Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles w. Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry
Speaker 1: over there, and this is Stuff you Should Know, the
Speaker 1: Mellow Gold edition. We're 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 Candy
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'm catching him right after the Messina part, right before
Speaker 1: the Caddyshack part. Okay, that's pretty narrow Kenny Loggins window.
Speaker 1: That's niche right there. But anyway, I'm talking about Mellow gold,
Speaker 1: because I think you and I can both agree chuk
Speaker 1: that even just reading about bee keeping, let alone actually
Speaker 1: engaging in the act of bee keeping, is about the
Speaker 1: most mellow, just relaxing thing that you can possibly do
Speaker 1: on this planet. I think it's just above bird watching
Speaker 1: and birding because birds don't sting you. Okay, So so
Speaker 1: 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, than 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 stung.
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 bee 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 beekeeping is relaxing. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: a it's a great thing to do, uh for the
Speaker 1: environment now because bees are super important to the environment
Speaker 1: and they're dying off because people spray for mosquitoes and
Speaker 1: use herbicides and things like that in their yard and
Speaker 1: that's not cool. No, but it's not just that. Remember
Speaker 1: there's there's the colony claps Disorder episode that we did. Um,
Speaker 1: no one ever got to the bottom of what has
Speaker 1: been the cause of this. There's like so many different
Speaker 1: culprits from like round up to um to yeah to
Speaker 1: uh uh, pest sides to cell phone towers. Was a
Speaker 1: culprit there for a little while, or suspected culprit, but
Speaker 1: as far as we know, as far as I know,
Speaker 1: we don't know exactly what it is that's leading to
Speaker 1: colony claps disorder. So yeah, it is a good thing
Speaker 1: to say, you know what, I'm going to oversee a
Speaker 1: colony of bees and make sure that they are just
Speaker 1: in hog Heaven as far as um their little lifespans
Speaker 1: are concerned. That's right, and we did a full episode
Speaker 1: on bees in January. What else did we do on bees?
Speaker 1: We did a a TV show episode on bees. And
Speaker 1: I sent you a clip from that episode today and uh,
Speaker 1: we we both had a good laugh. I thought it
Speaker 1: was good. I was like, this is actually pretty good
Speaker 1: compared to how I remember it. Yeah. Wow, I thought
Speaker 1: it was so bad. Really, that's funny. That's how I
Speaker 1: used to feel about it. Like I couldn't watch ten
Speaker 1: seconds strung together of that show. I was so cringe.
Speaker 1: E to me and I guess enough time has passed.
Speaker 1: Word now I look back on him, like, this is
Speaker 1: actually not nearly as bad as I remember it being.
Speaker 1: Nostalgia has kicked in. It's the shaan On effect, I guess.
Speaker 1: So that's funny, you say, Sean Not because I was
Speaker 1: just listening to sean On yesterday. Yeah, it's that bottom
Speaker 1: mine Half effect. That's what's going down. It's even more
Speaker 1: astounding because I was listening to bid or Bottom Mine
Speaker 1: Half this morning. So, uh, beekeeping in the United States
Speaker 1: is becoming more and more popular these days. Um, here's
Speaker 1: the stat and this was This is an article from
Speaker 1: the Old House Stuff Works website, but it's from Dave
Speaker 1: Rouse from Dave Rouse, from our very own and that's
Speaker 1: how I found it because I'm looking for Ruse specific material.
Speaker 1: Now it's it's just bona fide good stuff, it is.
Speaker 1: But he had a stat here from where uh, there
Speaker 1: were about two point six seven million honey bee colonies
Speaker 1: in the US. And of course a lot of these
Speaker 1: are from you know, uh, from Big b Big Honey,
Speaker 1: but there's a lot of backyard beekeepers doing their best
Speaker 1: work in going out there with their mellow gold, smoking
Speaker 1: up those hives and and getting out that sweet sweet nectar. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and actually those are good people to buy it from
Speaker 1: if you believe in immunotherapy like I do, which apparently
Speaker 1: is still considered unproven. Who do, But it makes so
Speaker 1: much sense that you could introduce small amounts of like
Speaker 1: local pollen that you may develop an allergy to to
Speaker 1: prevent from getting allergies, which means that you want to
Speaker 1: buy honey that's been produced within ten twenty miles maybe
Speaker 1: of where you live. Um, so you would want to
Speaker 1: go find one of those small beekeepers who sells their honey. Yeah.
Speaker 1: If you're on your your Facebook neighborhood page or your
Speaker 1: next door neighborhood page. Chances are you will see someone
Speaker 1: pop up every now and then it says I've got
Speaker 1: honey or eggs or something like that, or goat's milk.
Speaker 1: Just go get that stuff and eat it up, right,
Speaker 1: Who wants goats milk? Cool wants goats milk? You know,
Speaker 1: the traditional Facebook post grips um. You can also go
Speaker 1: to like, say what like a street festival in your
Speaker 1: town or something like that, like a little community festival.
Speaker 1: You're probably going to find local honey there, or a
Speaker 1: health 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 uh, like a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff like this. Your your first batch may
Speaker 1: not be the best, but like you learn and you
Speaker 1: learn and you get better and better at it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I want to shout out to also to some
Speaker 1: of the great resources. In addition to this house Stuff
Speaker 1: Works article, I actually called a guy for honey harvest
Speaker 1: farms in Glenda, Maryland. His name is Jeff, and Jeff
Speaker 1: helped me out with some info that I just couldn't
Speaker 1: find online. But some of the sites I came across
Speaker 1: include Carolina honey Bees, Iron Oak Farm, and Scientific Beekeeping,
Speaker 1: and all three of those are great resources. But there's
Speaker 1: a lot of really good resources on the Internet that
Speaker 1: help explain how to do this and UM answer more
Speaker 1: like arcane questions. And there's tons of forms like people
Speaker 1: who are really into beekeeping I found are called beaks
Speaker 1: geeks for short, UM, and they they are definitely into this.
Speaker 1: So there's tons of resources out there UM to to
Speaker 1: kind of get started and just kind of dive in.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I got the impression that, like there's always
Speaker 1: more to learn in each colony over the years. Is
Speaker 1: um probably has its own personality, I guess, is how
Speaker 1: you'd put it. Yeah. Should we go back in time
Speaker 1: though and talk about the history? I think so, because
Speaker 1: they found that is fifty years old where in Georgia,
Speaker 1: not our Georgia, the other Georgia. Yeah, and honey is
Speaker 1: very famous for not going bad. Um. You know. They
Speaker 1: say if you find old honey like that, you can
Speaker 1: just heat it up and it will go back to
Speaker 1: being just delicious honey, even if it's crystallized, right, because yeah,
Speaker 1: the crystallization is just kind of an unavoidable consequence of aging.
Speaker 1: But it's easy to reverse, right, just for a little
Speaker 1: bit of heat. Yeah, you got honey again flowing right.
Speaker 1: So did they taste that honey. I'm not sure if
Speaker 1: they tasted that honey, but they found other old honey
Speaker 1: that they've tasted, and it's supposed to be pretty good.
Speaker 1: You know, that's good honey tasted like honey, I think, right,
Speaker 1: And it doesn't stores. It stores right, tastes like chicken,
Speaker 1: and its stores forever, like literally from what we understand,
Speaker 1: because it's sterile and it stays generally sterile. Um. But
Speaker 1: the the earliest depiction of actually rating bee hive or
Speaker 1: of bee keeping is is not really bee keeping. It's
Speaker 1: basically just a picture of a guy in a cave
Speaker 1: in Spain, on the cave walls, sticking his hand into
Speaker 1: a bee hive, and it's from something like, um, I
Speaker 1: believe eleven thousand years ago, yeah, nine thousand b c E.
Speaker 1: And uh yeah, stick in his hand in that honey pot.
Speaker 1: As far as real bee keeping, goes and on a
Speaker 1: domesticated level. Um, we all know that they did it
Speaker 1: in Egypt and about but of course people think China
Speaker 1: probably beat us, uh or not us on that Egypt.
Speaker 1: Chuck casts is a lot with Egypt. Everybody it beat
Speaker 1: us to it here in Egypt. Um. So in Egypt,
Speaker 1: though eventually, um, they have something like on in Hiero
Speaker 1: glyph they have like bee hives, clearly depicted honey pots, um.
Speaker 1: And then they've also found hives that were human built,
Speaker 1: clearly human built, made of clay and straw, from as
Speaker 1: as late as twenty nine years ago in Israel. So
Speaker 1: we've been into honey for a very long time, and
Speaker 1: at some point we've figured out that you could probably
Speaker 1: um suffer a lot fewer beastings if you kind of um,
Speaker 1: oh what's the word insinuated yourself into this bee colony.
Speaker 1: And that's ultimately what beekeeping is. We'll see it's human 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 it 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 seen, um,
Speaker 1: what looks like a turned over basket with a hole
Speaker 1: in the bottom, as sort of the symbol of beekeeping,
Speaker 1: that's called a skep. And they still use them today
Speaker 1: here and there. I think like the most hardcore old
Speaker 1: school naturalist beekeepers might use a skep. Hipster, Yeah, hipsters,
Speaker 1: he's skeps 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 calling me every time you harvest,
Speaker 1: and you can keep a colony going for a lot
Speaker 1: longer than just one year, you know. Yeah, And things
Speaker 1: really kind of took a leap forward in Switzerland in
Speaker 1: the eighteenth century with a man named Francois Huber who
Speaker 1: had the first movable hive, the leaf hive, which was
Speaker 1: it was sort of like a book, It turned like
Speaker 1: a book would, and uh, this was a good design
Speaker 1: because you could get these you could get the honey
Speaker 1: and not the brood, and you can remove these leaves
Speaker 1: 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 Kenya 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 long,
Speaker 1: rectangular raised box. It's like one of those. But then
Speaker 1: if you lift the top of the box, there's just
Speaker 1: a bunch of bars that stretch across the top inside
Speaker 1: 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 one 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. People be like, what do you mean.
Speaker 1: So what he discovered is there's this magic space called
Speaker 1: the B space where bees can really do their things successfully.
Speaker 1: And he found out that bees would not even build
Speaker 1: a comb in a space tighter than one centimeter. And
Speaker 1: so he said, this is the B space where they
Speaker 1: can produce uh, the comb in the right amount and
Speaker 1: not enough be glue is going to get in the way, Like,
Speaker 1: this is the magic area, and I shall declare it
Speaker 1: be space and it shall be fruitful. Yeah, And it
Speaker 1: was like believe it or not. Realizing that bees don't
Speaker 1: build comb or glue in anything tighter than a centimeter
Speaker 1: revolutionized beekeeping because now with that B space, you could
Speaker 1: build these, um, these bee hives so that on the
Speaker 1: edges of them, they were just a centimeter between the
Speaker 1: sides of say, where the combs were built. Um, you
Speaker 1: could keep these these frames or these bars separated by
Speaker 1: a centimeter, so there's enough space, like you're saying, for
Speaker 1: the piece of work, but not enough for them to
Speaker 1: glue together, which was an ongoing, apparently millennium millennia old
Speaker 1: problem of having to harvest and getting a bunch of
Speaker 1: combs stuck together at once. With the space, now, all
Speaker 1: of a sudden you had little bits of comb that
Speaker 1: you could manipulate a lot more easily, And that was
Speaker 1: like a huge contribution to be keeping. Strangely enough, that's right,
Speaker 1: And he got a the first American patent on a
Speaker 1: movable frame bee hive in October of eighteen fifty two,
Speaker 1: hooked up with a cabinet maker from Philadelphia, U named
Speaker 1: Henry Borkwin and started building these things, started selling them
Speaker 1: and dead okay, But he found out that his patent
Speaker 1: was way too hard to enforce. He tried to for
Speaker 1: a little while, but it was basically a waste of
Speaker 1: his time and the patent was just walked all over
Speaker 1: and he ended up getting no royalties. But did revolution
Speaker 1: I be keeping so a lyon stroth hive then? Is
Speaker 1: a proprietary eponym? Is that what you're saying? Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: he got the patent right, and he couldn't enforce it,
Speaker 1: so it just became like Kleenex sort of or aspirin. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean if you if you buy a Langstroth hive today,
Speaker 1: then for sure he's not getting any dough. He's long dead,
Speaker 1: long dead in the ground. But so this, this high
Speaker 1: this is really cool and we'll talk more about it later,
Speaker 1: but just put a pin in it that this is
Speaker 1: the most widespread hive. Like Lyon Stroth figured out how
Speaker 1: to make a beehive that's so close to ideal that
Speaker 1: since the eighteen fifties that's gone virtually unimproved, which is
Speaker 1: pretty pretty significant accomplishment if you asked me. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I looked at these uh war or wear hives w
Speaker 1: A R R E, which is another kind um, but
Speaker 1: I didn't. I mean, I'm sure there are differences once
Speaker 1: you dig in there, but it didn't look that much
Speaker 1: different to me than the Lyon Stroth. Yeah. I couldn't
Speaker 1: really tell much of that. I mean I saw, well,
Speaker 1: this the limeshot doesn't have this this quilted thing of
Speaker 1: like you know, cardboard shavings or whatever. So there's like
Speaker 1: I think it's the very small differences that make a
Speaker 1: big difference in differentiating between these hives. Yeah, so should
Speaker 1: we take a break. I think we should, and then Chuck,
Speaker 1: when we come back, we're going to talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about B Society. Okay, let's do it alright. So
Speaker 1: I would direct everyone to our ten of ten TV
Speaker 1: show stuff you should know, and in particular the b
Speaker 1: S episode, which, by the way, I wrote, I have
Speaker 1: an exact get a producer credit on that show from
Speaker 1: writing that episode, executive producer credit on every episode. That's true,
Speaker 1: because that I really earned it on that one writing it. Well, listen,
Speaker 1: so that's funny because that's how it was explained to
Speaker 1: me at the time. But Chuck, I just want to
Speaker 1: go on record here. I went to Herculean links to
Speaker 1: keep you from getting stung by a bee in that episode,
Speaker 1: and they they said, absolutely not. Chuck has to get
Speaker 1: stung just to make the the episode worth watching. He
Speaker 1: has to get stung. And I thought it was a
Speaker 1: better idea if you didn't, if we kept building up
Speaker 1: to it and it never happened, but they said, no, no,
Speaker 1: we're not going with that. But I tried really hard
Speaker 1: to keep you from getting stun that's right, And we
Speaker 1: had 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? If sure, but if you really want
Speaker 1: to learn about bees, that's where we dive into it
Speaker 1: super deep. So I guess we'll just consider this a
Speaker 1: bit of a recap okay, okay, so um. In the
Speaker 1: in the world, there's something like twenty thousand species of
Speaker 1: wild bees, but in honeybee or bee keeping, you're going
Speaker 1: to find usually one species of bee APIs mellifera, which
Speaker 1: is either the European or the Western honeybee. And there's
Speaker 1: different varieties. They call them races, you know. With like
Speaker 1: breeds of dogs, we call them breeds, but they're all
Speaker 1: still the same species Canus lupus. But with bees, they're
Speaker 1: all the same species APIs mellifera, but the races are different.
Speaker 1: So you have like the Italian honeybee or the carno
Speaker 1: Lean I believe, Carnolian honeybe or the Russian honeybee, but
Speaker 1: they're all races of European or Western honeybee. That's what
Speaker 1: you're going to find everywhere. Yeah, and these things are amazing.
Speaker 1: I remember at the time we were just sort of
Speaker 1: obsessed with bees after that episode, so much so that
Speaker 1: we wanted to do it for the TV show, uh In.
Speaker 1: One of the main reasons is because they're what's called
Speaker 1: a super organism, which basically means you take a western
Speaker 1: honey bee out on its own, and that thing isn't
Speaker 1: gonna do anything worthwhile with it. Couldn't order dinner at
Speaker 1: Roy Rogers restaurant. It's so dumb. No, But when you
Speaker 1: put all these things together, all these bees have very
Speaker 1: specific jobs that we're gonna go over here in a second,
Speaker 1: and all these coordinated actions, and that is this super organism.
Speaker 1: They are one hole, like sixty thousand honey bees acting
Speaker 1: as one in order to produce honey hive mind' hive
Speaker 1: mind right, So I mean we get so many hive
Speaker 1: mind worker bees. All these like things that are in
Speaker 1: like the our lexicon are all taken from the way
Speaker 1: bees do their thing right exactly. And so when you
Speaker 1: put them together, this larger super organism an emergent property
Speaker 1: of the collective actions and the instincts that these bees
Speaker 1: are following. If you put it all together, they interact
Speaker 1: and form this larger hole and that's the colony. And
Speaker 1: so on the individual level, you have three different types
Speaker 1: of bees. You've got worker bees, which make up the
Speaker 1: vast majority of the population. They're all female, they're all
Speaker 1: sexually undeveloped females, and they do almost all of the
Speaker 1: work um as usual around the hive. Um. That includes
Speaker 1: everything from raising the eggs to um creating wax. Um. Uh.
Speaker 1: They what else do they do? They make the honey,
Speaker 1: they go collect the pollen, They defend the hive, They
Speaker 1: serve as guards at the entrance, like they do almost everything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they take care of that queen, which is the biggest one. Literally,
Speaker 1: so this all made me nervous. Uh when I was
Speaker 1: reading this again because so much depends on the queen.
Speaker 1: It all depends on this one. Be Wait it made
Speaker 1: 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 she 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? Okay, we'll find out the in the
Speaker 1: listener mail. Uh. Then you got your drones, of course,
Speaker 1: those are the male bees and they it is funny
Speaker 1: you have one one queen, you have these males that
Speaker 1: all they do is mate with a queen, and then
Speaker 1: these female worker bees do it literally everything else. Right,
Speaker 1: But on the other end, the the female worker bees
Speaker 1: are the ones who get to decide like who lives
Speaker 1: and who dies. And if you're a male drone, once
Speaker 1: you've mated with the queen, which happens in mid air
Speaker 1: outside of the hive, it is super sexy. The queen
Speaker 1: mates with multiple males at once, gathers their sperm and
Speaker 1: stores it in a little sack which she then goes
Speaker 1: and like lays eggs and fertilizes the eggs as she
Speaker 1: sees fit, because I believe unfertilized eggs are drones and
Speaker 1: fertilized eggs are workers. So the queen is actually keeping
Speaker 1: an eye on how many of what are needed. But
Speaker 1: the drones once they mate, especially when it comes time
Speaker 1: for winter, and all of a sudden, they're starting to
Speaker 1: 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: ignominious 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 intake, right exactly, Because here's
Speaker 1: the thing, so, so just with this life cycle of bees.
Speaker 1: In the spring, when the flowers start to bloom and
Speaker 1: the bees are going crazy, it's what's called the nectar flow. Um,
Speaker 1: they are producing honey in overtime. And so what you're
Speaker 1: doing is the bee caepers. You're saying, Okay, well here,
Speaker 1: I want to make sure you have plenty of room
Speaker 1: to store as much honey as you possibly can, because
Speaker 1: what the bees are doing is storing honey, literally storing
Speaker 1: energy away to help get them through the winter. And
Speaker 1: you're going in and say, I'm going to take these
Speaker 1: honey stores that you plan to use to make it
Speaker 1: through the winter, and I'll leave you some. I'll leave you,
Speaker 1: hopefully just enough so that you don't need any, but
Speaker 1: I'll also, as the beekeeper, this human who's insinuating himself
Speaker 1: for herself, I'll hit you up with some food too,
Speaker 1: to make sure you guys survive, happy, and comfortably through
Speaker 1: this winter in exchange for letting me take this honey,
Speaker 1: right because I've got some toast inside that's just popped
Speaker 1: out of the toaster. Man, I had some creamed honey
Speaker 1: for the first time today. I mean, like, I'm a
Speaker 1: big time honey guy, but I had not had cream
Speaker 1: honey before, and it's like spun honey or is that different.
Speaker 1: It is a combination of crystallized and liquid honey that's
Speaker 1: highly spread herble and I got it. It's like just
Speaker 1: Trader 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's honey is sort
Speaker 1: of one of nature's miracles. It is when you start
Speaker 1: talking about Manuka honey and things at like these healing
Speaker 1: properties and it's it's pretty great. Stung by 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 Jan
Speaker 1: if 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 be keeping, Dave here recommends you get new equipment.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you know you have to because if you
Speaker 1: get inherited equipment, like once you're on the scene, somebody
Speaker 1: might be like, hey, like I got an extra smoker,
Speaker 1: or here some frames I can't use. They open their
Speaker 1: trench coat and they've got a bunch of bee boxes
Speaker 1: hanging inside. What do you have? But as you will
Speaker 1: find out later on in our section on disease and
Speaker 1: bacteria and stuff, it's pretty prevalent. So you want to
Speaker 1: get your new equipment going if you're new to be keeping,
Speaker 1: 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 you're
Speaker 1: calling his toast, and 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 the beekeepers use and see all the
Speaker 1: different parts or whatever. But there's there's too many of
Speaker 1: them to really go into. So we're just gonna focus
Speaker 1: on the Langstroth high Even though with just the length
Speaker 1: of this introduction to how we're just going to pay
Speaker 1: attention to the Langstroth hive, I could have covered two
Speaker 1: or three other highs, but we're gonna stick to just
Speaker 1: the Langstroth hive. Okay, So you could build one of
Speaker 1: these 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 axis um so, yeah, but it is true,
Speaker 1: like if you have like a quaint hardware store, that's
Speaker 1: 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: And 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 going to be building net comb. That's where
Speaker 1: the queen's gonna be laying or eggs. That's where gonna
Speaker 1: they're gonna raise that brood up, and that's where they're
Speaker 1: gonna store the honey that they think that they're going
Speaker 1: to be eating an abundance, right, and then you've got
Speaker 1: a really important piece of equipment that it would be
Speaker 1: very easy to overlook if you don't know what you're doing,
Speaker 1: but you're gonna have issues if you don't get it.
Speaker 1: It's called the queen excluder. So you remember, Chuck that
Speaker 1: you said that the queen is about twice the size
Speaker 1: of the workers. I don't know, but you definitely did.
Speaker 1: I'm here to tell you when, um, when when you
Speaker 1: added queen excluder. All it is is basically like a
Speaker 1: mesh or slats or something like that that are space
Speaker 1: far 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,
Speaker 1: The honey super position. Maybe it's a nod to quantum physics.
Speaker 1: Maybe so, but this is where they're gonna store that
Speaker 1: surplus honey when when the plants are blooming and that
Speaker 1: nectar is flowing and you're you're skimming some off the
Speaker 1: top as the beekeeper. Yeah, and like if you did
Speaker 1: not have that queen excluder, the honey super would be
Speaker 1: just another brood chamber, because the queen wants to use
Speaker 1: as many places as she can to lay eggs, and
Speaker 1: then they lay honey around it. So the the eggs
Speaker 1: which is where which also serves as the nursery for
Speaker 1: the brood um and the honey they're all like together
Speaker 1: in the same combs, but because you put that queen excluder,
Speaker 1: she's not laying eggs in that honey super which means
Speaker 1: it's just sweet, delicious honey in all of the combs.
Speaker 1: 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 their wax
Speaker 1: making abilities to Yeah, I did, actually so Like it
Speaker 1: takes about a table spoon of honey to make an
Speaker 1: 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 kind of perfect to right,
Speaker 1: And the reason that they make hexagons is because they
Speaker 1: don't know this, but structurally it is the most structurally
Speaker 1: sound um shape. Inn sure that um uses the least
Speaker 1: amount of material, which is just astounding that bees instinctually
Speaker 1: know to make an um hexagon hexagon right, not octagon right,
Speaker 1: So they but but they use but they start with
Speaker 1: the circle and then use their body heat to melt
Speaker 1: it into the shape. Well, anyway, what they have to
Speaker 1: do this for each egg that they put in a
Speaker 1: brood chamber. They have to do this for each um,
Speaker 1: each cell that they put honey into, and then they
Speaker 1: they also make wax to cap the honey off. So
Speaker 1: it requires a lot of honey to make that wax,
Speaker 1: which means logically, if you can give them a leg up,
Speaker 1: either with preprinted honey or plastic or leaving as much
Speaker 1: honey as you can from the honey harvest, or leaving
Speaker 1: as much wax there as you can from after the
Speaker 1: honey harvest, they don't have to make new wax. They
Speaker 1: can reuse the old stuff, which means that's less honey
Speaker 1: that your bees are eating to produce wax, which means
Speaker 1: it's honey that you're getting. Yes, And by the way,
Speaker 1: if you're typing an email to me right now, because
Speaker 1: I said hexagons or five sided Please stop? Okay, it
Speaker 1: is six sides. Yes, everyone knows that five sided. Uh,
Speaker 1: structure is a circle. Wait what is a five sided one? Huh?
Speaker 1: What's a five sided one? Uh? Is that a pentagon? Yeah? 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: Get my guns? Uh, confused sometimes everyone, Well, chuckle, I'll
Speaker 1: teach you a little cheat here. Refer to all of
Speaker 1: them as polygons, and you're covered. Oh yeah, So like
Speaker 1: 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 asked
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. Ready,
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, their pollen
Speaker 1: resources resources are gonna be lower obviously because things aren't
Speaker 1: in full bloom. So you're gonna have to help feed
Speaker 1: these little little fellas 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, those pet waters
Speaker 1: that have like the water, some of them 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 bee hive.
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. But specifically you mentioned pollen. I
Speaker 1: saw something that I didn't realize. But when you reach
Speaker 1: about the fall, you don't want the bees to have
Speaker 1: any pollen. If you're feeding them, it has to be
Speaker 1: like pure sugar water, because if they eat pollen, that
Speaker 1: will produce solid waste. And bees are really clean and
Speaker 1: they won't go in their hive. They leave the hive
Speaker 1: to go evacuate their bowels, which actually ties into that
Speaker 1: yellow rain short stuff. We did remember that. But they'll
Speaker 1: go fly away from the hive, but if it's too cold,
Speaker 1: they can't leave the hive, so they will actually die
Speaker 1: rather than poop in the in the colony, or some
Speaker 1: of them will be like, forget it, I'm living, I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna go ahead and poop. But now the whole
Speaker 1: colony is spoiled. And the reason why it is because
Speaker 1: they've eaten too much pollen and they can't make it
Speaker 1: until the spring to go outside and poop. So you
Speaker 1: don't want to feed him 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: pop 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. Oh
Speaker 1: I'm not doing it is So let's let's keep going
Speaker 1: here because we need to move on to the tools,
Speaker 1: because that's the box. That's the langstroth hive. Um, get
Speaker 1: a get a good one. Make sure it's solid. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and again, you don't have to break the bank. There's
Speaker 1: there's a there's you know, a cheap basic langstroth hive
Speaker 1: isn't going to put you in the poorhouse. And plus
Speaker 1: one other thing about langstroth hive before we move on
Speaker 1: that so ingenious chuck is the um it's modular and scalable,
Speaker 1: so you can easily like remove the top boxes and
Speaker 1: put another brood chamber on, put another honey super on,
Speaker 1: and you know, harvest more and more honey. Um. It's
Speaker 1: if you break part of it, you can replace parts exactly.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's it's like a really good inventor, Like
Speaker 1: it makes sense that it would have been invented in
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty and not you know, really have been changed
Speaker 1: that much. I agreed. Uh. So we talked a little
Speaker 1: bit about the protective clothing that is that veil. You
Speaker 1: can have the cool little uh sort of safari pith
Speaker 1: helmet with a veil, but usually they will just fit
Speaker 1: over any kind of wide brimmed hat. You want to
Speaker 1: make sure it's snug. Uh. They some people, you know,
Speaker 1: it depends on who you are. If you're really used
Speaker 1: to this, you can build up sensitivity to be stings
Speaker 1: and you're like, forget the gloves forget covering my body.
Speaker 1: I'll just wear the veil. Some people might not even
Speaker 1: wear the veil because they're so cool. I think at
Speaker 1: least they wear the veil. Oh no, I've seen people
Speaker 1: handling bees without veils. Friend, that's crazy. Yeah, you think
Speaker 1: old time beekeepers are putting on a veil. All the
Speaker 1: videos I watched, everyone was wearing veils like they might
Speaker 1: not have been wearing anything else, but they had a veil.
Speaker 1: And they had the second thing a smoker. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: you gotta have that smoker. And that is a very
Speaker 1: cool device. And I always wanted to hold one, and
Speaker 1: finally we got to when we made that little video
Speaker 1: interstitial And it looks sort of like they've compared it
Speaker 1: to a elongated metal teapot. Not a bad descriptor, um.
Speaker 1: It's just like a metal canister with a with a
Speaker 1: spout pointing up where, and it's got a handle that
Speaker 1: has a little little bellows built into it. And what
Speaker 1: you do is, and I always wonder what the heck
Speaker 1: was in there. You're just burning something. You're burning cardboard
Speaker 1: or you're burning leaves or something, and use that bellows
Speaker 1: just to pump a little smoke out right, and the
Speaker 1: reason you're pumping the smokeout is to calm the bees,
Speaker 1: and it calms the bees by masking the pheromones that
Speaker 1: they that they're say, the guard bees are shooting out,
Speaker 1: which means that the other bees aren't picking up on
Speaker 1: this alarming pheromone, and so they're all remaining calm. Actually,
Speaker 1: so it's an essential tool of the trade, is a smoker.
Speaker 1: That's right, And you're also gonna need a hive tool
Speaker 1: if you look those up. It's if you've ever used
Speaker 1: a wonder bar. I think that's probably proprietary name, but
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of like a kind of like a
Speaker 1: flat crow bar, and that's exactly what it looks instead
Speaker 1: of a beefy round crow bar. I at ly suggest
Speaker 1: you get a wonder bar too, because those are just
Speaker 1: great to have run the house. Yeah, I have one
Speaker 1: of those. You got a wonder bar, I do. I
Speaker 1: don't know if it's Wonderbar, wonder Bar, trademark, pride bar,
Speaker 1: but it is exactly that. Yeah. Yeah, So this high
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 like get that
Speaker 1: be glue loose, and that high tool is what you
Speaker 1: use because it doesn't destroy your beautiful, beautiful hive 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, Yeah, including it up to stinging
Speaker 1: 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
Speaker 1: bee if you've been stung by the bee keeping bug. Um,
Speaker 1: there's actually just a few things you want to do
Speaker 1: to get started. It's not hard to get into. It's
Speaker 1: one of those things like, um, have you ever taken
Speaker 1: scuba diving lessons? You learn how to scuba dive and
Speaker 1: it takes about thirty minutes and then the rest of
Speaker 1: like say, the week long course is to teach you
Speaker 1: how to stay alive as something goes wrong. Right. Beekeeping
Speaker 1: is kind of the same way, Like it's really easy
Speaker 1: to get into and learn the basics, but but it
Speaker 1: takes years of just understanding and learning and picking up
Speaker 1: new things to to really become an advanced beekeeper. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and it's you can read books, and you can
Speaker 1: go online, and you can take courses, but like with everything,
Speaker 1: there's nothing like firsthand experience. And like you said, it's
Speaker 1: it's gonna be a while, be a while, I mean
Speaker 1: to do that. I'm sorry, but in a couple of seasons,
Speaker 1: you know you you're gonna really know what you're doing
Speaker 1: to a large degree. Yeah, Dave Russ says, man, go
Speaker 1: find a mentor. There's plenty of beekeepers out there who
Speaker 1: are They're not gonna yell at you for asking, they'll
Speaker 1: probably be happy to pass along this knowledge and information.
Speaker 1: I think. So it seems like a hobby slash job
Speaker 1: that people want to spread the love of right like
Speaker 1: creamed honey. So Dave says, though, just there's some basic
Speaker 1: things to start. Um, you want to pick a location
Speaker 1: for your hive, and one of the first things you
Speaker 1: want to do is make sure that you're allowed to
Speaker 1: have a hive. Depending on where you live. If you
Speaker 1: live out in the country, there's probably very few ordinances.
Speaker 1: Most most ordinances either say you can't have bees here
Speaker 1: because this is a city and within the city limits,
Speaker 1: no bees are allowed. They say bees are farm animals
Speaker 1: so they belong on a farm, or bees are non
Speaker 1: domesticated animals, so same thing. Heaven forbid you have an
Speaker 1: h O A just forget about it. Yeah, literally, forget
Speaker 1: about it if you have an h O W A. 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's 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 there. 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 them
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 to southeast is so it
Speaker 1: gets all sorts of 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 private or a fence near the entrance,
Speaker 1: because when they when they leave the high 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, son, 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 beehive that's going to protect
Speaker 1: it from rain and stuff like that too. And speaking
Speaker 1: 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 had 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. Dave also
Speaker 1: says put a zip block of sugar water on your
Speaker 1: beehive and cut have slid in it. So maybe go
Speaker 1: a step further beyond a platter. Well, I mean it
Speaker 1: depends on your esthetic, I think, I guess. But I
Speaker 1: put some water in like a tire that stood up
Speaker 1: on its side, and I'm like that to see that
Speaker 1: in your yard. Why are you picking on day if
Speaker 1: he's the bath because that was some just genuinely bad.
Speaker 1: If I still put a platter of water out there,
Speaker 1: 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 nineteen seventy 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,
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. Me right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the latter is correct. They both like they they have
Speaker 1: the queen mate with a bunch of drones, and then
Speaker 1: they say, you wint and take the queen and put
Speaker 1: a sequester her so that she can't lay any eggs.
Speaker 1: And then they put her in a special container with
Speaker 1: the rest of the bees and ship them to you.
Speaker 1: And then you put the bees together in your own
Speaker 1: brood chamber with the queen in her sequestered thing, and
Speaker 1: you 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 queen. It's
Speaker 1: pretty cool work, it really is. And I've also seen
Speaker 1: that the candy plug which is meant to also keep
Speaker 1: the queen bee alive during transport, um, if it comes
Speaker 1: out or something, you can just plug it with a
Speaker 1: marshmallow too, which is the most quaint thing I've ever
Speaker 1: read in my entire life. Uh, you should also try
Speaker 1: and get your bees locally. Um. If you get them locally,
Speaker 1: then you know a that they haven't been shipped a
Speaker 1: long way, which is going to stress them out and
Speaker 1: be that they're gonna be hip to your scene. Uh,
Speaker 1: They're gonna be down with your weather and just cool
Speaker 1: with the bars and the restaurants that are nearby. They'll
Speaker 1: know all about the local schools that the parents never
Speaker 1: stopped talking about, and everyone's just gonna be happier. Right.
Speaker 1: So also, you hopefully you can just go pick them up.
Speaker 1: But I do have the impression that there's tons of
Speaker 1: mail order bees too. Oh sure, but you you, whatever
Speaker 1: it is, you want to order them so that they
Speaker 1: arrive in early early spring, because your whole goal here
Speaker 1: is to get this colony up and moving and really
Speaker 1: healthy and well populated and rare and to go um
Speaker 1: by the time the spring flowering and the nectar flow begins.
Speaker 1: That's right. Uh, there's another way to do this, what
Speaker 1: I call the Chuck way, the Chuck version, and that's
Speaker 1: to buy a nuke, right, And a nuke is a
Speaker 1: nucleus colony, and that is just sort of like the
Speaker 1: lazy persons all in one solution. You you buy a
Speaker 1: hive box. It's preloaded, it's stocked, it's got an active queen,
Speaker 1: it's got eggs, it's got your brood. It's got your
Speaker 1: pollen stores, it already has honey, for God's sake. And
Speaker 1: they call it, like I said, a short for nucleus
Speaker 1: colony as a nuke. And you can get a nuke
Speaker 1: for not much more than this other stuff, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: And I mean so basically it's the brood chamber component
Speaker 1: that we're talking about with the Langstroth hive. That's basically
Speaker 1: what you're buying. Is they ship you a like you say,
Speaker 1: you're ready to go brew chamber, and then you just
Speaker 1: start putting a queen um excluder and you know, super
Speaker 1: boxes and all that stuff on top, and there you go.
Speaker 1: It seems pretty pretty smart to me to try starting
Speaker 1: with that as well. When I was looking at the price,
Speaker 1: I was like, cheeze one of these nukes, like a
Speaker 1: thousand bucks, And it seems like it was all about
Speaker 1: fifty dollars more than starting from scratch. But I think
Speaker 1: you can spend quite a bit on a starter kit
Speaker 1: of bees if you're, say, um, looking to have just
Speaker 1: pure bread bees. Yeah, like just Italian honey bees are
Speaker 1: just Russian honey bees, because um, the different different races
Speaker 1: have different kind of um tendencies, like Italian honeybees tend
Speaker 1: to to keep a larger population over the winter, which
Speaker 1: means that you need to leave a more honey or
Speaker 1: feed them more. But they're also friendly or more docile
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. Um, But it's really expensive because
Speaker 1: those bees are artificially inseminated and like really in a
Speaker 1: very controlled environment, whereas with most of those ones that
Speaker 1: you're spending like a hundred two hundred bucks on ten tho,
Speaker 1: they're what they call mutts, which are just like, you know,
Speaker 1: a whole whole bunch of different races of the same
Speaker 1: species of bee, and they they have a lot of
Speaker 1: different characteristics, some of which may actually make them less
Speaker 1: susceptible to diseases than say, like pure breads are. It's
Speaker 1: like it's like a normal person compared to um, British
Speaker 1: royalty or something. Is that too soon? I don't think so. Okay,
Speaker 1: So once you've got everything set up, um, your main
Speaker 1: job is going to be to feed your bees, try
Speaker 1: and keep them from swarming, and then making sure they
Speaker 1: stay healthy from disease and mites. Um, you're gonna be
Speaker 1: harvesting that excess honey along the way, like we've been
Speaker 1: talking about, and gonna be feeding them that sugar water
Speaker 1: to keep them happy. And as you're doing this, you're
Speaker 1: gonna be learning more and more about just sort of
Speaker 1: the shorthand of it all. Like like when you go
Speaker 1: to even lift the back of a box, you're gonna
Speaker 1: know just by weight, like how heavy with honey that
Speaker 1: the thing is. You're not gonna have to keep pulling
Speaker 1: stuff out and looking at it over and over. That's
Speaker 1: pretty impressive. Yeah, all these little shortcuts. Um, but we
Speaker 1: need to talk about swarming because that's a that's a
Speaker 1: big deal and something that seems like it could happen
Speaker 1: fairly easily. Um, if you have a good, healthy hive
Speaker 1: going on and they're producing a lot of brood, it's
Speaker 1: gonna become overcrowded. So you want to part of avoiding
Speaker 1: this is to keep your population in check. But if
Speaker 1: you don't, then they're going to swarm, which means half
Speaker 1: of your colony and sometimes all of it, is gonna say,
Speaker 1: come on, queen, let's go, let's leave this place. I
Speaker 1: don't like this apartment anymore because it's too crowded, right,
Speaker 1: which is just an unavoidable natural process because if you
Speaker 1: think about it, what the bees are doing is reproducing
Speaker 1: and growing their population, and then eventually when things get crowded,
Speaker 1: they split into two and go establish a new colony
Speaker 1: or um leave the old colony behind. Right, So you're
Speaker 1: you're artificially preventing that from happening by doing things like
Speaker 1: inspecting the the um brood chamber. Four signs of queen
Speaker 1: cells like little queen larva that are being grown by
Speaker 1: the by the workers, which means that they're preparing to
Speaker 1: swarm and start another colony. That like a little peanut
Speaker 1: sort of hanging off of your comb. And if you
Speaker 1: just go through and pick those off literally pick just
Speaker 1: get them out of there, then the bees are like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I guess we're not going to raise another queen now.
Speaker 1: But there's other things you want to do to like
Speaker 1: you want to actually physically get rid of some of
Speaker 1: the brood to to control the population. You're basically saying
Speaker 1: this idea about swarming, you'r we we were, We're not
Speaker 1: going to do that. We're going to make it so
Speaker 1: that you have more room by controlling the population. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when you say get rid of the brood, that doesn't mean, uh,
Speaker 1: take these frames out and burn them on the fire.
Speaker 1: You're gonna be involved, hopefully by this time, with other
Speaker 1: local people in the area that are doing this. You're
Speaker 1: gonna be going to beekeeper meetings and getting hammered once
Speaker 1: a month on mead right, and uh, you're gonna trade
Speaker 1: with your friends. You're gonna say, hey, let's uh, I
Speaker 1: got too much going on here. I'm afraid I'm gonna
Speaker 1: get a swarm happening. So here's some brood frames h
Speaker 1: if you can, if you can take them, and uh,
Speaker 1: people are going to be very grateful for that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because it's kind of like getting a free nuke. Uh,
Speaker 1: to to to um supplement your your calling me that's
Speaker 1: maybe not doing so good because there's two problems. One
Speaker 1: you're calling he can be too healthy and then it's
Speaker 1: gonna swarm, which you want to prevent. Or it can
Speaker 1: be weak, which means that it can be overwhelmed by
Speaker 1: robber bees nearby bees that come through and to steal
Speaker 1: a bunch of stuff and basically kill off the wheat colony.
Speaker 1: So yeah, just to supplement your numbers with a brood
Speaker 1: frame that somebody doesn't want because their population is starting
Speaker 1: to swarm, that would be a very good thing. To have.
Speaker 1: That's right. One other thing about swarming chuck, that's how
Speaker 1: you make a bee beard. That's right. You take a
Speaker 1: queen and you tire to your forehead and the bees
Speaker 1: will come and form a beard around your face. That's
Speaker 1: what they're doing with the b beard. It's pretty funny
Speaker 1: looking and they will get stung. But the reason why
Speaker 1: they're not totally stung is because before they swarm, the
Speaker 1: bees gorge themselves on honey for their traveling to go
Speaker 1: establish the new colony, and they're just following the queen,
Speaker 1: and so if the queen is tied to your forehead,
Speaker 1: they're just hanging out waiting to see what she's gonna do.
Speaker 1: Totally all right. We need to talk about disease because
Speaker 1: it is It is bad right now. Um. There's something
Speaker 1: called the Veroa might which is a parasitic pest and
Speaker 1: it is very small, came to the United States in
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties and is the most common cause of
Speaker 1: be death and colony failure right now because of commercial beehives.
Speaker 1: Almost half uh in spring ofen were infected with veroa.
Speaker 1: It's a bad, bad problem. It is because they will
Speaker 1: lay their eggs. These mtes will lay their eggs on
Speaker 1: the um larva or the pupa of the bees, and
Speaker 1: they will feed on the pupa and either kill them
Speaker 1: or deform them. They will also attach themselves to adult
Speaker 1: bees and suck their blood. They spread disease. It's a
Speaker 1: really bad jam. And so as being a beekeeper, you
Speaker 1: have to keep an eye out for any kind of
Speaker 1: might infestation and then treat it accordingly. That's like a
Speaker 1: basic part of beekeeping, but also something that's a little
Speaker 1: more advanced than anything we could really go into now.
Speaker 1: It's just know that part of beekeeping is monitoring for
Speaker 1: diseases and pests and then treating them. Yeah, you don't
Speaker 1: want more than ten and there are various ways that
Speaker 1: you can test how many mites you have. Uh that
Speaker 1: once you get into bee keeping, you're gonna learn these
Speaker 1: little tricks. But you don't want any more than ten
Speaker 1: mites per two bees. And if you have more than that,
Speaker 1: then you're in trouble. And when you look at a
Speaker 1: picture of these things like sitting on a bee and
Speaker 1: feeding on it, it's just you just want to like
Speaker 1: pride off of their right and squash it. Right. But
Speaker 1: then then foul brood, which we mentioned earlier is another
Speaker 1: big problem. And there it got its name from the
Speaker 1: sulfur smell that a brood um, a brood frame will
Speaker 1: have when you pull it out. And once you have that,
Speaker 1: your your whole colonies gone. They're goners and you need
Speaker 1: to burn your your wooden wear. Yeah, I saw dead fish.
Speaker 1: I was because I saw sulfur and I was like, well,
Speaker 1: does this smell like farts? Right? But then I saw
Speaker 1: dead fish was kind of what a lot of people
Speaker 1: said it smells like. And if you've got that, then
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, that's what a letdown. It is a letdown,
Speaker 1: especially if it happens, you know, right around you know,
Speaker 1: right before they really start producing honey, right, And that's
Speaker 1: where we find ourselves. Finally you get to that sweet,
Speaker 1: sweet mellow goal, which is which is what you're doing
Speaker 1: this for, not only to get the honey, but obviously
Speaker 1: it'd also do the right thing by encouraging bee populations,
Speaker 1: but harvesting honey is what everyone's really in it for.
Speaker 1: Whether you're gonna sell it or just give it away
Speaker 1: to friends or just have some for your family. That's
Speaker 1: really the end game here. And so like when you
Speaker 1: do when you go to to get the honey. Um.
Speaker 1: There's actually a pretty clever little thing you put on
Speaker 1: uh in between the brood chamber and the honey super
Speaker 1: that you're gonna collect honey from that lets the bees out,
Speaker 1: but it's it produces a maze for them to try
Speaker 1: to get back in. So after forty eight hours all
Speaker 1: of bees will clear out. 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 or mainly very homespun,
Speaker 1: just sort of these hand cranked versions literally homespun. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You you you uncap it and remove the wax, and
Speaker 1: you'll see in these videos they hold up the frames
Speaker 1: and just take a knife like a hot knife and
Speaker 1: just sort of cut the wax away from the frame
Speaker 1: and then you can literally see the honey there. If
Speaker 1: you don't have a uh. An extractor. You can just
Speaker 1: do it the old fashioned way and lay it down
Speaker 1: and just wait for the honey to flow. But you
Speaker 1: can also stick them down in the extractor. The one
Speaker 1: I saw held about eight frames and you just crank
Speaker 1: that 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. In the is this bigot on the bottom,
Speaker 1: and you put it up on your countertop and pure
Speaker 1: honey just flows right out of the bottom. It's pretty awesome.
Speaker 1: It's beautiful and taste. The good thing about the extractor too,
Speaker 1: is all you're doing is carving off the top wax cap,
Speaker 1: but you're leaving the wax part of the chamber, the
Speaker 1: bulk of the wax intact, so that the bees can
Speaker 1: reuse it and they have to eat less honey to
Speaker 1: produce more wax for the next season. It's pretty great.
Speaker 1: It is pretty great. That's beekeeping, which is pretty great too. Agreed,
Speaker 1: Got anything else right now? I got nothing else? Well,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about this more later when we get into
Speaker 1: bee keeping. His old man, okay for sure. Uh not
Speaker 1: that you have to be an old man to be
Speaker 1: into bee keeping, That's not at all what I mean. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you want to know know more about bee keeping going
Speaker 1: and 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. And since I said
Speaker 1: tons of other stuff on the internet, that means it's
Speaker 1: time for a listener mail. I'm gonna call this uh
Speaker 1: something about our jingle the theme song. Hey, guys, been
Speaker 1: listening for about eight years. I never had a reason
Speaker 1: to write in. And you get a lot of emails
Speaker 1: from couples who sing your jingle back and forth to
Speaker 1: each other, which is very cute. But my story is
Speaker 1: less cute. I just moved into a new house and
Speaker 1: it turns out we have the exact amount of steps
Speaker 1: 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. Jamie is from Sienna College,
Speaker 1: and uh, I'm sorry you have the worst of all
Speaker 1: earworms right that. But that was the email. It just
Speaker 1: kind of ended like that. Yeah, I mean it was
Speaker 1: like I wanted to be like and I went to
Speaker 1: the dentist, and the dentist happened to turn out to
Speaker 1: be a long lost uncle who put me in his
Speaker 1: will or something. But no, it ended with the chipping
Speaker 1: of the tooth. That's it. Sorry, Jamie. That's all we
Speaker 1: can say. En did like many of my own stories.
Speaker 1: If you want to get in touch of this, like
Speaker 1: Jamie did, to let us know you chipped a tooth,
Speaker 1: or just to say hi, or that an uncle put
Speaker 1: you in their will, you can go on to stuff
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