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 bees' needs as best they can comprehend,
and with the infrequency Welcome, welcome to
Be Love Beekeeping presented by our great friends
and partners in beekeeping. Mann Lake. Today
we're going to have a super informative conversation
about condensing hives with one of the leading
authorities on the topic but first fresh from
the beekeeping news we had another couple of
big trucks carrying beehives rollover one in
Yellowstone National Park and another in Texas.
What really cracked me up was this headline from
the Texas Accident quote Two million bees escape
after truck carrying hives overturns. The reporter
made it sound like they were hauling federal
prisoners who escaped the accident. Call the
federal marshals. Of course, we know that the
last thing the bees wanted to do was leave their
homes. But when their homes are broken open and
scattered across the highway, they don't really
know what to do. Orange County Emergency Services
warned residents, quote, Everyone that lives
in the affected area please remain indoors. An
18 -wheeler carrying beehives has turned over
and there's heavy presence of bees in the area.
The good news is that local beekeepers quickly
came to the rescue both of the bees and of the
residents. This got me thinking because we hear
about this quite often. Is there something with
bees in these truck rollovers? And I'm going
to say no because here are some other unusual
mishaps in the last few months on US highways.
A truck in Tennessee hauling fireworks caught
fire and its load triggered a spectacular impromptu
display. Back in March, 40 ,000 pounds of extra
firm tofu was spilled in Missouri, and previous
to that, firefighters responded to a crash in
which a truck carrying a huge load of ribeye
steaks burst into flames. All right, enough of
that silliness, let's get back to talking about
honey bees. Welcome, welcome to Bee Love Beekeeping,
everybody, and I'd like to welcome especially
We have a great guest today, Bill Hesbach. How
are you, Bill? I'm very good. Thank you so much.
It's a pleasure to be here. I am super excited
to have you today because we're going to be talking
all about condensing hives, which is something
that I still have a lot to learn about, but it's
come up a lot lately. We had Lauren on the show
recently and she mentioned it and you and I had
another guest on that has built his own long
laying hive. and is talking about a condensing
system with that. So if you don't mind, I want
to jump right in. Would you start with just the
30 ,000 foot view of in general, what are we
talking about when we talk about condensing hives?
Yeah, it's actually quite simple. So when we're
talking about condensing hives, we're assuming
that we allow the bees to control the the internal
environment in hives. We don't get involved with
ventilation at all. And it's based on the principle
that bees have lived for millions of years. The
pollinators have lived for millions of years.
The current Western bee that we keep here in
the United States has been around for hundreds
of thousands of years and they've lived in cavities
where they controlled all the hive gases. So
a condensing colony brings them a step backward.
toward their more natural environment. So it's,
in a word, bees get to control all the hive gases.
We don't interfere. In order to do that, by the
way, you have to have a box that allows for a
complete envelope that they can then manage themselves.
So does that mean in times of winter, for example,
you have no ventilation in the hive at all? No
ventilation at all in the hive, except for the
entrance. the bottom entrance here, just like
it would be in a tree cavity, a box that would
be surrounded by a lot of insulation on the top
and the sides, a closed box, and the only ventilated
part of it would be the entrance, which we keep
at about a three inch long space. Okay. And a
lot of people reduce that entrance in winter
anyway. But it's hard for some of us to understand
how we don't need ventilation because we need
to talk about condensation. We need to talk about
CO2. We need to talk about gases that build up.
And I want to preface this with something that
just came to my mind. Bill, what is the name
of the volcano that blew up over in Italy a few
years ago? Yeah, it buried beehives in volcanic
ash. And they were buried for, if I remember
right, about 50 days. Yeah. And they were dug
out and the bees were still alive and just fine.
Yeah. Well, that and you could also extend that
into some of the colder climates where bees are
covered with copious amounts of snow in sort
of an igloo configuration that occurs naturally.
And they survive under all of that snow without
any added ventilation at all. So In the winter
where I am, we get a lot of snow. And a couple
of years ago, we had so much snow that even though
some of my hives that are on stands, they were
still buried. Like you just sort of saw a lump.
And I thought it was my duty to take a brush
or a broom or whatever and get the snow away
from the entrances so that they had ventilation.
Was I making a mistake? Well, you weren't making
a mistake, but you were just surviving through
a lot of cold work. Unnecessary snow ice is different
than snow. So if you had ice over that front
entrance and you have to remove it, snow has
an incredible amount of porosity. When I do this
talk and I've been doing it since about 2016,
I show snowflakes and up under microscopy and
it's just a veritable porous space. So bees.
And all other insects, by the way, that live
underground all winter long with dense snow packs
survive perfectly okay with the exchange of gases
through snow. So you can exchange gases through
snow, is my point. They don't get bogged down.
As a matter of fact, if a colony gets a lot of
snow on top of it, it adds to the insulation.
Okay. I want to let you get back to giving this
whole 30 ,000 foot view. Tell us... a little
bit more about detail now. Okay. How does this
work? Why should we use it? Well, I can tell
you how it works. And for you to sort of embrace
the concept, it's a challenge to Belor. And to
give you an idea, I think where we started with
ventilation, I think ventilation is a useful
practice when you don't insulate a colony, especially
in a cold climate, and you allow the gases that
come off of the core To meet a lot of cold air
on the say a cold inner cover It'll condense
there into liquid moisture and drip back down
on the cluster So early on when bees were taken
out of their natural habitat kept in Langstroth
boxes Early beekeepers noticed right away that
they could they had to do something To keep that
condensation from accumulating around the top
of the cluster with a cold surface. So those
are just basic thermodynamics. Those are physics
laws. You can't change that, right? If you have
warm, moist air that has a fairly dense moisture
content and hits a cold surface, it's going to
condense into liquid moisture. Now, if you insulate
that and you maintain a surface above a cluster,
It's above the dew point. There can't be any
condensation that occurs there. So what ends
up happening then is the moisture vapor that's
coming off of the cluster will come up, warm
the surface that's insulated, and then it spreads
out and seeks colder parts of the colony. So
again, just basic physics, basic thermodynamics
and basic bee biology. So bees take advantage
of this, especially when they're in trees and
there's plenty of insulation above them. As moisture
then finds its way out toward cooler spaces,
it condenses inside the colony. So therefore,
it's a condensing colony. So you're allowing
the moisture to condense. So then is that good
is a question to let moisture condense inside
the colony. Yeah, because people would say, hey,
we don't want the bees to get wet. Yeah, they
absolutely will never get wet as long as the
surface above them is above the dew point. or
you can't get liquid moisture to develop and
drip down on bees if that surface can't reach
the dew point. What happens is then that moisture,
that vapor, goes out toward color surfaces and
it condenses there. Now this is the number one
factor why bees are, by their instincts, are
biologically superior to our beekeeping. So the
first thing that happens is when that condenses
on the outside, it gives off latent heat. There's
a built -in latent heat recovery system when
moisture is allowed to condense inside the colony.
That can account for more than a double -digit
savings in energy expenditure if you allow that
to condense inside the colony. Again, this is
just physics. So that's one thing. And then,
of course, if there's excess moisture, then it'll
run down the frames or inside the box and then
accumulate in the bottom or or go out of the
bottom board or whatever, whatever happens. But
that doesn't normally occur when bees are allowed
to condense in the colonies. Not a lot of excess
moisture, not where I live. Yeah, so that's the
first thing. There's a latent heat recovery that
bees take advantage of when they allow to condense.
Now that water is in the colony. It has liquid
moisture in areas where bees have access to it.
So that's the other positive part about allowing
some condensation to occur inside the colony,
not in the cluster, but around it. on surfaces
around it, is they have it access to thin honey
when they want to eat it during the winter. I
don't think a lot of beekeepers realize that
honey is cured honey inside cells. It's easy
for bees to uncap that, but they can't lap it
up. They got to thin it. It's too thick to go
through their proboscis. I've often wondered
why bees use water to thin honey. and then eat
it. And that's the reason why it's just, it has
too much viscosity for bees to just swallow,
right? So that then means that they don't have
to go out to search waters. When they break cluster,
they can find water right near them or move a
cluster over a little bit. They can find more.
So those are two really important parts of why
condensation is a positive thing to occur inside
of a colony during the late heat recovery and
moisture available to thin honey so they could
eat it. Now there's more to this, right? So now
you asked earlier about the gases. So the gases
are where it really gets interesting. Because
with the gases, two things happen in a cluster,
especially a type cluster. The CO2 builds up
and the oxygen levels driven down. So now you
have an environment that is higher in CO2 than
you would expect, right? So it could get up to
22 % of the somewhere between 14 and let's say
20 percent, somewhere between 14 and 20 percent
of the colony's atmosphere, the cluster's atmosphere,
is now CO2. So what's the bee's response to that?
Bees respond to that in a completely different
way. If you were human in that environment and
you would last about five minutes before you
would go into hypoxia, you would die at 10 percent
CO2 in minutes. These survive and lots of other
insects survive in these real high CO2 high environments
by lowering their metabolic rate. So they have
another biological adaptation. They go into a
low metabolic stabilized rate. So they, instead
of dying or going to hypoxia, they manage the
amount of energy they use using that gas. Now,
if it gets too high, of course, they ventilate
a little bit of it out. If it's really cold and
they're in a tighter cluster, they're going to
use that CO2 to lower their metabolic weight.
And therefore they use less honey to generate
the amount of energy they need for that size
cluster. That's the hard part for people to understand
because you would think the first you'll hear
in B meetings, first of all, you got to get the
condensation out. Then you got to get the CO2
out because it'll kill. CO2 does not kill insects.
You can put anybody who has bred queens. will
know that if they're going to do some artificial
insemination, they will put a queen bee inside
of a tube backward, and a nesticizer would see
a CO2 for as long as they have to to inseminate
that queen. Then she wakes up and is fine. And
we didn't be able to put the bees in 100 % CO2.
Of course, that wouldn't work. So the extreme
side wouldn't work. That is fascinating stuff.
Is this something that people should be doing
if they're in a warm environment, Hawaii or Southern
California or something? Yeah, since I wrote
the first article on condensing colonies, I wrote
in 2016 for Be Culture magazine and it got some
circulation early on. And I coined that term
condensing colony, which now has a life of its
own, which is kind of interesting for me and
rewarding in some ways. But I got feedback from
people all over, up in the Northwest of the United
States, in Germany, Turkey. So I got response
from that article, with the same kind of question,
should I try it here? What should I do? And my
answer was always the same for everyone who made
an inquiry, was try it, see what happens. And
so then the second generation... of folks that
have tried it in the meantime, some have found
incredible success with it. Now, if you're going
to use it in Florida, you're using it for a completely
different reason. The interesting part about
the way this whole thermoregulation biology ties
into both cold and warm climates is something
we don't normally think about. So in a warm climate,
what does a condensing colony do? In a warm climate,
it acts as a way for bees to regulate the amount
of heat that's in a comb. There's a bunch of
behaviors that occur where bees will dump heat
outside the colony with their little bodies.
They press it against comb. They absorb heat.
They can get about a calorie. of heat absorption
per a bee's abdomen then they bring that outside
on the outside of the box disperse that heat
then come back in so there's a heat shielding
effect. Now if you start pumping in really hot
humid air into a cluster that's already managing
the way that they regulate heat it works really
well if you will allow them to do it themselves.
you know, then they set up little swamp coolers
in there, right? They'll collect water hanging
off the rim of a cell and evaporate it with wings,
with their wing movement, right? So in cold climates
where we think of thermoregulation as saving
bees from freezing to death, in hot climates,
the same thing, bees are adapted to thermoregulate
on their own. And a condensing box, so the condensing
colony is just a box that has insulation on top
and the sides, works fine. I really don't have
to take my word for it. The industry has responded
really well to this. And they make a bunch of
insulated condensing colonies right out of the
box these days. When I first started to popularize
this idea, you had to make it. Quick break to
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.com. Discount code MLBlove10. You had to make
one of them. You had to take a Langstroth box,
make a sleeve that goes over it, and then make
some kind of an insulated telescoping cover that
would keep the whole box as a condensing colony.
And, of course, seal off the bottom and all that
with a single entrance on the bottom. You had
to make it all. Now you don't have to make anything.
There's everybody out there. There's a number
of brands. Man Lake carries a few, and Better
B carries a few. There's lots of... you know,
bee supply houses that are now carrying them.
And out in Australia and in all of Europe, the
Germans have been keeping polly boxes for decades
with no topping. As a matter of fact, if you
look at German beekeeping practices, their box,
their polly box, which is a condensing colony
by nature, has a piece of plastic like a ...
six mil plastic that they put over the top of
the frames, they're thick polytopon. And through
all of those scenarios, there's been tests of
colonies in really hot climates, like the Gibson
Desert and other places in Australia where they
had uninsulated boxes side by side with insulated
boxes. And notice that the behavior of bees is
that they did a lot more bearding on the outside
of the uninsulated boxes than they did in the
insulated stuff. And I've seen that for years
in my own apiaries, where bees in hot weather
will beard like crazy. In my insulated boxes,
there's always some hives in a colony that in
my yards that aren't insulated. I will see them
beard differently. So I think this is a great
reminder for people that insulation is important
in hot climates as well as cold ones. That's
part of what you're getting at here, right? It's
exactly right. I mean, you know, you don't take
the insulation out of your walls in the summertime,
or you don't uninsulate your attic in the summertime.
So insulation works both ways. I mean, if these
are keeping a brood area at 95 degrees Fahrenheit,
say for instance, they don't need 102 degree
moist air coming into the bottom of the box,
or for that matter, they don't need 95 degree
air or 87 degree air with high humidity being
pumped inside the box. The homeostasis is a bee's
absolute biological adaptation. They want a box
that they can stabilize in all environments and
control the air envelope inside. There's lots
of high -powered physics behind thermoregulation,
and I got into all of it. And if you can do the
formulas that are associated with figuring out
all these thermodynamic, you have to be an engineer.
The real key to understanding it is to put yourself
back in time a little bit and think about how
bees evolved. There's very little natural evidence
that a beekeeper can't rationalize themselves.
They can say, well, listen to what... Bees came
from trees, say for instance, or other cavities.
And all of those other cavities that bees have
evolved to live in provided them with a lot of
insulation. Take an old tree here in the northeast
where I live. You'll see a hole in a bee tree
that's been there for maybe 75 years. Colonies
occasionally occupy it and then they go away,
but they come back to that. And the reason they
select that over and over again is because it
has the characteristics that they need to survive.
And one of them, of course, in a tree, is a bunch
of insulation above the cavity that they pick,
a bunch below it, and then usually five or six
inches of wood all around the outside, which
would make for a complete insulated envelope
with a single entrance. So let's say we have
a beekeeper that wants to try this concept and
they don't have a polyhive. So they want to buy
some insulation and just try this. You mentioned
a sleeve that goes over the whole thing. Yes.
Give us some kind of step by step. Like how much
insulation? Do we want that hard foam insulation?
Do we want an inch of it? Do we want two inches
of it? What's a what's a just a basic recommendation?
Yeah, so there's like about a 75 25 split on
loss So about 75 percent of the loss heat loss
in a colony goes out of the top Let's just say
it's an uninsulated box just goes out of the
top and then maybe 25 percent around the sides
so if you were gonna make a sleeve that went
over a Langstroth box say for instance, you could
buy poly sheets, there's ones called R -Max,
there's pink sheets of foam, EPS foam and expanded,
some special expanded foams that you get about
R -5 or R -6 or R -7 per inch. And you could
put one inch of that around the outside. And
I'm going to explain some peculiarities about
how insulation works. So we'll just generally
flesh out how you could make this yourself. So
you would make a box that fits over the Colony
right right over a length with box same dimensions
as the outside now. You've got an extra inch
Around the entire circumference of that box,
which so your normal telescoping covers won't
fit over that anymore So in order to get a complete
Insulated envelope you have to make Or if you
were going to make this you have to make a telescoping
cover that would fit over that insulation. It
would accommodate that one inch around the entire
colony and then also have two inches of that
foam on the top. So one inch around the side,
two on the top, but it has to be a continuous,
no break in the insulation. So does the heat
just leave through those breaks too much? Yes,
the heat leaves through those breaks. So let
me explain how insulation works. When I worked
as a mechanical engineer in a company that I
owned, I was a consultant for building envelopes.
So I would be called in as a specialist to figure
out how they could improve the design to accommodate
for more insulation. Now it's well known. But
back in the day, there was very little known
about it. So we did some tests on how insulation
works. So if you were to take a regular building
bay cavity and fill it 90 % with insulation,
that 10 % that you left out at the top would
compromise the entire insulation quality of that
bay. So if you have a box that has open edges
and all kinds of the insulation doesn't touch
each other or on the top you don't make it a
continuous so it touches all four sides. You
just lose insulation heat and you're defeating
the purpose of the insulation. A lot of beekeepers
will say to me well I did what I thought but
I put a quilt box up there and then I put the
insulation on top of the quilt box. So the quilt
box ends up with a lot of ventilation and we
don't ventilate below insulation. It just doesn't
work that way. You know, you know, you know,
put your insulation has to be in contact and
in a continuous area or else it just doesn't
work. So no quilt box. My point is you can't
put ventilation below your insulation. That would
be like opening up the windows in your second
floor in your house all winter long. Totally
makes sense. Okay. So yeah, so that's how you
might make one. The article that I wrote in B
Culture in March of 2016 is still available online.
Anybody that wants to look that up, just look
up, you know, just you can search my name. They
have a good library there. You can look up old
articles. Yeah. And you just go ahead and do
that and you can. search that article and give
step -by -step instructions on how to build them.
Just be reminded that this is when they weren't
offering an insulated box yet. There weren't
any poly boxes on the market at that point. So
that's why you had to make one. And now there
are all kinds. Yes. There's also insulation blankets
that wrap all the way around and have like plastic
on the outside so they're waterproof and they
look like, I haven't used one yet, they look
like they're three or four inches thick. Like
you'd get a lot of R value, but it sounds like
it's important to make sure you have higher R
value on top than on the sides. Yes. So there's
really some innovative products out there that
have come out and one I consulted with is the
Hive Hugger. And if people want to take a look
at that as an example of how you put together
your own sleeve, they're already made for you.
So the sleeves are being made if you wanted to
try it. and see what the results are. So I did
a lot of work on figuring out if I was okay with
talking about the way condensation works in economy.
My early efforts at trying to understand the
thermodynamics were then reinforced by some interesting
physicists, one in England, that did a bunch
of work on the thermodynamics and explained that
what's possibly happening with boxes in cold
climates that are ventilated is that the bees
are in a constant state of trying to survive.
So it puts them in a really rugged state, and
they have to try to survive that, and they can
for the most part. But we have to be aware that
since the bee lore of ventilation was initiated
back in the day when beekeepers first learned
that liquid moisture would kill their bees, there
weren't a lot of viral stresses that we know
of. The form -wing virus wasn't discussed. We
didn't have varroa. No one talked about black
queen cell virus. I mean, the viral landscape
back in the day, there may have been there, and
I'm almost guaranteed it was there. My studies
in virology would indicate that... We didn't
invent anything. There were viruses even back
then. They just weren't deadly. What we were
working with back in the day was American Foulbrood,
European Foulbrood, Sackbrood, Chalkbrood, all
of that stuff, the bacterial infections and the
viral infections that went back a ways. But now
we know for certain that bees, that Varroa, are
vectoring a bunch of viral load into bees. And
you're hearing a lot about beekeepers saying,
the first cold snap in my colony died. I think
that there's different pressures on bees in terms
of their cellular mechanisms to try to combat
viral infections. It leaves them a little bit
more vulnerable. So my logic in all of that is,
yes, maybe your bees will survive without a bunch
of insulation and outside of a condensing colony,
but why not? If you're a hobby beekeeper or advance
your animal husbandry into a place where you're
providing the bees with a more natural habitat,
give them a chance. I'm going to add something
to that. And that's a great line of thinking
and a great explanation. And another thing that
a lot of us deal with is pesticides use around
us that the bees just can't seem to stay away
from. And so anything we can do to make their
life easier, is going to counteract some of those
other things that you were just talking about
and the pesticide load, the viruses, the varroa,
the everything else. So let's give them a break
any place we can. And you mentioned these things
about we learned about moisture and it's all
terrible and that kind of thing. It seems like
one of the problems that us beekeepers have is
the first thing that we learned on a topic, whether
it was from a mentor 20 years ago or whatever.
like that sticks and we have a hard time being
open -minded that maybe that wasn't right. I
need to be open -minded here about thermodynamics
and condensation and all these other things because
bees are struggling and we've got to figure out
any other way to help them than we can. And it's
not just about throwing chemicals in to fight
varroa. Right, you can, yeah, so you're fortifying
the natural biology of bees. The way I look at
it is on this sort of like a continuum between
a fully condensing colony where bees are allowed
to divide management controls over the hive gases,
using CO2 to regulate their metabolism in the
wintertime, using that internal atmosphere to
cool colony and heat. Under those circumstances,
you have a biological unit that's working in
concert with the evolution of their own biology.
As you move away from that model and move them
toward a more of a ventilating model to a full
ventilating model, you're moving from a natural
environment to an artificial one. And the artificial
one has pretty much been reinforced by our industrial
beekeeping complex in that I don't have anything,
I have nothing against pollinating or beekeepers
using pollinators and their services, but they
view bees as an industrial product. We don't
have to. If we're going to care for bees in a
more sort of natural way, it makes sense to provide
them with a habitat that's more natural. Yeah.
All right, Bill. I really appreciate all the
wisdom that you're sharing with us today. Let's
leave with something fun. You've been a beekeeper
long enough that I'm sure you've had some wild
and crazy beekeeping stories. You want to leave
us with one or two? I was thinking about that
when you first asked the question, and there's
so many of them that are just a whole lot of
fun that happened. So I was in the yard one day
and I witnessed a swarm. I always spend a lot
of time around bee yards. And especially in swarm
season, I'm always there doing something. So
I'll always, or on occasion, I'll see swarms.
In this particular time, I saw a swarm coming
out of a hive. I saw it emerging. Then I went
to a tree and hung there about four feet high.
Nice big swarm. So I thought this is going to
be easy to catch. Let me just go over there and
I'll shake it into a bucket. So I set up some
hive equipment and I shook the branch. Now I'm
working blind. So I'm holding the bucket and
the branch, so I shake it down and all the bees
fly away. I mean, I get a couple thousand in
the bucket, but the bees all fly. Now what happened
is they flew with the queen to another location,
which I didn't notice. I'm in the middle of hiving
these couple of thousand bees that I put up a
box in the apiary and dumped those bees in. And
then I then I said, wow, wait a minute, there's
another swarm up there. Well, actually, it was
the same swarm. It's just that they I didn't
notice that they formed in a different location.
So I'm over there collecting that swarm. So I
hide them in a different box. So now I got I
got one swarm in one and one swarm in the other.
But that but. You know, and then I got the original
colony that swarmed. Should we guess what the
colony without the queen did? Yeah, go ahead.
What do you think the colony without the queen
did? Well, I assume they realized their queen's
in that other box and they all headed over there.
So they took off out of that box, but there was
more bees in that to say, you know, because they
took off with that and they went into the, and
they went into the box. So now I've got a swarm
coming out of a box that I just hives and I'm
thinking, well, that does happen. Sometimes they'll
benefit, but that colony swarmed and went into
the other box. Now there was a lot of action
in the first box that I dumped in, right? The
colony that I dumped the box in with the queen.
the queen managed to get out of that and fly,
because she was ready to fly. But I didn't see
that. So when she returned to the colony, which
she did, she went underneath. And there's a screen
bottom on those boxes. So now both colonies in
my inspection, like the next day I usually go
back when I get a swarm and I'm thinking, okay,
let me make sure that this colony is queen right.
There's no queen. And I knew there's no queen
anywhere except she's on the bottom with about
10 ,000 bees. So yeah, so that has happened more
times than I can imagine. We never totally figure
them out. That's part of the fun. So we just
keep learning and learning. I haven't run over
my smoker in the yard with the truck and caught
the yard on fire and I haven't bent hive tools
or got flats from running them over. I haven't
done anything that crazy. Where's the most painful
place to get stung? I've gotten stung everywhere.
I think the most painful place to get stung for
me is my nose. If you got a minute. Let me tell
you this other story about Thailand. I've been
fortunate to go on a couple of B excursions in
other countries, Africa, Thailand, especially
Italy. We went with a bunch of university students
to Thailand and we were out in the middle of.
We went to the University of Burpa and we were
hosted by entomologists there and we were going
out into the jungles and looking for Apis dorsata.
the biggest bee in the world, the biggest apis
bee in the world, huge bee, three times the size
of a regular Western honeybee, or at least two
size. I thought I was going with grad students
and entomologists, but I went with undergrads.
A lot of them weren't really that interested
in keeping bees. They were just looking for a
trip to Thailand, but they went anyway. We arranged
to go out with honey hunters. to find these nests
in them, in the forest. So we find one. The unfortunate
part about this nest, it was down a trail. The
trail went past a tree and ended not very far.
It couldn't go very far in Thailand. There was
water in ditches all over the place. There's
seven species of poisonous snakes. It's thick
jungle -like conditions. Now the students all
went past a tree. and gathered in a location
where to get back out, they got to go back under
the tree and back to the bus. So the beekeeper
is trying to explain to us in a way that we couldn't
understand it because he's speaking Thai, that
the colony hasn't been acting. That colony he
harvested honey from and hadn't been acting that
calm. So he wanted to warn us ahead of time might
be a little bit dicey. What happens is they climb
the tree with a smoker in their hand that they
make on the way there. They have no protection
at all. He climbs up about 10 meters high and
he smokes the colony. And what happens with dorsata,
which is different than western honeybee, is
they leave the colony when you smoke them. They
don't stay on, they don't hang around trying
to gather up whatever nectar, nectar they have
themselves. They blew up off the colony and who
do they find for I was standing under the tree
filming the beekeeper, the honey hunter. The
bees find the students. And did they have all
their gear on, their protective gear? Yeah, they
had like some gear and some not. And so they
started to sting. So they panic. This is a big
bee and it's kind of intimidating. So they ran
out of the from underneath it. They ran past
me. The beekeeper had dropped his smokers. I
had the smoker, but I was filming. So I stayed
with the beekeeper and I was filming them up
the tree. They ran through, but when they panicked
and they didn't run out the trail, they decided
they were going to run through the little streams
and horrible conditions where there's a bunch
of little... predator snakes and things ready
to get you. And it was just, it was just horrific.
I mean, it was just, it turned out to be the
biggest nightmare beekeeping experience I think
that there ever have. They're not, they didn't
go home and become beekeepers, I'm sure of that.
But yeah, so we got, we got a lot of people stung
with it. Everybody was fine. Nothing happened.
No serious injuries. No serious injuries, but
a couple of students went back to the United
States the next day. Hey Bill, I've got to let
you go, but it's been really fun and really informative.
Thank you so very much. Thanks again for joining
us on Be Love, Be Keeping presented by Man Lake.
Another big thank you goes to V2B Health for
their support. Vita's Varroa Control Ranger products
includes Epistan, Epigard and now Varroxan Extended
Release Oxalic Acid Strips. Hey thanks a lot
guys and if you haven't yet please subscribe
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