Speaker 1: From berries to the bar, from Buffalo to Bora Bora.
Speaker 1: Bees our big business. Believe it or not, we're talking
Speaker 1: about bees. So byob and join us for this episode
Speaker 1: of Parts per Billion. Buzz buzz, and welcome to a
Speaker 1: very special episode of Parts per Billion, the podcast from
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Environment. I'm your host, David Schultz. Perhaps you've heard,
Speaker 1: or maybe you haven't heard, but we just released another
Speaker 1: big podcast project, a spinoff, if you will. It's called
Speaker 1: the Business of Bees, and it's a six part mini
Speaker 1: series looking at well that bees, their importance in the economy,
Speaker 1: the environmental threats they face, and a whole lot more.
Speaker 1: You can listen to it by searching the Business of
Speaker 1: Bees wherever you get your podcasts. I am joined today
Speaker 1: by the crew that put this whole thing together, Adam
Speaker 1: Allington and Tiffany Stecker. Hello everyone, Hey David, Hi David.
Speaker 1: So let's just talk about the podcast really quickly. What
Speaker 1: why bees? Why did we choose bees to sort of
Speaker 1: dig do this really deep dive. Well, As listeners might
Speaker 1: not know, we three together have all at different points
Speaker 1: covered the pesticide beat here at Bloomberg Environment first and
Speaker 1: then Tiffany, and now me and so anyone who's covered
Speaker 1: pesticides knows that pollinators are particularly impacted by agricultural pesticides,
Speaker 1: and so that kind of got us talking. I think
Speaker 1: about the ways in which our agricultural economy was structured
Speaker 1: today and how that impacts bees specifically, and how bees
Speaker 1: have become also this big symbol for these environmental policy problems.
Speaker 1: So I think that's kind of what got us talking, right, right,
Speaker 1: I think Adam really wanted to tell this story in
Speaker 1: a new way through a podcast medium. We've heard so
Speaker 1: much about this, We've read so many news stories, but
Speaker 1: it has really been done in this sort of format. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right. I mean that when I was covering pesticide,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you guys experienced this as well. That it's just,
Speaker 1: you know, anytime you talk about bees or you write
Speaker 1: about bees, someone's going to be listening. It's it's something
Speaker 1: that just inherently, you know, gets people's attention because people
Speaker 1: are either you know, think bees are cute, or they're
Speaker 1: worried that all the bees are dying or both, you know,
Speaker 1: or they're remembering back to you know, two thousand and six,
Speaker 1: two thousand and seven and colony collapse, which was the
Speaker 1: moment bees really became you know, headline news, and even
Speaker 1: for people like us who were sort of cover this
Speaker 1: stuff all along, I was still kind of wondering, like,
Speaker 1: his colony collapse still the number one threat for bees today?
Speaker 1: And if you know, have we solved it, have we
Speaker 1: fixed colony collapse? Why are we still see these headlines
Speaker 1: about bees dying in record numbers and why is it
Speaker 1: still so hard for bee keepers to keep their bees alive?
Speaker 1: And so I think that was the other sort of
Speaker 1: guiding light for the podcast, is trying to connect these
Speaker 1: dots for the listeners. Do you think that was one
Speaker 1: of the more surprising things that you learned when doing
Speaker 1: this is that colony collapse seems like, you know, it
Speaker 1: was in the news so much back when it was
Speaker 1: going on, but it's not really that big of an
Speaker 1: issue anymore. That was that surprised me. Well, I think
Speaker 1: that's part of the reason we made this a six
Speaker 1: part series. There's so many different elements to it, and
Speaker 1: colony collapse was very mysterious when it was first discovered.
Speaker 1: We still don't know a whole lot about it, but
Speaker 1: there's all these other issues surrounding bees, the mites, as
Speaker 1: Adam mentioned for real mites, pesticides, overall loss of biodiversity
Speaker 1: and plant life in the US. Another thing that really
Speaker 1: surprised me, which is something that you touched on a
Speaker 1: lot in the first episode which was just released, is
Speaker 1: that the most beekeepers don't really make a lot of
Speaker 1: money off of their honey. They make money from selling
Speaker 1: pollination services where they send out their hives and they
Speaker 1: you know, have their hives go pollinate these big fields
Speaker 1: of crops. That was wild to me that honey isn't
Speaker 1: afterthought for these beekeepers. I know, you wouldn't really know,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't come to that conclusion just based on you know,
Speaker 1: maybe going to the grocery store or your local farmers
Speaker 1: market or you know, honey's everywhere. It's definitely a product
Speaker 1: people still consume a lot, in fact, are consuming more
Speaker 1: and more each year. But the money that the beekeepers,
Speaker 1: the commercial beekeepers can make through pollination services is so
Speaker 1: high that they've it's essentially become their their number one business.
Speaker 1: Beekeepers are. You know, commercial beekeepers will still maybe sell
Speaker 1: some honey, but a lot of them just keep the
Speaker 1: honey in the hive to use his feed for the bees.
Speaker 1: Because their main job is to go from crop to
Speaker 1: crop to help pollinate, and they need that honey. You know,
Speaker 1: if they didn't have the honey, the beekeeper would have
Speaker 1: to provide some other food source. So it's really changed
Speaker 1: quite a bit. You guys went to California, Michigan, South Carolina.
Speaker 1: I went to Maryland. I met the long trek to
Speaker 1: to Maryland to go interview. Yeah, you're gonna want to
Speaker 1: You're gonna want to expense for that trick. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: what was the What was your favorite interview that you
Speaker 1: guys did, uh, you know for this product, this project.
Speaker 1: We spoke to a lot of interesting people, but I
Speaker 1: really enjoyed kind of these off the off the cuff
Speaker 1: conversations with farmers that we had. I had a good
Speaker 1: conversation with Mike Doherty in California about how to pronounce uh,
Speaker 1: the nut. That is the reason why bees are so
Speaker 1: important pollination. There's two different ways. Apparently there's almond and
Speaker 1: there's ammen and and well Mike pointed out that you
Speaker 1: don't say solomon. Well, okay, that's that's a good point,
Speaker 1: but that's ammin. That's bizarre. Yeah. I mean, as a reporter,
Speaker 1: I think anytime that I can get out and talk
Speaker 1: to farmers, I'm particularly happy, you know. I think farmers,
Speaker 1: especially almond farmers, are you know, and they really want
Speaker 1: to you know. They they're part scientists, they're part business
Speaker 1: you know, entrepreneur, and then they're you know, old school farmers.
Speaker 1: So they you know, they're trying to do the best
Speaker 1: job they can to keep bees alive and to also
Speaker 1: bring in the crop and to use the least amount
Speaker 1: of chemicals and to produce you know, something that's that's
Speaker 1: you know, a really high quality product. And so they're
Speaker 1: really balancing a lot of different you know inputs into
Speaker 1: this specific system, and it's it's interesting to pick their brain.
Speaker 1: My my favorite interview was one that I did not do,
Speaker 1: but actually when you did with Philip Ramsey, who's entomologist
Speaker 1: at the University of Maryland's right, that's correct, Yeah, And
Speaker 1: just he described how these mites attack bees and the
Speaker 1: actual like mechanics of it, and it was so vivid
Speaker 1: and so gruesome that it's just like I saw that
Speaker 1: in my mind and I don't think I will ever
Speaker 1: unsee it, and it is just he was an amazing character. Yeah,
Speaker 1: these Verroa mites they're called Veroa destructor, and what they
Speaker 1: do to bees is they attached to the bees abdomen
Speaker 1: and they you know, they slowly suck out the bees
Speaker 1: liver basically, and you know, try to imagine, you know,
Speaker 1: if you had, you know, a parasitic might the size
Speaker 1: of your you know, your hand on your stomach, and
Speaker 1: it was sucking out your liver, you'd probably be less
Speaker 1: than a healthy as well. So yeah, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of wrapping things up since because now I'm what, I
Speaker 1: don't get to ramble on for thirty five minutes about No, No,
Speaker 1: that was fascinating. I just gonna need to go lose
Speaker 1: my lunch over pretty soon. The big question that I
Speaker 1: wanted to ask you guys kind of was that you
Speaker 1: guys worked on we all worked on this project for
Speaker 1: close to six months. We really lived and breathed bees
Speaker 1: during that time. Knowing what we know now, do you
Speaker 1: think that bees are more or less under threat, more
Speaker 1: or less endangered than they were before we started this project?
Speaker 1: Why don't we start with you, Tiffany, Well, it really depends.
Speaker 1: I mean, bee is used very broadly, but we have
Speaker 1: the honey bee. As we talked a lot about and
Speaker 1: we also have tons of different wild bees of native pollinators,
Speaker 1: those I think are really under threat. The thing about
Speaker 1: honeybees is that they really are like livestock. Beekeepers can
Speaker 1: reproduce them. If they're getting low, they can make more,
Speaker 1: they can raise more. That's not really the same for
Speaker 1: native pollinators that are really dependent on wildlife. I have
Speaker 1: wild plants, biodiversity and also very affected by pesticides and
Speaker 1: these other chemicals. That's a great point, and we have
Speaker 1: a whole episode coming up devoted to that that not
Speaker 1: all bees are like, not all bees or honey bees.
Speaker 1: The wild bees are very overlooked and very threatened. Adam,
Speaker 1: what about you, Yeah, I mean what Tiffany said, But
Speaker 1: like you know, in you know, twenty seventeen was a
Speaker 1: kind of a watershed moment for a bee conservation when
Speaker 1: the rusty patch bumblebee was added to the endangered species list,
Speaker 1: you know, the first bee to be added to the list.
Speaker 1: And you know, not to discount the the problems faced
Speaker 1: by bee keepers and the fact that honeybees are dying
Speaker 1: is a problem, but you know, the environment we keep
Speaker 1: these honey bees in is a man made environment. And
Speaker 1: so even if we were to say lose seventy five
Speaker 1: percent of all the honey bees, that would be a tragedy.
Speaker 1: But we could just simply, we could bounce back from that.
Speaker 1: Whereas if you lose you know, ninety five percent of
Speaker 1: the rusty patched bumble bees, which is was the case
Speaker 1: with them with that species, you know, you can't just
Speaker 1: put those species back out into the environment. They're gone.
Speaker 1: They're gone, right, and so and we're learning so much
Speaker 1: about how these native pollinators interact with not just crops,
Speaker 1: but you know, wildflowers, shrubs, you know, they're very important
Speaker 1: connections in these ecosystems that you know, we don't really
Speaker 1: know what will happen if they go away. And then
Speaker 1: I guess I would say, since you know, I have
Speaker 1: to answer this question too, I don't really know. And
Speaker 1: I think that's my favorite part about the podcast is
Speaker 1: that this is such a complex topic. There's no simple answer,
Speaker 1: and I think, you know, I think we got at
Speaker 1: the complexity and we got we got at the the
Speaker 1: nuance of this that some bees are threatened, some bees aren't.
Speaker 1: The threats are complex. It's not any one thing. It's
Speaker 1: not just chemicals, and you know that's uh, you know,
Speaker 1: that's what I think I took away from the podcast.
Speaker 1: I kind of walk away from it also feeling like
Speaker 1: we could do another six episodes too, just on bees,
Speaker 1: Like there is really so much. There's such a fascinating
Speaker 1: species and their connections with so many different you know,
Speaker 1: agriculture and then in cities, and then you know, I
Speaker 1: think we could just keep going, but unfortunately we gotta
Speaker 1: kind of wrap it up at six. I guess that
Speaker 1: was Adam Allington, an, Tiffany Stecker and myself talking about
Speaker 1: our new podcast, Business of Bees. Thank you guys for
Speaker 1: joining us. Sure, thank you, David. You can find Business
Speaker 1: of Bees wherever fine podcasts are found. For more information
Speaker 1: on pollinators of all types, visit our website News dot Bloomberg,
Speaker 1: Environment dot com. That's news dot Bloomberg, Environment dot com,
Speaker 1: and if you want to chat with us on social media,
Speaker 1: use the hashtag parts per b. That hashtag, once again
Speaker 1: is parts per b. Today's episode of Parts Pavilion was
Speaker 1: produced by myself along with Maurissa Horne and Jessica Coombs.
Speaker 1: Nicholas Anzelota is the audio engineer. The music for this
Speaker 1: episode is a message by Jazarre. It was used under
Speaker 1: a creative comments license. Thank you for listening. Hey, I'm
Speaker 1: Adam Allenton. I'm the host of a new show from
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Environment called The Business of Bees. Here's what you
Speaker 1: need to know about it. We travel around the country
Speaker 1: talking to people at every corner of the honeybee ecosystem.
Speaker 1: This is the largest managed pollination event on Earth. In fact,
Speaker 1: commercial beekeeping is more important to farming than ever before.
Speaker 1: But bees are also under threat from pesticides and invasive
Speaker 1: pests and mysterious diseases. It's sort of like Christmas when
Speaker 1: you go to the hive in December and you open
Speaker 1: the lid, you just hope somebody's home. If you're interested
Speaker 1: in bees, two, I think you might like the show.
Speaker 1: Look for us wherever you get your podcasts.