in a world brimming with complexity few creatures
embody harmony like the honeybee with tireless
precision she dances from bloom to bloom each
motion guided by millennia upon millennia of
instinct each act in service to the whole and
then There are the beekeepers, watchful stewards
of this ancient symbiosis. Part agriscientist,
part poet, they move along their hives with the
efficiency of mow, levy and curly, tending to
the bee's needs as best they can comprehend,
and with the infrequency of a waterfall in the
Sahara, sometimes running off flapping and flailing
like a penguin on a hot sidewalk. This is their
journey. Welcome, welcome to Be Love, Be Keep
being presented by our great friends over at
Man Lake. Today we're going to be discussing
what the future of beekeeping just might look
like. Have you ever pictured robotic arms tending
hives? Optical recognition sensors inspecting
individual frames, cells, and brood? How about
generative AI and other high -tech tools evaluating
the health of your bees and offering advice for
the beekeeper? Cleared back in 1851, Lorenzo
Langstroth revolutionized beekeeping by introducing
the concept of movable frames and bee space.
This made it easier and more efficient to inspect
hives, control swarming, and harvest honey. In
the last 200 years there have been oh some small
modifications to his original design, but really
the basic concept of the Langstroth hive has
struggled to have any major advances. Of course
there are some different hive designs, the top
bar, waray, flow, skep, az, long laying, dartington,
layens, etc. In the U .S. it's believed that
approximately 80 % or more of total hives are
still the basic Langstroth design. Today we're
going to have a conversation with Elia Radziner,
one of the founders and developers of BeeWise,
a company working with robots, AI, and other
tech to revolutionize beekeeping. As always,
if you have feedback on what you think about
this or other new beekeeping technology discussed
on this podcast, hey please shoot me an email
eric at beelovebeekeeping .com. We'd love to
hear from our listeners. All right, now let's
jump right into it. I'd like to welcome our guest
today. This is going to be really fun. This is
going to be really different. We have Elia Radziner
with us. Elia, how are you? Good. How are you,
Eric? I'm happy to be here. Oh, I'm great. I'm
glad we can finally do this. We talked quite
a while ago and we've come full circle now and
we can have this whole discussion that everybody
can listen to. Was I close on the pronunciation
of your name? Spot on. Yes. All right. I get
some kind of a reward for that, right? In my
books, you do. The host of the day award. You
can actually pronounce a guest's name. Before
we jump into this, we're going to be talking,
everybody, we're going to be talking about BeWise
today. be home. Some people think this only applies
to commercial beekeepers but we're gonna learn
all about it anyway whether you are a hobbyist
or a sideliner or whatever. This is gonna be
cool stuff to learn about. Alia let's start with
your journey just a little bit. What got you
into beekeeping? How long have you been doing
it? Where did you do it? There's ten questions
just go tell us about you and beekeeping. Yeah,
so unlike a lot of commercial beekeepers today,
I wasn't born into it. So I'm not a second or
third generation beekeeper. I was always interested
in ag and food and I actually went to an ag school
kind of like a UC Davis kind of school where
I was getting my bachelor's in plant science.
That's where I was introduced to bees by a friend,
you know. Just kind of keeping some bees in his
backyard and suggested I could come and kind
of lend a hand and help learn about the bees.
Honestly, I just fell in love. I took all the
courses that I could at university. And after
graduating, I kind of took it up full time and
started working for a commercial operation as
a beekeeper. Always had my own hives on the side
as well. A few years into that, one day out in
the field, I had an idea, not really an idea,
but more of a thought that computers could do
my job better than I could. Oh, ouch. No, that
can't be. Beekeeping is two hands on. I've heard
that. I didn't know a lot about computer vision
and robotics, but I knew a little bit. I had
friends working in... you know, high -tech companies
and startups and I knew what they were up to.
And really, today we know that we can actually
apply existing technologies. We didn't develop
any technology at BeWise, any innovative technology.
We're using existing technologies that are applied
in other industries in beekeeping. Beekeeping
is fascinating, you know, and it is hands -on.
But with off -the -shelf technologies today like
computer vision, machine learning, precision
robotics, things are today pretty ubiquitous
in other industries. We can actually see what's
happening in hives in real time and address it
in real time. Actually address the main challenges
that beekeepers face today, which is understanding
what's happening in the hives before it's too
late. fixing it before it's too late. You know
those two things aren't the same, they're separate.
I think those are the two main drivers to colony
loss today. But that's what we set out to do.
It was 2018 when I had that thought. I was very
fortunate in kind of meeting the right people
to form the founding team of BYs and after that
we were very fortunate. With the fundraising
and the continuous, you know development of the
team today were about a hundred and fifty people
at be wise All dedicated to saving the bees Well,
I like how you put it just a minute ago and I'm
gonna get this wrong. My memory isn't perfect
but Sound like you're diagnosing problems before
they become too bad and then you're fixing those
problems What were the words that you used? Yeah,
I you know identifying the problem Knowing what's
happening in the hive is really key. If you go
out and join beekeepers in the field or if you're
looking at YouTube videos of what beekeepers
are doing, half of the time we're playing detective.
I always felt when I went out to the hives and
I'm like, Sherlock Holmes, opening this hive
and it's not doing as well as the others and
like, okay, what's happened to it and why and
when, and what I'm looking at, is that just a
symptom or is that the cause? that they lose
the queen because there was no food or because
the queen was old or there's something else going
on. So you're always playing detective. You don't
really know what's going on. And even when you
do, it's very often too late, which is the devastating
part. I'm sure all your listeners are familiar
with going out to the bees and finding empty
boxes where the bees used to be. And, you know,
that's such a hard feeling, such a hard experience.
Or boxes full of dead bees. Yeah. And it's an
emotional thing. This principle that you're talking
about, I mean, with the big bee die off this
year here in North America, it seems like had
we diagnosed these things early, we could have
fixed a lot of them. And it may not have been
so bad, but instead it was Okay, it's January.
We're headed to California. Here come the bees
open up the boxes and it's too late So but you
know what we haven't even told anybody what be
wise is yet. So please give us an overview What
are we talking about here? so I'll actually start
off with really the challenges that we're trying
to solve and it's gonna be a Seamless continuation
of the last point we're discussing and that will
help us understand what be wise is When I had
that thought in 2018 that a computer could do
things better, we didn't rush off and build a
bee home. We didn't know what we wanted to do.
But very quickly, I had a few people who were
interested in the idea of helping bees with technology
and understanding what the real problems are.
And that's the first thing we did was really
try and look and understand. What are the main
challenges that beekeepers face today? And we
realized that there are three main challenges.
The first challenge is what I call distance.
Beekeeping is a distributed system. So unless
you have only two hives in your backyard, as
soon as you have more than two hives in your
backyard, you're talking about a distributed
system where you have small groups of hives far
away from each other. Now you might be a commercial
beekeeper where you're running bees, you know.
thousands of hives all across the state. You
might be a sideline or a hobbyist with fewer
hives, but they're always spread out. You never
have a tremendous number of hives in one place.
And this is different than any other type of
agriculture, right? You mentioned almonds before.
An almond grower, you know, they have a ranch,
a thousand acres, all the trees are in one place.
So this is distance. This brings us to the second
challenge, which is time or timing. because hives
are in small groups far away, we don't have an
on -site team like the almond ranch, you know,
with the bees all day every day. Rather, we have
a team that cycles through the yards. So, you
know, today I'm going to visit these couple of
yards, tomorrow I'm going to visit another couple
of yards, and the next time I'm going to get
back to my hives is another couple of weeks,
two or three weeks away. The third challenge
is expertise. And I think this is a very powerful
one, both for commercial beekeepers and hobbyists.
Commercial beekeepers might be very, very experienced
beekeepers, but often they're not the ones in
the field opening up the hives, trying to determine
what's going on with the hives, trying to make
decisions. They usually have, you know, labor,
employees, often beginning labor. The hobbyists,
when I started off as a hobbyist beekeeper, you
know, before I got into the commercial aspect,
I felt the same. We didn't really know what we
were doing and we would call people who knew
and try to ask and try to understand, but you
don't really understand what's going on. It takes
a lot of expertise. When we kind of looked at
these three challenges, we said, okay, bees have
their own challenges. Bees are facing them for
our mites, pesticides that are being applied
in their area and disease and viruses for forage.
Bees are facing all these challenges. But we're
trying to help them while we're only visiting
the hive less than 10 % of the time with not
enough experience and spending 40 % of the time
in the car. And suddenly when we looked at the
high loss numbers with the tools that we were
trying to cope with, it suddenly didn't look
so absurd. It was always like... that we're losing
30, 40 % of our bees every year. This was, you
know, five, six years ago before we got up to
60%. And it felt like, how could this be? But
when we really took the problem apart and kind
of looked at why is it so difficult to keep bees
alive, we realized that we just didn't have the
tools to cope or to help the bees cope with their
challenges, which again, the bee challenges and
the beekeeper challenges are different. Just
to recap, we're talking about distance, time,
and expertise. And when we looked at these three,
we realized that a concept that could solve this
is what we call today remote beekeeping. What
if we could not only see what's happening in
the hive, but actually treat it without sending
someone out there? It's just a matter. Again,
this is before we had the bee home, before we
had anything. And we realized that if we had
this, we could actually provide professional
beekeepers, experienced beekeepers, a tool to
manage their hives at scale on a per hive basis.
Today, everything is done with a blanket approach.
Blanket feeding, blanket treating of mites, antibiotics,
everything is done blanket approach. With this
type of approach with remote beekeeping, you
can actually treat every hive according to what
it needs. If this hive needs feeding today but
this hive doesn't, you can feed this hive and
not that hive. If this hive is losing its queen,
you can introduce brood from another hive, introduce
eggs or larvae from another hive, and help that
hive along until you get there so it doesn't
become a drone layer. So there are all these
things that you can do on a per -hive basis if
you have the information and the ability to act.
So this true part, right, understand and act
is very, very important. So if we go back to
this idea of a distributed system, if you can
only see what's happening but not be out there
in real time, it's not enough. It's not enough.
It will let you know, okay, these hives are,
you know, starving or these hives have lost their
queen or these hives have been exposed to pesticide
or whatever. And you might be able to prioritize
this yard over that yard, but it's only going
to marginally help. Because when you're losing
60 % of your hives, it means that all the hives
are going to face a detrimental challenge throughout
the year. Most of them aren't actually going
to make it. Most of them are going to die. But
some of them are going to be able to save. You
really want to be able to know what's happening
early on. When a hive, for example, loses a queen,
it's very easy to solve within a few days. If
you let it go for a few weeks, it's too late.
Same goes for feeding, same goes for mites, same
goes for really anything that the bees are coping
with. It's all about timing. So you have to know
what's going on early on and treat it early on.
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off your first $100 purchase. So that was 2018.
When we came to this understanding of the problem,
we realized the solution. Again, remote beekeeping.
And we started working. We raised some money.
And very quickly, by the end of that year, we
already had a working prototype out in the field,
getting feedback from beekeepers that were using
it and working with it. In an iterative process,
kind of worked on that until we got to what we
have today, which is Bee Home 4. we're always
going to be working on new versions of the Behome.
But the Behome, in essence, is a device that
is half hive, half robot, and allows beekeepers
to not only see what's happening in their hives,
but actually treat them in real time. So they
can actually log into their portfolio devices,
log into the device, see what's happening with
all the hives. Every device has up to 10 hives
in it. Some have two, three, four, you know,
but up to 10 hives. They can see all the frames,
they can see the brood, they can see how much
pollen and nectar have been coming in or if the
hive is now eating their stores, how much is
left in the hive and how much has been eaten
over the last couple of weeks. Beekeepers can
then make decisions on management of the hives,
whether they want to balance out the yards, balance
out brood between hives, treat hives for mites,
feed hives, move the hives to a different location.
That's obviously done manually, but all the rest,
treatment, feeding, balancing, that's all done
through the system. So basically they make decisions
on the computer and those are carried out by
the robotic system to the benefit of the bees.
Without anybody ever going there and opening
up a box. Well, I wouldn't say ever well Okay,
wrong word But generally for a situation like
you just described Okay, I could be sitting in
Timbuktu somewhere Get on my phone online To
I assume you've got some kind of an app and I
can say okay this be home right here has eight
colonies in it, here's what's going on with three
of them, here are my options, do this, and then
it will do that for you. Am I saying that right?
Correct. Just to give a couple of scenarios of
what you can do on the app and what's left to
be done in the field by people. So for example,
our beekeepers are notified if there's a queenless
hive. And they can actually log in, they can
see all the lists with bee homes where there
are queenless hives, can log in and see the hives
and determine if those hives have enough material,
enough bees, enough brood provisions to, you
know, it's worth reinvesting in that hive. They
can then actually choose brood frames from other
hives for the robot to take into those hives.
So the robot can actually move frames with eggs
or dail larva from queen right hives into the
queenless hives and allow those queenless hives
to grow a self -queen, right? They can also send
a crew to introduce mated queens if they prefer,
you know, if they want to keep the specific genetics.
If they have a team on hand nearby that can get
there in time, they can also send, you know,
a mated queen. But suddenly, instead of losing
20 % of your hives to, you know, to queenless
hives every year, suddenly you can reduce that
number to 2 % or 1%. Feeding, there's a syrup
tank in the device when the hive's in areas where
we need to supplement feed. Beekeepers can turn
on the feeding and the hive, the robots will
actually maintain a full feeder frame inside
the hives, you know, throughout that period or
throughout that location until the beekeeper
turns that off. So these are just a couple of
examples. What's left to be done in the field
again is there's the syrup tank, so we have to
fill it every so often. So we have a team of
people, the beekeepers send their syrup crews,
but instead of filling every hive, filling the
feeder in every hive, all they need to do is
fill a syrup container. They don't have to be
experienced beekeepers. They don't have to open
up the hives. They can just fill a syrup container
and the robotic system will take care of the
rest. That's really cool. So for those that are
listening to the audio version of this and they
can't see the pictures, I'm going to have you
in just a second explain what this box looks
like. For those that are watching on YouTube,
there's going to be some video so they're seeing
what you're talking about. So if I've never seen
this before, help me picture. And by the way,
I'm looking at your website right now next to
you, so it's very easy for me to picture. Tell
me How big is the box? What does it look like?
Because I don't think you want me to describe
it. Because to me, it looks like a couple of
big air conditioner units. But tell me, how would
you describe it better than that? Beautiful air
conditioning units. Beautiful. Yes, they are
beautiful. They have colors on them and stuff.
Yeah. The unit is about eight feet long, four
feet high and four feet deep. So that's about
the footprint of it. Essentially, you know, think
of a pallet of hives. You know, a pallet has
four hives on it. So think about this, this has
up to 10. So I call it a super pallet. And so
it's like two and a half pallets long, basically.
And above where the hives are, where the bees
are, there's an extra space where the robot works.
So the robot is actually traveling inside the
unit above the hives, and can go eight feet long
and four feet deep and access every hive. pull
out the frames, inspect them, move them around
if it needs to. So for example, you know, we
didn't talk about mites, I'm sure we will, but
we have a heat treatment unit for mites. The
robot can actually take capped brood frames,
shake the bees off, put these frames inside a
heat chamber, and treat the mites with heat without
affecting the brood, without affecting the bees,
and put that frame back in the hive after it's
killed all the mites off using heat treat. Instead
of chemicals, that's pretty cool. Instead of
chemicals. Going on with what the device looks
like, on top we have solar panels. They are doors
that allow, you know, humans to come and interact
with the hives. So they're like, like the Tesla
X model doors that open up what you call those
kind of wing doors. Yep. So they open up like
that and people can access the hives or the robot
for maintenance or for whatever we need. We have
different colors at the entrance of the hives
to help the bees navigate back to their own hives.
So today, you know, usually hives are just painted
white, but it's well known from the literature
that different colors actually help bees identify
their hives better and reduce drift. It also
looks cool. So we kind of added that layer in
there. There are different colors above the different
entrances. It's kind of like a rainbow across
the lower part. The entrances are also controlled
by the system. So the system can actually open
and close the entrances. This is used both for
transportation. So if we wanted to move hives,
the system can close down the entrances during
nighttime. And we can come, we don't have to
come when it's dark. We can come, you know, seven
o 'clock, eight o 'clock in the morning, move
the bees. But it's also used to regulate the
hive entrance size during different times of
the year. So when it's cold, the hive entrance
is reduced. When it's warmer, it makes the hive
entrance a little bit larger, but also to protect
them from pesticides. So if we're pollinating
a crop and we know the farmer or the neighbor
are going to be applying pesticides, we can actually
close down the entrances for 24 hours and keep
the bees safe. and let them go out again once
it's safe, 24 hours later or 48 hours later,
go out and continue pollination. That helps protect
them from pesticides. How do you keep them cool
in a situation like that? Is there some ventilation?
The floors have two options in them, either mesh
or solid. That's actually done manually. So when
we go when it's warm we're going into pollination
or into honey production the beekeepers will
open all the all the bottom boards basically
to mesh and That that keeps the bees ventilated
the device itself also knows how to regulate
the temperature of the device with fans so it's
never too hot in there I hate to say you've thought
of everything but You've had a few years to kind
of think through this obviously and I'm sure
you've ran into all kinds of issues and the one
that I am wondering how in the world do you control
this and that is propolis. It seems like it would
just gum up your robot and you know, how would
it work? So what do you do about that? Yeah,
Propolis was the first thing we looked at when
we started iterating with the first prototypes.
I would say very early on, you know, we were,
we had kind of two options that we were considering,
two approaches we were considering when it came
to hive manipulation and inspection. The first
one was, you know, can we build a system that's
going to go inside the hive and perform inspection,
perform procedures? We realized that it's too
difficult. And the better option was Langstroth
had already invented the removable frame. It
already invented the B -space, the modern hive
that allows us to manipulate the hive by manipulating
the frames. And we realized that if we wanted
to be able to carry out all the different beekeeping
practices that are practiced today, all we really
needed to do is build a robotic arm that was
able to extract that frame. If you think about
all the different practices that beekeepers do
today, whether it's feeding, whether it's inspecting
the hives, treating mites, collecting honey,
it's all done with some sort of form of manipulating
the frames in the hive. That's the base of beekeeping.
You know, in other words, if you look at beekeeping
practices before the invention of lag strath,
before the invention of the removable frame,
100 % of the practices were different. So beekeeping
today is actually a product of the design of
the modern hive. And if we wanted to be able
to utilize all these practices with remote beekeeping,
we wanted to be able to manipulate the frame
just like people do. So the robotic system doesn't
actually work inside the hive. All it knows how
to do is open up the hive and remove a frame.
So even with propolis, that's not a problem.
It can... Remove a frame, move a frame. There
were a lot of problems that we came up against
in the first couple of years of iterating on
this ability. But once you solve that, that kind
of opens up everything else. And a lot of IP
in the company is around dealing with the properties.
We have a lot of design principles, I guess,
on you know, what we're allowed to do when interacting
with the hive, when designing, if we're designing,
you know, a special cover for the hive or, you
know, an adapter for the hive on how to get it
to work with, you know, with the bees and not
against the bees and not gum up and stick with
too much propolis. All right. I've got a ton
of questions that I just keep writing down here.
Is this using regular length trough frames inside?
Yes. Deep frames? Medium frames? Only deep frames.
Only deep frames. So I could take frames right
out of a hive that I already have in a wooden
box and put them right into BeWise. Sorry, BeHome,
which is actually the product, okay? Do you have
a whole bunch of these in use already? You know,
you've proved this concept that it works. So
today we have about 1 ,200 of them fully in use,
about 12 ,000 knives or 10 to 12 ,000 knives
already in the units. How's it going? I don't
mind asking the hard questions here. Is it working
as good as you expect? Let me put it that way.
It's one of those things that is both very difficult
and very rewarding at the same time. Everything
we're doing is for the first time. I just went
out this week. We had a couple of new hires that
I took down to see one of the yards here in California.
I told you before about how beekeepers can log
in and make decisions. Now we're working on,
can we get the AI to make some of those decisions?
And we went down to look at a yard where the
AI is actually managing the balancing for the
entire yard. So you go out there, it's a B yard.
It's a large B yard. I know there are a couple
of hundred hives out there in B homes. And you're
just listening and you can hear the robots move
inside the units. So we open up some units to
see what the robots are doing. They're inspecting.
They're just doing their thing. They're inspecting
the hives. Everything is done very, very slowly,
very, very gently. They're identifying the hives,
the weaker hives that need extra brood or extra
honey or pollen. They're identifying the stronger
hives that can actually donate on an honey or
brood. And they're making those decisions and
moving. And we're measuring to see the outcome.
Is the AI actually able to help the bees better
than beekeepers, better than humans? So obviously,
to get to this point, we've already had Beom
4 out in the field for almost two years. And
only now we're getting to the point where we're
working on this feature. So everything is a long
process to get it to the point where it's working.
But when it works, when you go out there and
see this just working, you're making history.
This is the first time that something like this
has been done. I think the team and everybody
we're working with, you know, understands how
important and big this is. Let's talk honey.
Are the bees able to make much honey inside these
hives? And the second part of the question is,
is it hard to harvest? Yeah. So honey is one
of those things that is still done manually.
So again, think of those palettes that I described
earlier, those super palettes, the bee homes,
when it comes to time for the honey flow, we
actually super the hives inside there with regular
supers. For that time being, for those couple
of months, six, eight weeks when we have honey
supers on, the robot is actually disabled. The
bees are doing their thing collecting the honey
and then we, you know, collecting the honey is
just the same as collecting the honey from regular
hives. That's all done manually. So the robot
really is there to help you prepare for the season.
Make sure that all the hives are balanced, are
treated for mites, are queen right, are ready
to go, are optimized for honey production. And
then during the season, it's disabled. After
you take the supers off, the robot goes in there
again, makes sure, you know, to find the hives
that have gone queenless during the honey season,
find the hives that have gone broodless, have
plugged out or whatever, start balancing, start
treating mites right away, then prepare the hives
for overwintering. So would you leave the hives
in to be homes over winter? Yeah. Once they go
in there, there's no reason to take them out.
Yeah. Might as well. Seems like it makes a lot
of sense during pollination. I mean, these, um,
you can lift with a regular forklift, right?
Put them on a, put them on a truck just like
you're doing with pallets of hive boxes. Okay.
So tell me about some of the other research that's
being done. How is this helping with research,
for example? Yeah, so first of all, explain the
main data that we're acquiring on Hives. So there
are a lot of data points that we're getting.
We're weighing the frames and we're measuring
the temperature every day of every frame. But
the main data points that we're using for our
system, the unit actually picks out frames and
takes an image of the frame, a scan, frame scan.
And then the AI, the machine learning looks at
the frame and identifies every cell on every
frame and categorizes it for what it is. If you
know a little bit about AI, you need a lot of
data points. So every one of our frame is like
6 ,000 data points, right? There are about 3
,000 cells on each side of the frame. Each one
can be empty or full of something. It could have
honey in it. It could have brood. It could be
drawn out or not drawn out. It could be drone
brood or regular brood. It could be a queen cell.
And then all together, the pattern also has additional
data points, right? Is it spotty brood? Is there
wax moth in my frame? Is there a pattern of disease?
What is the queen laying pattern look like? So
all this information in every frame. And today
we have tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands
of these frames, each one containing 6 ,000 data
points over the course of several years, same
seasons and thousands of hives. This type of
data is something that has never imagined trying
to create this type of data without robotics.
So that's kind of the background of this. Now
we're doing different researches. We collaborated
with UC Davis around pollination, where they
had a look at bee activity in the bee homes versus
regular hives during almond pollination. We did
another activity with Auburn University around
heat treatment, both with tropylae labs in Thailand
and with veromites here in California. So I think
if you're someone that's listening to this and
you care about bees and you're concerned about
what we can do as humanity to make sure that
bees are still here tomorrow, this is something
that can really help, can really change and help
us help the bees overcome their challenges. And
this is why the hobbyists should care about this
also. Is this ever going to be in the kind of
production and the kind of price where a sideliner
might say, Hey, yeah, I need 10 of these things.
Or is it just makes sense for the really large
commercial guys? So I think as time progresses,
we're still out there kind of proving our go
to market, proving our price point, proving the
business model, proving the technology, right?
We're still in that phase. When we get to the
point where It just makes more sense economically
to keep bees with a bee home than with a wooden
box. I think it will almost become, you know,
that we're always going to have, which is a good
thing, I think, beekeepers who want to keep bees,
you know, boutique beekeepers in wooden hives
or different types of hives. You know, today
there are thousands of different designs for
hives and beekeeping. There's only one that's
ubiquitous with commercial beekeepers, which
is, you know, the Langstroth hive. But there
are hundreds of different designs that beekeepers
can choose and work with, and you're always going
to have that plethora of options, which is fantastic.
But for people who are doing this for economic
reasons, as well as working with bees, I think
at some point it's just going to become the standard
way of keeping bees. So it's just like... It
used to be standard to get from one place to
the other with a horse and carriage. Today it's
standard to do it with a car. It's just going
to be the same, you know. Today it's standard
to keep bees with a smoker and a hive tool in
a wooden box. And tomorrow it's going to be standard
to do it with, you know, with modern technology
because that's how we do everything. Totally
makes sense. All right, before I let you go,
even a high tech person like you has got to have
some kind of wild and crazy beekeeping story.
Can you think of one or two? I'll tell a story
of how I got introduced to bees. This must be
embarrassing. I can tell the look on your face.
Go ahead. You wanted something juicy. So I said
that a friend had asked me to kind of help him
out with his backyard hives. So the first day
he called me like it was, hey, I'm going to go
and get this swarm out of the tree at the campus.
Do you want to come and help me? I didn't know
anything about bees at this point. I was like,
okay. So we go there. I don't know, it's like
20 feet up in a tree. The campus put up a nesting
box for some bird or something was screwed to
the tree and a swarm had gone into that box.
No birds, just a ton of bees. So I go up the
ladder and I've got this bee suit on that doesn't
really fit me. You know, it's short on the legs.
You know, I'm six feet tall. My friend is...
Little bit shorter and I you know, it's his suit
first time first time with bees first time anything
so I got up there I tried to unhinge the the
box from the tree and I realized you know, I
tried to tear it off. It kind of kind of comes
half off But I realized that it's it's screwed
to the tree from the inside of the box, which
is full of bees And this is not a swarm that
came in yesterday and we can kind of just like
take out. It's been living there for months probably.
Anyway, somehow I'm able to kind of detach it
from the tree just with brute force. And I'm
carrying it down on my shoulder, down this 20
-foot ladder. I obviously got stung a ton of
times. But we got it done. I covered it with
a net first, you know, to try and keep the bees
inside and kind of try to seal all the openings.
Of course, a lot of bees were flying around,
so it got stung a ton of times. But we got into
the car, we got into his backyard, got it into
standard equipment, kind of cut out the comb
and put it into standard frames. And he already
had a couple of hives, so this was like a third
one. It was huge. We had to use like two or three
different boxes to transfer it into regular hives.
After that, I was like, okay, what's next? And
he was like, now we'll keep them alive and see
if we can make some honey. And that's kind of
how I got into beekeeping. I need some video
of you on the ladder trying to carry that thing
down with your ankles exposed. I'm just picturing
the whole thing in my mind here. Sounds awesome.
Yeah. Thankfully there was no, we might have
some, some photos of it, but there's no video.
I'll take a photo. Anyway, hey, Elia, I really
appreciate your time today and looking towards
the future. It's fun to see what's coming ahead.
And what we've been using here has been used
for 200 years or whatever. It's very low tech.
I have no problem with things changing and getting
better. So it must be fun to be part of that
whole process going on. It's a humbling experience
for sure. Propolis will humble you every time.
That's right. Thanks for joining us on Be Love
Beekeeping presented by Man Lake. If you like
this content I hope you'll share it with a friend,
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sign up for our newsletter at BeLoveBeekeeping
.com Also just a shout out to Vita B Health for
their support, we appreciate them. Vita's Varroa
Control range of products includes Apistan, Apagard,
and now Varroxan, extended release oxalic acid
strips. Thanks guys, 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.