WEBVTT - Selects: The Ins and Outs of Beekeeping 0:00:00.960 --> 0:00:03.279 Hey, everybody, it's me Josh, and for this week's selects, 0:00:03.279 --> 0:00:07.960 I've chosen our episode on Beekeeping from October two. After 0:00:08.039 --> 0:00:10.320 re listening to this one, I dare say that it 0:00:10.400 --> 0:00:13.400 could be my favorite episode, and not just because I've 0:00:13.440 --> 0:00:15.760 been hoping to use dare say in a sentence lately. 0:00:16.239 --> 0:00:18.400 Sure it doesn't have the sexy thrills of the dB 0:00:18.520 --> 0:00:22.360 Cooper Live episode or the loveability of the Elephant episode, 0:00:22.640 --> 0:00:25.599 but it's got a mellow homeliness that makes me feel 0:00:25.640 --> 0:00:28.360 like I'm wearing a comfy sweater, sipping tea at the 0:00:28.440 --> 0:00:31.360 kitchen table, and a beautiful mourn. I hope it does 0:00:31.400 --> 0:00:38.599 the same for you. Enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, 0:00:38.920 --> 0:00:47.600 a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to 0:00:47.640 --> 0:00:52.680 the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, 0:00:52.760 --> 0:00:56.400 there's Jerry over there, and this is Stuff you should Know. 0:00:57.160 --> 0:01:02.920 The Mellow Gold Edition were talking about Beck Ah, Yeah, sure, 0:01:02.960 --> 0:01:06.000 but I think beck was really talking about a m 0:01:06.319 --> 0:01:09.679 soft rock from the seventies, which I gotta say is 0:01:09.720 --> 0:01:13.399 like right up my alley these days. I love that. 0:01:13.440 --> 0:01:15.600 I mean, I've always loved it, but I'm I'm really 0:01:15.640 --> 0:01:18.600 on a streak right now. Yeah, you were championing, uh 0:01:18.760 --> 0:01:23.800 the yacht rock thing, which I just I discovered Kenny Loggins, 0:01:23.840 --> 0:01:26.720 like I knew Kenny Loggins only from the top Gun era, 0:01:28.280 --> 0:01:30.600 and then that one Caddyshack song, which I was not 0:01:30.800 --> 0:01:34.039 crazy about. But then even further back, before the caddy 0:01:34.040 --> 0:01:40.080 Shack thing, it was just beautiful stuff Loggins and Messina. Yeah, 0:01:40.160 --> 0:01:43.000 I don't know if I've heard any Messina stuff, so 0:01:43.080 --> 0:01:45.480 I think I'm catching him right after the Messina part, 0:01:45.680 --> 0:01:48.880 right before the Caddyshack part. Okay, that's pretty narrow Kenny 0:01:48.880 --> 0:01:52.480 Loggins window, that's niche right there. But anyway, I'm talking 0:01:52.480 --> 0:01:55.840 about mellow gold because I think you and I can 0:01:55.840 --> 0:02:00.640 both agree, Chuck, that even just reading about bee keeping, 0:02:00.840 --> 0:02:04.240 let alone actually engaging in the act of bee keeping, 0:02:05.200 --> 0:02:09.080 is about the most mellow, just relaxing thing that you 0:02:09.120 --> 0:02:13.760 can possibly do on this planet. I think it's just 0:02:14.040 --> 0:02:19.919 above bird watching and birding because birds don't sting you. Okay, 0:02:19.960 --> 0:02:24.160 So so it's less mellow than bird watching. No, no, no, yes, 0:02:24.200 --> 0:02:26.840 it's less mellow. I think bird watching is the most 0:02:27.200 --> 0:02:30.120 mellow thing on the planet, Okay. And I think because 0:02:30.160 --> 0:02:33.760 there's a threat of stinging then bees have to be 0:02:34.360 --> 0:02:37.160 just slightly more stressful. Yeah, we should probably just go 0:02:37.200 --> 0:02:40.440 ahead and cut to that particular chase. Like, if you 0:02:40.480 --> 0:02:43.160 are a beekeeper, you're going to get stinged. Like the 0:02:43.200 --> 0:02:46.800 bees don't necessarily know you exist, and they certainly don't 0:02:47.120 --> 0:02:50.120 learn to love you or anything like that. Um. There's 0:02:50.160 --> 0:02:53.000 just certain tricks and techniques you can do too vastly 0:02:53.040 --> 0:02:55.000 cut down on the chance you're going to be strong, 0:02:55.520 --> 0:02:57.480 but you're going to be stung, like from what I've 0:02:57.480 --> 0:03:01.800 seen several dozen times a year from working very closely 0:03:01.880 --> 0:03:05.640 with bees, handling them, interacting with them. Um. And so 0:03:05.760 --> 0:03:08.359 if you have a b allergy, you probably don't want 0:03:08.400 --> 0:03:12.560 to take up bee keeping. But but don't turn this 0:03:12.600 --> 0:03:15.120 episode off because, as we were just saying, even just 0:03:15.240 --> 0:03:18.880 reading or hearing about bee keeping is relaxing. Yeah, and 0:03:18.880 --> 0:03:21.640 it's a it's a great thing to do, uh for 0:03:21.680 --> 0:03:25.160 the environment now because bees are super important to the 0:03:25.280 --> 0:03:29.840 environment and they're dying off because people spray for mosquitoes 0:03:29.880 --> 0:03:33.880 and use herbicides and things like that in their yard 0:03:34.720 --> 0:03:38.000 and that's not cool. No, But it's not just that. 0:03:38.080 --> 0:03:44.520 Remember there's there's the Colony clips Disorder episode that we did. Um. No, 0:03:44.560 --> 0:03:47.000 one ever got to the bottom of what has been 0:03:47.040 --> 0:03:49.480 the cause of this. There's like so many different culprits 0:03:49.520 --> 0:03:53.760 from like round up to um to yeah to uh uh, 0:03:54.120 --> 0:03:57.560 pest sides to cell phone towers. Was a culprit there 0:03:57.560 --> 0:04:00.400 for a little while, or suspected culprit, but as far 0:04:00.440 --> 0:04:02.440 as we know, as far as I know, we don't 0:04:02.480 --> 0:04:05.360 know exactly what it is that's leading to colony claps disorder. 0:04:05.440 --> 0:04:07.480 So yeah, it is a good thing to say, you 0:04:07.520 --> 0:04:10.520 know what, I'm going to oversee a colony of bees 0:04:10.600 --> 0:04:13.800 and make sure that they are just in hog Heaven 0:04:14.280 --> 0:04:18.400 as far as um their little lifespans are concerned. That's right. 0:04:18.480 --> 0:04:22.680 And we did a full episode on bees in January. 0:04:23.000 --> 0:04:26.640 What else did we do on We did a a 0:04:26.720 --> 0:04:30.120 TV show episode on bees. And I sent you a 0:04:30.160 --> 0:04:33.440 clip from that episode today and uh we we both 0:04:33.440 --> 0:04:36.600 had a good laugh. I thought it was good. I 0:04:36.680 --> 0:04:38.920 was like, this is actually pretty good compared to how 0:04:38.960 --> 0:04:42.520 I remember it. Yeah, I thought it was so bad. Really, 0:04:42.560 --> 0:04:44.240 that's funny. That's how I used to feel about it. 0:04:44.279 --> 0:04:47.880 Like I couldn't watch ten seconds strung together of that show. 0:04:47.960 --> 0:04:50.640 I was so cringe. E to me, I guess enough 0:04:50.680 --> 0:04:52.680 time has passed where now I look back on him like, 0:04:53.040 --> 0:04:55.160 this is actually not nearly as bad as I remember 0:04:55.160 --> 0:04:58.359 it being. Nostalgia has kicked in. It's the show On effect, 0:04:58.720 --> 0:05:01.000 I guess. So that's fun, you say, Sean, Not because 0:05:01.000 --> 0:05:04.560 I was just listening to Sean on yesterday. Yeah, it's 0:05:04.560 --> 0:05:07.240 that bottom mine half effect, that's what's going down. It's 0:05:07.279 --> 0:05:10.320 even more astounding because I was listening to bid or 0:05:10.400 --> 0:05:14.840 bidom Mine Half this morning. So, uh, beekeeping in the 0:05:14.920 --> 0:05:18.840 United States is becoming more and more popular these days. Um, 0:05:18.920 --> 0:05:21.000 here's the stat and this was this is an article 0:05:21.040 --> 0:05:23.480 from the Old House Stuff Works website, but it's from 0:05:23.600 --> 0:05:25.880 Dave Rouse, from Dave Ruse, from our very own and 0:05:25.880 --> 0:05:27.880 that's how I found it because I'm looking for Ruse 0:05:28.120 --> 0:05:31.960 specific material. Now it's it's just bona fide good stuff, 0:05:32.040 --> 0:05:35.320 it is. But he had a stat here from where 0:05:36.000 --> 0:05:39.600 there were about two point six seven million honey bee 0:05:39.680 --> 0:05:43.800 colonies in the US. And of course a lot of 0:05:43.800 --> 0:05:47.520 these are from you know, uh, from Big b Big Honey, 0:05:48.920 --> 0:05:51.840 but there's a lot of backyard bee keepers doing their 0:05:51.839 --> 0:05:55.279 best work in going out there with their mellow gold, 0:05:55.960 --> 0:05:59.799 smoking up those hives and and getting out that sweet 0:05:59.800 --> 0:06:03.120 see nectar. Yeah, and actually those are good people to 0:06:03.160 --> 0:06:06.240 buy it from if you believe in immunotherapy like I do, 0:06:06.279 --> 0:06:10.600 which apparently is still considered unproven. Who do. But it 0:06:10.640 --> 0:06:15.000 makes so much sense that you could introduce small amounts 0:06:15.000 --> 0:06:17.719 of like local pollen that you may develop an allergy 0:06:17.800 --> 0:06:20.520 to to prevent from getting allergies, Which means that you 0:06:20.560 --> 0:06:23.680 want to buy honey that's been produced within ten twenty 0:06:23.680 --> 0:06:26.840 miles maybe of where you live. Um, so you would 0:06:26.920 --> 0:06:29.560 want to go find one of those small beekeepers who 0:06:29.560 --> 0:06:32.359 sells their honey. Yeah. If you're on your your Facebook 0:06:32.440 --> 0:06:36.280 neighborhood page or your next door neighborhood page, chances are 0:06:36.360 --> 0:06:38.120 you will see someone pop up every now and then 0:06:38.240 --> 0:06:41.560 it says I've got honey or eggs or something like that, 0:06:41.680 --> 0:06:44.040 or goats milk. Just go get that stuff and eat 0:06:44.080 --> 0:06:48.039 it up right? Who wants goats milk? Who wants goats milk? 0:06:48.160 --> 0:06:52.400 You know? The traditional Facebook posts? Um, you can also 0:06:52.440 --> 0:06:54.440 go to like say what like a street festival in 0:06:54.480 --> 0:06:56.880 your town or something like that, like a little community festival. 0:06:56.920 --> 0:06:59.880 You're probably going to find local honey there, or health 0:07:00.000 --> 0:07:03.920 food store something like that, or goats milk, you know. Yeah, 0:07:03.960 --> 0:07:07.080 and while beekeeping is for sure fun and this made 0:07:07.120 --> 0:07:08.400 me want to do it, and I may do it 0:07:08.440 --> 0:07:11.280 one day. You gotta have some time. It is not 0:07:11.440 --> 0:07:13.720 the easiest thing in the world to do. It's it. 0:07:13.840 --> 0:07:15.680 It kind of came across to me as one of 0:07:15.680 --> 0:07:19.360 those things that like a lot of like a lot 0:07:19.400 --> 0:07:22.120 of stuff like this. Your your first batch may not 0:07:22.200 --> 0:07:24.480 be the best, but like you learn and you learn 0:07:24.560 --> 0:07:27.120 and you get better and better at it. Yeah, And 0:07:27.160 --> 0:07:29.280 I want to shout out to also to some of 0:07:29.280 --> 0:07:33.520 the great resources in addition to this house Stuff Works article, 0:07:33.840 --> 0:07:38.200 I actually called a guy from Honey Harvest Farms in Glendon, Maryland. 0:07:38.280 --> 0:07:41.320 His name is Jeff, and Jeff helped me out with 0:07:41.360 --> 0:07:44.720 some info that I just couldn't find online. But some 0:07:44.760 --> 0:07:47.880 of the sites I came across include Carolina Honey Bees, 0:07:48.640 --> 0:07:53.040 Iron Oak Farm, and Scientific Beekeeping, and all three of 0:07:53.080 --> 0:07:55.120 those are great resources. But there's a lot of really 0:07:55.120 --> 0:07:58.000 good resources on the internet to help explain how to 0:07:58.080 --> 0:08:01.760 do this and um answer more like arcane questions, and 0:08:01.760 --> 0:08:03.840 there's tons of forms like people who are really into 0:08:03.840 --> 0:08:09.120 beekeeping I found are called beaks geeks for short, um, 0:08:09.280 --> 0:08:12.240 and they they are definitely into this. So there's tons 0:08:12.240 --> 0:08:15.280 of resources out there UM to to kind of get 0:08:15.320 --> 0:08:17.480 started and just kind of dive in. But yeah, I 0:08:17.520 --> 0:08:20.080 got the impression that, like, there's always more to learn, 0:08:20.640 --> 0:08:24.560 and each colony over the years is um probably has 0:08:24.600 --> 0:08:28.800 its own personality, I guess, is how you'd put it. Yeah. 0:08:28.920 --> 0:08:30.920 Should we go back in time though and talk about 0:08:30.960 --> 0:08:36.000 the history? I think so? Because they found honey that 0:08:36.120 --> 0:08:41.440 is fifty years old where in Georgia, not our Georgia, 0:08:41.880 --> 0:08:44.640 the other Georgia. Yeah, and honey is very famous for 0:08:44.720 --> 0:08:47.640 not going bad. Um. You know they say if you 0:08:47.679 --> 0:08:50.240 find old honey like that, you can just heat it 0:08:50.320 --> 0:08:53.160 up and it will go back to being just delicious honey, 0:08:53.200 --> 0:08:57.360 even if it's crystallized, right, because yeah, the crystallization is 0:08:57.440 --> 0:09:01.080 just kind of an unavoidable consequence of aging. But it's 0:09:01.120 --> 0:09:04.640 easy to reverse, right, just for a little bit of heat. Yeah, 0:09:04.920 --> 0:09:08.360 it's got honey again flowing. Right. So did they taste 0:09:08.360 --> 0:09:11.920 that honey. I'm not sure if they tasted that honey, 0:09:11.960 --> 0:09:14.840 but they found other old honey that they've tasted, and 0:09:15.080 --> 0:09:17.280 it's supposed to be pretty good. You know, that's honey 0:09:17.320 --> 0:09:19.960 tasted like honey I think, right, And it doesn't stores 0:09:20.120 --> 0:09:24.439 its stores, right, tastes like chicken and its stores forever 0:09:24.760 --> 0:09:27.760 like literally from what we understand, because it's sterile and 0:09:27.800 --> 0:09:32.839 it stays generally sterile. Um. But the the earliest depiction 0:09:33.040 --> 0:09:37.280 of actually rating a bee hive or of bee keeping 0:09:37.360 --> 0:09:40.040 is is not really bee keeping. It's basically just a 0:09:40.080 --> 0:09:42.600 picture of a guy in a cave in Spain, on 0:09:42.679 --> 0:09:45.559 the cave walls, sticking his hand into a bee hive. 0:09:45.960 --> 0:09:48.840 And it's from something like, um, I believe eleven thousand 0:09:48.880 --> 0:09:53.480 years ago, yeah, nine thousand b c E. And uh yeah, 0:09:53.640 --> 0:09:56.319 stick in his hand in that honeypot, as far as 0:09:56.480 --> 0:10:01.320 real bee keeping goes, and on a domesticated at level. Um. 0:10:01.440 --> 0:10:03.560 We all know that they did it in Egypt and about. 0:10:04.920 --> 0:10:08.560 But of course people think China probably beat us, uh 0:10:08.679 --> 0:10:13.240 or not us ony chuck casts is a lot with Egypt. Everybody, 0:10:13.240 --> 0:10:16.640 it beat us to it here in Egypt. Um. So 0:10:16.960 --> 0:10:20.560 in Egypt, though eventually, um, they have something like on 0:10:20.840 --> 0:10:24.079 in Hiero glyph they have like bee hives, clearly depicted 0:10:24.480 --> 0:10:30.160 honey pots. Um. And then they've also found hives that 0:10:30.200 --> 0:10:33.360 were human built, clearly human built, made of clay and straw, 0:10:33.800 --> 0:10:37.679 from as as late as years ago. In Israel, so 0:10:38.040 --> 0:10:40.120 we've been into honey for a very long time, and 0:10:40.160 --> 0:10:42.680 at some point we figured out that you could probably 0:10:43.160 --> 0:10:47.400 um suffer a lot fewer beastings if you kind of 0:10:48.080 --> 0:10:52.840 um what's the word insinuated yourself into this bee colony. 0:10:52.880 --> 0:10:56.719 And that's ultimately what beekeeping is. We'll see it's humans saying, okay, 0:10:56.760 --> 0:10:58.800 I kind of get this life cycle of the bees 0:10:58.880 --> 0:11:01.400 and the bee colony and what's going on here. I'm 0:11:01.440 --> 0:11:05.560 going to kind of manipulate this or oversee its supervised 0:11:05.600 --> 0:11:08.320 I guess that's how you put it, um this natural 0:11:08.400 --> 0:11:11.800 process in order to basically steal the honey from the 0:11:11.800 --> 0:11:14.600 bees at the end of the summer. That's right in 0:11:14.600 --> 0:11:17.120 a way that where they can keep making honey. Because 0:11:17.200 --> 0:11:19.959 in the early days, the very first bee hives that 0:11:20.040 --> 0:11:26.000 people domesticated, we're holloud out stumps and tree logs and things, 0:11:26.559 --> 0:11:29.199 and they would destroy these. They would get that honey 0:11:29.280 --> 0:11:32.200 and then be like, all right, let's just destroy it 0:11:32.280 --> 0:11:35.200 and kill everything that gave us this delicious honey. There 0:11:35.240 --> 0:11:38.000 was a better way forward, uh later, But it also 0:11:38.080 --> 0:11:40.520 took the skep s k e p. If you've ever 0:11:40.559 --> 0:11:44.720 seen um, what looks like a a turned over basket 0:11:44.760 --> 0:11:47.480 with a hole in the bottom as sort of the 0:11:47.520 --> 0:11:50.840 symbol of beekeeping. That's called a skep, and they still 0:11:50.880 --> 0:11:53.120 use them today here and there. I think like the 0:11:53.160 --> 0:11:59.720 most hardcore old school naturalist beekeepers might use a skep hipster, Yeah, hipsters, 0:11:59.720 --> 0:12:04.960 he's yess or they outside the developing world. Um, we 0:12:04.960 --> 0:12:07.199 we rarely use them these days, but they're still around, 0:12:07.280 --> 0:12:09.280 and you can find pictures of them. And if you 0:12:09.320 --> 0:12:13.240 look at on images online and uh, they have pictures 0:12:13.280 --> 0:12:14.959 of them turned over and you can see the combs 0:12:14.960 --> 0:12:17.440 stuffed in there. It's kind of cool looking, right yeah. Yeah, 0:12:17.600 --> 0:12:20.520 And like you said, it's basically like the international kind 0:12:20.520 --> 0:12:24.240 of homespun symbol of of bee keeping in honey raising, 0:12:24.559 --> 0:12:26.360 that's right, But that was not any better for the 0:12:26.400 --> 0:12:28.640 bee because you had to destroy the hive with those 0:12:28.679 --> 0:12:31.160 as well, right, which is it's bad for the bees, 0:12:31.200 --> 0:12:33.120 but it's also bad for the beekeeper because you have 0:12:33.200 --> 0:12:36.040 to re establish a new callony every time you harvest, 0:12:36.120 --> 0:12:38.000 and you can keep a calling you going for a 0:12:38.040 --> 0:12:41.040 lot longer than just one year, you know. Yeah, And 0:12:41.120 --> 0:12:43.760 things really kind of took a leap forward in Switzerland 0:12:44.200 --> 0:12:47.000 in the eighteenth century with a man named Francois Huber, 0:12:47.720 --> 0:12:51.800 who had the first movable hive, the leaf hive, which 0:12:51.880 --> 0:12:53.600 was it was sort of like a book. It turned 0:12:53.640 --> 0:12:57.040 like a book would, and uh, this was a good 0:12:57.040 --> 0:13:00.920 design because you could get the you can get the 0:13:00.960 --> 0:13:03.959 honey and not the brood, and you can remove these 0:13:04.040 --> 0:13:06.960 leaves without killing the colony, which was a great step forward. 0:13:07.360 --> 0:13:09.400 But it still wasn't like the best design yet, and 0:13:09.400 --> 0:13:11.440 that one never really caught on. It didn't catch on 0:13:11.559 --> 0:13:15.600 despite Hubert's um efforts to promote it. He would go 0:13:15.640 --> 0:13:17.880 into town and say, oh, well, let's see what's on 0:13:17.920 --> 0:13:21.800 the next page, bees, what's on the next page more bees? 0:13:21.880 --> 0:13:26.000 Everyone and town folks just never really caught on. But 0:13:26.120 --> 0:13:29.800 in the nineteenth century there's a guy named Thomas Wildman 0:13:30.320 --> 0:13:33.040 and he started working with what are called bar hives, 0:13:33.480 --> 0:13:36.400 which I have also seen called Kenyan bar hives. So 0:13:36.440 --> 0:13:39.640 I suspect that Thomas Wildman got the idea from Kenya. 0:13:39.880 --> 0:13:43.040 But it's like basically a long trough for like, um, 0:13:43.080 --> 0:13:46.079 you know those standing planters that you can keep a 0:13:46.160 --> 0:13:48.079 number of plants in, But it's just basically like a 0:13:48.640 --> 0:13:52.320 long rectangular raised box. It's like one of those. But 0:13:52.400 --> 0:13:55.160 then if you lift the top of the box. There's 0:13:55.160 --> 0:13:58.079 just a bunch of bars that stretch across the top 0:13:58.120 --> 0:14:01.360 inside and that's it. They have like a notch hanging down. 0:14:01.640 --> 0:14:03.960 But if you pull that that bar up, you see 0:14:04.000 --> 0:14:07.600 that the bees have have created combs dangling from those 0:14:07.640 --> 0:14:10.920 those bars. Which is this This bar hive is still 0:14:11.040 --> 0:14:13.679 very much in use today, it's just not nearly as 0:14:13.679 --> 0:14:16.280 widespread as when we're about to talk about. Yes, that 0:14:16.360 --> 0:14:20.359 would be a man from Pennsylvania, minister named Lorenzo Langstroth, 0:14:21.120 --> 0:14:24.000 who said I will one day be the father of 0:14:24.040 --> 0:14:27.480 American beekeeping. That everyone's like, what are you talking about? 0:14:28.560 --> 0:14:32.240 He said, just pay attention because I have discovered what's 0:14:32.240 --> 0:14:34.680 called the B space. And everyone's like, what are you 0:14:34.680 --> 0:14:39.200 talking about? Is this a sermon? He was widely questioned, 0:14:39.240 --> 0:14:41.000 Like everything he said, he'd be like, I have to 0:14:41.000 --> 0:14:42.480 go to the bathroom and people be like, what do 0:14:42.480 --> 0:14:47.080 you mean. So what he discovered is there's this magic 0:14:47.560 --> 0:14:50.200 space called the B space where bees can really do 0:14:50.280 --> 0:14:54.280 their things successfully. And he found out that bees would 0:14:54.280 --> 0:14:56.960 not even build a comb in a space tighter than 0:14:57.040 --> 0:15:01.120 one centimeter. And so he's said, this is the B 0:15:01.280 --> 0:15:05.320 space where they can produce uh, the comb and the 0:15:05.400 --> 0:15:09.280 right amount and not enough be glue is going to 0:15:09.360 --> 0:15:11.800 get in the way, Like this is the magic area, 0:15:12.200 --> 0:15:15.000 and I shall declare it be space and it shall 0:15:15.080 --> 0:15:17.800 be fruitful. Yeah. And it was like, believe it or not, 0:15:18.440 --> 0:15:21.800 Realizing that bees don't build comb or glue in anything 0:15:21.800 --> 0:15:26.200 tighter than a centimeter revolutionized bee keeping because now with 0:15:26.280 --> 0:15:29.240 that b space, you could build these, um, these bee 0:15:29.280 --> 0:15:32.160 hives so that on the edges of them, they were 0:15:32.240 --> 0:15:34.880 just a centimeter between the sides of say, where the 0:15:34.920 --> 0:15:38.480 combs were built. Um, you could keep these these frames 0:15:38.560 --> 0:15:41.720 or these bars separated by a centimeter, so there's enough space, 0:15:41.760 --> 0:15:43.160 like you're saying, for the bees of work, but not 0:15:43.280 --> 0:15:45.520 enough for them to glue together, which was an ongoing, 0:15:46.040 --> 0:15:51.880 apparently millennium millennia old problem of having to harvest and 0:15:51.920 --> 0:15:54.760 getting a bunch of combs stuck together at once. With 0:15:54.800 --> 0:15:57.640 the space, now all of a sudden you had little 0:15:57.760 --> 0:16:00.520 bits of comb that you could manipulate a lot more easily. 0:16:00.560 --> 0:16:03.080 And that was like a huge contribution to be keeping. 0:16:03.120 --> 0:16:06.080 Strangely enough, that's right, And he got a the first 0:16:06.080 --> 0:16:10.320 American patent on a movable frame bee hive in October 0:16:10.400 --> 0:16:13.560 of eighteen fifty two, hooked up with a cabinet maker 0:16:13.600 --> 0:16:18.560 from Philadelphia, U named Henry Borkwyn and started building these things, 0:16:18.720 --> 0:16:21.960 started selling him and dead okay, but he found out 0:16:22.000 --> 0:16:25.200 that his patent was way too hard to enforce. He 0:16:25.280 --> 0:16:28.080 tried to for a little while, but it was basically 0:16:28.080 --> 0:16:31.360 a waste of his time and the patent was just 0:16:31.560 --> 0:16:34.359 walked all over and he ended up getting no royalties 0:16:34.360 --> 0:16:38.240 but did revolutionize bee keeping. So a Langstroth hive then, 0:16:38.320 --> 0:16:41.800 is a proprietary eponym. Is that what you're saying. Well, 0:16:41.840 --> 0:16:45.240 I mean he got the patent right, and he couldn't 0:16:45.280 --> 0:16:48.320 enforce it, so it just became like Kleenex sort of 0:16:48.840 --> 0:16:51.840 or aspirin. Yeah. I mean if you if you buy 0:16:52.280 --> 0:16:56.600 a Langstroth hive today, then for sure he's not getting 0:16:56.600 --> 0:16:59.920 any dough. He's long dead, long dead in the ground. 0:17:00.240 --> 0:17:02.360 But so this this high this is really cool and 0:17:02.400 --> 0:17:04.480 we'll talk more about it later, but just put a 0:17:04.520 --> 0:17:07.040 pin in it that this is the most widespread hive. 0:17:07.160 --> 0:17:09.840 Like lyon Strouth figured out how to make a bive 0:17:10.320 --> 0:17:14.639 that's so close to ideal that since the eighteen fifties 0:17:15.080 --> 0:17:20.199 that's gone virtually unimproved, which is pretty pretty significant. Accomplishment 0:17:20.240 --> 0:17:22.200 if you ask me. Yeah, And I looked at these 0:17:22.400 --> 0:17:25.640 uh war or wear hives W A R R E, 0:17:26.280 --> 0:17:29.840 which is another kind um, but I didn't. I mean, 0:17:29.880 --> 0:17:31.720 I'm sure there are differences once you dig in there, 0:17:31.720 --> 0:17:33.399 but it didn't look that much different to me than 0:17:33.440 --> 0:17:36.480 the Lyon Struth. Yeah. I couldn't really tell much of 0:17:36.520 --> 0:17:38.159 the I mean I saw, oh, well this the Lion 0:17:38.200 --> 0:17:41.119 Struth doesn't have this this quilted thing of like you know, 0:17:41.440 --> 0:17:44.440 cardboard shavings or whatever. So there's like, I think it's 0:17:44.480 --> 0:17:47.000 the very small differences that make a big difference and 0:17:47.400 --> 0:17:50.680 differentiating between these hives. Yeah, so should we take a break. 0:17:51.119 --> 0:17:53.000 I think we should, and then chuck. When we come back, 0:17:53.000 --> 0:17:56.000 we're going to talk a little bit about B society. Okay, 0:17:56.200 --> 0:18:25.440 let's do it all right, So I would direct everyone 0:18:25.520 --> 0:18:30.600 to our ten of ten TV show stuff you should know, 0:18:31.200 --> 0:18:34.480 and in particular the B's episode, which, by the way, 0:18:34.520 --> 0:18:36.840 I wrote, I have an executive producer credit on that 0:18:36.880 --> 0:18:41.320 show from writing that episode. Executive producer credit on every episode. 0:18:41.640 --> 0:18:46.119 That's true, because that I really earned it on that one. Well, listen, 0:18:46.200 --> 0:18:48.320 so that's funny because that's how it was explained to me. 0:18:48.359 --> 0:18:50.199 At the time. But Chuck, I just want to go 0:18:50.240 --> 0:18:54.600 on record here. I went to Herculean Links to keep 0:18:54.680 --> 0:18:57.960 you from getting stung by a b in that episode, 0:18:58.320 --> 0:19:02.480 and they said, absolutely not. Chuck has to get stung 0:19:02.720 --> 0:19:05.920 just to make the episode worth watching. He has to 0:19:05.960 --> 0:19:08.560 get stung. And I thought it was a better idea 0:19:08.600 --> 0:19:10.439 if you didn't, if we kept building up to it 0:19:10.440 --> 0:19:12.880 and it never happened, But they said, no, no, we're 0:19:12.920 --> 0:19:14.680 not going with that. But I tried really hard to 0:19:14.760 --> 0:19:16.760 keep you from getting stun that's right, And we had 0:19:16.760 --> 0:19:18.680 a little fake bees that they put on my eyeball. 0:19:20.240 --> 0:19:24.160 But I would direct people to the January podcast episode. Instead. 0:19:24.920 --> 0:19:27.520 Why not? Both? Sure, but if you really want to 0:19:27.600 --> 0:19:31.800 learn about bees, that's where we dive into it super deep. 0:19:32.160 --> 0:19:34.240 So I guess we'll just consider this a bit of 0:19:34.240 --> 0:19:41.080 a recap. Okay, okay, so um. In the in the world, 0:19:41.160 --> 0:19:44.840 there's something like twenty thousand species of wild bees, but 0:19:45.080 --> 0:19:48.360 in honey bee or bee keeping, you're going to find 0:19:48.600 --> 0:19:54.480 usually one species of b APIs mellifera, which is either 0:19:54.560 --> 0:19:58.760 the European or the Western honeybee, and there's different varieties 0:19:58.800 --> 0:20:01.520 they call him races, you know, with like breeds of dogs, 0:20:01.520 --> 0:20:03.720 we call them breeds, but they're all still the same 0:20:03.760 --> 0:20:07.320 species Canis lupus. But with bees, they're all the same 0:20:07.320 --> 0:20:11.919 species APIs mellifera, but the races are different. So you 0:20:11.960 --> 0:20:16.800 have like the Italian honeybee or the Carnolean I believe, 0:20:16.840 --> 0:20:20.760 Carnolian honeybee, the Russian honeybee, but they're all races of 0:20:20.840 --> 0:20:24.800 European or Western honeybee. That's what you're gonna find everywhere. Yeah, 0:20:24.840 --> 0:20:27.400 and these things are amazing. I remember at the time, 0:20:27.480 --> 0:20:31.320 we were just sort of obsessed with bees after that episode, 0:20:31.400 --> 0:20:32.960 so much so that we wanted to do it for 0:20:33.000 --> 0:20:36.360 the TV show. Uh. And one of the main reasons 0:20:36.440 --> 0:20:40.000 is because they're what's called a super organism, which basically 0:20:40.040 --> 0:20:43.000 means you take a western honeybe out on its own, 0:20:43.760 --> 0:20:46.680 and that thing isn't gonna do anything worthwhile with it. 0:20:46.880 --> 0:20:50.639 Kuldn't order dinner at Roy Rogers restaurant. It's so dumb. No. 0:20:51.040 --> 0:20:53.520 But when you put all these things together, all these 0:20:53.600 --> 0:20:56.280 bees have very specific jobs that we're gonna go over 0:20:56.359 --> 0:21:00.800 here in a second, and all these coordinated actions, and 0:21:01.040 --> 0:21:04.680 that is the super organism. They are one hole like 0:21:04.920 --> 0:21:09.280 sixty thou honey bees acting as one in order to 0:21:09.720 --> 0:21:13.159 produce honey. Hive mind. It's a hive mind, right, So 0:21:13.200 --> 0:21:15.320 I mean we get so many hive mind worker bees. 0:21:15.359 --> 0:21:17.840 All these like things that are in like the our 0:21:17.960 --> 0:21:20.280 lexicon are all taken from the way bees do their 0:21:20.320 --> 0:21:23.520 thing right exactly. And so when you put them together, 0:21:23.560 --> 0:21:27.960 this larger super organism an emergent property of the collective 0:21:28.000 --> 0:21:31.040 actions and the instincts that these bees are following. If 0:21:31.080 --> 0:21:33.239 you put it all together, they interact and form this 0:21:33.359 --> 0:21:36.960 larger hole and that's the colony. And so on the 0:21:37.000 --> 0:21:40.760 individual level, you have three different types of bees. You've 0:21:40.800 --> 0:21:43.439 got worker bees, which make up the vast majority of 0:21:43.480 --> 0:21:48.480 the population. They're all female, They're all sexually undeveloped females, 0:21:49.160 --> 0:21:53.160 and they do almost all of the work um as 0:21:53.280 --> 0:21:58.640 usual around the hive. Um. That includes everything from raising 0:21:58.880 --> 0:22:06.399 the a to um creating wax. Um. Uh. They what 0:22:06.440 --> 0:22:08.199 else do they do? They make the honey, they go 0:22:08.240 --> 0:22:11.880 collect the pollen, They defend the hive, They serve as 0:22:11.880 --> 0:22:15.520 guards at the entrance, like they do almost everything. Yeah, 0:22:15.560 --> 0:22:19.720 they take care of that queen, which is the biggest one. 0:22:20.400 --> 0:22:24.520 A literally so this all made me nervous. Uh, when 0:22:24.520 --> 0:22:27.679 I was reading this again, because so much depends on 0:22:27.720 --> 0:22:30.920 the queen. It all depends on this one. B Wait, 0:22:30.960 --> 0:22:34.320 it made you nervous. Yeah, it's not, because it's not like, oh, 0:22:34.359 --> 0:22:36.440 there's a bunch of queens, so if one of them 0:22:36.480 --> 0:22:40.080 dies or something happens, then you're fine. You gotta have 0:22:40.160 --> 0:22:43.000 that queen and there's just one of them. I can't 0:22:43.000 --> 0:22:46.680 remember where we heard it, but like somebody said somewhere 0:22:46.720 --> 0:22:50.840 that like the queen is their slave, and that's actually 0:22:50.920 --> 0:22:54.280 like kind of true because the queen's whole job, chuck, 0:22:54.400 --> 0:22:58.200 is to basically keep the colony going and optimistic through 0:22:58.200 --> 0:23:01.679 this pheromone that she may creates, but also to like 0:23:01.800 --> 0:23:05.960 lay all of the eggs and fertilize them. Um, but 0:23:06.040 --> 0:23:08.880 that's a lot of eggs. It's a ton. Like apparently 0:23:08.920 --> 0:23:11.880 a queen can lay up to a million in her lifetime, right, yeah, 0:23:11.880 --> 0:23:14.640