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 Man Lake. we're going over
to Europe again today to discuss a whole new
kind of beehive design that creators claim can
cut your winter colony losses down to five percent
and double your honey yield. And our guest's
wild and crazy beekeeping story is one for the
ages. But first in beekeeping related news, a
really sad story out of Ireland. Board -winning
longtime beekeeper Kathleen Devine dies after
suffering multiple stings. This was just earlier
this week and details are still a little sketchy.
One report has her being stung only twice. Another
says it may have been up to 20 times. Either
way, how does someone who's been beekeeping for
decades suddenly die from a few stings? Well,
here's what we do know. Kathleen was in her early
70s and had recently taken a step back from beekeeping
because she had quote, suffered some reactions
from stings. Early Monday evening she went to
help another beekeeper with his hives and that's
when it all happened. She received stings, had
a reaction, and was transferred by air ambulance
to a hospital where she passed away. A post mortem
examination will be carried out. I guess it's
just a really sobering reminder that even though
you haven't been allergic to bee stings in the
past, you can develop an allergy in the future.
If you have reactions, especially new ones, don't
take them lightly. Seek proper medical advice.
These situations are rare but they do happen
so be careful out there and consider having an
EpiPen on hand just in case. Mrs. Devine and
her husband Des were hobby beekeepers. well loved
by the local beekeeping community. They had won
numerous prizes for their honey at various agricultural
shows country -wide. Sympathies and prayers for
her and her family at this time. On a more upbeat
note, British and Danish researchers have just
engineered a super food to protect honey bees
from growing threats. Their results are published
in the weekly science and technology journal
Nature. The work we did here represents a major
technology breakthrough for the beekeeping industry
and for food security and global pollination,"
noted University of Oxford researcher Professor
Geraldine Wright. The scientists first identified
the key compounds in pollen that benefit bees
which involve six plant sterols. They then genetically
engineered a strain of yeast to produce a precise
mixture of these ingredients in a sustainable
and affordable way. The colonies fed the superfood
thrived and boosted reproduction when compared
to the control group. There's a lot of scientific
details. If you're interested, we'll post a link
to the study in the show notes. Okay, let's get
to our interview. By the way, if you like awesome
Italian accents, you're going to love what's
coming up. Hey, I'd like to welcome to the show
today super special guest all the way coming
to us from Italy, Alex Scamberoni. How are you
doing today? I'm fine, I'm really very happy.
I will harvest my last honey flow next Friday
with the Primal Beehive in the mountains. So
far so good. And we're going to be talking about
Primal Beehive. That's one thing that I love
doing on this show is finding out about new products
and new ways to do things before we jump into
that. I want to get into a little bit of your
history. Tell me what got you into beekeeping
and when, and then we'll kind of go from there.
Yeah, actually, it's pretty easy. In my home
village, we have two long, very long standing
traditions, centuries old tradition. One is the
silkworms. No one is working with silkworms in
my area anymore. But beekeeping, oh, that's for
sure. So since I was in elementary school, my
mother would use it to buy honey from local beekeepers.
And I always loved the smell of the beeswax of
the honey. We mainly have two blossoms here,
two main nectar flow. One is the acacia and the
other one is the sweet chestnut, which is my
preferred honey. So yeah. Years ago when I had
finally time free time because I closed my machine
tools company and I started to keep bees just
for fun It was love at first sight. It was also
a dream come true because Really where every
time I I was making breakfast with the milk and
honey from my local beekeepers I was always thinking
I should have my own bees. So as soon as I was
able but it was 2006, so almost 20 years ago,
I started keeping bees by my own. So before we
started recording, you were telling me about
this sweet chestnut honey. Describe the flavor.
What's it like? When it's really, really harvested
at the right moment, it's really dense, dark.
It's not black, but it's pretty brown, dark brown,
and it has kind of two sensations the first one
when you start testing it mainly is the sweet
part of the chestnut that comes to you but then
when it goes down into the throat it became I'll
just say you said before spicy spicy and it's
a kind of a second experience after a few seconds
that that was I really like the most and yeah
it's a It's everywhere here because from the
hill behind my village up to the mountains in
Switzerland, this part of the Alps, the valley
that goes from the Lago Maggiore up to the main
ridge of the Alps, it's full of sweet chestnut
forest. So it's something that we really like
a lot in the area, both on the Italian and on
the Switzerland side. Here in the U .S. there's
a thing called hot honey now. It's a spicy honey,
but people are doing it by infusing things like
jalapeno peppers in their honey. And it's really
good, but I think it's a lot more fun when it
just comes directly from the bees with whatever
flavor it is. There's just something very special
about that. What other kinds of things do they
forage on in your area? The very first blossom
is the wild cherry, following with apricots.
And then we also have another English word for
dandelion. Dandelion. Dandelion. And then we
have acacia, on which we usually harvest honey.
After acacia, we have wild flowers, different
kind. And then it depends from the season. It
could be late June, beginning of July, we have
the sweet chestnut. Here, at the end of the Alps
and the foothill, it's almost the last blossom
that we have. Then we move up in the mountains,
our colonies, to have a second wave of sweet
chestnut and wild flowers until beginning of
September, more or less. That's mainly what happened
during the blossoming season. We go to the mountains
because it's a time machine, it's a dramatic
operation. So we go back in time to harvest more,
at least to forage, to have the bee foraging
on natural flowers and not feeding syrup so early
in the season. Now climate -wise, how cold is
it where you are? What are the winters like?
It depends, but on average, we have winters that
can be as cold as minus seven, minus 10 Celsius.
that is about 14 degrees fahrenheit and then
we have a hot summer that can be as hot as 36
celsius which is kind of i think close to 90
or 100 fahrenheit very humid okay and so that's
a huge range did you find that you had a lot
of winter die -off At the beginning, yes, and
the problem was related to the dissipation of
the hive. Nowadays, still, people using the dandt
langstroth hives, they are used to feed not less
than 26, even more, sometimes even 50 liters
of syrup to overwinter colonies. And this comes
with other problems like nosema disease because
of those very liquid syrups. Since the first
industrial prototype that we built, Giammario
and I with Primal B, we went down to less than
10 liters of CO2 over winter colony. And we also
reduced the winter losses at the same time. In
the actual version of the Primal B hive and the
test that we did last winter, we went down to
no more than 4 liters of syrup and less than
10 % of colony losses. Actually, last winter
we lost less than 5%. But on average, I'm comfortable
to say that we can work with less than 10 % colony
losses during the winter time. So I live in an
area where the common losses is at least 50 %
per year. It's just, it's very, very, it's very,
very cold here in the winter and a lot of snow.
And if your bees are weak, you know, from Varroa
or whatever, or don't have enough food, they
just, they just don't survive period. Now you
were telling me previously that your first three
years or so in beekeeping, you had a lot of losses.
100%. Yeah. 100 % is a lot. And that was what
led you and your partner into thinking there's
got to be a better way. Tell me that story. How
did that all come about? Yeah, actually, again,
I had a wife and three small kids and I was not
able to enjoy my family because of my previous
job. I founded and owned a machine tools company
with my brother and we were working. too much,
too many hours, even all weekends. So when I
decided with my brother to quit the company,
to have a better lifetime, and I started to keep
busy, I told Gianmario and he said, okay, let's
do it together so we can spend more time together
because Gianmario and I, we met at high school
and I mean, you cannot choose your brothers,
but if I could, it would have been John Mario.
So we were always looking for each other to spend
time in the mountains, climbing ice falls, ski
touring, whatever it could be in the mountains.
And bees in our area, they really were the first
excuse to meet each other more often and to be
outside in the outdoors. So we started together.
But At the very beginning, as you said, for three
years in a row, we lost everything. We were buying
B package, not B package, nucleus at the beginning
of spring. And we tried to harvest honey. We
were not able to harvest even one drop of honey.
And then by November, more or less, in the best
case, it could have been January, all of our
colony died. So we were really close to give
up and then it was the fourth year and a friend
of mine called me, the guy Herman from German
origin, he is a professional tree climber and
he was cutting down a huge cedar tree in a beautiful
centuries old villa. in the park of this villa
and he called me because he's allergic and he
said, look, there is a swarm of bees here. I
cannot do my job. People are paying me to do
this job I cannot do. So just run, come here,
grab the swarm and let me work. And when I arrived,
that was not a swarm. That was a huge colony
inside this incredible, huge hollow tree. I'm
talking about a tree that was two meter maybe
more at the bottom and up to 12 more or less
12 meters high there was this hole in the in
the hole tree and literally a black pipe of bees
coming in and out pretty angry because chainsaw
is not something they like they like so I was
I was a fool actually because when I saw that
thing I was thinking probably this is a I don't
know, kind of a better strain of a queen. So
with Hermann, he literally opened a one -meter
door with the chain so that we were pushing the
chain into the hollow tree until we saw honey
coming in, not chips. And also I called Gianmario.
Gianmario was giving a lecture at the university,
and I remember him telling to the classroom.
Okay, guys, the lesson is over. I have more important
stuff to do. And one hour later, he was showing
up in the place where Herman and I were trying
to understand what was going on inside the tree.
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off your first $100 purchase. So we tried to
move a colony that was with combs that were more
than one meter high and there was four or six
those huge combs and and we were trying to move
this colony into the dam which is pretty much
the same of a Langstroth wooden hive and now
when I look back of this event I cannot believe
how full I was because even in terms of volume
that doesn't fit that it was not possible. we
killed that colony actually and that was very
very sad. Gianmario didn't sleep he went back
to his lab and the day after he woke me up telling
me we need to change the box because what we
really what he really did was to redesign everything
in a three -dimensional software where he can
assign mechanical and thermal property to every
component that he designed. He designed the holotree,
the combs and the bees in a way that he could
apply mathematical simulation, mainly Navier
-Stroke's equation to understand what was going
on inside, starting from the idea that they need
to keep energy in a better way in order to have
those huge combs that we saw. the following morning
when he woke me up he told me look in your email
so I look at the email and I saw this drawing
that he built with the mathematical simulation
and the drawing was showing me a different shape
mainly a different shape of a comb compared to
the dead ant we were working with the same day
we started prototyping something that was kind
of simulation of the hollow tree And from that
moment on, we built many, many different kinds
of prototypes, even from concrete. And you can
imagine an empty hive made of concrete, 80 kilo
of a prototype. And we were trying to move those
empty hives waiting, just the hardware was waiting
80 kilo. And then we put bees inside and swarm
and testing. we started really seeing differences
in the colony behavior. So we improved our prototype
and then as he was and he still was last year
a professor at university in Lugano, we were
allowed to apply mainly from what is the Swiss
startup ecosystem. We realized after me visiting
the U .S. relatives and traveling and asking
to meet beekeepers in the U .S., we realized
that we may have a business opportunity or something
that eventually could be good for the beekeeping
community worldwide. But we like the money, so
we applied for competition, kind of the shark
tanks that you have in the U .S. pretty much
everything that we could win in the ecosystem
in Switzerland. And with that money, we built
better prototypes and we traveled extensively,
I may say, for three weeks from Southern California
to Vancouver Island and from Baltimore to Atlanta
in three weeks, meeting every beekeeper that
was willing to meet us, hobbyists, sideliners,
commercials. Everybody that was willing to meet
us, we were willing to spend our time and sharing
our experience and learning along the way. So
when we came back, we decided to build something
better from the previous prototype. And we made
the mistake to think that that could be the product
to put on the market. And we really under evaluated
the amount of time, the amount of effort and
the amount of money that we needed. to enter
a market and then the pandemic hit and with the
pandemic we were in where I live I live less
than one hour from the very hot spot first hot
spot of the pandemic in Europe because I am between
Milano and Lugano between Italy and Switzerland
and the first hot spot was a small village just
south was from Milano so we were stuck in our
houses no not allowed even to go outside in our
street we decided to do something and to redesign
everything from scratch this time knowing what
the performance could be but also scaling down
the manufacturing cost. Because before the pandemic,
when we realized that we can really deliver something
better for the colony, we traveled also to test
our solution. So we delivered some of the previous
version in the very hot Negev desert in Israel,
but also we over winter colony in Alaska, few
hours. westward from Anchorage on the Kinaipan
Isola. And when we were able to talk again, to
travel again and meeting potential suppliers
in US and in Europe, we knew that we could deliver
a good hive, a primal bee hive at a fair retail
price and all the related activity that we needed
to do. I just want to catch up and make sure
we're on the same page here. So we've got a couple
of brothers living in Italy in Switzerland and
the winter is killing off your bees and then
you come across this giant hive in a hollow tree
end up cutting it apart and realize None of the
beehives being made right now are good old buddy
Langstroth. It doesn't fit what bees actually
do inside a hollow tree. So that's what we're
going to do. And we're going to figure out how
to do it. So so a couple of you guys, are you
both engineers or just? Your brother. Gianmario
is an engineer. I am by college. I am a mechanic,
a mechanical technician. I was used to design
machine tools, huge CNC machine tools. So our
background is both mechanical, but I was more
on the manufacturing side and Gianmario was more
on the theoretical and simulation side of the
mechanical stuff. So you guys know how to design
and build things. And you came up with what sounds
like a good design. At what point did you say,
hey, this thing weighs way, way, way, way too
much to be practical. We're going to shift to
polystyrene. What made you think that's the material
you wanted to use? Actually, it's a bit different.
First, thanks to John Mario's simulation and
then to the first prototype that we did, we realized
that we have a good explanation. about the whole
system. So the colony, the bees, the hardware
where you keep the bees, the hive and the outside
temperature, the outside environment, which means
mainly temperature and seasonality. From that
good explanation, we then decided to build something
and we can build with different materials. But
when we went down to manufacturing cost, I grade,
high density, food grade EPS. It's a technology
that is mature, I may say, and can be used at
scale. So when we were thinking about the U .S.
market and the huge number that bees are in the
U .S. market and in North America, generally
speaking, we realized that we really need something
that can be used at scale. And so we started
the partnering up with one of the best companies
in Europe. They are now our first supplier and
they manage that technology very well. They manage
the technology so well that they are now helping
us to move the manufacturing into the U .S. And
this is not only because of the wonderful tariff
that we love so much. Yeah, but also because
even before that, we are paying transportation
costs because now we are shipping containers
from Europe to the US and this is killing us
in terms of cost and time to deliver. So the
idea to move the manufacturing process in the
US was born more than one year ago when we closed
our seed round and then we waited to have the
first good and not good feedback from the early
adopters in the US, not only hobbyist, but also
commercial guy, because there are a few features
that we really need to change in order to allow
those people to work with Primal B and to take
advantage of the results. So now we are planning
to have manufacturing up and running by the end
of the year in the US. Hopefully, we will be
able to deliver from the US in February. On the
video version of this podcast, I'm going to insert
some pictures of what this actually looks like
for those that are just listening to the audio.
I want you to describe what does your hive actually
look like because it doesn't look like a regular
Langstroth hive or even a top bar hive. Yeah
okay in the primal bee hive we changed the nest
and the nest only this is the first things that
people need to know there's no need to change
extraction equipment for our vesting honey because
we can put supers above the nest as usual and
in our supers the beekeeper can still use the
deep or the medium langstroth frames that he's
already working with. But the nest itself is
a different shape because the shape of the nest
really, really matters. in terms of thermal efficiency.
It's much more the shape than the insulation.
You can insulate a lag strut or a double dip
as much as you want, as much as you can, but
you cannot go... even closer to the performance
that we can achieve using LA Primal B Nest which
is made by eight frames with the trapezoidal
shape they are as high as 70 centimeters 700
millimeters and you have this trapezoidal shape
because especially at the spring at the end of
the winter in the spring build up The upper part
of our frames provide a larger surface for the
colony to develop and a whole single surface
from top to bottom. These allow the queen to
lay eggs in a more efficient way. That means
that with the same amount of energy, they can
have larger surface of brood, which also means
every cycle you have more bees that can go back
into the system to perform when you have those
eight frames one stuck by the other then you
have something that is a little bit bigger than
a double deep and the external dimensions are
such that you can place four primer bee nests
on a four -way palette so that the external dimension
is four centimeters wide and 60 cm length. On
top of this nest, we put a nest lid, what we
call a nest lid, an empty super and a top lid
for a total amount of more than 120 air value
as a closure of the cross -section of the nest
and this provides most of the efficiency that
we can deliver to the colony. Did you say 120
R value? Yeah, it depends which kind of empty
super you can use, but we are between 120 and
150 as the wall call it winter closure of the
nest, which is made by three components. Nest
lead, empty super, one empty super made of a
solid APS and the top lid and the nylon strap
to tie everything together. The coupling profile
between the components is that such which is
airtight. So the air inside the empty super provide
better insulation. And when we overwinter in
Alaska, we instead of just an empty super, we
put kind of a mattress of additional EPS as an
insulation material to better survive the long
Alaska winter. And the same thing goes when you
are in very hot climate. Yeah. Let me just interpret
this for everybody a little bit. So this does
not look like a normal beehive. You see this
EPS material and the brood box, there's not two,
there's one, and you call it a nest, which I
absolutely love that term, by the way, the frames
inside are you said 70 centimeters, which is
about 27 and a half inches tall. Exactly. And
the width is roughly the regular width. Yeah,
a little shorter, a little bit shorter. Just
a little bit shorter. And so in the nest, you're
going to be pulling out frames that are 27 and
a half inches tall. Now, above that goes a brood
box made out of the same material, same kind
of insulation. But we can put our regular Langstroth
frames in it. Exactly. Which also means we can
pull them out and put them in our regular extractors.
We don't have to do anything special, different,
or anything else to extract honey from them.
That's a big deal. Yeah, and also because we
don't want to harvest the honey from the primal
bee nest frames, matched with the thermal efficiency
of the nest itself, this is why we can really
feed less and less compared to every other solution.
Because the cluster of the bees during the winter
start at the very bottom of the primal bee frames
and then the cluster moves very, very little
by little upwards when they need some honey for
the winter consumption. But most of the time,
between 10 and 12 centimeters of honey on top
of the frame is more than enough to overwinter
the colony, at least in the place where we made
our experiment. Okay, now your R value, you mentioned
120. which I don't know of anything that's that
high in our regular length strut hives, which
are three quarter inch wood. I believe the R
value is like one or two. Yeah, maybe five. It
depends from the thickness of the play. So hardly
insulated at all, but a big fat tree has a ton
of insulation. So you're trying to reproduce
this tree like atmosphere. The last thing I don't
want to get too technical here. But could you
talk about the thermal dynamics just a little
bit? Because we've had various people on the
show talking about how important airflow is even
when it's really cold in the winter. And other
philosophies are, no, shut them down and don't
have very much airflow at all. What's the airflow
like on this? The critical point is the dew point.
People that are used to open some hole or something
on top of the nest, they do so because they think
that the circulation of air between the bottom
and the top can help the bees to evacuate. to
put away the moisture inside the nest. But the
real question is why those colonies have moisture
inside the nest? And the answer is because the
dew point is inside the nest. So when you provide
because of the shape and then the material, you
provide such thermal efficiency. we move the
dew point outside. That means that they don't
need an air flow inside the nest during winter
time. They need to stabilize the temperature
and to do that with the minimal effort possible,
with the minimal possible effort in a way that
they really can keep the queen alive at the right
temperature, almost just with their metabolic
energy. That goes with the less consumption during
the winter passage and at the beginning of spring
when the cluster opens up and the queen understands
that the queen feels that it's time to lay eggs,
this operation to open the cluster and to raise
the temperature from the winter queen passage
to the brood temperature of 36 degrees comes
with the five or even more five times less effort
than compared to the landstock hive. This is
key because And this is much more related to
the shape of the nest than the material itself.
This is one of the things that we struggle the
most to communicate because insulation is easy
to understand. And even in our own houses, we
see that when we put insulation in the house,
we can consume less energy to stay warm during
the winter. But the shape is really key. One
of the things that Gianmario always try to explain
to me first is a comparison between the shape,
the small difference in shapes on a race car.
When they change millimeters of the spoiler of
the wings or whatever, the effect, the downside
effect or the differences in the performance,
it's huge. And mainly this is the same thing,
changing the nest the shape of the nest improve
a lot what the bees can do. And the bees, they
know better than us. So when they feel they are
in a nest that is well made and easy to manage,
they just act doing what they do best. So the
conservation of energy and the better use of
resources is in their DNA, and they just keep
doing what they were able to do for. billions
of years, for many, many years, thousands of
years. And they go back to do what they were
used to do before wrong wooden highs. Have you
found that the bees also produce more honey?
And if so, why? Correct. The bees produce more
honey because, again, it's in their DNA. They
know that when the net flow comes, it's time
to put energy let's say in the ziagonal cells
for when the winter will come and they don't
have a limit. I mean, the limit is the nectar
flow itself. So when they understand by instinct
that they don't need so much energy to keep the
temperature of the brood inside the nest, they
keep going harvesting nectar and this nectar
will not be used during the same season, will
be stored for the winter to come. The key point
in the primal bee is that using the same last
medium or deep to harvest honey and having the
nest which consume, which require so less energy
compared to what we were used to work with, it's
a win -win situation because what we leave into
the nest for the colony is enough. or close to
enough to survive an average winter everywhere
in Europe and I can say everywhere in the US,
maybe excluding Alaska or the cold state or the
northeast of the US. But at the same time, we
can harvest more honey. And from the comparison
that we have already done in Europe and in Israel,
On average, we harvest double the quantity compared
to the wooden Langstock type. Sometimes it's
even more, it depends. There are beekeepers in
my area working with Primal Bee. They are already
used to harvest the wild cherry honey. which
is something that people forgot about because
since the Varroa came in and the colony became
weaker and weaker they were not able to harvest
the wild cherry which is the very very first
blossom that we have but with the primal bee
and overwintery a strong colony and now they
start going back to collect this honey that has
not been collected since the 18 more or less.
Alright, so what I'm gonna say, and I don't want
this to sound rude in any way shape or form,
you're putting a lot of promises out there, right?
Less bee die -off, twice as much honey made.
I decided to put this thing to the test and your
marketing people were kind enough to send me
one of your hives, the whole package, and even
though This is going to be close to the end of
August before I get bees in it. I'm going to
try one this year and see how these bees overwinter.
That's probably not fair because that's not enough
of a head start before winter. Now you will need
to feed them probably very very dense syrup as
dense as honey and not less than probably between
8 and 12 kilo. until they will build at least
four or five full comms. And then I'm pretty
sure that you will overwinter very well. Okay,
I will do that. I'll feed the crap out of them
and we'll see how it goes. And our listeners
know here, I'll be very honest. If it works,
and I really hope it does, and I think it will
because everything you're saying just makes sense,
then I'll report on that. And if for some reason
it doesn't, then We'll learn and we'll talk about
that come spring. I will be traveling again and
again in the U .S. we should also create the
opportunity for me to visit you in your place.
Not only meeting in person in Appimondia, but
really, I really would like to visit you in person
so we can share our own experience. Yeah, it
would be great. I would love that. That'll be
really fun. And we are going to meet at Appimondia
coming up here soon. Alex, I hope I remember
to warn you of this when we talked previously.
Everybody that comes on this show gets to tell
about a wild or crazy or embarrassing or painfully
unusual beekeeping story that they personally
have had. Would you have something you want to
share with us? Yeah, actually, the craziest things
that Gianmario and I did when we were using our
first prototype was starting moving the colony
from where we are up to the mountains on the
Switzerland border. In this ballet that it's
25 kilometers long, full of sweet chestnut. It's
a valley where you only have sweet chestnut trees.
And I remember one night, and we were used to
move our hive with my pickup truck. I have an
old 99 Dodge pickup truck. It's my hobby. I dismantle,
I modify it. But that night it was not available.
So we use the John Mario's car. a old four wheel
drive Jeep that has not picked up bad. So we
put the hives inside the car. And there were
prototypes, so not very well made with bees that
can eventually get out. And driving during the
night on this mountain road. every time we were
looking for just to see just to because it was
fun to see wild boars and deers and actually
after that we were going up and in the middle
of the road there was a beautiful deer and Giammario
loves animals but I was back then I was also
a deer hunter. When Giammario saw the deer he
saw a beautiful animal and when I saw the deer
I saw mainly uh yeah goulash and uh and steaks
and kind of so i i was trying to stop the car
and i was shouting to him no don't stop don't
stop grab the deal we have space we have room
inside for the deal as well so there was a moment
of uh doubt and the car was shaking left and
right and the eyes the prototypes open up so
in a matter of a few seconds we were covered
with thousands of bees and we were forced to
stop the car ran out in the middle of the road
in the mountains and shouting to each other how
full we were. And at the end, we spent the following
two hours trying to recover the bees inside the
car, close the prototype and go on to the mountain
apiary. And when we arrived at home, I was swallowing
like, wow, it was the craziest night. as he might
be keeping experience, and we still laugh about
that and remember about that. And that was when
we decided that we needed a nylon strap to tie
everything down and not have these things happening
again. That was really crazy. That is an awesome
story. I wish we had video of that. I'm just
picturing it in my mind. open hives in the car.
You know that reminds me of something I'm going
to tell this little story real quick. The first
time that I ever caught a swarm and it was a
really big one. It's one of the biggest swarms
I have ever seen. And I had been told you can
just take a cardboard box, shake it from the
tree into the box. Well Let's just say it was
a big swarm and it took a couple of boxes and
I did that. And then I put some tape on the boxes,
but I didn't want to make it, you know, airtight.
Not that you can really get cardboard airtight,
but there were a little teeny gap so that there
was air flow going in and out. And I was driving
my wife's car. That's a little Toyota hatchback.
And I have these boxes of bees in the back seat.
And as I'm driving along, they start getting
out. and one gets out and then two and then three
and then thirty and forty and thank goodness
they weren't coming after me they wanted to get
out so they were against the windows and by the
time i got home i couldn't even see out of the
back window or the back side windows because
they were completely blabbered with colon by
bees And, uh, you know, we learned these lessons
the hard way and it ended up being fun and a
fun story. Yeah. But honestly, uh, now it's,
uh, it's a startup companies with Israeli startup.
Uh, we have the team in the U S, uh, all amazing
people. They are doing a great job, but, uh,
at the bottom, the bottom is when we started
working with the bees, uh, there was nothing
like working with the bees. in our previous experience.
And it's really something that you became addicted
to. And even the way we look around on every
season changed. We didn't notice flowers before
working with bees. We didn't notice the different
blossom of big trees before keeping bees. We
didn't look at the nature around us in the same
way that we look at now. It's amazing. It's just
amazing. That's so true, and one of the beauties
of beekeeping. All right, I need to let you go.
Alex Gamberoni, thank you so much for being with
me. Best of luck to Primal B. And by the way,
we'll stick a link in the show notes if anybody
wants to look it up and have a look at exactly
what this thing looks like and how it works.
And I'll see you at Appimondia. Yeah, yeah. Thank
you very much, Eric, to host me in this wonderful
conversation. And really, I'm looking forward
to meet you in person in Appimondia. I will have
those samples of the sweet chestnut for you to
taste and bring back home. And yeah. We should
also plan me to visit you in in Huta. Yeah, perfect.
You come out here and do some skiing or in the
summer and see the bees, either way. Yeah, yeah,
I will. Thanks for joining us on Be Love Beekeeping
presented by Man Lake. If you like this content,
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not just in it for the honey or the money, you're
in it for the love. See you next week.