May I have your attention, please? The following
is not the real Jeff Fox review If you have learned
the hard way that honeybees don't like internal
combustion engines like lawnmowers You might
be a beekeeper If you never ever thought that
you'd have anything to do with an electric fence
but you live in bear country? Well, you might
be a beekeeper. If you don't remember the last
time you washed your beekeeping suit, you might
be a beekeeper. Might be stinky too. Welcome,
welcome to Be Love Beekeeping presented by Man
Lake. Today's guest is the amazing Dr. Tom Seeley.
We're going to be all over the place learning
about everything from worker bee piping in swarms
to the differences between Langstroth hives and
honeybee homes in trees to hive insulation, Varroa
control, and the one we've all got to try bee
lining, also known as bee hunting. First, a quick
feel -good story ripped from the headlines of
the world of honey bees. Meet Maple, a former
human remains detection dog, is now a beekeeper
at Michigan State University's Pollinator Performance
Center. She's a very energetic springer spaniel
who really likes to work and have a purpose,
and so this was a wonderful opportunity for her
to continue working. said Sue Stakehall, Maple's
owner, canine handler, and trainer. Maple uses
her sense of smell to detect American foul brood.
If she detects the bacteria, she sits. And you've
got to see the pictures because Sue made Maple
a custom doggy beekeeping suit. That is, it's
unbelievable. It's awesome. According to Stakehall,
Dogs can be trained to detect many things like
explosives, narcotics, people, leaking pipelines,
even endangered species, she said. People probably
don't realize how many different types of detection
dogs are used. and MSU researcher Megan Milbrath
says their team is developing an instructive
manual for professionals to train dogs to detect
harmful honeybee diseases, which saves both bees
and time. When you've got tens of thousands of
colonies to go through, we have to look at ways
that could process a lot of samples quickly,
Milbrath said. a dog really can quickly move
through a yard and identify ones that need to
be inspected. Love it, great story, way to go,
Maple. All right, let's get to the interview.
We have an extremely special guest on the show
today, Dr. Tom Seeley, coming to us from a beautiful
spot in Maine. How are you today, Tom? I'm happy
as a clam at high tide, as they say up here.
And I know you're from Ithaca, New York. Do you
spend summers in Maine? Yes, I spend about three
months in Maine. I married a Maine girl. When
we got married, she told me, Tom, I'm always
going to need a sea breeze. So I built a little
house up here and spend a good part of the year.
Well you were kind enough to send me a picture
of the view from where you are and it's stunning
it's beautiful and I'm glad you're enjoying your
summer. Hey for those that don't know who Dr.
Sealy is, Tom do you mind if I embarrass you
a little bit just by giving people some background?
I know the most important thing for you is the
fact that you've been beekeeping for 56 years.
You started when you were in high school And
that is so cool. And we're going to get into
that story in a few minutes, but I want to say
Dr. Seeley has been a professor at Cornell University
for his career and has studied everything having
to do with bees and especially, please correct
me if I'm wrong, bee behavior and ecology. Yes,
that's exactly right. Both of those things, behavior
and ecology. And you're the author of six books?
I think that's right, six books. The first one
that I read was Honey Bee Democracy. It sounds
a little crazy to say it changed my life, but
wow, it just blew open my brain to bees and so
much more. And by the way, and I think this is
your newest book, I'm in the middle of it right
now, Piping Hot Bees and Boisterous Buzz Runners.
We'll find out a little bit about what that means
today, but we're not here to pitch books. We're
here to talk beekeeping and talk honeybees and
their behavior and I hope that as we get into
some of the things that may sound at first glance
like, well what does that have to do with me
and my beekeeping? The fact that honeybees swarm
in this particular way and have these behaviors.
I hope Tom you can help me and our listeners
come to where we can take those things and internalize
them into how our behavior is with bees just
by understanding them better and how we keep
them. Do you have any particular place you'd
like to start? If not, I've got a thousand questions
for you. Well, let's see. You've got more experience
in organizing these presentations, so I'll follow
your guidance. Well, I appreciate that. Between
this and another podcast, I've interviewed quite
a few hundred people, but I've got to tell you,
I'm a little nervous because in the beekeeping
community, Tom Seeley is it. Okay. I hate to
use hyperbole, but is it possible that you know
more about bee behavior than anybody else on
this planet right now? It's possible. Speaking
of embarrassing you, go ahead and answer. Well,
I'd say I've made it the focus, the primary focus
of my 50 -some years of studying the bees. And
in some sense, it's been a very narrow. There's
many ways to study honeybees. And I've really
focused on their behavior and also their ecologies.
I suppose that does the combination of the many
years and the focus, particularly on their behavior,
does make me especially well knowledgeable on
this topic. But I don't claim by any means to
say that we fully, I or anybody else, fully understands
the behavior of worker honeybees. They are the
most intelligent of all the insects and they've
got a lot of mysteries still. Well, that's one
of the things I love about them is we'd never
fully figure it out. The bees and things like
Varroa and stuff that make beekeeping tough.
We never fully have all the answers, I don't
believe. Yeah, I like to draw the analogy between
human beings and honeybees. In both cases, we
are the most complex behaviorally and cognitively
of the primates, and the honeybees are the most
complex behaviorally and cognitively of the insects.
And in both cases, it's because we live in very
complex societies. It's social living, we know.
that really builds complex brains. And so that's,
that's a real parallel between humans and honeybees.
So on that topic, since you just brought it up,
I want to read something that you've got posted
on Cornell's website. I was going to save this
for later because it sounds very scientific,
but I absolutely love this. Here we go. Remarkably,
there are intriguing similarities between how
the bees in a swarm and the neurons in a brain
are organized so that even though each unit,
B or neuron, has limited information and limited
intelligence, the group as a whole makes first
-rate collective decisions. For example, in both
systems the process of making a choice consists
of a competition between the options to accumulate
support, B visits or neuron firings, Also in
both systems the winner of the competition is
determined by which option first accumulates
a critical level or quorum of support. Consistencies
like these indicate that there are general principles
of organization for building groups that are
smarter than the smartest individuals in them.
I totally get that and I think it is so cool
just like In a group of human beings, it takes
a hundred different high -tech companies before
giant leaps in computer technology happen, for
example, and hundreds of people at each of those
places to where we now have inventions that one
person couldn't come up with every part of. And
I think that's what we're talking about. in the
consensus of bee colonies is the whole collective
is so much smarter than one individual bee. Can
you please explain that better than I just did?
Well, let's just use an example. I think it's
the colony as a whole. Let's look at its foraging
operation. It's spreading its foragers far and
wide and in many different directions to gather
the food and the water and the resin that it
needs. And no one bee can go out and collect
the information about all the foraging opportunities
across the countryside. So just right at the
level of getting the information about the problem,
which we would call the sensory aspect of it,
that's dispersed among all of the foragers, so
thousands and thousands of bees. And then they
have to somehow have a way to use all that information
that's been collected, and they do it. in ways
where the bees come back and they carefully advertise
what they found in terms of its direction and
distance and its desirability. And they adjust
the announcement of the dance announcement's
strength according to the desirability. So the
best things get advertised the most strongly.
And so that gives a bias to sending more bees
to those locations than to poorer locations.
It's a very Very sensible, but at the same time,
wonderful system of organizing, deploying the
foragers in a colony. Something similar happens
in a swarm, but the rules are a little bit different.
And you somehow figured out the rules. That's
always the challenge. You see, let's go to a
swarm because it's a little simpler. It's easier
to envision, I think. You see this mass of bees
hanging from a tree branch. And if you look closely,
you'll see Bees these would be the Nessite scouts
coming back landing on the surface of the swarm
and doing waggle dances and Some of the waggle
as the bees do their waggle dance They walk upward
and others walk sideways and others walk downward
and some are very excited and some are less excited
and somehow out of all of that and that's a big
body of information that's being collected and
Processed there on the surface of the swarm That's
a good example of the collectiveness of it. And
then it's basically a race. The best site gets
advertised the most strongly. The buildup at
that site happens the most rapidly. And it's
the first site to get enough popularity for the
bees to get nest site scouts to sense, oh, this
site is a really good one. Let's cut. We don't
need to talk anymore. We've found a really good
site. Let's go back and get things organized
to make the move to this new home. So for beekeepers
that like to catch swarms, how can they use that
information that you just gave us? That's a really
valuable question. There's a couple of things
a beekeeper can use. One is if they see bees
performing waggle dances that are where the bee
as it walks forward and is waggling her body,
if they're pointing in all sorts of different
directions, straight up or straight down, left
or right, That would tell the beekeeper that
the nest -site scouts are not close to finishing
the decision -making. And so you don't have to
really rush. But there's another signal in there,
Eric, that is even more valuable for a beekeeper.
It's an acoustical signal called piping. And
it's the sound that the nest -site scouts make
when they sense that they're ready to The decision
has been reached, and they need to go around
and tell the other bees, the non -scouts bees
in the swarm, to warm up their flight muscles
so they can all launch into flight almost within
simultaneously. And that sounds like this. So
if you're a beekeeper and you put your ear up
next to a swarm and you hear that sound, you
know that that swarm's preparing to take off.
And it will probably take off within one to five
or six minutes. So if you hear that scramble
and get a hive and shake those bees into your
hive. Now I've also heard that sound in a hive.
Can you explain that? If you hear it in a hive,
there's queen piping and then there's worker
piping. They're a little hard to tell apart.
You might be hearing queen piping and that would
be piping between the different virgin queens
kind of advertising themselves or it could be
worker piping. if the colony is preparing to
swarm, because the worker bees make this warm
-up or piping signal to get everybody in the
hive ready to have their flight muscles warm
enough to fly out to form the swarm. So if you
hear that, it's either the queens are fighting
or the workers are getting ready to swarm. The
first time I heard it, I think it was the queens,
that former thing that you discussed, because
they weren't ready to swarm. Tell us about how
you got into beekeeping. Because this show is
all about the love of bees, and to spend your
whole career with this, you must have some love.
But where did it start? It started when I was
a boy, I think I was about 10 years old, and
I watched a swarm of bees move into a black walnut
tree near my parents' house. Fortunately, it
was about a big old black walnut tree, but with
many... big, big tree, but the bees just by chance
moved into the bottom most limb. They were moving
in. I was initially scared of the bees, but as
I got a little more braver or more experienced
in watching the bees, I realized I could bring
up my father's stepladder and set it up right
next to the nest entrance. And I didn't have
a bee veil or anything, but I could sit there
quietly and just watch the bees. I think that's
what And it was a huge mystery, as I'm sure you
can see. You see bees coming and going from a
knot hole, and you wonder, what's going on inside
there? That really, I think, was the thing that
got me going, seeing the bees firsthand and up
close and wondering what on earth is going on
inside that tree hollow. I think that says a
lot about you, too, frankly, because I can imagine
a bunch of 10 -year -old boys Also taking baseball
bats to that and seeing who dared hit it and
run the fastest. So you must have really been
a deep thinker. I don't know if I thought was
thinking deeply. I like nature. We lived out
in the country, saw a lot of neat things in the
natural world. And this was one that was particularly
mysterious because there was a lot of action,
but it was out of sight. We'll call it a deep
curiosity. How's that? Yeah, that's right. That's
it. Exactly. And that was in the Ithaca, New
York area. Yeah, it's in the little, a little
valley just outside of Ithaca called Ellis Hollow.
It's where I still live. In fact, it didn't disperse
well. A few years ago we went through Ithaca
and talk about a beautiful area. Wow. Green and
you've got the finger lakes there and yeah, it's
just beautiful. Yeah. It's remarkable that it
has this super duper university in the middle
of nowhere. It's because the founder. Ezra Cornell,
who made a fortune on telegraph, setting up telegraph
systems. That's where he owned land. And he was
a good guy. He said, I got all this money. I
want to do something good with it. And I'm going
to start a university. And he had the brains
to realize he didn't know how to do it, but he
hired a very smart guy. I forget from where he
came from. The two of them together set up this
very remarkable university in the middle of just
a tiny little city. And you spent your whole
career there. Yeah, I spent a few years. My first
job was teaching in New Haven, Connecticut at
Yale University. It's where I had a job offer
was given to me. It was a rundown city at the
time. Now it's rejuvenated, but it was a difficult
place to live at the time. Dangerous, in fact.
I once got held up at gunpoint. So that made
me think, I don't think I want to stay here too,
too long. Quick break here to thank our presenting
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The Man Lake app is a great resource for determining
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already downloaded the Man Lake app, give it
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And if you're shopping for beekeeping supplies,
don't forget your discount code MLBlove10. It's
in the show notes for $10 off your first $100
purchase. All right, let's switch gears for a
minute. Let's talk about a hobby that I have
not taken up yet called bee lining or bee hunting.
For those that haven't heard about this. Tell
us what in the world this is. Bee lining is an
old craft that goes back hundreds of years, whereby
before people had bees and hives, before Langstroth
invented a hive, the way people got honey was
to line bees, to follow bees that you see on
flowers. Follow them back their flight lines
home to their hive to their usually in a tree
and then collect the nest and steal the honey
So bee lining is the process of following the
bees from where you first see them on flowers
Back to their home and it's it's a craft. It's
a skill and it's another great way to enjoy To
have fun with honeybees because when you'd be
line, you're just you're feeding bees sugar water
and they're happy and you get to watch how they
load up and fly away and there's no danger of
being stung, anything like that. I'd like to
say it takes you to places you wouldn't otherwise
go. Can you tell me about the process? You just
mentioned sugar water. How do you do this? Do
you just set up in the forest someplace? What
do you do? You start by trapping bees in a little
box and it could be just a cardboard box or whatever.
You go out to find bees on flowers. You trap
them in a box. It's called a bee box if you want
to have a special one. And once the bees are
in there, you put a comb filled with sugar water
in your little box. The bee box, a bee hunter's
box, has two chambers. You capture bees in the
box. You lure them to the rear chamber. That
allows you to put food in the front chamber.
And then you let the bees move from the rear
chamber to the front chamber. They walk onto
your comb that's filled with thick sugar syrup.
They think they've found heaven. You leave the
box closed for a few minutes. You'll open it
up. They come out. They're usually not freaked
out. They circle around. They fly home. And then
unless there's a honey flow on, they will come
back. And then once you've got a traffic of bees
between their home and your bee box, you can
then see the direction they're flying home. And
you can move your box step by step, maybe once
every hour or so, another 100 yards or more if
it's open territory. back down their flight line
and bit by bit you work your way back to their
home. Depending on where you are, it might be
in somebody's apiary or it might be a bee tree
in somebody's barn, something like that. So how
long does that usually take? You mentioned moving
it every hour. Is this a whole day, multiple
day? Yeah, that's an important question. I'm
just trying to pull up the numbers. I think the
shortest bee hunt I ever did was an hour because
I started the bee line unknowingly, only about
100 yards from their home. The longest one, I
think, took two years. I wasn't working at it
steadily, of course. Two years? Oh my gosh. Well,
in the sense that I couldn't find it the first
year, and so I went back and tried again and
found it in the second year. The bees were...
nesting very high up in a hemlock tree. So it
took a couple of tries, basically. But on average,
I think I've got some words in that book that
it usually takes me maybe five hours, something
like that. So not a full day, but a good full
morning and part of an afternoon. As I say, the
beauty of it is it takes you to places you wouldn't
otherwise go to. And there's a kind of an exhilaration
or a sense of exuberance you feel when you finally
find the bees home. Because if it's in a forested
setting, you know, there's thousands of trees
out there, but there's only one that the bees
are living in. And when you work your way back
to it and you find it and you see the bees going
in and out of a knothole or crack in that tree,
you realize, I did it! I did it! This is a real
accomplishment. That, for the modern bee hunter,
is not the honey at the end of the honey. It's
the discovery of the bees. But I knew some old
timers who didn't have much money. That's how
they would get their sweetener. They would find
a bee tree. They wouldn't kill the, cut it down
and they would usually chop it open and take
out some of the honeycombs, put them in a pot
and bring it home. That's another approach to
the whole bee hunting endeavor. That sounds like
it takes so much patience. It does take patience,
but sometimes patience is easy to have. If you're
out in nature, you listen to what the birds are
calling. You look at the, you study the trees
around you. You got these neat little bees coming
and going, and they become individuals because
you want to figure out how long it takes the
bee to go home. and come back, you have to label
the bees with little dots of paint, and you get
to really know them as individuals. Some work
rapidly and efficiently, and some poke around.
If you're an enthusiast, one would find it very
interesting. And I think one of the coolest things
about it, Eric, as maybe I've mentioned this,
maybe I'm repeating myself, you're now looking
at the behaviors of individual worker bees. You're
not confronted with hundreds of worker bees walking
around on a comb in front of you. you really
get to know them as individuals. Yeah and when
you're looking at hundreds it's hard to look
at them as individuals. Right. It's hard to keep
track of just one. Exactly. I try to do that
sometimes just observing them outside a hive
like I want to watch just one it's circling around
is it coming is it going and it can be very distracting
when there's a hundred of them doing that it's
hard to keep your eye on one. So are you following
this bee lining? You're starting with one bee.
Does it come back with some of her friends? Yeah,
unless there's a honey flow on, you are usually
the best food source around if you're offering
honey in a comb. And so yeah, she will go home,
maybe not on her first trip home, but sometimes
she'll do a dance and advertise your feeder,
your comb. Other bees start showing up, unmarked
bees. So, you know, those are novices that she's
brought to the site. And then you can label them.
As I say, once you've got a nice little good
traffic of bees flying between your feeding station
and their home, then you can move the feeding
station closer in stages, closer and closer to
their home. And that's the process of bee lining.
Okay. Let's shift gears a little bit because
I'm picturing bees inside of a tree. Can you
give us an idea of How different is it for bees
living in a tree versus these man -made boxes
that we use? I mean, it's obviously a different
place, but does it affect their behavior also?
Yes, I think it does. You know, the Langstroth
hive is a brilliant invention from the perspective
of enabling humans to manage in the colonies
of bees, but it was designed not with a lot of
consideration of the bees. What's ideal for the
bees? For example, in nature, when the bees choose
a home site, they choose sites that are high
off the ground, so they're safe. They're not
likely to be detected by bears. They also choose
sites that are relatively small, cavities that
are small, only the size of one deep 10 -frame
hive body, for example. That's typical in a tree
cavity. And that means that they don't produce
huge colonies, but they They have enough space
to make a colony, to build up, get crowded, produce
a swarm, store up honey. They still have enough
space to store up about 40 pounds of honey. And
as anybody knows, who's got lifted, hefted a
full 10 -frame honey super. The other thing that's
really strikingly different is the insulation
of the nest. In the wild, I've dissected about
20 bee trees. natural nests. And I think the
average wall thickness, wood wall thickness was
about, I can't remember, was four inches or six
inches, but it much better insulation. So small
entrance, smallish cavity, really good insulation
and high off the ground, so less conspicuous
to predators. So how does that affect their life
cycle and just their overall behavior? Well,
with life cycle, the main thing is that Well,
one of the two main things that I can think of
at this point is one is it means that colonies
are gauged or set themselves up for swarming.
As we all know, so much of our beekeeping management
is swarm prevention. So we give colonies extra
space. We also give them extra space for storing
honey, more honey than they will need. So the
bees in the wild are small. They're apt to swarm.
They only store up as much honey as they need.
And the other thing is one that I've mentioned
is the safety of being high off the ground and
in an inconspicuous nest entrance, for example.
And then one last thing is a couple more, actually.
Within the nest, they have They will build as
much drone comb as they want, which is usually
about 15 % of their comb area is devoted to drone
comb. So they will produce, they'll have greater
reproductive genetic success because they're
rearing more drones in a wild colonies nest than
in a managed colonies nest. The other one, maybe
I'm repeating myself, is the very good insulation
of a wild colonies nest. So how would you suggest
hobby or even commercial beekeepers take that
information? and use it in their beekeeping.
Now I realize the whole idea of the Langstroth
hive is, yes, they do pretty well in it, but
it's really convenient for us for getting that
honey out, right? So, I mean, for example, it's
not practical for us to have a four or six inch
thick walls on a bee box, you know, weigh a couple
hundred pounds more than it already does. So
how do we use that information? Well, if you're
a beekeeper in a northern climate, I think one
thing you want to do is, or a cold climate, I
should say, is to add insulation. As you said,
it doesn't make sense to achieve that insulation
by adding solid wood, but you can get very good
foam insulation and put it on the outside of
a hive, maybe even just for the winter. I've
modified my hives. I use eight -frame hives,
and I've put two inches of foam insulation on
all the sides, and then I've... covered that
over, that insulation over with quarter inch
plywood. So it makes the hive a little bulkier
than it would have without the insulation. But
I live in a cold climate and the bees, they don't
even go into a tight cluster in the winter inside
that hive because there it stays warm enough
in there. That's one way to do it is to just
add the blue foam insulation that is used in
house construction on the outside walls, put
on an inch or two inches of it and then cover
it with wood so it's protected. What about ventilation?
Do we seal that thing up pretty tight or do they
need ventilation on the bottom and the top both?
This has been a controversy on this show. I've
had people on talk about really different theories
on this. My answer is going to again come. Eric
from the bees. The bees tell me they don't want
a top entrance because they go out of their way
to seal up as everybody beekeeper in the northern
cold climates knows. They seal up all those cracks
on the with the inner cover and the outer cover.
They don't they don't want a top entrance. And
I'll tell you and I learned why they don't. It's
because in the winter, at least in a cold climate
setting where they can't go outside to get water.
They rely on some condensation inside the hive
for their winter water need. And I know that
because in my office at Cornell, I keep an observation
hive. And I like to keep it year round, keep
the colony in there year round. And what I've
learned in watching in the winter, because this
hive is in a heated room, there's no condensation
inside that hive. And those bees get wicked thirsty.
And I know that because they, until I got smart
enough to realize that I wasn't giving them kind
of that they're having a problem. They would
go out on the first any warm day in the winter,
sunny day. And then when there was snow melting,
they'd go out on the dry, the black asphalt and
drink, drink, drink water. Then the most vigorous
waggle dances I've ever seen, ever, ever seen
were performed by winter water collectors. They
were so thirsty and they really wanted to get
make sure everybody got the word that the water
was available. I guess that's a long answer.
I respect the bees. They don't want it. They
don't want air leaking out the top of their hive.
They seal the top of their hive. If you can let
them have some water, don't worry about the condensation.
They want the condensation is useful to the bees,
at least in cold climates. That's their winter
water source. So we want some. We don't want
so much that it's dripping on them. Well, the
cluster where it's where the bees are and the
cluster is, there's enough warmth that there's
not condensation right above the cluster. So
it's not dripping on the bees. And if it drips
on the combs around the bees, no big deal. That
makes the water that they need for the winter
more accessible. Because you have to always keep
in mind, what are these poor bees eating all
winter? They're eating an 84%, 82 % sugar solution.
There's almost no water in honey. And they need
water, just as we need water. And so some condensation
inside a hive may not look very homey or comfortable.
or appealing to a human being, but at least in
the cold climates where I live, it's very important
to the bees. As I say, it's their winter water
source. I saw that when I intentionally did an
experiment where I deprived them of that and
how desperate they got for water when they didn't
have it in their hive. You mentioned dissecting
trees or trees with bees in them. How do you
do that? Do you just cut it down and chop it
open or what? This is sort of one of the dark
sides of my research program. Early on in my
studies of investigating how bees live in nature,
a key early step was to go out, find bee trees,
cut them down. And here it really gets nasty.
I would put cyanide gas in the tree, go up to
the tree early in the morning before it was going
to be cut down. I put in this material called
cyanogas in there. and stuff a rag in the entrance.
And I couldn't cut the tree down and collect
it and do all that with the bees angry at me.
So I'd come back later in a few hours, come with
a chainsaw, cut it down, figure out what section
of the tree actually was housing the bees, cut
that out of the big tree, bring it back to the
lab, split it open, and dissect the nest. And
it was very revealing. That's how I learned that
in nature, bees devote about 15 % of their comb
area. to drone call. It also became clear how
important propolis is. Every surface inside those
tree cavity nests has a thick coating of propolis.
They very carefully make little passageways.
They build their combs wall to wall inside that
cavity, unlike in a hive, but they make little
galleries, little openings on the ends where
the combs hit the walls. They leave openings
so they can get around from one side of the comb
to the next side. And the entrance is usually
at the bottom of the cavity so that the heat
isn't going out the top. Please don't feel guilty.
for having to do that. You called it the dark
side and things like that. And science needs
to do that sometimes or dissect an animal or
something. If I wanted to see what the nests
were, I had to get the tree down. And if I got
the tree down, there's going to be a bajillion,
I mean, well, there's going to be thousands of
stinging insects. And I just, I couldn't do those.
Yeah, that wouldn't have worked. And I wanted
to know what the intact colony was. I wanted
to know. how many workers there were, how many
drones there were, that sort of thing, how much
brood there was. That was a limited scientific
thing. The rest of us aren't going to go out
and do that kind of thing. We don't need to.
We can learn from your science and appreciate
it. I know you are specifically, what's the term
I'm looking for? Your focus has been more the
behavior of bees, but as far as the physical
aspect, Do you have any advice for us on Varroa
control and maybe relating it to how bees do
it in a natural environment versus in our apiary
would give us some direction? Yeah, this is a
really tricky topic, Eric, because I'll tell
you what I do, but it's not going to work for
most people. I guess about, I can't remember
how many years ago, I just went cold turkey and
I stopped treating and most of the colonies died
off, but the ones that didn't. I made splits
from those. Since then, I've not needed to treat
for Varroa. I was inspired by this by a beekeeper
up in Vermont, Kirk Webster, who's a commercial
beekeeper. He runs several hundred colonies,
and he did the same thing, but long before I
did. There are colonies that are resistant to
Varroa, and what they do, the workers in these
colonies, they rip apart the Varroa. If they
get a Varroa, they'll pull the legs off, they'll
crush the body, and they throw them out. So that
resistance does exist out there in nature. And
so if you're a small scale beekeeper and you
can buy a queen from Kirk Webster, he does sell
them. Then that's, that's one room. If you can't
do that, then I think, I think you just, you
have to treat your colonies. And it's true that
for a lot of beekeepers, that's just not going
to be reasonable. And I know of some beekeepers
that have said, Hey, I'm going to do that. and
they had 10 colonies and all 10 died and spread
viroa everywhere else around them too. So that
isn't an answer for everybody in ideal situations.
I think it's fantastic. Most of us have to treat
in some way. Yeah and even if you're a non -treatment
person you want to do some things like you ideally
you don't put all your colonies right close together.
So if one is collapsing the bees that are are
drifting into your adjacent hives. Right, and
the treatment -free beekeepers, it doesn't mean
they don't do anything. They're doing something
like the genetics that you're talking about.
They're doing brood breaks. They're doing other
things that can help those colonies along, just
maybe not chemically. That's it for part one
of our discussion with Tom. Next week's episode
will feature the conclusion of our discussion,
where we get into a whole other set of topics,
you're not going to believe how many, and even
find out his favorite wild and crazy beekeeping
story. Until then, remember to subscribe and
follow this podcast. Also a shout out to V2B
Health for their support of the show. Vida's
Varroa control range of products includes Apistan,
Apigard, and now Varroxan extended release oxalic
acid strips. Thanks guys, enjoy this beautiful
summer, enjoy your bees. Thanks again for joining
us on Bee Love Beekeeping presented by our good
friends over at Man Lake. And remember, if you're
not just in it for the honey or the money, you're
in it for the love. See you next week.