Speaker 1: Brought to you by the two thousand twelve Toyota Camry.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
Speaker 1: There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, and you put us together,
Speaker 1: give us a little nextar let us um collect pollen
Speaker 1: with the hair on our bodies. And you have stuff
Speaker 1: you should not be a lot of pollen, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: honeymaking fools. Yeah, you would be best at is Ronny Williams.
Speaker 1: Oh man, that guy's scary. Yes, you would be a
Speaker 1: honeymaking fool. How you doing well, sir? How are you?
Speaker 1: I'm pretty good. It's a little early, uh it is,
Speaker 1: it is, but you're feeling good. Yeah, man, I love
Speaker 1: recording in the mornings. Yeah, been up since six am
Speaker 1: reading about bees. Yeah. Well this is ah I can amazine.
Speaker 1: You could. You could have gotten up at four or
Speaker 1: five because it's like the most extensive article in the
Speaker 1: universe is how bees work. It's Tracy Wilson joint and
Speaker 1: so it's thorough and exhaustive and exhausting. But it's a
Speaker 1: good one. Dude. I love bees. Yeah, I hate bees.
Speaker 1: Do you really why? Because they sting, they hurt, they
Speaker 1: make me get up at six am. You only they're
Speaker 1: fascinating creatures. Uh yeah, de Meal like them. Okay, well
Speaker 1: you got to talk about him anyway. How about Um.
Speaker 1: I don't really have much of a an intro, which
Speaker 1: is probably for the best because this is a really
Speaker 1: long episode. There's a lot of facts, Yeah, there are
Speaker 1: in parts and things. Let's talk bees, man, how long
Speaker 1: have they been around? Bees have been around for a
Speaker 1: gazillion years. Uh, they've been around for a long time.
Speaker 1: Ancient Egyptians um in fact, that there were sort of
Speaker 1: magical creatures that the sun got rock cried down upon
Speaker 1: the earth. Yeah, which is fanciful, and that's where bees
Speaker 1: came from. But that's not where they came from. Uh.
Speaker 1: The San people think that we came from bees of
Speaker 1: the Kalahari. The San people. Yeah, yeah, they have this
Speaker 1: creation myth that a bee was carrying a mannis across
Speaker 1: the desert, got tired, died. Before it died, it laid
Speaker 1: some eggs in the mantis, and then that became the
Speaker 1: first human and that's where we came from. Not buy
Speaker 1: that really? Sure? Why not? Uh? A lot of people
Speaker 1: used to think that um, including beekeepers that they reproduced
Speaker 1: spontaneously they didn't like have intercourse to do so. And
Speaker 1: this was true until the mid six hundreds when a
Speaker 1: very cool dude named jam swimmer Dam examined bees under
Speaker 1: a microscope and saw a little reproductive parts. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: got all wrong, he went, and I'm Jams swimmer Dam.
Speaker 1: That's a pretty great name. It's a great name. That's
Speaker 1: a good at that. Uh. Is that what he was?
Speaker 1: It's gotta be, you think swimmer Dam Jam swimmers am
Speaker 1: probably so. Uh. And there are like twenty species of bees,
Speaker 1: but we're going to concentrate mainly on honey bees mostly
Speaker 1: a little bit of what are the other ones? Not
Speaker 1: the bumble bees, but well we'll talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about bumble bees too. Yeah, pretty much those two. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but mostly honey bees. They're the most studied. I think
Speaker 1: they're the most fascinating. But social and nons and I
Speaker 1: don't want to say anti social solitary solitary bees and
Speaker 1: anti socials may be a way to describe it. But
Speaker 1: those are two two categories that we're going to dive into. YEA, So,
Speaker 1: surprisingly bees go back even further than the ancient Egyptians,
Speaker 1: The oldest bee fossil that they found is about a
Speaker 1: hundred million years old, and they think that at some
Speaker 1: point around then during the Cretaceous period, bees diverged from wasps,
Speaker 1: not necessarily from washp. It doesn't mean that um bees
Speaker 1: evolved from wasp but then possibly they shared it a
Speaker 1: common wasp like ancestor I but that was creepy man,
Speaker 1: And I'll bet it was like eight ft long too. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And this is about the same time too, not coincidentally,
Speaker 1: when flowering plants started doing their thing. Before this, if
Speaker 1: you wanted to, you know, do the the tree thing,
Speaker 1: you had to plant thing, you had to do like
Speaker 1: what conifers do, dropping your cones and counting on the
Speaker 1: wind and nature to do your work, which may or
Speaker 1: may not work. But thankfully bees came along and they said, hey,
Speaker 1: you know what, we can help take your pollen, Mr flower. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So so bees and flowering plants angiosperms coevals, and that
Speaker 1: was a big step for bees. They're kind of like
Speaker 1: the uh sweet philosophy majors of the wasp family. Uh.
Speaker 1: They just went off and became herbivores, whereas their wasps,
Speaker 1: their wasp relatives are wasp cousins were carnivores, and not
Speaker 1: only carnivores, carnivores that used ovipositors to you lay their
Speaker 1: eggs in other animals. Yeah, that's gross, it is and
Speaker 1: it's very aggressive. Um. But as we said, bees became herbivores.
Speaker 1: They just go around to flowers. All they want is
Speaker 1: to be left alone, collect pollen and nectar and then uh,
Speaker 1: you know, pollinate flowers along the way. And they're very
Speaker 1: happy with their lives like that. They they're into the
Speaker 1: pan flute and birkin stocks. Do you think these are
Speaker 1: like hippies a little bit? Yeah, you've never been attacked
Speaker 1: by a dozen hippies, actually more than a dozen. I
Speaker 1: was stung a dozen times. Is that what I told
Speaker 1: that story before in the Colony Collapse podcast when I
Speaker 1: was tagged in the head and face twelve times. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that brings about one of my worst days, very painful. Um.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about parts. The bees body is pretty remarkable. Um.
Speaker 1: It's kind of exoskeleton made of chiten kitan, movable plates
Speaker 1: of this kitan. Yeah, it's almost like a suit of armor.
Speaker 1: It sounds like, Yeah, that's pretty neat. Uh, they've got,
Speaker 1: like we said, a lot of hairs all over their body,
Speaker 1: a little fuzzies that they collect. The pollen help regulate
Speaker 1: body tempt keep it cool or warm, depending on what's
Speaker 1: going on. And uh, like a lot of insects, they have,
Speaker 1: they're divided into little sections the head, the thorax, and
Speaker 1: the abdomen in this case, and the brain is in
Speaker 1: the head. And it's not a big brain, no, but
Speaker 1: it's pretty awesome. Well yeah, because it's specialized. So bee
Speaker 1: brain has about nine and fifty thousand neurons. It seems
Speaker 1: like a lot for a small insect. It does a
Speaker 1: small brain, right, Um, but apparently it's not. And uh,
Speaker 1: the reason why we know it's not because just based
Speaker 1: on the number of neurons, bees should be incredibly stupid
Speaker 1: and very simple animals, and they're not. The reason why
Speaker 1: is because the neurons in a bee's head are extremely specialized,
Speaker 1: and rather than being recruited by some like executive function
Speaker 1: like we have in our frontal lobes, their neurons kind
Speaker 1: of act on their own and communicate with other neurons
Speaker 1: to carry out a very specific activity. Right. So this
Speaker 1: division of labor in the brain allows these to do
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff that it would require a bigger
Speaker 1: brain to to do normally. It's pretty ingenious. Yes, that's right.
Speaker 1: These are pretty smart when they figured out how to
Speaker 1: do this to themselves. Uh. They have a couple of
Speaker 1: a century into the uh five eyes. Three of them
Speaker 1: are simple, a silly, and then two compound eyes and
Speaker 1: they have lots of repeating parts called omata I think,
Speaker 1: And they can actually see polarized light. They specialize in
Speaker 1: patterns and humans can't do that obviously because we would
Speaker 1: be like, just try the predator. Maybe that what that
Speaker 1: looks like? That's thermal imaging. Oh yeah, that's right, it's
Speaker 1: normal polarized to be. Um, you more polarized glasses, like
Speaker 1: your your polarized sunglasses. Remember this for I got the ravans. Yeah,
Speaker 1: instead of ravan, it said polar that's what you get
Speaker 1: for eight bucks. It's cvs. Is they worked? Do you
Speaker 1: have them forever? Yeah? Until they broke. So that's how
Speaker 1: you saw polarized light. Bees don't even need sunglasses from cvs.
Speaker 1: They just see it naturally. And the reason this is
Speaker 1: important is because um, as we'll see later on, they
Speaker 1: used the sun to navigate and being able to see
Speaker 1: polarized light. That means they can see clear through crop
Speaker 1: clouds when it's overcast and know where the sun is.
Speaker 1: That's right, very important. Uh, Like a lot of insects,
Speaker 1: I've got the little mouth parts. You know, we've talked
Speaker 1: about mouth parts. I think in uh please maybe flies, flies,
Speaker 1: flies and fleas. Uh. They have the jaws or the
Speaker 1: paired mandibles, the tongue with the colossa, and then the
Speaker 1: lips which are the labor room and the maxilla, and
Speaker 1: they support the probiscus, which I think most people know
Speaker 1: is the the pollen sniffing device and collecting. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: what I mean sniff, I mean sniff it up in there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like an r varts trunk pretty much, but in
Speaker 1: instead of huffing ants, that huffs nectar. That's right. You've
Speaker 1: got two pair of wings, you got three pair of legs.
Speaker 1: The wings are actually part of the skeleton, which is
Speaker 1: kind of cool. And and so if you're a little
Speaker 1: boy that's tearing wings off of a bee, you're actually
Speaker 1: breaking its skeleton. You need to spanking, You needed to
Speaker 1: get stung. Oh yeah, that's how you learned that lesson
Speaker 1: poetic justice exactly. And Uh. They the row of books
Speaker 1: called the hamuli connect the wings, so they are just
Speaker 1: beating together in synchronicity, but they don't connect all the time.
Speaker 1: They're not fused together. The wings are separate front four
Speaker 1: wings and rear wings are separate. And then when they
Speaker 1: really want to get going and flying, they hooked together
Speaker 1: using the hamuli. And that's to fly though, right, to
Speaker 1: really take off. Oh Like, they have different speeds of
Speaker 1: flying and they connect or disconnect depending on that. Tracy
Speaker 1: skipped that part so much for thora. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: you got the legs, which um, starting from the body
Speaker 1: working out, you have the coxa, the tric canter, the femur,
Speaker 1: the tibia, and the tarxas a k a hip, thiah
Speaker 1: and put and that's the body for the most part. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but the legs are also kind of specialized. They're almost
Speaker 1: like a Swiss army legs. It's pretty cool. They've got
Speaker 1: different kinds of hair. You've got brush hair, comb hair,
Speaker 1: depending on the kind of pollen you're collecting, and then
Speaker 1: basket like hairs that hold pollen. You've got a pad
Speaker 1: and a claw so you can like grab things. You
Speaker 1: can strangle other bees if you want. Um, and this
Speaker 1: is kind of cool. There's a small groove in the arm,
Speaker 1: in the leg for scraping pollen from the antenna. And
Speaker 1: then lastly there's a press on the bottom for packing
Speaker 1: pollen into things. That's pretty neat if you ask me,
Speaker 1: that is pretty neat. Swiss army leg. Don't you call
Speaker 1: the what I call it very nice? Should put a
Speaker 1: pattern on that. So yeah, so chuck. When you you know,
Speaker 1: when you accidentally squish a bee and you look down
Speaker 1: at it and it's guts are everywhere, it's not red.
Speaker 1: The blood isn't red. And actually it doesn't necessarily have
Speaker 1: what we would call blood. It's called hemo lymph and
Speaker 1: it it has oxygen just suspended in it. It doesn't
Speaker 1: have red blood cells, which is why be blood hemolymph
Speaker 1: is clear. Yeah, you don't see a lot of insects
Speaker 1: with red blood, do you? Only only Americans red blooded insects.
Speaker 1: Of course, we can't overlook the stinger um that is,
Speaker 1: uh where the bees abdomen is, and it's an appendage
Speaker 1: and like we said before, it's a egg depositor, an ovipositor,
Speaker 1: and then the lancets will sting you and deliver venom.
Speaker 1: From the poison sac in a venom gland. And once again,
Speaker 1: these wasp like ancestors, they think that's where the bees
Speaker 1: got the venom, and it's just a leftover trait from that,
Speaker 1: even though they didn't go on to lay their eggs
Speaker 1: in meat. Right, That's which is why the wasps evolved
Speaker 1: venom to subdue their prey while they were laying eggs
Speaker 1: and eating them and all that stuff. And bees, like
Speaker 1: you said, had it left over, but they just have
Speaker 1: it for defense. Yeah, and I guess it was obviously
Speaker 1: a trait worthy of keeping. And uh like, if I
Speaker 1: had a stinger and could inject people venom, I'd keep
Speaker 1: it around, use it on occasion. You'd be like, come on, evolution,
Speaker 1: just let me have it. There are stingless bees though, um,
Speaker 1: quite a few species, and they don't have stingers at all. No,
Speaker 1: and they were very handy among the Maya until very
Speaker 1: recently for beekeeping because you just stick your hand in
Speaker 1: there and be like, I'm taking your honey, and what
Speaker 1: are you gonna do? Nothing, that's great because you're a
Speaker 1: stingless bee. They couldn't even bite or anything. No, they
Speaker 1: just stand idly by. That's their thing. Um, so check.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of there's a lot of stuff that
Speaker 1: a bee produces there, like pubescent children. They just produce
Speaker 1: all these different things with all these different glands all
Speaker 1: the time. They're secreting stuff all the time. But it's
Speaker 1: very useful stuff, that's right. Uh, and then chuck. You
Speaker 1: know how when you get stung sometimes you hear or
Speaker 1: you've heard a bee will die after it stings you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think most people think that all bees die when
Speaker 1: they sting you. True. No, it depends on the type
Speaker 1: of stinger they have. Honey Bees, for the most part,
Speaker 1: except for the queen honey bee have barbed stingers, and
Speaker 1: if a bee has a barbed stinger, it is gonna
Speaker 1: stick in you. If you're a mammal, a bee can
Speaker 1: sting other insects with a barbed stinger and live after
Speaker 1: singing repeatedly. If it stings in the mammal, we have
Speaker 1: this um fat, meaty flesh that the barbed stinger hooks into,
Speaker 1: and when the bee flies away, it leaves its stinger
Speaker 1: and it's abdomen and guts stuck in you and so
Speaker 1: it dies, which is why if you have a barbed stinger,
Speaker 1: you can only sting once, but some bees do have
Speaker 1: smooth stingers and and sting mammals as often as they like.
Speaker 1: I wonder how often that how long that takes for
Speaker 1: the be to die, because you know they're stinging and
Speaker 1: they fly away. I wonder if it's like a few
Speaker 1: minutes or a couple of hours, or if they just
Speaker 1: like I would think, pretty quick quietly and bleed out
Speaker 1: or but I mean, how long does it take a
Speaker 1: bee to bleed out? I don't know, probably not hemolymph out.
Speaker 1: But I know when I've been stung, I see him
Speaker 1: fly away, and they look like they're doing all right
Speaker 1: to me, And right when you turn around, they just go.
Speaker 1: I guess I'm gonna trail the next bee that stings,
Speaker 1: follow it. You're gonna check it. You gonna check it,
Speaker 1: all right. So you want to talk about some juices
Speaker 1: and stuff, some venom, Yeah, we should talk about venom.
Speaker 1: Remember the difference between venomous organism and a poisonous organism
Speaker 1: is venom is produced in the body poisons outside, right,
Speaker 1: that's right, uh, And a be's venom uh basically destroyed cells.
Speaker 1: Like it's pretty hardcore stuff. It's a good thing. It's
Speaker 1: in small quantities probably, I can imagine if it was
Speaker 1: larger quantities could be pretty destructive. But they have peptids
Speaker 1: and enzymes break through the fat linings of the cell,
Speaker 1: destroy the mass cells. Uh, and that releases histamine. This
Speaker 1: is where we get into like whether or not you're allergic.
Speaker 1: You could be in big trouble. Yeah, because histamine that's
Speaker 1: part of your immune response, which is a good thing.
Speaker 1: You know, you want that, right, And histamines open the
Speaker 1: blood vessels so that you can get your antibodies, your immunes,
Speaker 1: your immune cells to this site much more quickly. But
Speaker 1: if you have a b allergy, your immune system is
Speaker 1: too large, it's too big a response. Your blood vessels
Speaker 1: dilate so much that you lose blood pressure and fall
Speaker 1: over um, which is called anaphylactic shock. That's right, and
Speaker 1: that can kill people dead. And if you are allergic
Speaker 1: to bees, you uh almost in the likelihood have an
Speaker 1: epinephrine shot with you because it's dangerous stuff and that
Speaker 1: will constrict the blood vessels and save your life hopefully, right,
Speaker 1: if you get it in time. I imagine it depends
Speaker 1: on the person. Fingers crossed fingers crossed um. So, like
Speaker 1: we said, there's twenty thousand, approximately twenty species under the
Speaker 1: super family Appodia or a Podia. How do you say that.
Speaker 1: Let's go with a Podia. And depending on the bee,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have a different kind of nest. But they
Speaker 1: are similar, you know, in a lot of cases. So
Speaker 1: we'll break it down into honey bees and bumble bees
Speaker 1: for the nesting purposes and for social those are they're
Speaker 1: both social. That's right kind of bees they are. So, uh,
Speaker 1: you've got um among honey bees. You have a perennial nest.
Speaker 1: She is always around. It's kind of cool. They build
Speaker 1: the same nest and for life. Yeah, I love that, uh,
Speaker 1: and for generations um. And they build it by secreting
Speaker 1: um stuff out of their glands because bees are like
Speaker 1: the pubescent children human children of the of the insect world.
Speaker 1: They're always secreting stuff out of their glands. But they
Speaker 1: make good use of it and one of the things
Speaker 1: that they use it for is wax to build nests. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And these are all ladies, by the way, It's a
Speaker 1: very important point. Yeah, these are all little women workers.
Speaker 1: And the reason why is because male bees for the
Speaker 1: most part, are around to fornicate and that's about it.
Speaker 1: In fact, they don't even have a lot of the
Speaker 1: parts that you need to be a real bee, but
Speaker 1: to collect pollen or anything like that. They're there to
Speaker 1: reproduce and that's it. Yeah. In fact, they will even
Speaker 1: get kicked out of the hive if things get a
Speaker 1: little too crowded and food is scarce or winners coming.
Speaker 1: The women will say, all right, it's time for you
Speaker 1: guys to leave. You know, you can't stay here, that's right.
Speaker 1: I wonder what they do. They probably say, I'm in
Speaker 1: this thing you if you don't get out of here,
Speaker 1: no owner. What the males do, though, they go off
Speaker 1: and die. They die, They form their own little like
Speaker 1: boys club. I have the impression that male bees are
Speaker 1: kind of too oh fish to think of that kind
Speaker 1: of thing dummies. Yeah. But so if you see a
Speaker 1: bee collecting pollen, yeah, in almost every species, that's a
Speaker 1: female bee. If you see a bee stinging you or
Speaker 1: feel a beasting in you, that's a female because the
Speaker 1: stingers an ovipositor, which makes it a female parts right. Um.
Speaker 1: But as we were saying, the nests that are built
Speaker 1: and maintained and uh stocked um are all done by
Speaker 1: females with the honeybee. That's right, and it's perennial. Yes,
Speaker 1: and uh, in that little nest, if the queen bee is,
Speaker 1: the queen bee will be delivering a queen substance. It's
Speaker 1: a pheromone. And if it did, another secretion, another secretion.
Speaker 1: If and if the little lady be start getting less
Speaker 1: and less of this, they'll say, you know what, we
Speaker 1: need to split up and make a new queen and
Speaker 1: a new hive. And let's just go ahead and start
Speaker 1: this process now. And let's pick a new queen and
Speaker 1: start feeding her royal jelly. Another secretion and um, raise
Speaker 1: her right right on this royal jelly. So with the
Speaker 1: about half of the workers and the old queen take
Speaker 1: off and found a new um hive. I guess there's
Speaker 1: too much pressure on the new queens. So yeah, like
Speaker 1: we got this place built for you, you just grow
Speaker 1: up and take care of it. And that's what happens.
Speaker 1: The new queen grows up and and the hive basically
Speaker 1: divides like a cell into pretty pretty cool yeah um
Speaker 1: solitary or not solidier bumblebees found they found annual um
Speaker 1: nests and basically that idea too though diggs every year
Speaker 1: it's not getting attached to something. Yeah. Um, so they
Speaker 1: in the In the fall, the queen mates, spends the
Speaker 1: winter underground. In the spring, she lays some eggs that
Speaker 1: turn out to surprisingly mostly be females, if not all females,
Speaker 1: and they help her build a nest. In the summer,
Speaker 1: she lays some more eggs. Those hatch into males. Those
Speaker 1: males fly off, and all of the male bumblebees. Somehow
Speaker 1: scientists haven't figured out how they do it. They figure
Speaker 1: they get a uh, they say, hey, we're all gonna
Speaker 1: be over here to mate this Friday. We'll see you
Speaker 1: guys there. Then all the queens from all the individual
Speaker 1: nests for miles around come over and everybody copulates, and
Speaker 1: then they leave the scrunchy on the door. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: then that's that ye, And that's the cycle starts a
Speaker 1: new the female lays eggs or goes back underground for
Speaker 1: the winter. That's right. And these are the social bees,
Speaker 1: Like we said, um, However, less than fift of bees
Speaker 1: are social, even though they're the ones we usually think of.
Speaker 1: More as far as like hives and nests and things.
Speaker 1: My favorite are the solitary bees. Why because they're doing
Speaker 1: their own thing. My my really favorite reason why. It's
Speaker 1: because the different ways they make their home. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: just think it's really cool. Yeah. So, like social bees
Speaker 1: are are known from the type of hives they have,
Speaker 1: that's kind of how they divided. But yeah, the way
Speaker 1: that they make their homes. For solitary bees, that's yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a good definition. And solitary bees they'll get together
Speaker 1: on occasion if they need to, like band together for
Speaker 1: defense or something, but they generally do their own thing. Um.
Speaker 1: So some of the different ways that these guys can
Speaker 1: make homes, like carpenter bees, which are my favorites. Um
Speaker 1: they bore holes in wood and unpainted like raw wood,
Speaker 1: and they usually are like the spitting image of a bumblebee.
Speaker 1: But if you see a bumble bee going into a
Speaker 1: hole in like your door jam, that's a carpenter bee.
Speaker 1: I like carpenter bees. I think it's cool. And they
Speaker 1: get the little tool belt. Yeah, they always have a
Speaker 1: pencil behind their ear. Yeah, And they're always late and
Speaker 1: the job is never done on time, and they'll tell
Speaker 1: you straight this is gonna cost two or three times
Speaker 1: when I originally estimated exactly. I just think it's cool
Speaker 1: that they can actually bore into the wood like that.
Speaker 1: It's amazing. And they're always like perfectly little round holes too,
Speaker 1: I know. Like what's surprising is they use their eyes
Speaker 1: to bore a little laser shoot out of them. Wow.
Speaker 1: I don't think I knew that. Tracy skipped that too.
Speaker 1: There are the plaster or bees. Um, they dig little
Speaker 1: holes and tunnels and line them with another secretion. That's
Speaker 1: sort of like blaster makes sense. The leaf cutters, what
Speaker 1: do they do? They use those uh those um grasping claws, remember,
Speaker 1: and then they bite leaves apart with their their mouths
Speaker 1: and line their nests with them because they like to
Speaker 1: be nice and comfy. Mason bees. Used to be a
Speaker 1: mason bee yeah yeah, um, and I would secrete something
Speaker 1: from my jaws that basically was like mortar and put
Speaker 1: sand and pebbles together and make a nest. It's a
Speaker 1: strong nest. This is like basically the three pigs of
Speaker 1: the bee. We're going from, like we're going from leaves
Speaker 1: to wood yeah, wooden sand yeah. Nice. The carter b
Speaker 1: that's they like furry wooly parts of plants. And that's
Speaker 1: basically they're like the Bob Guccioni bees. Yeah, they wear
Speaker 1: silk robes and stuff like that. Uh. And then my
Speaker 1: favorite thing is when uh Tracy points out a few
Speaker 1: species actually will like check out an empty snail shell
Speaker 1: and say, that looks like a very nice little apartment.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna move in there. And you want to
Speaker 1: move in, Let's just divide it up with more secretions
Speaker 1: and you take that half will make it a duplex. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is really cool. Or others will go into an
Speaker 1: old ant hill or termite hill or wasp nest and
Speaker 1: be like hello, and if they hear back hello, Hello, Hello,
Speaker 1: they'll they'll say, well, this is where I'm gonna lay
Speaker 1: my eggs. It's already built. Yeah. And the cuckoo bee,
Speaker 1: these guys are dumb. They go they're parasitic bee, not
Speaker 1: in that they eat other bees, but that they um,
Speaker 1: they lay their eggs in other bees nests and just
Speaker 1: say cyanara and they rely on their pollen. It just
Speaker 1: it's like, I feel like they're dumb. They're like they
Speaker 1: can't figure it out on their own, so they just
Speaker 1: kind of sneak in there in the dead of night
Speaker 1: even do their thing. Sweat bees, remember those little guys
Speaker 1: very aptly named. They are after you're that. I thought
Speaker 1: that was sort of a wive style. It's not. No,
Speaker 1: they're sweat bees, that's right. The orculd be is another
Speaker 1: good example of coevolution. Um. They think that the or
Speaker 1: could be with its extremely long probe. Probiscus um basically
Speaker 1: evolved to get the nectar out of orchids, which keeps
Speaker 1: its nectar very deep in the flower blossom. Evolution scaring
Speaker 1: in the face. Uh the scariest bee? Josh? Is there
Speaker 1: such thing as a killer bee? Uh? No, that's kind
Speaker 1: of a media hype. I mean, any bee, especially if
Speaker 1: you had a bee allergy, could kill you. Um. But
Speaker 1: what are killer bees? So back in the fifties seven
Speaker 1: in Brazil, some apiarists, some beekeepers, imported some African honey
Speaker 1: bees and they got loose, and they went and made
Speaker 1: it with the European honey bees that were already in
Speaker 1: the area. And what you had was Africanized honey bees,
Speaker 1: which are virtually identical to European honey bees, but they
Speaker 1: are far more aggressive, especially if they think you're messing
Speaker 1: with their hive. And you know, like Africans and Europeans
Speaker 1: mating that makes them aggressive. That's just interesting how you
Speaker 1: combine those two and all of a sudden they're just
Speaker 1: piste off. But then at some point the media got
Speaker 1: ahold of it as they started to approach from Brazil
Speaker 1: upward toward America. Yeah, we have some here right in
Speaker 1: the States. Yeah, they made it to Texas, Florida, I believe,
Speaker 1: maybe in Georgia, California, Arizona. I bet there's some in
Speaker 1: South Georgia, and um they the media went crazy over
Speaker 1: killer bees. That seems like a seventies thing. I sort
Speaker 1: of remember that. I thought it was eighties. Was there
Speaker 1: was there a movie or something? Oh, I'm sure, swarmy movie.
Speaker 1: I think there had to be, or there should be,
Speaker 1: um so reproduction, the fun sexy stuff. This is actually
Speaker 1: really fun, I think because bees can live up to
Speaker 1: five years some of them. Honey bee. Just I think
Speaker 1: that's the queen. Just the queen. Okay, that makes sense
Speaker 1: because I didn't get because it's Tracy also said that
Speaker 1: some of them don't even lift through the winter. I
Speaker 1: guess it just depends, right, That's why I think it
Speaker 1: was the queen that she was referring to. Up to
Speaker 1: five years. Yeah, for an insect. I mean she's well
Speaker 1: taken care of. She doesn't have to do a lot,
Speaker 1: that's right. The males, like we said, are the there
Speaker 1: there too to deposit their male parts in, and unfortunately
Speaker 1: they don't leave with their male parts. Yeah. Depending on
Speaker 1: the species of bee, they may much like a stinging
Speaker 1: a mammal, once they copulate. Does that work for bees? Copulation? Yeah? Um,
Speaker 1: they leave there, like you said, their man parts in
Speaker 1: the female and die as a result. They feeling takes
Speaker 1: it more than he leaves it was there, right, I
Speaker 1: don't know, I just have a feeling. The female bees
Speaker 1: just seemed like they they're the smart one. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: like I have your you know what's it called? Your
Speaker 1: um not a penis? No, it's not a penis. Their
Speaker 1: endo fallus. I've got your ends and I'm not giving
Speaker 1: it back exactly, and now you're dead. That's right. Um.
Speaker 1: So with funny beest specifically, I think the queen bee
Speaker 1: is the only one that lays eggs. Is that correct? Um? No,
Speaker 1: the queen uh honey bees. Females will lay like a
Speaker 1: few eggs during their lifetime, but the queen bee lays thousands. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, so it is possible for a honey beat okay,
Speaker 1: but for the most part carrying on the hive that's
Speaker 1: up to the queen, right, um. The and then once
Speaker 1: an egg is laid, it goes through the same stages
Speaker 1: that like a caterpillar. Well yeah, I never knew that either. So,
Speaker 1: like you lay an egg and it hatches into a larva,
Speaker 1: which looks like a little worm, a little sick, gross
Speaker 1: white worm. Um. And it's fed by workers for a
Speaker 1: couple of days, fed royal jelly, which you said they
Speaker 1: secrete from their heads, right, yeah. Did I don't think
Speaker 1: the regular bees get the royal jelly? Do they for
Speaker 1: the first two days, for just two days? That if
Speaker 1: you want to make a queen, you feed that be.
Speaker 1: You feed any female larva um royal jelly the whole
Speaker 1: time until you're raising her, Yeah, until she spins a cocoon,
Speaker 1: so they get royal jelly. A couple of days they
Speaker 1: they molt um. There, the workers seal off the honeycomb,
Speaker 1: which is an egg chamber in this case. Yeah, each
Speaker 1: little one. Yeah, those like build a little door basically, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's one per no more, that's right, no less, uh,
Speaker 1: And then the larva spins a cocoon and eventually emerges
Speaker 1: as an adult. And I've heard tell that the first
Speaker 1: thing a bee does when it's born is clean out
Speaker 1: its egg chamber for the next bee. They're very busy
Speaker 1: and tidy and like, yeah, they've got a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff to do for sure. Uh. And here's the other
Speaker 1: cool thing. Males will get a little bit larger cell.
Speaker 1: But the queen can actually decide whether or not to
Speaker 1: have a male or a female. Yeah that's remarkable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because a queen will collect sperm enough for her lifetime
Speaker 1: and one shot, yeah, and one mating season because I
Speaker 1: understand it. And then you know what I mean, Um,
Speaker 1: she'll dole it out depending on what kind of uh
Speaker 1: bees the hive needs at any pointing. So what's the
Speaker 1: what's the magic sauce thing? Uh? What how she does this? Um?
Speaker 1: She stores all right? If she uses stored sperm to
Speaker 1: fertilize the egg, then she had this female. If she
Speaker 1: leaves egg unfertilized, then it's a male, right, So it's
Speaker 1: up to her. And what's crazy is this? This? It
Speaker 1: all depends on what kind of state the hives in,
Speaker 1: Like do you need more workers to go gather more food, um,
Speaker 1: or do you need more males to reproduce? It's pretty cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: how they strike that balance with that tiny little brain,
Speaker 1: I guess years of experience. How do they pick the
Speaker 1: queen too? Do you know that? I don't know. Is
Speaker 1: it just random? And then they start him on the
Speaker 1: royal jelly and that just gets the process. That's the
Speaker 1: impression that I have that as long as it's a
Speaker 1: fertilized egg that will become a female. Yeah, then I
Speaker 1: think you could feed any of those royal jelly. It's
Speaker 1: probably one of the queen's daughters though, as opposed to
Speaker 1: one of the few of the others. Don't you think, uh,
Speaker 1: keep that royal bloodline intact? Yeah, I would think. You know, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's just a guess. I bet somebody knows. I mean,
Speaker 1: what if what if they accidentally raised the cuckoo bees
Speaker 1: egg as a queen cheese? What a colossal nightmare that
Speaker 1: would be? Um? Okay, So the the little eggs hatch
Speaker 1: and the little worker bees they have different jobs according
Speaker 1: to their age, but they are going to be taking
Speaker 1: care of the young at this point. Um, they're going
Speaker 1: to be feeding them pollen or be bread, which is
Speaker 1: pollen and nectar mixed together. It sounds delicious, actually it is.
Speaker 1: And there's you know a lot of people think that
Speaker 1: bees are just only after nectar. No, they collect pollen
Speaker 1: on purpose as well, and they use it to make
Speaker 1: bee bread. That's right, and be bread does sound very delicious. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so as you get older, though, you're gonna have
Speaker 1: different jobs. And um, at first you're a nurse, and then,
Speaker 1: like you said, once you get little older, you might
Speaker 1: be a maide or a butler and clean on not butler,
Speaker 1: I guess it made and start cleaning out the other, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the other empty cells. Even though you said
Speaker 1: they're supposed to do it yourself, I guess they. You know,
Speaker 1: some are lazy, maybe some some other worker bee has
Speaker 1: to come behind and take care of their business. They're like,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna keep my eye on you, exactly. And then
Speaker 1: they also learned at that point out to forge for
Speaker 1: food and make honey. And this is where things get
Speaker 1: kind of fun. Those are and those are the oldest ones. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the oldest ones are the scouts and the ones that
Speaker 1: forage or the oldest bees in the hive. The followers. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: and to say, real quick to first chuck um that
Speaker 1: that was social bee reproduction. UM. Solitary bee reproduction is
Speaker 1: very sad. Sometimes in some species the mother lays an egg,
Speaker 1: seals up this um whatever cheese used as the nest
Speaker 1: with a little bee bread, a little honey whatever, and
Speaker 1: then takes off and dies and they never see their
Speaker 1: little baby bee. That is said, and that sad. So uh.
Speaker 1: Bees find their food in pretty remarkable ways. That can
Speaker 1: smell like really really well, and like we said, they
Speaker 1: can recognize color patterns and things, and they have their
Speaker 1: solar compass, so this allows them to see where the
Speaker 1: sun is. They also have an internal clock, so when
Speaker 1: they go out the scout bees and find the food,
Speaker 1: they know, all the sun's right there, and I flew
Speaker 1: three yards. Now I'm flying back and the sun is
Speaker 1: right there. So they can actually use those together to
Speaker 1: pinpoint or pinpoint for the others where the food is
Speaker 1: because they're going I'm back to tell everyone, hey, and
Speaker 1: they you know, let them taste like this is what
Speaker 1: you're after. Taste a little bit of this and now
Speaker 1: come with me. By way of this dance, they can
Speaker 1: remember and judge and measure where they went, where the
Speaker 1: food source was, but then they also can communicate it
Speaker 1: like you sit through dancing. UM. And if food's really
Speaker 1: close by, they'll just basically run up a vertical wall
Speaker 1: of a honeycomb, which they call it the dance floor. UM,
Speaker 1: and we not just us. It's called the dance that's
Speaker 1: what people who study bees call it. UM. And they
Speaker 1: basically just run up or down in the direction of
Speaker 1: the food source in relation to the sun, not in
Speaker 1: relation to the hive. When they go out, they'll be like, Okay,
Speaker 1: the sun's over here, it's it's in this direction. That's
Speaker 1: pretty cool. Yeah, that's called a round dance. And they
Speaker 1: depend on their sense of smell because they don't get
Speaker 1: super specific with the round dance. They're like, I'll get
Speaker 1: you out there and then you'll know trust me exactly
Speaker 1: because bees can smell from meters away, which is that's
Speaker 1: a really far distance. How small bees are. UM. And
Speaker 1: when the when the food is a little further away,
Speaker 1: they do the actual waggle dance and UM. Basically this
Speaker 1: is running again in a in a line in the
Speaker 1: direction of the food and then making these little um
Speaker 1: circles in opposing directions at the end of the line.
Speaker 1: So it will run up and then go to the
Speaker 1: left in the circle, and then run up and then
Speaker 1: go to the right in the circle. Um, and that
Speaker 1: tells everybody where the where the food is, and then
Speaker 1: the quality of the food source, how tight the circle is,
Speaker 1: I think kind of says it's really really good, or
Speaker 1: if it's a big loping circle, mamb like it's okay,
Speaker 1: we've had better. And then the bees also flapping its
Speaker 1: wings at the same time, and all the bees that
Speaker 1: have gathered around, like you said, um are called followers.
Speaker 1: They're the oldest ones in the hive, and they're taking
Speaker 1: all this information in and a specific group of them
Speaker 1: are going to be directly behind the bee while it's
Speaker 1: doing this waggle dance wind, yeah, flapping its wings, and
Speaker 1: that wind is going to tell them about how long
Speaker 1: they need to travel for. And then all the bees
Speaker 1: take off. When they get to about the right area,
Speaker 1: they go into like a search pattern until somebody finds it,
Speaker 1: and then they start making trips back and forth. Yep.
Speaker 1: I mean they're delivering a lot of information here, very
Speaker 1: specific information. And um, they make about a dozen trips.
Speaker 1: Each bee can carry about half her weight in pollen
Speaker 1: or nectar, which is amazing. And then um, when they
Speaker 1: come back to unload the stuff, there's more communication going
Speaker 1: on because the little unloaders that are back at the
Speaker 1: hive will behave differently according to how much uh more
Speaker 1: food they need. If they're like, come on, come on,
Speaker 1: give it, give it, give it, that means keep going,
Speaker 1: keep going. And then they're like, yeah, yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: I'll take it since you brought it. But we're really
Speaker 1: doing okay, They're like, all right, well, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to get anymore if you're just not going to be
Speaker 1: excited about it any longer, Let's just find some men
Speaker 1: to have sex with, right, Or let's turn this next
Speaker 1: there into honey, yes, just because for storage per this
Speaker 1: honey has far less volume than nectar. It's basically concentrated nectar,
Speaker 1: so you can store more of it, right, that's right.
Speaker 1: So they transform nectar into honey in a in a
Speaker 1: kind of a gross way. Um, they regurgitate it over
Speaker 1: and over and over, which evaporates the water out of it.
Speaker 1: And um, they also flap their little wings to I
Speaker 1: guess use air to do the same thing. And so
Speaker 1: honey is a bunch of regurgitated be stuff. Because there's
Speaker 1: it's the vomit. Yeah, I mean there's be stuff in
Speaker 1: there as well. Yeah, it's not just nectar like they're
Speaker 1: stuck in the moisture out, but they're also adding enzymes
Speaker 1: and stuff their own from their body to make honey.
Speaker 1: It's not just dehydrated nectar. It's it's honey is a
Speaker 1: different thing that's made by this stuff, but it has
Speaker 1: some pretty amazing properties to it. Um. One of the
Speaker 1: things that's added during this regurgitation process is called glucose
Speaker 1: oxidase and UM. When it's fed too young to the young,
Speaker 1: it's broken down into glucosset, which gives them tons of
Speaker 1: energy because there's a lot of sugar calories in in honey.
Speaker 1: But it's also broken down into um hydrogen peroxide, which
Speaker 1: is one of the things that gives honey. It's anti
Speaker 1: microbial antibacterial properties, and that's why humans have been using
Speaker 1: it and eating it for thousands and thousands of years
Speaker 1: to treat wounds. Occasionally, it can be good in a
Speaker 1: pinch if you're a survivalist, especially an open wound. UM there. So,
Speaker 1: I mean you've heard that honey is um like it
Speaker 1: keeps forever. Basically Obviously it doesn't keep for everybody will
Speaker 1: keep a very long time. That's one of the big reasons.
Speaker 1: Another reason is that um it has a high asmotic
Speaker 1: pressure and it's hygroscopic, which means it wicks moisture out
Speaker 1: of the air around it, and since it has a
Speaker 1: high asmotic pressure, it does it really strongly. So if
Speaker 1: you're a little nice, um moisturized piece of bacteria UM
Speaker 1: and you come in contact with honey, it's gonna suck
Speaker 1: the moisture out of you and kill you. Antibacterial. Wow, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's pretty amazing. If you come across a beehive in
Speaker 1: the wintertime and they just seem like they're all in
Speaker 1: there asleep, hibernating, not so, they're still pretty active. They
Speaker 1: they will leave the hive to poop and pee because well,
Speaker 1: I guess they don't pee, but they leave the hive
Speaker 1: to do their business because they don't want to go
Speaker 1: in their little cell, which again, they're very tidy little creatures.
Speaker 1: They know not to like wallow in their own feces
Speaker 1: not feces but bt uh. But they are still pretty
Speaker 1: busy there because they have to keep warm. So they
Speaker 1: and especially keep the queen warm, and so they tremble
Speaker 1: just like humans kind of shiver just to increase the warmth.
Speaker 1: Then the summertime they will flap their wings to kind
Speaker 1: of keep things climate controlled on the cooler side and
Speaker 1: drip water on the honey comb. That's amazing. They are
Speaker 1: pretty amazing creatures. If you and I still hate them, yeah,
Speaker 1: Oh we should also say, I'm real quick that while
Speaker 1: the honey has a lot of antibacterial properties and anti
Speaker 1: microbial properties, one particular bacteria that is impervious to honey's
Speaker 1: defenses is um Clustridium baculinum AK boculi is um, the
Speaker 1: bacteria that gives you a boculi is um um. And
Speaker 1: since it's soil born, uh, it's very easy for sea
Speaker 1: bachulnum to get into honey. It's in honey. Any honey
Speaker 1: you eat is going to have it in there. It's
Speaker 1: not in large enough measure to affect us, but it
Speaker 1: could be life threatening to a baby, which is why
Speaker 1: they always say, like, never give honey to a baby.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, ever, you know, I don't think we mentioned
Speaker 1: either the honey. You know, you have different flavors of
Speaker 1: honey that depends on what the bee has been Uh,
Speaker 1: what kind of flowers the bee's been hanging out. It's
Speaker 1: like orange blossom, honey, it's clover is orange blossom and clover.
Speaker 1: So I never knew that either makes perfect sense. Bees.
Speaker 1: I thought it wasn't like an added flavor or something,
Speaker 1: you know, like whatever you know will make different flavors
Speaker 1: of And it was like natural occurring. You're like, when
Speaker 1: are they going to make bacon honey? Man A bit
Speaker 1: that's good. Just cook some bacon, put some honey on it.
Speaker 1: Um um. And you know we had we did a
Speaker 1: podcast on colony collapse disorder, so I would encourage people
Speaker 1: to go listen to that as well. It was a
Speaker 1: good one in the archives. Um, have you got anything else?
Speaker 1: I've got nothing else? Okay, bees. If you want to
Speaker 1: learn more about bees, you should go check out this
Speaker 1: very thorough um article on how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Can type in bees and it will bring it up
Speaker 1: and you can learn even more, including about colony collapse
Speaker 1: disorder and um be keeping as well. Yeah, maybe we
Speaker 1: should be keeping one day. Okay, I don't mean a podcast,
Speaker 1: I mean just started on the side business. Haven't we already?
Speaker 1: Did you have like a smoker and everything? Uh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: TV will tell you I do. Um. Okay, so since
Speaker 1: I said search bar, I think I did at how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com and that means it's time for
Speaker 1: of course listening mail. All right, Josh, I'm gonna call this,
Speaker 1: uh correction from a librarian. Remember we did our book
Speaker 1: banning podcast. That's her correction. That's all she said, and
Speaker 1: that is from Carly. Thank you, Carly. Hey, guys, love
Speaker 1: your show. As a librarian, I was excited to hear
Speaker 1: what you had to say about book banning. However, I'd
Speaker 1: like to clear up a misconception about the role of
Speaker 1: a librarian and banning books. You said, if a customer
Speaker 1: patron approaches the librarian wants a book ban it is
Speaker 1: up to the librarian to decide this is not. This
Speaker 1: could not be further from the truth. In the cases,
Speaker 1: public libraries are run by boards of trustees, volunteers in
Speaker 1: the community who set policies for the library. UH. These
Speaker 1: community members are not librarians, and when someone wants a
Speaker 1: book removed, they must fill out a form and submit
Speaker 1: it to the board. Then the board reviews the material
Speaker 1: in the objection the board of trustees. UH, it is
Speaker 1: the board of trustees who decides whether or not to
Speaker 1: remove the item. The board of trustees may consult with
Speaker 1: others like librarians, UH review, sources, the community at large, etcetera.
Speaker 1: But it is not the librarian who decides whether to
Speaker 1: ban the book. UM, I hope to hear this corrected.
Speaker 1: She says, it is unfortunate to hear one's profession and
Speaker 1: misconstrued and an international public forum. So that is from Carly,
Speaker 1: and she says thanks, and keep up the good work
Speaker 1: and Chuch, thanks Carly, appreciate that. Um. I think everybody
Speaker 1: got that. It's pretty clear and concise. It is not
Speaker 1: librarians in most cases who can carry out the banning.
Speaker 1: It sounds like she might have been yelled at by
Speaker 1: somebody because of our podcast. Maybe well she just yelled
Speaker 1: at us. UM, if you have a correction for us,
Speaker 1: we are always very much open to those who we
Speaker 1: want to hear him so we can pass them along
Speaker 1: because we like correcting ourselves and getting things right. You
Speaker 1: can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast.
Speaker 1: You can join us on Facebook dot com slash Stuff
Speaker 1: you Should Know, and you can send us a good
Speaker 1: old fashioned email at stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com
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