WEBVTT - The Ins and Outs of Beekeeping 0:00:01.120 --> 0:00:03.400 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of My 0:00:03.600 --> 0:00:12.799 Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. 0:00:13.000 --> 0:00:17.800 I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles w. Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry 0:00:17.840 --> 0:00:21.520 over there, and this is Stuff you Should Know, the 0:00:21.640 --> 0:00:27.240 Mellow Gold edition. We're talking about beck Ah. Yeah, sure, 0:00:27.280 --> 0:00:30.320 but I think beck was really talking about a m 0:00:30.600 --> 0:00:33.960 soft rock from the seventies, which I gotta say is 0:00:34.040 --> 0:00:37.680 like right up my alley these days. I love that. 0:00:37.760 --> 0:00:39.920 I mean, I've always loved it, but I'm I'm really 0:00:39.960 --> 0:00:42.880 on a streak right now. Yeah, you were championing, uh, 0:00:43.080 --> 0:00:48.120 the yacht rock thing, which I just I discovered Kenny Loggins, 0:00:48.159 --> 0:00:51.040 like I knew Kenny Loggins only from the top Gun era, 0:00:52.560 --> 0:00:54.920 and then that one Caddyshack song, which I was not 0:00:55.120 --> 0:00:58.360 crazy about. But then even further back before the Candy 0:00:58.360 --> 0:01:04.440 Shack thing, it was just beautiful stuff. Loggins and Messina. Yeah. 0:01:04.680 --> 0:01:07.320 I don't know if I've heard any Messina stuff. So 0:01:07.360 --> 0:01:10.480 I'm catching him right after the Messina part, right before 0:01:10.520 --> 0:01:13.880 the Caddyshack part. Okay, that's pretty narrow Kenny Loggins window. 0:01:14.280 --> 0:01:17.759 That's niche right there. But anyway, I'm talking about Mellow gold, 0:01:18.440 --> 0:01:21.120 because I think you and I can both agree chuk 0:01:21.760 --> 0:01:26.080 that even just reading about bee keeping, let alone actually 0:01:26.400 --> 0:01:30.320 engaging in the act of bee keeping, is about the 0:01:30.360 --> 0:01:34.320 most mellow, just relaxing thing that you can possibly do 0:01:34.400 --> 0:01:40.120 on this planet. I think it's just above bird watching 0:01:40.200 --> 0:01:44.800 and birding because birds don't sting you. Okay, So so 0:01:44.920 --> 0:01:48.440 it's less mellow than bird watching. No, no, no, yes, 0:01:48.520 --> 0:01:51.120 it's less mellow. I think bird watching is the most 0:01:51.520 --> 0:01:54.440 mellow thing on the planet. Okay. And I think because 0:01:54.480 --> 0:01:58.080 there's a threat of stinging, than bees have to be 0:01:58.680 --> 0:02:01.480 just slightly more stressful. Yeah, we should probably just go 0:02:01.480 --> 0:02:04.760 ahead and cut to that particular chase. Like, if you 0:02:04.760 --> 0:02:07.480 are a beekeeper, you're going to get stinged. Like the 0:02:07.520 --> 0:02:11.120 bees don't necessarily know you exist, and they certainly don't 0:02:11.440 --> 0:02:14.440 learn to love you or anything like that. Um, there's 0:02:14.480 --> 0:02:17.280 just certain tricks and techniques you can do too vastly 0:02:17.360 --> 0:02:19.320 cut down on the chance you're going to be stung. 0:02:19.800 --> 0:02:21.799 But you're going to be stung, like from what I've 0:02:21.800 --> 0:02:26.120 seen several dozen times a year from working very closely 0:02:26.160 --> 0:02:29.960 with bees, handling them, interacting with them. Um. And so 0:02:30.080 --> 0:02:32.680 if you have a bee allergy, you probably don't want 0:02:32.720 --> 0:02:36.840 to take up bee keeping. But but don't turn this 0:02:36.919 --> 0:02:39.440 episode off because as we were just saying, even just 0:02:39.560 --> 0:02:43.359 reading or hearing about beekeeping is relaxing. Yeah, and it's 0:02:43.400 --> 0:02:46.120 a it's a great thing to do, uh for the 0:02:46.200 --> 0:02:50.120 environment now because bees are super important to the environment 0:02:50.200 --> 0:02:54.320 and they're dying off because people spray for mosquitoes and 0:02:54.440 --> 0:02:59.120 use herbicides and things like that in their yard and 0:02:59.240 --> 0:03:02.760 that's not cool. No, but it's not just that. Remember 0:03:02.800 --> 0:03:07.720 there's there's the colony claps Disorder episode that we did. Um, 0:03:08.720 --> 0:03:11.120 no one ever got to the bottom of what has 0:03:11.160 --> 0:03:13.040 been the cause of this. There's like so many different 0:03:13.040 --> 0:03:16.799 culprits from like round up to um to yeah to 0:03:17.120 --> 0:03:21.280 uh uh, pest sides to cell phone towers. Was a 0:03:21.320 --> 0:03:24.360 culprit there for a little while, or suspected culprit, but 0:03:24.400 --> 0:03:26.280 as far as we know, as far as I know, 0:03:26.360 --> 0:03:28.480 we don't know exactly what it is that's leading to 0:03:28.560 --> 0:03:31.040 colony claps disorder. So yeah, it is a good thing 0:03:31.120 --> 0:03:33.880 to say, you know what, I'm going to oversee a 0:03:33.960 --> 0:03:36.680 colony of bees and make sure that they are just 0:03:37.200 --> 0:03:41.440 in hog Heaven as far as um their little lifespans 0:03:41.440 --> 0:03:44.480 are concerned. That's right, and we did a full episode 0:03:44.480 --> 0:03:48.440 on bees in January. What else did we do on bees? 0:03:49.640 --> 0:03:52.880 We did a a TV show episode on bees. And 0:03:52.960 --> 0:03:57.040 I sent you a clip from that episode today and uh, 0:03:57.160 --> 0:03:59.480 we we both had a good laugh. I thought it 0:03:59.520 --> 0:04:02.520 was good. I was like, this is actually pretty good 0:04:02.600 --> 0:04:05.400 compared to how I remember it. Yeah. Wow, I thought 0:04:05.400 --> 0:04:07.720 it was so bad. Really, that's funny. That's how I 0:04:07.800 --> 0:04:10.440 used to feel about it. Like I couldn't watch ten 0:04:10.520 --> 0:04:13.320 seconds strung together of that show. I was so cringe. 0:04:13.360 --> 0:04:15.600 E to me and I guess enough time has passed. 0:04:15.640 --> 0:04:17.600 Word now I look back on him, like, this is 0:04:17.640 --> 0:04:19.840 actually not nearly as bad as I remember it being. 0:04:20.040 --> 0:04:23.400 Nostalgia has kicked in. It's the shaan On effect, I guess. 0:04:23.400 --> 0:04:25.479 So that's funny, you say, Sean Not because I was 0:04:25.520 --> 0:04:29.440 just listening to sean On yesterday. Yeah, it's that bottom 0:04:29.440 --> 0:04:32.120 mine Half effect. That's what's going down. It's even more 0:04:32.839 --> 0:04:35.279 astounding because I was listening to bid or Bottom Mine 0:04:35.279 --> 0:04:39.920 Half this morning. So, uh, beekeeping in the United States 0:04:40.120 --> 0:04:43.479 is becoming more and more popular these days. Um, here's 0:04:43.480 --> 0:04:45.480 the stat and this was This is an article from 0:04:45.480 --> 0:04:48.080 the Old House Stuff Works website, but it's from Dave 0:04:48.160 --> 0:04:50.360 Rouse from Dave Rouse, from our very own and that's 0:04:50.360 --> 0:04:53.440 how I found it because I'm looking for Ruse specific material. 0:04:53.520 --> 0:04:56.680 Now it's it's just bona fide good stuff, it is. 0:04:56.720 --> 0:05:00.480 But he had a stat here from where uh, there 0:05:00.480 --> 0:05:04.560 were about two point six seven million honey bee colonies 0:05:04.600 --> 0:05:08.320 in the US. And of course a lot of these 0:05:08.360 --> 0:05:11.839 are from you know, uh, from Big b Big Honey, 0:05:13.240 --> 0:05:16.400 but there's a lot of backyard beekeepers doing their best 0:05:16.400 --> 0:05:20.640 work in going out there with their mellow gold, smoking 0:05:20.720 --> 0:05:25.560 up those hives and and getting out that sweet sweet nectar. Yeah, 0:05:25.600 --> 0:05:28.200 and actually those are good people to buy it from 0:05:28.240 --> 0:05:31.320 if you believe in immunotherapy like I do, which apparently 0:05:31.400 --> 0:05:35.440 is still considered unproven. Who do, But it makes so 0:05:35.520 --> 0:05:39.640 much sense that you could introduce small amounts of like 0:05:40.040 --> 0:05:42.400 local pollen that you may develop an allergy to to 0:05:42.480 --> 0:05:45.120 prevent from getting allergies, which means that you want to 0:05:45.120 --> 0:05:48.640 buy honey that's been produced within ten twenty miles maybe 0:05:48.640 --> 0:05:51.560 of where you live. Um, so you would want to 0:05:51.600 --> 0:05:55.040 go find one of those small beekeepers who sells their honey. Yeah. 0:05:55.120 --> 0:05:57.960 If you're on your your Facebook neighborhood page or your 0:05:58.120 --> 0:06:01.360 next door neighborhood page. Chances are you will see someone 0:06:01.400 --> 0:06:04.000 pop up every now and then it says I've got 0:06:04.000 --> 0:06:06.680 honey or eggs or something like that, or goat's milk. 0:06:07.080 --> 0:06:09.560 Just go get that stuff and eat it up, right, 0:06:09.800 --> 0:06:12.640 Who wants goats milk? Cool wants goats milk? You know, 0:06:12.720 --> 0:06:16.839 the traditional Facebook post grips um. You can also go 0:06:16.920 --> 0:06:18.960 to like, say what like a street festival in your 0:06:18.960 --> 0:06:21.200 town or something like that, like a little community festival. 0:06:21.200 --> 0:06:23.960 You're probably going to find local honey there, or a 0:06:23.960 --> 0:06:28.240 health food store something like that, or goats milk, you know. Yeah, 0:06:28.279 --> 0:06:31.440 And while beekeeping is for sure fun and this made 0:06:31.440 --> 0:06:32.720 me want to do it, and I may do it 0:06:32.720 --> 0:06:35.600 one day. You gotta have some time. It is not 0:06:35.760 --> 0:06:38.000 the easiest thing in the world to do. It's it. 0:06:38.160 --> 0:06:40.000 It kind of came across to me as one of 0:06:40.000 --> 0:06:43.520 those things that like a lot of uh, like a 0:06:43.520 --> 0:06:46.360 lot of stuff like this. Your your first batch may 0:06:46.360 --> 0:06:48.440 not be the best, but like you learn and you 0:06:48.560 --> 0:06:51.360 learn and you get better and better at it. Yeah, 0:06:51.360 --> 0:06:53.400 and I want to shout out to also to some 0:06:53.480 --> 0:06:57.119 of the great resources. In addition to this house Stuff 0:06:57.160 --> 0:07:01.080 Works article, I actually called a guy for honey harvest 0:07:01.120 --> 0:07:04.640 farms in Glenda, Maryland. His name is Jeff, and Jeff 0:07:04.960 --> 0:07:07.599 helped me out with some info that I just couldn't 0:07:07.600 --> 0:07:10.320 find online. But some of the sites I came across 0:07:10.440 --> 0:07:16.320 include Carolina honey Bees, Iron Oak Farm, and Scientific Beekeeping, 0:07:16.800 --> 0:07:18.720 and all three of those are great resources. But there's 0:07:18.760 --> 0:07:20.880 a lot of really good resources on the Internet that 0:07:20.960 --> 0:07:24.600 help explain how to do this and UM answer more 0:07:24.720 --> 0:07:27.400 like arcane questions. And there's tons of forms like people 0:07:27.440 --> 0:07:30.239 who are really into beekeeping I found are called beaks 0:07:31.000 --> 0:07:35.960 geeks for short, UM, and they they are definitely into this. 0:07:36.000 --> 0:07:38.960 So there's tons of resources out there UM to to 0:07:39.120 --> 0:07:41.120 kind of get started and just kind of dive in. 0:07:41.160 --> 0:07:43.640 But yeah, I got the impression that, like there's always 0:07:43.640 --> 0:07:47.320 more to learn in each colony over the years. Is 0:07:47.520 --> 0:07:51.800 um probably has its own personality, I guess, is how 0:07:51.840 --> 0:07:54.360 you'd put it. Yeah. Should we go back in time 0:07:54.400 --> 0:07:58.280 though and talk about the history? I think so, because 0:07:59.280 --> 0:08:04.600 they found that is fifty years old where in Georgia, 0:08:04.840 --> 0:08:08.320 not our Georgia, the other Georgia. Yeah, and honey is 0:08:08.400 --> 0:08:11.400 very famous for not going bad. Um. You know. They 0:08:11.440 --> 0:08:13.560 say if you find old honey like that, you can 0:08:13.600 --> 0:08:16.280 just heat it up and it will go back to 0:08:16.320 --> 0:08:20.360 being just delicious honey, even if it's crystallized, right, because yeah, 0:08:20.440 --> 0:08:24.720 the crystallization is just kind of an unavoidable consequence of aging. 0:08:24.840 --> 0:08:27.320 But it's easy to reverse, right, just for a little 0:08:27.320 --> 0:08:31.400 bit of heat. Yeah, you got honey again flowing right. 0:08:31.720 --> 0:08:35.280 So did they taste that honey. I'm not sure if 0:08:35.280 --> 0:08:37.520 they tasted that honey, but they found other old honey 0:08:37.559 --> 0:08:40.520 that they've tasted, and it's supposed to be pretty good. 0:08:40.679 --> 0:08:43.240 You know, that's good honey tasted like honey, I think, right, 0:08:43.240 --> 0:08:47.480 And it doesn't stores. It stores right, tastes like chicken, 0:08:47.800 --> 0:08:50.960 and its stores forever, like literally from what we understand, 0:08:51.040 --> 0:08:54.800 because it's sterile and it stays generally sterile. Um. But 0:08:54.960 --> 0:09:00.880 the the earliest depiction of actually rating bee hive or 0:09:00.880 --> 0:09:03.200 of bee keeping is is not really bee keeping. It's 0:09:03.280 --> 0:09:05.760 basically just a picture of a guy in a cave 0:09:05.840 --> 0:09:09.160 in Spain, on the cave walls, sticking his hand into 0:09:09.200 --> 0:09:12.000 a bee hive, and it's from something like, um, I 0:09:12.040 --> 0:09:15.600 believe eleven thousand years ago, yeah, nine thousand b c E. 0:09:16.679 --> 0:09:19.360 And uh yeah, stick in his hand in that honey pot. 0:09:20.080 --> 0:09:23.559 As far as real bee keeping, goes and on a 0:09:23.640 --> 0:09:26.920 domesticated level. Um, we all know that they did it 0:09:27.000 --> 0:09:31.679 in Egypt and about but of course people think China 0:09:31.760 --> 0:09:34.360 probably beat us, uh or not us on that Egypt. 0:09:34.920 --> 0:09:37.920 Chuck casts is a lot with Egypt. Everybody it beat 0:09:37.960 --> 0:09:41.960 us to it here in Egypt. Um. So in Egypt, 0:09:42.000 --> 0:09:45.679 though eventually, um, they have something like on in Hiero 0:09:45.760 --> 0:09:51.160 glyph they have like bee hives, clearly depicted honey pots, um. 0:09:51.360 --> 0:09:55.520 And then they've also found hives that were human built, 0:09:55.559 --> 0:09:58.559 clearly human built, made of clay and straw, from as 0:09:58.720 --> 0:10:02.000 as late as twenty nine years ago in Israel. So 0:10:02.360 --> 0:10:04.440 we've been into honey for a very long time, and 0:10:04.480 --> 0:10:06.960 at some point we've figured out that you could probably 0:10:07.480 --> 0:10:13.240 um suffer a lot fewer beastings if you kind of um, 0:10:13.360 --> 0:10:17.160 oh what's the word insinuated yourself into this bee colony. 0:10:17.200 --> 0:10:21.040 And that's ultimately what beekeeping is. We'll see it's human saying, Okay, 0:10:21.080 --> 0:10:23.120 I kind of get this life cycle of the bees 0:10:23.160 --> 0:10:25.720 and the bee colony and what's going on here. I'm 0:10:25.720 --> 0:10:29.880 going to kind of manipulate this or oversee it supervised. 0:10:29.880 --> 0:10:32.640 I guess that's how you put it. Um, this natural 0:10:32.679 --> 0:10:36.080 process in order to basically steal the honey from the 0:10:36.120 --> 0:10:38.880 bees at the end of the summer. That's right in 0:10:38.880 --> 0:10:41.440 a way that where they can keep making honey. Because 0:10:41.520 --> 0:10:44.280 in the early days, the very first bee hives that 0:10:44.360 --> 0:10:50.320 people domesticated, we're holloud out stumps and tree logs and things, 0:10:50.880 --> 0:10:53.520 and they would destroy these. They would get that honey 0:10:53.600 --> 0:10:56.520 and then be like, all right, let's just destroy it 0:10:56.600 --> 0:10:59.520 and kill everything that gave us this delicious honey. There 0:10:59.559 --> 0:11:02.319 was a better way forward, uh later, But it also 0:11:02.400 --> 0:11:06.400 took the skep s k e p. If you've ever seen, um, 0:11:06.440 --> 0:11:09.520 what looks like a turned over basket with a hole 0:11:09.520 --> 0:11:13.079 in the bottom, as sort of the symbol of beekeeping, 0:11:13.160 --> 0:11:15.880 that's called a skep. And they still use them today 0:11:15.920 --> 0:11:19.040 here and there. I think like the most hardcore old 0:11:19.040 --> 0:11:24.000 school naturalist beekeepers might use a skep. Hipster, Yeah, hipsters, 0:11:24.040 --> 0:11:29.280 he's skeps or they outside the developing world, Um, we 0:11:29.280 --> 0:11:31.560 we rarely use them these days, but they're still around 0:11:31.600 --> 0:11:33.600 and you can find pictures of them. And if you 0:11:33.640 --> 0:11:37.600 look at on images online and uh, they have pictures 0:11:37.600 --> 0:11:39.280 of them turned over and you can see the combs 0:11:39.280 --> 0:11:41.720 stuffed in there. It's kind of cool looking, right, yeah, yeah, 0:11:41.920 --> 0:11:44.840 and like you said, it's basically like the international kind 0:11:44.840 --> 0:11:48.520 of homespun symbol of of bee keeping in honey raising, 0:11:48.880 --> 0:11:50.680 that's right, But that was not any better for the 0:11:50.720 --> 0:11:52.960 bee because you had to destroy the hive with those 0:11:53.000 --> 0:11:55.480 as well, right, which is it's bad for the bees, 0:11:55.520 --> 0:11:57.440 but it's also bad for the beekeeper because you have 0:11:57.520 --> 0:12:00.360 to re establish a new calling me every time you harvest, 0:12:00.440 --> 0:12:02.560 and you can keep a colony going for a lot 0:12:02.600 --> 0:12:05.679 longer than just one year, you know. Yeah, And things 0:12:05.679 --> 0:12:08.600 really kind of took a leap forward in Switzerland in 0:12:08.640 --> 0:12:12.280 the eighteenth century with a man named Francois Huber who 0:12:12.520 --> 0:12:16.280 had the first movable hive, the leaf hive, which was 0:12:16.320 --> 0:12:18.040 it was sort of like a book, It turned like 0:12:18.080 --> 0:12:21.720 a book would, and uh, this was a good design 0:12:22.840 --> 0:12:26.040 because you could get these you could get the honey 0:12:26.200 --> 0:12:28.600 and not the brood, and you can remove these leaves 0:12:28.679 --> 0:12:31.280 without killing the colony, which was a great step forward, 0:12:31.679 --> 0:12:33.680 but it still wasn't like the best design yet, and 0:12:33.720 --> 0:12:35.760 that one never really caught on. It didn't catch on 0:12:35.880 --> 0:12:39.920 despite Hubert's um efforts to promote it. He would go 0:12:39.960 --> 0:12:42.200 into town and say, oh, well, let's see what's on 0:12:42.240 --> 0:12:46.120 the next page, bees, What's on the next page? More bees? 0:12:46.200 --> 0:12:50.320 Everyone and town folks just never really caught on. But 0:12:50.440 --> 0:12:54.119 in the nineteenth century there's a guy named Thomas Wildman 0:12:54.640 --> 0:12:57.360 and he started working with what are called bar hives, 0:12:57.800 --> 0:13:00.720 which I have also seen called Kenya bar hives. So 0:13:00.760 --> 0:13:03.640 I suspect that Thomas Wildman got the idea from Kenya. 0:13:04.160 --> 0:13:07.360 But it's like basically a long trough for like, um, 0:13:07.400 --> 0:13:10.400 you know those standing planters that you can keep a 0:13:10.480 --> 0:13:13.160 number of plants in, But it's just basically like a long, 0:13:13.200 --> 0:13:16.839 rectangular raised box. It's like one of those. But then 0:13:16.880 --> 0:13:19.560 if you lift the top of the box, there's just 0:13:19.600 --> 0:13:23.040 a bunch of bars that stretch across the top inside 0:13:23.559 --> 0:13:25.680 and that's it. They have like a notch hanging down. 0:13:25.960 --> 0:13:28.280 But if you pull that that bar up, you see 0:13:28.320 --> 0:13:31.880 that the bees have have created combs dangling from those 0:13:31.960 --> 0:13:35.240 those bars. Which is this This bar hive is still 0:13:35.360 --> 0:13:38.000 very much in use today, it's just not nearly as 0:13:38.000 --> 0:13:40.640 widespread as one we're about to talk about. Yes, that 0:13:40.640 --> 0:13:44.640 would be a man from Pennsylvania, minister named Lorenzo Langstroth, 0:13:45.400 --> 0:13:48.320 who said, I will one day be the father of 0:13:48.360 --> 0:13:51.800 American beekeeping that everyone's like, what are you talking about? 0:13:52.840 --> 0:13:56.560 He said, just pay attention because I have discovered what's 0:13:56.559 --> 0:13:58.959 called the B space. And everyone's like, what are you 0:13:59.000 --> 0:14:03.520 talking about? Is this a sermon? He was widely questioned, 0:14:03.559 --> 0:14:05.320 Like everything he said, he'd be like, I have to 0:14:05.320 --> 0:14:07.160 go to the bathroom. People be like, what do you mean. 0:14:09.400 --> 0:14:12.520 So what he discovered is there's this magic space called 0:14:12.520 --> 0:14:15.839 the B space where bees can really do their things successfully. 0:14:16.400 --> 0:14:19.240 And he found out that bees would not even build 0:14:19.280 --> 0:14:23.640 a comb in a space tighter than one centimeter. And 0:14:23.800 --> 0:14:26.320 so he said, this is the B space where they 0:14:26.360 --> 0:14:30.440 can produce uh, the comb in the right amount and 0:14:31.000 --> 0:14:34.760 not enough be glue is going to get in the way, Like, 0:14:34.840 --> 0:14:37.560 this is the magic area, and I shall declare it 0:14:37.640 --> 0:14:40.920 be space and it shall be fruitful. Yeah, And it 0:14:40.960 --> 0:14:44.080 was like believe it or not. Realizing that bees don't 0:14:44.080 --> 0:14:47.200 build comb or glue in anything tighter than a centimeter 0:14:47.800 --> 0:14:51.680 revolutionized beekeeping because now with that B space, you could 0:14:51.680 --> 0:14:55.240 build these, um, these bee hives so that on the 0:14:55.360 --> 0:14:57.920 edges of them, they were just a centimeter between the 0:14:57.960 --> 0:15:01.040 sides of say, where the combs were built. Um, you 0:15:01.080 --> 0:15:04.240 could keep these these frames or these bars separated by 0:15:04.280 --> 0:15:06.640 a centimeter, so there's enough space, like you're saying, for 0:15:06.680 --> 0:15:08.080 the piece of work, but not enough for them to 0:15:08.120 --> 0:15:13.280 glue together, which was an ongoing, apparently millennium millennia old 0:15:13.320 --> 0:15:17.040 problem of having to harvest and getting a bunch of 0:15:17.080 --> 0:15:20.360 combs stuck together at once. With the space, now, all 0:15:20.360 --> 0:15:22.920 of a sudden you had little bits of comb that 0:15:22.960 --> 0:15:25.360 you could manipulate a lot more easily, And that was 0:15:25.480 --> 0:15:28.960 like a huge contribution to be keeping. Strangely enough, that's right, 0:15:29.080 --> 0:15:31.560 And he got a the first American patent on a 0:15:31.680 --> 0:15:35.760 movable frame bee hive in October of eighteen fifty two, 0:15:36.440 --> 0:15:40.160 hooked up with a cabinet maker from Philadelphia, U named 0:15:40.200 --> 0:15:43.880 Henry Borkwin and started building these things, started selling them 0:15:43.880 --> 0:15:46.960 and dead okay, But he found out that his patent 0:15:47.160 --> 0:15:50.120 was way too hard to enforce. He tried to for 0:15:50.160 --> 0:15:52.880 a little while, but it was basically a waste of 0:15:52.960 --> 0:15:56.640 his time and the patent was just walked all over 0:15:56.960 --> 0:15:59.840 and he ended up getting no royalties. But did revolution 0:15:59.880 --> 0:16:02.680 I be keeping so a lyon stroth hive then? Is 0:16:02.680 --> 0:16:06.440 a proprietary eponym? Is that what you're saying? Well, I mean, 0:16:06.840 --> 0:16:09.960 he got the patent right, and he couldn't enforce it, 0:16:10.000 --> 0:16:14.440 so it just became like Kleenex sort of or aspirin. Yeah. 0:16:14.440 --> 0:16:18.160 I mean if you if you buy a Langstroth hive today, 0:16:19.080 --> 0:16:22.960 then for sure he's not getting any dough. He's long dead, 0:16:23.160 --> 0:16:25.880 long dead in the ground. But so this, this high 0:16:25.920 --> 0:16:28.040 this is really cool and we'll talk more about it later, 0:16:28.080 --> 0:16:30.240 but just put a pin in it that this is 0:16:30.280 --> 0:16:33.200 the most widespread hive. Like Lyon Stroth figured out how 0:16:33.240 --> 0:16:37.160 to make a beehive that's so close to ideal that 0:16:37.400 --> 0:16:42.600 since the eighteen fifties that's gone virtually unimproved, which is 0:16:42.720 --> 0:16:45.720 pretty pretty significant accomplishment if you asked me. Yeah, and 0:16:45.760 --> 0:16:48.920 I looked at these uh war or wear hives w 0:16:49.120 --> 0:16:52.880 A R R E, which is another kind um, but 0:16:53.120 --> 0:16:55.360 I didn't. I mean, I'm sure there are differences once 0:16:55.400 --> 0:16:57.000 you dig in there, but it didn't look that much 0:16:57.040 --> 0:16:59.640 different to me than the Lyon Stroth. Yeah. I couldn't 0:16:59.720 --> 0:17:02.040 really tell much of that. I mean I saw, well, 0:17:02.080 --> 0:17:04.800 this the limeshot doesn't have this this quilted thing of 0:17:04.840 --> 0:17:08.040 like you know, cardboard shavings or whatever. So there's like 0:17:08.240 --> 0:17:10.480 I think it's the very small differences that make a 0:17:10.480 --> 0:17:14.320 big difference in differentiating between these hives. Yeah, so should 0:17:14.359 --> 0:17:16.560 we take a break. I think we should, and then Chuck, 0:17:16.600 --> 0:17:18.280 when we come back, we're going to talk a little 0:17:18.320 --> 0:17:48.480 bit about B Society. Okay, let's do it alright. So 0:17:48.600 --> 0:17:52.879 I would direct everyone to our ten of ten TV 0:17:53.040 --> 0:17:57.200 show stuff you should know, and in particular the b 0:17:57.400 --> 0:17:59.520 S episode, which, by the way, I wrote, I have 0:17:59.560 --> 0:18:01.600 an exact get a producer credit on that show from 0:18:01.640 --> 0:18:06.399 writing that episode, executive producer credit on every episode. That's true, 0:18:06.440 --> 0:18:10.440 because that I really earned it on that one writing it. Well, listen, 0:18:10.520 --> 0:18:12.560 so that's funny because that's how it was explained to 0:18:12.600 --> 0:18:14.399 me at the time. But Chuck, I just want to 0:18:14.400 --> 0:18:18.520 go on record here. I went to Herculean links to 0:18:18.680 --> 0:18:22.280 keep you from getting stung by a bee in that episode, 0:18:22.640 --> 0:18:26.480 and they they said, absolutely not. Chuck has to get 0:18:26.520 --> 0:18:29.960 stung just to make the the episode worth watching. He 0:18:30.000 --> 0:18:32.199 has to get stung. And I thought it was a 0:18:32.240 --> 0:18:34.560 better idea if you didn't, if we kept building up 0:18:34.560 --> 0:18:36.920 to it and it never happened, but they said, no, no, 0:18:37.040 --> 0:18:38.920 we're not going with that. But I tried really hard 0:18:38.960 --> 0:18:40.959 to keep you from getting stun that's right, And we 0:18:40.960 --> 0:18:43.000 had a little fake bees that they put on my eyeball, 0:18:44.560 --> 0:18:48.480 but I would direct people to the January podcast episode instead. 0:18:49.240 --> 0:18:51.760 Why not both? If sure, but if you really want 0:18:51.800 --> 0:18:55.480 to learn about bees, that's where we dive into it 0:18:55.560 --> 0:18:58.359 super deep. So I guess we'll just consider this a 0:18:58.359 --> 0:19:03.600 bit of a recap okay, okay, so um. In the 0:19:04.840 --> 0:19:07.840 in the world, there's something like twenty thousand species of 0:19:07.880 --> 0:19:12.359 wild bees, but in honeybee or bee keeping, you're going 0:19:12.400 --> 0:19:18.080 to find usually one species of bee APIs mellifera, which 0:19:18.119 --> 0:19:22.280 is either the European or the Western honeybee. And there's 0:19:22.320 --> 0:19:24.960 different varieties. They call them races, you know. With like 0:19:25.040 --> 0:19:27.479 breeds of dogs, we call them breeds, but they're all 0:19:27.480 --> 0:19:31.160 still the same species Canus lupus. But with bees, they're 0:19:31.200 --> 0:19:36.000 all the same species APIs mellifera, but the races are different. 0:19:36.000 --> 0:19:39.440 So you have like the Italian honeybee or the carno 0:19:39.960 --> 0:19:43.320 Lean I believe, Carnolian honeybe or the Russian honeybee, but 0:19:43.359 --> 0:19:47.399 they're all races of European or Western honeybee. That's what 0:19:47.440 --> 0:19:50.640 you're going to find everywhere. Yeah, and these things are amazing. 0:19:50.680 --> 0:19:52.919 I remember at the time we were just sort of 0:19:52.960 --> 0:19:56.359 obsessed with bees after that episode, so much so that 0:19:56.400 --> 0:19:59.560 we wanted to do it for the TV show, uh In. 0:19:59.680 --> 0:20:01.800 One of the main reasons is because they're what's called 0:20:01.800 --> 0:20:06.120 a super organism, which basically means you take a western 0:20:06.160 --> 0:20:09.400 honey bee out on its own, and that thing isn't 0:20:09.400 --> 0:20:12.320 gonna do anything worthwhile with it. Couldn't order dinner at 0:20:12.400 --> 0:20:16.000 Roy Rogers restaurant. It's so dumb. No, But when you 0:20:16.040 --> 0:20:18.760 put all these things together, all these bees have very 0:20:18.760 --> 0:20:21.399 specific jobs that we're gonna go over here in a second, 0:20:22.040 --> 0:20:27.000 and all these coordinated actions, and that is this super organism. 0:20:27.080 --> 0:20:32.240 They are one hole, like sixty thousand honey bees acting 0:20:32.320 --> 0:20:36.840 as one in order to produce honey hive mind' hive 0:20:36.840 --> 0:20:38.680 mind right, So I mean we get so many hive 0:20:38.760 --> 0:20:41.439 mind worker bees. All these like things that are in 0:20:41.520 --> 0:20:44.000 like the our lexicon are all taken from the way 0:20:44.040 --> 0:20:47.159 bees do their thing right exactly. And so when you 0:20:47.160 --> 0:20:51.120 put them together, this larger super organism an emergent property 0:20:51.280 --> 0:20:54.639 of the collective actions and the instincts that these bees 0:20:54.640 --> 0:20:56.960 are following. If you put it all together, they interact 0:20:56.960 --> 0:21:00.439 and form this larger hole and that's the colony. And 0:21:00.520 --> 0:21:03.439 so on the individual level, you have three different types 0:21:03.880 --> 0:21:06.720 of bees. You've got worker bees, which make up the 0:21:06.840 --> 0:21:10.800 vast majority of the population. They're all female, they're all 0:21:10.800 --> 0:21:15.560 sexually undeveloped females, and they do almost all of the 0:21:15.640 --> 0:21:20.920 work um as usual around the hive. Um. That includes 0:21:20.960 --> 0:21:29.359 everything from raising the eggs to um creating wax. Um. Uh. 0:21:29.600 --> 0:21:32.040 They what else do they do? They make the honey, 0:21:32.200 --> 0:21:35.760 they go collect the pollen, They defend the hive, They 0:21:35.760 --> 0:21:39.840 serve as guards at the entrance, like they do almost everything. Yeah, 0:21:39.880 --> 0:21:45.840 they take care of that queen, which is the biggest one. Literally, 0:21:46.080 --> 0:21:49.080 so this all made me nervous. Uh when I was 0:21:49.119 --> 0:21:52.480 reading this again because so much depends on the queen. 0:21:52.760 --> 0:21:55.560 It all depends on this one. Be Wait it made 0:21:55.560 --> 0:21:58.640 you nervous. Yeah, it's not, because it's not like, oh, 0:21:58.680 --> 0:22:00.719 there's a bunch of queens, so if one of them 0:22:00.760 --> 0:22:04.399 dies or something happens, then you're fine. You gotta have 0:22:04.440 --> 0:22:07.320 that queen and there's just one of them. I can't 0:22:07.320 --> 0:22:10.960 remember where we heard it, but like somebody said somewhere 0:22:11.040 --> 0:22:15.160 that like the queen is their slave, and that's actually 0:22:15.200 --> 0:22:18.600 like kind of true because the queen's whole job. Chuck 0:22:18.720 --> 0:22:22.480 is to basically keep the colony going and optimistic through 0:22:22.520 --> 0:22:26.000 this pheromone that she she creates, but also to like 0:22:26.119 --> 0:22:30.280 lay all of the eggs and fertilize them. Um, but 0:22:30.359 --> 0:22:33.200 that's a lot of eggs. It's a ton. Like Apparently 0:22:33.200 --> 0:22:36.160 a queen can lay up to a million in her lifetime, right, yeah, 0:22:36.200 --> 0:22:38.920 and that's over a few years. But that's about fift 0:22:39.440 --> 0:22:42.840 eggs a day. But my point is this, the queen 0:22:42.960 --> 0:22:45.199 is their slave because she does this for them. She 0:22:45.280 --> 0:22:49.040 keeps the population going, but they decide when it's time 0:22:49.080 --> 0:22:53.000 for another queen to be born, as far as I know, sure, 0:22:53.760 --> 0:22:58.199 is that correct? Okay, we'll find out the in the 0:22:58.240 --> 0:23:02.080 listener mail. Uh. Then you got your drones, of course, 0:23:02.080 --> 0:23:04.960 those are the male bees and they it is funny 0:23:05.000 --> 0:23:07.399