Speaker 1: addition to making sure the beehive gets morning sun, you
Speaker 1: want to protect it from strong winds. Um. You want
Speaker 1: to make sure that it's definitely protected from afternoon the
Speaker 1: worst of the afternoon sun. So say like between two
Speaker 1: and four. You don't want unobstructed sun just beating down
Speaker 1: your beehive is gonna cook them. Um. And you also
Speaker 1: want to make sure that there's a good, you know,
Speaker 1: all weather cap on the bee hive that's going to
Speaker 1: protect it from rain and stuff like that too. And
Speaker 1: speaking of rain, you also want a water source nearby. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you you made a joke about going to
Speaker 1: your neighbor's pool, but that could happen because bees need water.
Speaker 1: They forage for water and they cool to hive with it.
Speaker 1: They blend it with pollen to make bee bread, which
Speaker 1: is pollen, nectar and honey, and that's what they eat.
Speaker 1: And um, I think that's what the larvae especially feed on.
Speaker 1: Is that right? Yeah? I think so that be bread.
Speaker 1: So if you live near a pond, or you gotta
Speaker 1: like grow up like me and head a creek uh
Speaker 1: nearby your house, and then you're all you're all set.
Speaker 1: You don't need to worry about it. But if you don't,
Speaker 1: then you're gonna want to put something in Like a
Speaker 1: bird bath might be nice. Or Dave even says you
Speaker 1: can just put a large platter of water. Yeah. Dave
Speaker 1: also says put a zip block of sugar water on
Speaker 1: your beehive and cut have slid in it. So maybe
Speaker 1: go a step further beyond a platter. Well, I mean
Speaker 1: it depends on your esthetic, I think, I guess, but
Speaker 1: I mean put some water in like a tire that
Speaker 1: stood up on its side, and I'm like that to
Speaker 1: see that in your yard. Why are you picking on
Speaker 1: day if he's the best, because that was some just
Speaker 1: genuinely bad. If I still put a platter of water
Speaker 1: out there, like like, put a little more thought into this. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: all right, So you've got everything except bees. And it
Speaker 1: never occurred to me where you get these bees? Right?
Speaker 1: You know? I thought you just set this all up
Speaker 1: in the bees would be attracted to it and fill
Speaker 1: it up over the course of a decade and then
Speaker 1: you can start making honey. You can actually buy bees. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they arrive via post postal service what I understand,
Speaker 1: or probably FedEx these days. But I read a mother
Speaker 1: Earth News article from ninety four and they were saying,
Speaker 1: your postman will love you for this, but they're going
Speaker 1: to arrive in a package a box filled with live bees,
Speaker 1: probably somewhere around ten thousand of them. Yeah, And amated queen.
Speaker 1: That's important. It's not like you have all this and
Speaker 1: you're like, now I gotta go find the rarest thing
Speaker 1: in the world, which is a happily mated queen. Right,
Speaker 1: And so the made this is one of the reasons
Speaker 1: I called Jeff um over at the farm at Honey
Speaker 1: Harvest Farm and Glen to Maryland because I was like, well,
Speaker 1: I couldn't find what made it specifically meant it was
Speaker 1: called premated, That's what Dave. Dave called it premated, So
Speaker 1: I was like, does that mean a virgin queen that
Speaker 1: hasn't made it yet or has made it beforehand? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: the ladder is correct. They both like they they have
Speaker 1: the queen mate with a bunch of drones and then
Speaker 1: say you wint and take the queen and put a
Speaker 1: sequester her so that she can't lay any eggs. And
Speaker 1: then they put her in a special container with the
Speaker 1: rest of the bees and shipped them to you. And
Speaker 1: then you put the bees together in your own brood
Speaker 1: chamber with the queen in her sequestered thing, and you
Speaker 1: peel back a little like piece of tape or something,
Speaker 1: and that exposes a little candy plug and the workers
Speaker 1: eat through the candy plug to free the the queen.
Speaker 1: It's pretty cool how it works, it really is. And
Speaker 1: I've also seen that the candy plug which is meant
Speaker 1: to also keep the queen bee alive during transport, Um,
Speaker 1: if it comes out or something, you can just plug
Speaker 1: it with a marshmallow too, which is the most quaint
Speaker 1: thing I've ever read in my entire line. Uh, you
Speaker 1: should also try and get your bees locally. Um. If
Speaker 1: you get them locally, then you know a that they
Speaker 1: haven't been shipped a long way, which is going to
Speaker 1: stress them out and be that they're gonna be hip
Speaker 1: to your scene. Uh, They're gonna be down with your
Speaker 1: weather and just cool with the bars and the restaurants
Speaker 1: that are nearby. They'll know all about the local schools
Speaker 1: that the parents never stopped talking about, and everyone's just
Speaker 1: gonna be happier. Right. So also, you hopefully you can
Speaker 1: just go pick them up. But I do have the
Speaker 1: impression that there's tons of mail order bees to Oh sure,
Speaker 1: but you you, whatever it is you want to order
Speaker 1: them so that they arrive in early early spring, because
Speaker 1: your whole goal here is to get this colony up
Speaker 1: and moving and really hell, the and well populated and
Speaker 1: rare and to go um by the time the spring
Speaker 1: flowering and the nectar flow begins. That's right. Uh, there's
Speaker 1: another way to do this, what I call the Chuck way,
Speaker 1: the Chuck version, and that's to buy a nuke, right,
Speaker 1: And a nuke is a nucleus colony, and that is
Speaker 1: just sort of like the lazy persons all in one solution.
Speaker 1: You you buy a hive box. It's preloaded, it's stocked,
Speaker 1: it's got an active queen, it's got eggs, it's got
Speaker 1: your brood, it's got your pollen stores, it already has honey,
Speaker 1: for God's sake. And they call it, like I said,
Speaker 1: a short for nucleus colony as a nuke. And you
Speaker 1: can get a nuke for not much more than this
Speaker 1: other stuff, right yeah. And I mean so basically it's
Speaker 1: the brood chamber component that we're talking about with the
Speaker 1: langstroth hive. That's basically what you're buying is they ship
Speaker 1: you a like you say, you're ready to go brood chamber,
Speaker 1: and then you just start putting a queen um excluder
Speaker 1: and you know, superboxes and all that stuff on top,
Speaker 1: and there you go. It seems pretty pretty smart to
Speaker 1: me to try starting with that as well. When I
Speaker 1: was looking at the price, I was like, cheeze one
Speaker 1: of these nukes, like a thousand bucks, and it seems
Speaker 1: like it was all about fifty dollars more than starting
Speaker 1: from scratch. But I think you can spend quite a
Speaker 1: bit on a starter kit of bees if you're, say, um,
Speaker 1: looking to have just pure bread bees. Yeah, like just
Speaker 1: Italian honey bees are just Russian honey bees because um,
Speaker 1: the different different races have different kind of um tendencies,
Speaker 1: Like Italian honeybees tend to to keep a larger population
Speaker 1: over the winter, which means that you need to leave
Speaker 1: them more honey or feed them more. But they're also
Speaker 1: friendly or more docile that kind of stuff. Um. But
Speaker 1: it's really expensive because those bees are artificially inseminated and
Speaker 1: like really in a very controlled environment, whereas with most
Speaker 1: of those ones that you're spending like a hundred two
Speaker 1: hundred bucks on ten tho, they're what they call mutts,
Speaker 1: which are just like, you know, a whole whole bunch
Speaker 1: of different races of the same species of be and
Speaker 1: they they have a lot of different characteristics, some of
Speaker 1: which may actually make them less susceptible the diseases than say,
Speaker 1: like pure breads are. It's like it's like a normal
Speaker 1: person compared to um, British Royalty or something. Is that
Speaker 1: too soon? I don't think so. Okay, So once you've
Speaker 1: got everything set up, Um, your main job is going
Speaker 1: to be to feed your bees, try and keep them
Speaker 1: from swarming, and then making sure they stay healthy from
Speaker 1: disease and mites. Um, you're gonna be harvesting that excess
Speaker 1: honey along the way like we've been talking about, and
Speaker 1: gonna be feeding them that sugar water to keep them happy.
Speaker 1: And as you're doing this, you're gonna be learning more
Speaker 1: and more about just sort of the shorthand of it all,
Speaker 1: Like like when you go to even lift the back
Speaker 1: of a box, you're gonna know just by weight, like
Speaker 1: how heavy with honey that the thing is. You're not
Speaker 1: gonna have to keep pulling stuff out and looking at
Speaker 1: it over and over. That's pretty impressive. Yeah, all these
Speaker 1: little shortcuts. Um, but we need to talk about swarming
Speaker 1: because that's a that's a big deal and something that
Speaker 1: seems like it could happen fairly easily. Um, if you
Speaker 1: have a good healthy hive going on, and they're producing
Speaker 1: a lot of brood. It's gonna become overcrowded. So you
Speaker 1: want to part of avoiding this is to keep your
Speaker 1: population in check. But if you don't, then they're going
Speaker 1: to swarm, which means half of your colony and sometimes
Speaker 1: all of it is gonna say, come on, queen, let's go.
Speaker 1: Let's leave this place. I don't like this apartment anymore
Speaker 1: because it's too crowded, right, which is just an unavoidable
Speaker 1: natural process, because if you think about it, what the
Speaker 1: bees are doing is reproducing and growing their population, and
Speaker 1: then eventually, when things get crowded, they split into two
Speaker 1: and go establish a new colony or um leave the
Speaker 1: old colony behind. Right, So you're you're artificially preventing that
Speaker 1: from happening by doing things like inspecting the the um chamber.
Speaker 1: Four signs of queen cells like little queen larva that
Speaker 1: are being grown by the by the workers, which means
Speaker 1: that they're preparing to swarm and start another colony. That
Speaker 1: looks like a little peanut sort of hanging off of
Speaker 1: your comb. And if you just go through and pick
Speaker 1: those off, literally pick just get them out of there.
Speaker 1: Then the bees are like, Okay, I guess we're not
Speaker 1: going to raise another queen now. But there's other things
Speaker 1: you want to do to Like you want to actually
Speaker 1: physically get rid of some of the brood to to
Speaker 1: control the population. You're just basically saying this idea about
Speaker 1: swarming your you we were We're not going to do that.
Speaker 1: We're going to make it so that you have more
Speaker 1: room by controlling the population. Yeah, when you say get
Speaker 1: rid of the brood, that doesn't mean, uh, take these
Speaker 1: frames out and burn them on the fire. You're gonna
Speaker 1: be involved, hopefully by this time, with other local people
Speaker 1: in the area that are doing this. You're gonna go
Speaker 1: in to beekeeper meetings and getting hammered once a month
Speaker 1: on mead, right, and you're gonna trade with your friends.
Speaker 1: You're gonna say, hey, let's uh, I got too much
Speaker 1: going on here. I'm afraid I'm gonna get a swarm happening.
Speaker 1: So here's some brood frames h if you can, If
Speaker 1: you can take them, and uh, people are going to
Speaker 1: be very grateful for that. Yeah, because it's kind of
Speaker 1: like getting a free nuke, uh to to to um
Speaker 1: supplement your your colony. That's maybe not doing so good
Speaker 1: because there's two problems. One, your colony can be too
Speaker 1: healthy and then it's gonna swarm, which you want to prevent.
Speaker 1: Or it can be weak, which means that it can
Speaker 1: be overwhelmed by robber bees nearby bees that come through
Speaker 1: and to steal a bunch of stuff and basically kill
Speaker 1: off the weak colony. So yeah, just to supplement your
Speaker 1: numbers with a brood frame that somebody doesn't want because
Speaker 1: their population is starting to swarm, that would be a
Speaker 1: very good thing to have. That's right. One other thing
Speaker 1: about swarming chuck, that's how you make a bee beard.
Speaker 1: That's right. You take a queen and you tire to
Speaker 1: your forehead and the bees will come and form a
Speaker 1: beard or around your face. That's what they're doing with
Speaker 1: the bee beard. It's pretty funny looking and they will
Speaker 1: get stung. But the reason why they're not totally stung
Speaker 1: is because before they swarm, the bees gorge themselves on
Speaker 1: honey for their traveling to go establish the new colony,
Speaker 1: and they're just following the queen, and so if the
Speaker 1: queen is tied to your forehead, they're just hanging out
Speaker 1: waiting to see what she's gonna do totally. All right.
Speaker 1: We need to talk about disease because it is. It
Speaker 1: is bad right now. Um, there's something called the Veroa might,
Speaker 1: which is a parasitic pest and it is very small,
Speaker 1: came to the United States in the nineteen eighties and
Speaker 1: is the most common cause of be death and colony
Speaker 1: failure right now because of commercial beehives. Almost half uh
Speaker 1: in spring were infected with veroa. It's a bad, bad problem.
Speaker 1: It is because they will lay their eggs. These mites
Speaker 1: will lay their eggs on the um larva or the
Speaker 1: pupa of the bees, and they will feed on the
Speaker 1: pupa and either kill them or deform them. They will
Speaker 1: also attach themselves to adult bees and suck their blood.
Speaker 1: They spread disease. It's a really bad jam. And so
Speaker 1: as being a beekeeper, you have to keep an eye
Speaker 1: out for any kind of might infestation and then treat
Speaker 1: it accordingly. That's like a basic part of beekeeping, but
Speaker 1: also something that's a little more advanced than anything we
Speaker 1: could really go into now. It's just know that part
Speaker 1: of beekeeping is monitoring for diseases and pests and then
Speaker 1: treating them. Yeah, you don't want more than ten, And
Speaker 1: there are various ways that you can test how many
Speaker 1: mites you have. Uh that once you get into bee keeping,
Speaker 1: you're gonna learn on these little tricks. But you don't
Speaker 1: want any more than ten mites per two bees. And
Speaker 1: if you have more than that, then you're in trouble.
Speaker 1: And when you look at a picture of these things
Speaker 1: like sitting on a bee and feeding on it, it's
Speaker 1: just you just want to like pride off of their
Speaker 1: right and squash it. Right. But then then foul brood,
Speaker 1: which we mentioned earlier, is another big problem, and there
Speaker 1: it got its name from the sulfur smell that a
Speaker 1: brood um, a brood frame will have when you pull
Speaker 1: it out. And once you have that, your your whole
Speaker 1: colonies gone. They're goners and you need to burn your
Speaker 1: your wooden wear. Yeah, I saw dead fish. I was
Speaker 1: because I saw sulfur and I was like, well, does
Speaker 1: this swim like farts? Right? But then I saw dead
Speaker 1: fish was kind of what a lot of people said
Speaker 1: it smells like. And if you've got that, then I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: that's what a letdown. It is a letdown, especially if
Speaker 1: it happens you know, right around you know, right before
Speaker 1: they really start producing honey, right, and that's where we
Speaker 1: find ourselves. Finally you get to that sweet, sweet, mellow gold,
Speaker 1: which is which is what you're doing this for, and
Speaker 1: not only to get the honey, but obviously it also
Speaker 1: do the right thing by encouraging be populations. But harvesting
Speaker 1: honey is what everyone's really in it for. Whether you're
Speaker 1: gonna sell it or just give it away to friends
Speaker 1: or just have some for your family, that's really the
Speaker 1: end game here. And so like when you do when
Speaker 1: you go to to get the honey um, there's actually
Speaker 1: a pretty clever little thing you put on uh in
Speaker 1: between the brood chamber and the honey super that you're
Speaker 1: gonna collect honey from that lets the bees out, but
Speaker 1: it's it produces a maze for them to try to
Speaker 1: get back in. So after forty eight hours, all of
Speaker 1: bees will clear out and you can take your honey
Speaker 1: super and all of the frames laden with honey and
Speaker 1: put them into an extractor, which is definitely going to
Speaker 1: probably double the amount that you've put into your bee
Speaker 1: keeping so far. But from everything I've seen is if
Speaker 1: you're going to harvest honey, this is the way to
Speaker 1: do it. Did you see any videos on this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you can get mechanical, motorized ones it's like
Speaker 1: a centrifuge, but the ones I saw were mainly very homespun,
Speaker 1: just sort of these hand cranked versions literally homespun. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You you you uncapped and remove the wax, and you'll
Speaker 1: see in these videos they hold up the frames and
Speaker 1: just take a knife, like a hot knife, and just
Speaker 1: sort of cut the wax away from the frame and
Speaker 1: then you can literally see the honey there. If you
Speaker 1: don't have a uh an extractor, you can just do
Speaker 1: it the old fashioned way and lay it down and
Speaker 1: just wait for the honey to flow. But you can
Speaker 1: also stick them down in the extractor. The one I
Speaker 1: saw held about eight frames and you just crank that
Speaker 1: thing and it just slings the honey out and filters.
Speaker 1: You have to have certain sized screens, uh for for
Speaker 1: honey extraction to filter out the wax bits and be
Speaker 1: legs and antennae or things, you know, be parts. You
Speaker 1: want to get that stuff out of there too. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But then at the bottom is the catch where they
Speaker 1: you know, between the the extractor and the screen is
Speaker 1: a reservoir and there's this bigot on the bottom and
Speaker 1: you put it up on your countertop and pure honey
Speaker 1: just flows right out of the bottom. It's pretty awesome.
Speaker 1: It's beautiful and the taste delicious. The good thing about
Speaker 1: the extractor, too, is all you're doing is carving off
Speaker 1: the top wax cap, but you're leaving the the wax
Speaker 1: part of the chamber, the bulk of the wax intact,
Speaker 1: so that the bees can reuse it and they have
Speaker 1: to eat less honey to produce more wax for the
Speaker 1: next season. It's pretty great. It is pretty great. That's
Speaker 1: bee keeping, which is pretty great too. Agreed, you got
Speaker 1: anything else right now? I got nothing else? Well, we'll
Speaker 1: talk about this more later when we get into be keeping.
Speaker 1: His old man, Okay, yeah, for sure. Uh. Not that
Speaker 1: you have to be an old man to be into
Speaker 1: be keeping. This's not at all what I mean. No. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you want to more about bee keeping, go on
Speaker 1: a how stuff works and check out this awesome article
Speaker 1: by Dave Rouse. And there's also tons of other stuff
Speaker 1: around the internet to help you. I mean, since I
Speaker 1: said tons of other stuff on the internet, that means
Speaker 1: it's time for a listener mail. I'm gonna call this,
Speaker 1: uh something about our jingle, our theme song. Hey guys,
Speaker 1: been listening for about eight years. I never had a
Speaker 1: reason to write in. And you get a lot of
Speaker 1: emails from couples who sing your jingle back and forth
Speaker 1: to each other, which is very cute. But my story
Speaker 1: is less cute. I just moved into a new house
Speaker 1: and it turns out we have the exact amount of
Speaker 1: steps on our stairs for me to stomp to your jingle.
Speaker 1: Ever since I discovered this a couple of months ago,
Speaker 1: it's become virtually impossible for me to not stomp your
Speaker 1: jingle on the stairs, sometimes singing along too. I can't
Speaker 1: imagine how maddening that is. A couple of days ago,
Speaker 1: I was thirsty in the middle of the night and
Speaker 1: went downstairs for some water. I'm sure you can guess
Speaker 1: what happened next down I go into my front door,
Speaker 1: chipping a tooth. I was not guessing that that was
Speaker 1: gonna happen. I wasn't gonna guess that either, But Jamie,
Speaker 1: I'm very sorry that happened. Seriously, Jamie is from Sienna College,
Speaker 1: and uh, I'm sorry. The worst of all earworms right that?
Speaker 1: But that was the email. It just kind of ended
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, I mean it was like I wanted
Speaker 1: it to be like, and I went to the dentist
Speaker 1: and the dentist happened to turn out to be a
Speaker 1: long lost uncle who put me in his will or something.
Speaker 1: But no, it ended with the chipping of the tooth.
Speaker 1: That's it, Sorry, Jamie. That's all we can say. Ended
Speaker 1: like many of my own stories. If you want to
Speaker 1: get in touch of this, like Jamie did to let
Speaker 1: us know you chipped a tooth, or just to say hi,
Speaker 1: or that an uncle put you in their will, you
Speaker 1: can go on to stuff you Should Know dot com
Speaker 1: and check out our social links. There, you can send
Speaker 1: us a good old fashioned email, wrap it up, slather
Speaker 1: it on the behind with honey, and send it off
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