May I have your attention, please? The following
is not the real Jeff Fox release. If you have
ever done a happy dance when your bees first
emerged in spring, you might be a beekeeper.
If you have a love -hate relationship with hay
fever season, You might be a beekeeper. If you
have ever seen the back of a bee from inside
your veil, think about it now. You might be a
beekeeper. Welcome, welcome to Be Love Beekeeping
presented by our good friends over at Man Lake.
Question for the day, how do you use your beekeeping
skills to help others? In today's episode, we're
going to have a discussion with two people that
have found amazing ways to help underprivileged
beekeepers in the Caribbean. But first, a brief
update on the huge losses of honeybees here in
North America. A while back, We had Chris Hyatt
on the podcast discussing how 1 .1 million colonies
had been lost this year. More recent polls have
increased that figure to 1 .6 million colonies.
Research is still in progress to find the causes
and we'll keep you posted as more info becomes
available. Let's lighten the mood with a few
fun facts about the honey bees that we so much
love. Did you know? that honey bees beat their
wings an incredible 11 ,400 times per minute,
which creates their characteristic buzzing sound.
And have you ever wondered if the bees know when
you're afraid of them? Well, here's something
maybe you didn't know. Bees can sense the hormone
released by scared humans and will attack if
they feel their hive is threatened. Did you know
that honey bees can recognize human faces? So
hey be nice to those bees and hopefully they'll
be nice to you. And did you know that Saint Valentine
is the patron saint of beekeepers and also of
love? And we just dubbed him the patron saint
of this podcast. I'd like to give a shout out
to Vita Bee Health for their support of this
podcast. Vita's Varroa Control range of products
includes Apistan, Apigard, and now Varroxan Extended
Release Oxalic Acid Strips. Thanks guys. Now,
let's have a chat with David and Beau. I'd like
to welcome our two guests today. One of them
you've met before, David Westerveld, but we have
somebody a whole lot more fun than him today.
And that is Beau Sturck. How are you, Beau? Good,
good. I'm good to go. And David, did you disconnect
after I just slammed on you right there? No,
I didn't hang up yet. But when I go back a long
ways, we know how to answer each other's questions
sometimes before they're even asked. Well, I
can tell you guys tease each other. So I just
thought I'd jump on both sides to get started
today. But we're going to be talking about. Bees
Beyond Borders. We'd love to talk about nonprofits
from time to time on the show. Before we do that,
Bo, tell us a little bit about you and your beekeeping
journey. It goes back quite a while. I've been
doing bees for a little over 30 years now, and
I started with a friend of mine. I made my living
as an artist and had an artist friend in town
here. I'm in St. Augustine, Florida, the oldest
city in North America, in North Florida, northeast
corner. A friend came down with a multiple sclerosis,
another artist, and she started needing therapy
and found that she started using bees for apotherapy
and it was working. At that time in Florida history,
we only had 400 beekeepers in the state. Right
now we're around 6 ,500 plus, I think it is.
And with that... 400, most of them were commercial
and it was hard to get bees up in this area.
So there was nobody, backyard beekeepers were
pretty rare. So I just raised my hand and said,
hey, I'll... I'm not afraid of insects. I had
a large insect collection as a kid in high school.
I collected coleoptera, beetles. I had a large
beetle collection. So I loved insects. And so
I raised my hand. The next thing you know, I'm
keeping bees for her, keeping a hive so she could
go out and collect bees three times a week. She
was doing them in her legs. As we know with apotherapy,
the toxins release your body's cortisol, so you
get that little cortisone boost. So she had mobility
in her legs with the bee stings. And it worked
for about three years before the disease caught
up with her. But in the meantime, I'm keeping
bees at her house. And like all beekeepers, we
start dividing the hives. And before you know
it, you've got too many hives. And obviously,
now I'm in the bee business and having to learn
this crazy trade. and get addictive. And I've
got one of those personalities that just keeps
saying, well, wait a minute, what does that,
what, wait, what, what does that mean? And researching
it. And before you know it, I just keep going.
Right about then, I started getting involved
with the state API inspector that we had in Florida
here at the time. And he was doing some mission
work through the state, actually. We had a program
with our governor at that point was... aiding
and giving, had a separate organization set up
a nonprofit called Favica, which was basically
a peace corps to the Caribbean. And if something
goes on in the Caribbean, usually Florida is
the first one being tropical, we're... we catch
all the trade and problems and issues that go
down. So they started doing some missions down
there and he dragged me along on a mission and
said, you know, let's go and we're going to take
on Barbados, I think was my first one. And we
went down and work with beekeepers and then.
A couple of years later, I came down to St. Vincent
and the Grenadines, and they'd gone down and
inspected, found American fowl brood in the country,
sent me down the following year, said, we found
100 hives. They all have American fowl brood.
You get to be the bad guy and go down and be
the issue of the hammer and start burning colonies.
So I volunteered, said, great. Flew down, got
down there and couldn't find any bees. I started
doing my presentation and told them what was
gonna go down and they said, we don't have bees.
What are you talking about? We don't have, they
haven't been here now for over a year. Sure enough,
all the colonies had collapsed. They couldn't
grow any crops. I got to see crop failure firsthand.
You go in a restaurant and they'd have little
gherkin pickles. You know, fingers, they're using
a razor blade on a pickle. for cucumbers on your
salad. The Grenadines had none in Bequia. They
had no bees at all and they hadn't had them for
a couple years because of the failure. And it
was a real interesting eye -opener. So we were
able to, at that point with that project, we
were able to get bees from St. Lucia. We brought
them in, we brought 20 hives over on a ferry
into into Grenadines Island of Bequia. We quarantined
them there to make sure they were clean and slowly
reintroduced bees back on the island. So it was
a real learning experience on that end of it.
Did you burn the old equipment first? Well, that
was the key was everybody had to burn their equipment.
Okay, everybody get rid of this old equipment
and, you know, we can't use it and going through
the whole steps. And did they? No. We got it
up to about 400 hives and then, you know, a couple
of years later go by and all of a sudden we're
having failure again. Well, what happened? You
got rid of that equipment. No, we never did.
Sure enough, all that equipment showed its ugly
head again and it dropped it back down to under,
yeah, maybe like 125 hives. And slowly by now,
I was down a little two years ago and they did
have most of that was gone. Most of it rotted
away or termites got it. So they've started over.
They've got it up to around 500 colonies at this
point that I could figure out. I mean, it's hard
to get an estimate. There's so many backyard
beekeepers down there and they really hide their
hives, keep them remote. They are a little bit
more defensive with some of that African genetics
in it. They're afraid you're going to want to
burn them or something. But is that where the
idea of bees beyond borders came from? Yeah.
Yeah, it started with that. And so I was going
down and then that organization that I was working
with slowly was getting phased out with the new
governors and the political scene in Florida.
It changed and they had to close down. And so
I just kind of launched it. I started working
with Andrew Coté a little bit in programs with
Bees Without Borders. And he wasn't really pushing.
He was pushing more African direction. And there
are groups that are working in Africa a little
bit more with Bees Abroad and Bees for Development.
So I've never worked with those groups, but I
have worked, you know, I know Nicole and I know
the crews, but they're more African -based. They're
based out of the UK. And being in the US here,
I felt a real need to work really with the Caribbean
and be a little bit closer here, like with that
aid back and forth between the country's connections.
There's an old adage, you know, if the U .S.
sneezes, they catch a cold. So the Caribbean's
really susceptible to a lot of problems that
come up. They actually, now it's going to catch
the flu. A lot of programs in Haiti, which I'm
real fascinated with, but now that's all off
limits once again. Sure. Yeah, it's not safe
to go into Haiti right now. No. David, tell us
a little bit about the need. Well, the need is,
you know, education is our main focus going down.
Not really trying to change the way they keep
bees, but let's say for like in Haiti where they
do a lot of log gums or other methods of keeping
bees. So instead of us going down there trying
to teach them, well, you need to run Langstroth
Ives, we go down and see what they have, what
materials, and we try to assist them. And first
of all, teaching them what parasites are out
there, what diseases, and what all we can help
them with without changing their bee techniques.
And so we do the education. And with Bo and I
both, we both have that background in agriculture.
So we also assist them with other projects like
in planning for bee forage and native bee forage
and assisting them in learning what plants they
need to have out there. And that's the biggest
thing, especially in Haiti, where they can't
afford to make or buy Langstroth equipment. So
top bar or no frame equipment, you know, or minimal
frame equipment works best for them. And we've
done a lot of education where you're teaching
the farmers in some of the other islands where
they're spraying haphazardous all the time, doesn't
matter day or night, whatever, we're educating
them also. And I mean, we do some outreach here
in the U .S. with education, so we do a lot of
education. All right, if you could come educate
some of my neighbors here, that'd be great, too.
You know, I had to do the education here in Florida
being regulatory before. Yeah, I mean, it took
us a couple years to educate the general public,
you know, the importance of honeybees. And we're
seeing that right now in some of the Caribbean
islands, where they're scared to death of bees
because they're stinging insects. And here in
Florida, at least, we're protected under the
right to farm and the right the placement of
beehives. That's what we're working with right
now, some of the Caribbean islands like Barbados,
where they have no laws in protecting where they
can put bees. So if the neighbor complains, they
could be thrown out of their bee yard, even if
it's their own property. So what's the main focus?
What is the mission of the organization? Food
security. I think it does involve beekeeping
is we try to really get rural development and
food security for everybody. And the said old
adage of eat local is the key to it all. Most
of the islands throughout the Caribbean are basically
importing honey at these extraordinary exorbitant
prices. And they're getting it from all the wrong
sources because they just need drums of honey.
And of course, they're getting it in from who
knows where. As we all know, we can't control
what's in a drum of honey that comes in. We don't
know if it's from Vietnam or Ukraine or China
or Korea. We just really don't know these sources
anymore and what quality it is. honey, as we
all know. Dave and I were also involved with
American Bee Federation Education Program, and
we're state delegates. So we're involved on all
levels of it, trying to keep this economy of
bees and honey and everything moving forward.
So when you talk about food security, is it mostly
honey or is it the fact that they desperately
need the pollinators too? They need the pollinators
because most of the crops that they do grow,
these farmers are root crops, so they are really
looking at a lot of those cubiculates for pollination
that they really need. Not as much the fruit,
they're really the fruit trees and most of that
they have other native pollinators that are out
there. We're trying to always make them aware
of all the other pollinators in the countries
that we visit. But it's really trying to get
pollination and food security honey. Our part
in Haiti is getting to even harvest honey. They're
looking at the brood like a bare wood as protein.
So they actually will take the pupas and the
larva and they'll fry it up. So that's a whole
different commodity right in itself. So it's
really hard to get them to keep bees in a box
and understand. you know, to keep your your parent
colonies going and not be eating everything there.
Food is a real sick problem. Let me just take
a minute here to thank our presenting sponsor,
Man Lake. One of the things I love about Man
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to be successful at beekeeping. One great resource
is their mobile app. You know, it's not just
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the Man Lake app today. And speaking of shopping,
don't forget your discount code MLBlove10. It's
in the show notes for $10 off your first $100
purchase. Now back to the guest. I've worked
in all areas of Haiti like Dave has. We've both
worked in different directions. But you get out
in the mountains there and still to this day,
labor, you're lucky you make a dollar and a half
a day for an eight to 10 hour day. Port -au -Prince
labor is up since the earthquake there. It's
up to around $6 for a 12 -hour day in the sweatshops.
So it's a real tough life to grind out. And if
you can have something on the side, try to get
your food crops up a little bit and have that
honey as an income source. And then they end
up with a little bit of wax, hopefully, that
they can turn into some cosmetics. We try to
teach a little bit of that also. It's amazing
the value of honey on almost all the Caribbean
islands. 20 years ago, their honey prices were
still somewhere around $10 to $15, somewhere
around a four ounce bottle. So it takes you about
four four ounce bottles to make a pound. And
they are still getting anywhere from $25 to $30
a pound for their honey. when they're selling
it throughout in Haiti the same way. And some
islands even more than that. I mean, it's crazy
the numbers that you hear. If you had a dozen
hives down there, you could actually make a living.
You could fly back and forth and still come out
ahead. I mean, it's just nuts. That is crazy.
What's your next big project? Do you have something
coming up? I do. Right now, I've got one going
on. We're going to start one down in Turks and
Caicos. Turks and Caicos lost their bees 30 years
ago in a hurricane, and they haven't had any
back. We were able to find some bees in the Bahamas.
Eight or 10 years back, Ted Dennard from Savannah
Bee had taken bees down to Exuma in the southern
Bahamas. They've come out pretty clean so far.
Jennifer Berry was working on that program. They
seem to be pretty mite -free from what we've
been able to find out. I'm going to go down here
in this next week. We've got a beekeeper down
there that's going to sell us four boxes of bees,
and we're going to put them on a private plane,
fly them into Turks and Caicos. We've got permission
from the chief veterinary officer there to bring
them into the country. So we're working with
the Bahama government agency for making sure
we are allowed to export them and at the same
time allowed to bring them into Turks and Caicos.
So we're going to do that here in the next month.
and then we have a program Dave and I are going
to be doing some teaching up in Arkansas outside
of Little Rock. So things like buying bees and
flying them to an island someplace sounds pretty
expensive. I assume that's where the 501c3 comes
in. How do you get donations? How do people donate
and what are they used for specifically? Well,
we're not getting paid. Dave and I are both strictly
volunteers on this whole operation, as we've
been doing. But we use it for exactly these kind
of programs. I've got a private donor that said
he would put up money for this program. He lives
in Turks, and he's a new farmer down there. He
has a plot of land and has enough cash on the
side that he says, let's go do it. I'll put up
the money for it. And so we got his security.
The foundation gets money coming in periodically
from different sources. I can't say it's anyone
in particular, but a lot of private foundations.
Grants have gotten really hard to come by anymore,
especially now with the cutbacks. We were starting
to work on a new program down in Jamaica. I started
one down there in a couple locations, but that
grant just fell through. It's gotten so hard.
There's so much competition in foundations. funding,
especially out of country. So we're just going
to take the money and go forward with it. We
have a site, a link on our website on the beesbeyondborders
.com site that there is a donation location on
there and a QR code, I believe still on there
that we can work with. So we get donations that
come in and we just kind of put it toward, you
know, the programs and move forward. for either
for our travel trips or we never work 100 % with
a program. Dave and I have gotten stuck with
that already or we've gotten pulled into a country
and all of a sudden the program wasn't there
that they talked about it. So we always have
to make them put up, they've got to put up something
to meet in the program to get us enticed. So
we try to do a 50 -50 if we can with programs
that they've got to have some skin in the game.
for us to come in and do the program because
it can be real pricing and it's just the logistics
and everything are just crazy. Talking about
Haiti is you have to have a driver. You just
can't drive down there. You need a car and a
driver and the costs are just crazy when you
start getting into the rentals in these third
world countries like that. Port -au -Prince has
no stop signs. There's no stop lights. It's just
chaos. You get on the main highway. That's a
four lane highway and it has an intersection.
And it literally, there's no light. And it's
just like the cars, you're just going through
this and it vibrates. And all of a sudden you're
through it. And you just go, how did I get through
a fourth lane, across a four lane highway and
make it? You may have somebody standing in the
middle that looks like a police officer directing
traffic, but no one follows him. No, no. That's
the thing. It's chaos. Or it's just a regular
citizen that was trying to cross the street and
got stuck. You just can't ever get to the other
side until midnight or something. Hey, give us
an idea. What has been one of your favorite projects?
Where was it? How did it go? Haiti, actually,
I've done a couple programs down there for over
the years, quite a few, and I was working in
a real remote area up in the mountains and came
across a character that had six logs on the ground
and had no beekeeping experience. It was taught
to him by his grandfather, had never seen a smoker
before. No clue. We worked it through that I
was able to show him how to build some top bar
hives. He was two and a half hours off road,
off the grid, completely up in the mountain.
The four -wheel drive couldn't go and we'd walk
a half hour from there back into the village.
And we were able to get some moped to bring us
in some sheets of plywood. And we cut it up with
a handsaw, taught them how to do top bar hive
with it. I've designed a hive, you get four of
them out of a sheet of plywood, top bar hive.
And then just get a thick plank of wood and we
just cut our top bars with that. So we had minimal
amount of equipment put into it. And after a
year, he was up to about 25. And when he got
25 of these colonies going, he was able to get
enough money to afford a moped. And the moped
got him into school, and then he got it up to
50. And now he was able to go to college, and
he became an agronomist in four years. So all
of a sudden it went from having just logs that
he had no clue as to what it was to becoming
now an agricultural officer in that region of
Haiti in the mountains. And he was able to get
other people involved to start packaging honey.
And before you know, they were able to make a
drum of honey and sell it to a candy company
in Port -au -Prince. I don't mean to overdo what
you're doing or... Throw hyperbole on it, but
you guys are humble about it that story. You
just told me Bo Your help has affected generations
Hopefully that's not just one person getting
a meal tonight. That's long -term Generational
help and that is spectacular. Yeah, I know it's
it's it's really humbling when you go in and
You know after I got the hive then then it became
down to okay. No, I've got a guy I've got top
bar hive here built take a log and now I've got
to stick my arms in this log and pull out the
frames and transfer it. How do you transfer a
log, hive into any other equipment? I mean, it
was just crazy. Well, especially a guy that wears
no protective gear. Yeah, exactly. It was pretty
humbling to take a machete and kind of pull these
crumbs of froth. frames comb out, and you don't
have rubber bands. So I took an old bed sheet
and I made little hammocks out of bedsheets and
tied them to the top bar. And when you're working
in a place like that, where do you stay? It's
pretty, it's pretty remote. I try to get to a
hotel. I mean, if you can, that's been kind of
my goal anymore. Getting older as I am, I'm in
my mid 70s, early 70s there. I just have to have,
I need hot water and no bugs. No bedbugs and
hot water is what I tell them. And I'm good to
go. I've stayed in tin sheds. I mean, you name
it, you're just in really remote. In fact, the
first time I was down there, the first night,
they put me in a metal building. We shared a
light bulb with the people on the other side
of the wall, even. And I had a cot in a bucket.
And about three in the morning, somebody opens
the door, comes walking in, the guy says, My
neighbor, I have no idea who it is. Some guys
walking in the room and he says, my roommate's
snoring. Can I sleep in this other cot at three
in the morning? And he's going to wake up and
go, okay. No idea to wake up in the morning to
see some guys sitting there combing his hair.
It's just the baffling. You never know what you're
going to get. And they come in there carrying
roosters in there and under their arm. And that's
going to be your breakfast. You're just like,
what? Okay, here we go. That sounds like a real
adventure. I want to go with you sometime. Hey,
David, in some of these remote places, Bo mentioned
American Falbrood in another country than that,
but do you see the same kind of problems in those
countries that you see here? Yeah, American Falbrood
isn't as widespread down in the islands, but
they're starting to get more Varroa and even
small high beetles are starting to get into there.
And most of the islands we deal with, like Haiti,
they have agricultural persons down there, like
the agronomists that Beau was talking about.
They have, like, extension officers. But most
of them, if they have any education, they get
out of there, come either to the states or to
other islands. So it's amazing when we get the
lake. We were actually in Haiti. I remember there
was an extension agent there that had about 50
hives of bees. And after myself and another person
had gone through the bees, we found Varroa mites
and we showed him the Varroa mites. He was an
extension agent for Haiti, and he was so amazed
he had decided he could spend enough time to
pull the Varroa mites out of the hive. And we
were like, no, you're better to figure out a
treatment or, you know, try some different products
and get rid of them. But he felt that his time
value of the time was low enough that he could
do it by hand and get them out. But then we got
the same person we were looking at, and you talk
about people they have very little to do with.
We looked at his feet, and he had a pair of shoes
on, it looked like. But when we really looked
at him... He had the top part of the shoes, the
soles were totally gone, and he was still, because
he wanted to impress us that he had shoes, he
was walking around with nothing but the top of
the shoe on. And walking over these, we called
them cow horn cacti that they use for fencing,
because they've got these big hard cactuses.
Those things could pierce through my boots that
I wore. And to watch him walk barefoot, well,
sort of barefoot over him was amazing to us.
And the other, I was going to tell a story from
being in the little town of Plaisance, which
is in the southeast side of Haiti, sort of middle
part. You're just in the mountain area. We had
an educational program we were doing one morning.
And we asked the people how far was the furthest
distance anybody had come for this training.
And we had, I think it was 27 people in the training.
One guy had walked 21 miles to get there and
actually had started two days before. He'd started
in the afternoon, walked during the night to
get there and walked two nights to get to that.
So and then stayed. And that was the first meal
when we had we buy like Bo was saying we purchase
a lot of stuff. So normally the meals are something
that we pay for. And that was the first meal
he had had in three days. And so it was an honor
to give him a smoking tool and a big lighter.
It was really funny because he'd never owned
or never seen a lighter before. And so, you know.
He'd always made fire with either sticks or or
had it always going. So yeah, the simple things
in life. I had a guy one time walking four hours
each day, each each morning for four days in
a row. He walked four to five hours in the morning
and at night going home in the mountains. And
there's this, you know, it's just all gravel
pass up through the mountains. It's not flat
land at all. It's pretty rough. So I've made
you got rice and beans and peas before he left.
Yeah. That economic situation that brings up
a really hard question and that is if you're
educating somebody and you're working with them
with their bees and for example They have you
know, they're overrun with Varroa. I Have a feeling
they can't afford to go out and buy some kind
of treatment even if it was in the country What
do you do? How do you help them in those kind
of situations? You teach them methods that they
can do like breaking brood cycles. The biggest
thing down in Haiti and most of the Caribbean
and islands is they have temperatures pretty
much 75 to 90, 95 degrees year round. So they
don't go off of seasonal brood breaks. So you
end up having the nectar flows. So if you have
a dearth, your brood will break. So we also try
to teach them to split or, you know, separate
the queen out. So you do a queenless split and
allow that brood to break. And then they can
do methods of powdered sugar is one, even though
they can't afford the powdered sugar. It was
so amazing to us. We taught them powdered sugar.
They collect the powdered sugar, sift the mites
back out of them, or they'd pour it into, you
know, let it sift down into water. And then take
the water and let it dehydrate to get the powdered
sugar, the sugar crystals back out. And it was
amazing to watch them do that. I mean, like Beau
said, in Haiti, it's not unusual for it to be
less than a dollar a day for income. And so what
they can save on, we've had some that try to
use botanicals. They have a couple different
plants down there. that it seems that if you
use the leaves that cause the bees to actually
start grooming and removing the mite. So, you
know, combination of brood splitting and doing
that can assist. We're trying to get a little
bit more research to have them do down there.
Also, I mean, here in the States, we always claim
that, you know, bees live 40 days down there.
They're flying a little bit more. And the bees
seem to be a little bit smaller. We believe we're
kind of come to the conclusion that the bees
gestation period is a little bit quicker. So
they don't have quite as much of a mite problem
just having that quicker gestation turnaround.
And the bees just don't live as long because
they're flying so much more. But we're doing
seeing more and more climate change is really
taking some little bit of an effect we're seeing.
We they've mentioned seasons down there. We're
starting to see more of a just a wet season or
dry season. We're not seeing these ebb and flows
like we used to dry, wet, dry, wet. And so they're
really getting to be it's getting harder and
harder for them to get a crop of honey in these
dirt seasons. Right now we're just in Barbados
here. a couple weeks ago, Dave and I, and it's
really in a dirt season again. And it should
be more rain should have started or not. So it's
really a tough, tough time for everybody. One
of our biggest programs, it wasn't our biggest
program, but probably the most beneficial one
was probably when we did Dominica where, you
know, we had them down there. They were making
about three pounds of honey per hive per year.
And after Bo and I had spent two trips down there,
they were actually up to about 30, 35 pounds
of honey. And all of that was actually technique.
We taught them not to take the honey right as
soon as it was being capped to allow them to
store the surplus and then pull that little bit
off out of the honey super. It really made a
difference, but then they got hit by a humongous
hurricane and wiped out about 98 % of their bees.
So they're just starting to come back. All right.
Let's end on a fun note here. Bo, you look like
someone, and with all your traveling, I bet you've
had many multiple wild and crazy beekeeping stories.
uh... man which one do you want which what which
direction do you want to go crazy or just are
funny let's start with funny and go crazy after
that funny funny i had a good one done in indiana
uh... it was my first real encounter with african
icebees and they dragged us around the island
and uh... all of a sudden they got everybody
decided this little tour group of ours and about
uh... dozen people and they all wanted to go
up and look inside of a hive In Guyana, they
take, everybody's ever worked with African bees,
they'll actually take 55 -gallon drums and light
them on fire around the outsides of the apiaries,
the big fields, and they will literally fog the
entire basin fields in smoke. Besides having
somebody, it's a full -time job for one person
to run a smoker, and their smokers are not like
ours. They're three times the size. They literally,
they look like a two -gallon... two to three
gallon cans with a big bellow on it. And their
job is to smoke. And they started smoking it
and I said, there's too many people, I'm out
of here. I just knew the CO2 coming off their
breath was gonna set them off. And sure enough,
I got about 100 yards away, if not a little bit
more, 120. 120 yards away from it. And man, I
could hear the dogs starting to bellow and a
goat yelling. And I knew that hell was breaking
loose down on the field. And sure enough, out
of the thickets comes Jerry Hayes. Everybody
knows Jerry. Yeah, I know Jerry. He comes out
of there and pushes, and I said, this ain't looking
good. He says, no. And I says, well, I'll tell
you what, Jerry. He says, I'm not going to have
a job if this starts happening. At that point,
he was our chief vaper here in Florida. And he
says, I'm going to be out of a job if this happens
in Florida. And with that, I said, well, I'm
going to have the distributor ship for EpiPens.
And he said, man, that's a good idea. You take
the East Coast, and I'll take the West. And man,
with that, a guy come running. They had a t -shirt
over a guy's head. And he come out of there,
Ben, he was so stung up, they ran him to the
hospital the next day. His eyes were swollen
shut and his lips were as big as cucumbers. I
mean, it was crazy to see that environment, how
fast African bees can go off on people. And they
just yelled, everybody back in the bus, go. They
will track you down. And they have a memory as
African bees will remember up to three days later,
you can't get near it. And when one colony goes
off, it's the one next to it goes off and the
next one next to it goes off. So when they all
go, it's craziness. Do you think that's because
of the pheromone released when stinging is going
on? Yeah, absolutely. Or do you think they see
the behavior of another hive and react on that?
It's the pheromones in the air. Yeah. The funny
part of that was that we had amongst the people
there was David Dijon, the African beef genesis
from Brazil, and he was with us. And he says
that even down in Brazil when they get like that,
they'll actually wear a plastic shield in front
of their face under their veil. They have a plastic
shield because the bees are actually releasing
venom in the air and it vaporizes and it'll close
your eyes up when it gets really thick. I have
not heard of that. That is, wow. Yes. Okay. Hey,
Dave, you also mentioned that wherever Bo goes,
swarms go. What do you mean by that? It seems
like throughout the travels that we've had, it
never fails wherever we're at. I mean, we were
driving through, I think it was a Lutheran. All
of a sudden, there was a swarm of bees going
through the edge of a town. As we drove through
the swarm, we had to stop the van we were in
and get out and we caught the bees in a box.
And it was so funny because we had to go, Bo
went and found a box and we put the bees in the
box and everybody was just amazed because I mean,
as you know, with the swarm, I don't even think
did we have a smoker that day? I just remember.
No, no, no. We caught these bees and put them
in the back of the van in a cardboard box and
everybody was just amazed because that actually
made the news. It had me in a bright yellow shirt
that I was wearing and Bo and us just picked
up the bees and it was kind of funny because
Chikara, who was with us, she's like, wherever
y 'all go, bees just coming. That's happened
in Arkansas. It's happened in Barbados. It's
happened in Freeport, Bahama. Freeport, yeah.
Yeah, we were getting a swarm out of the bushes.
I was teaching them how to do a removal. They
are all, of course, suited up in their white
jumpsuits, and we're coming in. Next thing you
know, the news crew shows up. As the news crew
shows up, they go, where's the body? They thought
we were the coroners going into the bushes looking
for a dead body. No, we're just beekeepers. No
bodies here except bees. We're trying to get
a plug for the beekeeping association. Hey, you
two are awesome. I appreciate you being with
me today. It's beesbeyondborders .com. Any last
words? Enjoy beekeeping. I think that's always
the main thing is find your passion and whatever
you like to do with bees and learn. The more
you learn, the better off we all become as beekeepers
and ambassadors for this wonderful little insect.
It's like we talk about here. It's all about
the love of bees. David? That's for sure. Well,
one thing we do like is training the trainers.
And you know, when we go down to the islands
or even into any of the states that we go to,
we try to train people so that they can follow
through with what we love to do, which is loving
bees. Yeah. Now we're getting, we're getting
older and we like to train trainers. That's our
big goal is we can't do it all. I'm ready to
support you and get down there and join you sometime.
Thanks again guys. Love having you. Thank you
very much. Thank you. Thank you Eric. Have a
good one. Thanks again for joining us here on
Be Love Beekeeping presented by Man Lake. Another
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love. See you next week.