Transcript
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May I have your attention please?
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The following is not the real Jeff Boxer-y.
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If you can tell the difference between a honey bee and a fly just by listening,
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you might be a beekeeper.
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If you know what IPM stands for, you might be a beekeeper.
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If you collect antique smokers, you might be a beekeeper.
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You can have my grandma, she won them.
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Welcome, welcome to Bee Love Beekeeping Podcast presented by our good friends over at Man Lake.
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At Bee Love, we're all about honey bees and of course the beekeepers.
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And if you're on the beekeeping adventure, we would love to hear from you.
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If you're just thinking about it, this is a great place to learn from real-life beekeepers.
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Bee's beekeepers and fun beekeeping stories, it's all about the love.
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And I think you're going to love today's show.
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We are going all the way over to Scotland to have a discussion with beekeeper Geno Jabar.
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By the way, coolest accent ever on this guy.
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And then we'll wrap up with some bees in the news.
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I'd like to welcome our super special guest all the way from Edinburgh, Scotland, Dr. Geno Jabar.
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How are you, Geno?
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Eric, it's a great pleasure to be on your podcast. I'm very well, thank you.
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Thank you so much. And I tried to pronounce the location as well as I can, but you better say it. Where are you?
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I'm in Edinburgh, in Scotland, you did brilliantly.
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Edinburgh, I've actually been there. It is a beautiful city. The people are warm and friendly and wonderful.
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And it's within a reasonable distance also to drive out to go golfing. Can you guess where I'm thinking?
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Possibly the famous St Andrews.
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It's St Andrews.
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But you may not be aware that in Edinburgh we also have the home of golf, the original first golf course, which is Leith Golf Course, which is before the rules of 18 hole golfing came into being.
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Okay, I did not know that because in St Andrews they told me that was where it started. They have a museum and everything there.
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And I believe that is true, but only for when the rules were finally put together for modern golf, but golf itself predated St Andrews.
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Okay, well, I would love to go through your whole resume, but it would take us an hour to do that.
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So let me just read a couple of things here. You're a physicist, bee farmer, and a honey sensory analyst.
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Before I go too much farther, what in the world is a honey sensory analyst?
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So that is the scientific, the posh term for what has been made well known as the phrase honey sommelier by Marina Marchese of the American Honey Tasting Society.
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A honey sensory analyst is someone who has been trained in sensory analysis, which is a very fancy way of saying using the senses that we have to profile a food.
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So it's used extensively by wine sommeliers across the world. It's used by cheese experts.
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And in Italy, they have been refining the technique for approximately 40 years in honey sensory analysis.
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And my journey in honey sensory analysis started with courses in Italy to learn this technique.
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It's both an appreciation of honey as a fine food, but also the superpower, you could say, of starting to notice that we,
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just as we are capable of observing things with our eyes, we can also start to observe things through our nose and our tongue and also the flavors in our mouth and other sensations we get in our mouth with food.
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And we can use that as a fingerprint, you could say, to work out what plants are in a honey and also to appreciate the quality of that honey.
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So, you know, we might as well jump into this part now. I was going to save it for later. But let's go for it now.
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What does a honey sommelier do in, in, I mean, you explained how you get there and what it is, but what do you do with it? How do you help people with it?
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So perhaps the best way to start this conversation is to go through how I came across it. So I've been training to be a Scottish honey judge and part of that journey brought me into the,
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an understanding of this technique as done in Italy. And it is the principle method used for judging honey in Italy.
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And also other European countries have caught on to that and are forming honey competitions based on the Italian model.
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So principally it came about to judge honey and why would we do that? The main reason is to improve the quality of honey available in the marketplace.
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It's a way of getting producers to compete with each other in a positive way and to receive feedback from judges on the quality of their honey and from that they can work out hopefully how to improve the quality of their honey.
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And so Italy started this whole journey off with trying to improve their own market.
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In general though, it's a wonderful way of communicating honey to someone who hasn't tasted that particular sample.
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So its principle power is communication. It's the ability to describe what the honey experience is like.
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And that is really important not for communication but also in then using that for marketing your honey. Because honey is a food to be enjoyed ultimately.
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It's something to be, to take pleasure in. And we want to communicate that to our customer.
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We want our customer to get a real gist of what it is so they can make a purchase.
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And that's really one of the principal reasons for it is it enables the producer or the honey retailer to communicate effectively what this product is to the customer.
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Because unfortunately Eric, we live in a world in which most people do not like honey or do not love honey in the way that beekeepers love honey.
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So we need to try and form a movement in which we can champion honey not only as an aromatically rich food but also recognising how expensive it is for us to produce it.
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And this really is an equivalent to whiskey and caviar and other expensive fine foods.
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And until we start treating honey as a fine food, we're going to end up finding it difficult to create a passion for the product that we ultimately want to share and celebrate.
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That is beautifully said. I think it's great that honey is being finely used in other ways. It's not just going on bread and toast or whatever, but on charcuterie boards and paired with different cheeses and things like that.
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And I would assume as a sommelier that's part of what you're going to help people with. You can say this honey goes with such and such. Can you give us an example?
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Sure. So for example, for us in Scotland and I believe in large parts of the United States, there is rapeseed honey, which is a very sweet honey and it crystallises quite rapidly.
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So it's normally prepared in a soft set or creamed state, really buttery in texture, really refreshing, gives a cooling effect normally in the mouth as well as this lovely icing sugar sweetness.
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And this really pairs very well with a very strong tasting cheese. The strong flavours are balanced by the sweetness of this honey.
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And the other thing with this honey is because it is so viscous, it lends itself well to spreading, whereas a runnier honey would be more practically a problem when you physically want to spread it with a knife.
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And so this would be a good example.
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It would be so fun to have you at a party.
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Oh, absolutely.
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All right. If somebody wants a kind of training that you have received, where do you go to get it?
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So we have very recently founded in the United Kingdom, the Honey Guild of the United Kingdom.
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And this organisation is principally, its principal goals are to educate people in honey sensory analysis within the Italian school.
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We are also championing honey as a fine food.
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And the third aim of the Honey Guild of the United Kingdom is to study our own United Kingdom honey varieties, as well as other territories related to the United Kingdom, to better understand what honeys we have, how the flavour of those honeys vary,
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and also ultimately how to use it and how to enjoy it best.
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So in terms of training, we are running next year in July, a accredited course, an introduction to honey sensory analysis in Edinburgh.
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And it will be led by our two accredited Italian teachers from Bologna.
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And this is a fantastic opportunity to not only visit Scotland, but to get accreditation in honey sensory analysis.
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And should you wish to continue to sit the final exam, you can then do the advanced course afterwards in Italy, and the exam ultimately after that in Italy.
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So it's a wonderful opportunity.
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That sounds wonderful.
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So if you have your website in the show notes, in case people want to look any of this stuff up, I want to hear what it's like just day to day.
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What is it like being a beekeeper in Scotland?
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We have many challenges, the weather being one of the principal problems.
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It never gets too hot, so temperature tends not to go over 72 Fahrenheit, and it never really gets that cold.
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So at the moment it's about 40 Fahrenheit. We are a maritime climate in Scotland and the UK, so the weather is generally defined by the Atlantic.
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And so we tend to have starting in December with winter.
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We kind of have a long winter that goes from December into May.
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So then we have the last week of April, first week of May, we have a really, you could say intense, but very short spring in which the temperature starts, the sun starts to come out more.
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It becomes warmer and we also have first spring crops.
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So those are principally in the in the cities.
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We have sycamore trees.
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We have hawthorn, which is used a lot by farmers and also in the cities as a hedging plant.
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And those generally produce a lot of, make significant contributions to our honey.
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Sometimes we have clover in June, sometimes it can be a dearth.
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So in the city of Edinburgh, we have what's called the June gap.
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And this is when the spring flowers have finished, but the summer flowers unfortunately haven't started.
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And this is becoming a little bit better because our local governments have stopped a lot of their lawn cutting.
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And so the white clover is coming back.
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And this is what would have flowered in this time period.
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And so beekeepers are maybe not producing a harvest of clover, but they're not having to feed their bees as much in June for them to survive June.
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And then in July, then the fire week will start.
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Our cities normally produce a lot of basswood honey.
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And our basswood is very minty and mentholic and it's really nice.
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In the hills in July, we have Erykahs, so types of heather that flower.
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And a lot of beekeepers have to make a choice.
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Do they wish to produce basswood honey or do they want to go out into the hills and produce bell heather honey?
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And that really can be a gamble.
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And then our most famous honey is the ling heather.
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The ling heather is an August crop and it is a very common heather that grows all over the hills of Scotland.
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And it produces a very intense smell of vinegar, very earthy.
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Its flavour is kind of earthy, caramel-like.
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It can be very chemical, very bitter.
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And it varies depending on its location to some extent.
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But it's also got this very interesting physical state, which is gelatinous.
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It's not a liquid or a solid when it's in a near monofluorotype.
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A lot of beekeepers love to produce this honey.
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It seems to be our speciality honey.
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And just in context, Scotland, the UK and Norway are the biggest producers of this honey.
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But it's also incredibly difficult for us to produce it as well.
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Because in August, the temperature starts to go down.
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It's harder for the bees to remove water from the nectar to refine it down.
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And depending on how strong your colony is, it's a very difficult plant for the bees to extract nectar from.
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And so you might have to move your bees into a very remote place where they have no choice but to go for ling heather.
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If there's something like Fasilia or another easy crop, then the bees will just prefer to go there
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because they're really quite clever animals, as we all know.
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And they would prefer an easy job to a hard job.
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Let me just take a minute here to thank our presenting sponsor, Man Lake.
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I've been asked, does Man Lake provide equipment for commercial beekeepers?
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Yes.
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Do they provide equipment for side liners?
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Yes.
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How about beginners?
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Of course.
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Protective gear, yes. Queens, nukes and packages, yes. Processing equipment, yes, yes and yes.
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There is a reason that Man Lake is the number one supplier for thousands and thousands of beekeepers.
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In fact, I could give you a hundred reasons to try them, but let's start with just ten.
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As in, ten dollars off your first $100 purchase with the discount code MLBLOV10.
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Don't worry, it's all in the show notes.
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Seriously, you'll be happy you gave Man Lake a try.
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And now, back to the guest.
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What are the important things about our August Heather Honey season?
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It's not so much that it's a wonderful honey and it's unique.
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It's actually that it's almost like an annual pilgrimage for beekeepers.
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We leave the city with tibes in our cars and we go out into the middle of nowhere into these 3,000-foot hills filled with Heather.
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And in August, it's beautifully purple, the whole place is purple with the blooming of the Kaluna Volgaris,
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which is the scientific name for Ling Heather.
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And it's not just a case of dumping the bees and going home,
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but we have a tradition of having a picnic on the Heather.
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It's a day out and it's something we look forward to in our calendar.
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It's a really nice cultural event.
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When did you say that Ling Heather is in bloom?
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It's an August plant, so it blooms from August until the first week of September.
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That's when I need to come visit you.
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That's right.
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Sounds beautiful. That's amazing.
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It is wonderful.
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And what I've missed out is the spring honey is in the countryside is mainly rapeseeds.
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So, for example, in the fields outside Edinburgh, and most of the east coast of Scotland, which is flat, is rapeseeds for the production of vegetable oil.
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But we have a great relationship generally with the arable farmers to have bees on their land,
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and we boost their harvest of rapeseed by giving extra pollination to the crop,
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and if we're lucky, we'll also take home some rapeseed honey as well.
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So that kind of in short is what it's the kind of beekeeping year in Scotland.
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In terms of other difficulties, in the urban environments like Edinburgh, it's very crammed.
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It's quite densely populated.
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We've got about 500,000 people in the city and it's constantly.
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It's a very beautiful city as you've alluded to,
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and so people are flocking here from the rest of the UK to live here.
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And so places to keep bees out of the way of the public is always a challenge.
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You need to be very creative and you have to have a lot of stamina to persist to find places where you can keep bees.
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And so a lot of people prefer, if they can, to keep them at home in the suburbs
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or to keep the bees on a farm where the farming community, they know about animals and they don't have a problem with bees.
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And they know that they are helping them in their crops.
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And with our subsidy system, believe that they get some money for having, for hosting you to happen with the beehives.
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It's good for sustainability.
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So are you talking about the farmers that do that, like a pollination service fee?
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Very good question.
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We do not have pollination services really at all,
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apart from some parts of the south of England where they have orchards and in crops where it's important.
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And that's one of the problems.
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Apart from the sale of honey or the sale of equipment or bees,
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it's not that we don't have that income from pollination contracts as you would have in the United States.
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So the subsidy system is government then, right?
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Yes.
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OK.
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So landowners get a subsidy for doing various agricultural schemes.
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Beekeepers can support arable farmers in achieving some of those subsidies on occasion, or at least support their application.
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So on an average to good year, if you have hives that are out, suburbs or country,
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give us an idea of what kind of a honey harvest you're going to have.
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Is it a harvest once a year and about how many pounds?
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This is a really wonderful question because one of the things we're trying to educate people,
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or at least make people aware of, is that it is better if we think about harvesting as a continuous process,
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little and often rather than leaving everything to the end of the year.
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And the reason I say that is if we have some of our beekeepers do have bees in the edge of the city and near a source of heather,
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what can happen is the very subtle honeys will be blended naturally by the bees with a stronger honey like the ling heather.
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And then if you process all that honey for the whole of the year together, you're going to end up with a blend.
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And so if you wanted to produce honey which is more subtle, or you want a purer sample such as to try to get a monofluorol honey,
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you need to extract or keep those honeys separate.
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So the other thing I should mention is we are by and large a hobbyist community.
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So Scotland's about five and a half million people, which is about the population of South Carolina and Minnesota.
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We have about 2000 hobbyist beekeepers who are members of the Scottish Beekeepers Association,
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which is the national body for beekeeping in Scotland.
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And we have an education system to teach beekeeping.
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I'm one of the master beekeepers in Scotland and also support the exams.
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We have also approximately 40 professional beekeepers who are members of the Bee Farmers Association.
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In terms of harvests, on average, I mean, it's all genetics is everything a beekeeping.
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Having a bee which is really well adapted to your climate and is able to take advantage,
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is ready to take advantage of the nectar when it comes in, is so important.
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So it can range, but they say on average maybe two supers a year.
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So that would be what, 40 pounds per hive?
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Or more.
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In a good year, much more.
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And with the right genetics, maybe double or double and a half of that.
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So maybe 40 to 60 pounds per hive, something like that.
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Okay.
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Tell me about pest problems.
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Do you have the same Varroa mite issues that we do here?
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Yes, we've had Varroa for about 20 years and it is a big problem.
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We have a strategy which is done in collaboration with the Scottish Government, which is an integrated pest management system
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that we advocate and that is basically to not just rely on one treatment,
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but to consider the beekeeping season and use multiple types of treatments to reduce your Varroa loads.
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So that could be non-chemical methods like trapping the queen.
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I should add that a lot of our bees tend to, the queen tends to go off lay naturally in Scotland in June.
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I think in other countries that's not the case and it might correspond to what I was talking about with the June gap.
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So we kind of have a queen caging built in, you could say.
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What we would call a brood break.
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Yes, exactly.
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And then you've got non-chemical treatments like removing sacrificing drones because the Varroa prefer to hide in the drone comb,
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as well as approved medical, organic and non-organic methods of eliminating Varroa mites.
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However, there is, and we will have a talk by one of our UK experts in practicing this, which is Steve Riley.
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And there's also Professor Steve Martin, who is talking about a way of getting a solution to the Varroa problem in the UK,
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which is effectively a no treatment solution, but it's a rational way of doing it whereby in summary, you measure, measure, measure.
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And that's perhaps the best advice that we can give.
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Rather than treating the bees, check, is it a big mite load?
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Is the mite load actually increasing or is it staying the same or is it low?
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So for example, for many beekeepers, there's been quite a low Varroa load the last two years and some beekeepers don't treat at all.
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And I think a lot of it depends on the environment and also how we keep our bees.
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So I would think that if you are a nomadic beekeeper and you're bringing your hives to different sources and trucking them about,
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they're going to get really stressed and that's definitely going to mean that their Varroa controls going to be affected.
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But if you're not moving your bees and you're trying to ensure they're not so stressed,
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you may find that your bees are actually more resistant to Varroa than you thought.
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And I should say that we have had Varroa for a very long time and there has, to some extent, it is a bit strange that it still is a problem
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because some countries like Cuba, for example, because they did not have the funding to use treatments,
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a lot of their bees died from Varroa, but those that survived repopulated the country and now they don't need to treat and everything's back to normal.
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So in some ways, what we beekeepers are, the problem with Varroa.
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So Cuba, it was natural selection that just happened automatically. So there are Varroa resistant.
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Yes, you could say Darwinian selection.
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That makes a ton of sense. I really agree with something you said a few minutes ago about testing.
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I believe personally, and I know all of the treatments, this is very controversial, but I don't believe in treating bees if the Varroa count is low.
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I mean, what's the point? Because no matter what you treat them with, it's going to have some effect on the bees, some negative effect.
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So if the Varroa load is low, we don't need to treat. If we're testing and it's high, we do need to treat.
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The other thing about testing is it will tell us if what we're doing to fight Varroa is working or not.
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If you find it's working great, if it's not, got to do something different.
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That's absolutely right. And that is the advice that the National Bee Unit and the Scottish Government are actually advising,
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is please measure and if the mites are above a threshold, you need to really consider doing a treatment.
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But if it's not, there's no reason to treat.
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Does the UK have the same standards as the EU? I've been reading a lot about how Neonix have been outlawed.
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There's a lot of controls on glyphosate and stuff. Is it the same where you are?
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Yes, there are occasionally, you could say, licenses put in to protect some farmers in the UK to grow sugar beet
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for domestic production of sugar, in which I believe they are able to use Neonix.
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But it would best to, don't quote me on it. But in general, they are still banned, to my knowledge.
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Well, as you know, here in the States, it's the wild west and it's kind of anything goes for the most part.
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California is putting some strategic laws in place, but I don't know. In my opinion, it's not enough yet.
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So I think we can learn something from what you guys are doing over there.
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Well, I think it's one of the, I think the more we learn about bees, the more we learn about ourselves to some extent.
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And, you know, it's all these chemicals have an effect on us and on our bees.
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The bees to some extent, I always like to see as similar to a cell in our own body.
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So the bee itself isn't the organism, it's the colony.
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And the bee is able to sacrifice itself for the colony.
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If it's diseased, if it has a chemical poison on it, it'll die outside the hive.
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And those bees, which are healthy, will remain in the hive.
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And so it's kind of ensures the survival.
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Well, I think certainly the exposure to chemicals is a massive problem.
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And the more organic we can go, the better.
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Absolutely. It's not that easy to control.
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I have neighbors around me with this roundup ready alfalfa. I can't keep my bees out of their alfalfa.
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I think you also asked about pests.
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So we do have areas of Scotland which are Varroa Free, the very north of Scotland.
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And also we have an island which is quite famous in the UK, the Isle of Colancy,
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where what the bee farmer that lives there has, you could say, a reserve
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for the native dark bee of Scotland, which he breeds and also offers the queens for sale.
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But the other interesting aspect of that island of Colancy and others is that the Varroa mite is there.
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So it's, you're able to keep bees in the old fashioned without treatments.
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And, you know, they even still have the Browler mites, which is a wingless fly,
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which is almost pretty much disappeared in the UK because the chemicals that we use to treat our bees
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are also killing that pest as well.
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So what else can we learn from you, people all over the world?
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You've got a specific climate, specific way of doing beekeeping there.
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What else can you share with us?
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I know before we were recording you were helping me with some ideas on winter
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and how we can better get through winter. But what else can you share?
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I think one of the most important things is you have to know your bees.
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You have to understand the personality of the colony because every colony is different.
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And sometimes just the subspecies name like Lagustica or the Caucasian,
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it doesn't really give enough information as to the behavior of that bee.
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So you have to really understand and you have to have a colony for a couple of years to see what they're like.
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When do they like to swarm and how much food do they like? Do they eat a lot? Do they not eat a lot?
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And my approach to beekeeping is really a cooperation between myself and the bees.
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So I have colonies that don't produce much honey. They like to produce, they eat a lot.
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But what they do like to do is they like to bring in pollen and they like to produce lots of bees.
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And so this colony, if I were to try and force to be a honey production colony, would be a disaster.
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The harvest from this colony is bees for nooks and pollen.
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And it's working with the bees, realizing what skills that colony has and using it in your operation
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as opposed to force having this algorithmic idea of forcing the bees to all be the same and to do one specific task.
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As they talk about tailored medicine in the future, this is like tailored beekeeping.
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And it's really what I think differentiates the beginner from the master slash intermediate beekeeper is this understanding.
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I like that a lot. Tell me about the joy you get from beekeeping. What do you love about bees?
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I think they continuously surprise you. So you can be quite stressed and you need to get, say, swarm prevention procedures done.
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Or maybe you need to just get around three apiaries in a day because you're going away somewhere on the weekend.
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And you're just, you know, you're in this stress state. But then once you open up that colony of bees, everything goes down to peace.
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And I think it's that mesmerizing effect of the bees, that their ability to calm you is so magical.
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It brings you into the moment. The other thing I love, and this is becoming more and more apparent,
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is not just the honeybees, but the other insects in the environment, which I would never have noticed.
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Have I not been a beekeeper? I start to notice, oh, that doesn't look like a honeybee.
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And but it kind of does. What is that? And then you discover there's this whole world of these other bees, solitary bees and wasps,
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different types of wasps, not just yellow jackets, you know, and it's just wonderful.
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So this year, for example, we had a lot of dragonflies in August and September, just basking on the hives.
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It's just magical. I do. I find that the bee hives are this magnet for wildlife.
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Wherever I put bees, I don't know if it's just because the bees bring you into the states,
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or if the smell of honey or the smell of the insects themselves is bringing animals closer to them.
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So a lot of the time I have deer sleeping near the hives. We've got owls and just various animals seem to be living near the bees.
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It's just fabulous. So I just think that it connects connecting yourself to nature and the world, the real world around you,
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not the technology world that we that we're kind of stuck in all day is just so refreshing.
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And I love how you mentioned the calming effect that they can have when you open up a hive.
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But I also know people newer at this that it's not calming. They get stressed. They're like, I hear buzzing.
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I'm afraid I'm going to get stung. What do I do? What advice do you have for people like that to help them be calm and get in that zen?
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I believe there's two animals that can smell fear in humans, the honey bee and dogs. And if you're afraid, they pick up on it immediately.
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And I think the other aspect of fear and the anxiety, if you have that with bees, is you're more clumsy.
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And the main thing that the bees really despise is vibration.
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You have to learn to be almost like this slow robot as you move in the hive. Everything takes, everything slows down when you're in the beehive.
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You can't be fast or they'll just go mad. Especially I should say, a lot of our bees in Scotland are by American standards quite defensive.
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So I would not just wear a veil. I would wear a full bee suit all the time. I don't trust my bees to be docile.
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I have docile bees, but I know that they are independent wild creatures.
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And if the temperature just changes suddenly or I've just had the hive open too long or I dropped a frame and you hear that football stadium howl,
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you know they're going to come for you. So you just, you need to always be aware that you're not dealing with a docile domestic creature.
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These are wild and part of the things I love about the bees is they live with you and they can always leave if they want, if that makes sense.
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A bit like cats, you know, they're always free to leave. They're not imprisoned, but they stay because it's a good deal having a beekeeper to care for them, right?
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Yeah. I mean, we think we can control them, but no. In fact, the term beekeeper, yeah, we probably better change that to something better.
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I think there are not many beekeepers. Most people are bee slaves. We don't, we're not on top of our bees.
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And I think that is the skill that we need to get to as well. And it comes with getting to know your bees. I'm not there yet, but having everything, particularly in the winter,
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the wonderful thing about winter is it gives the beekeeper space to plan next year, have all that equipment ready.
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But if you don't do that, and I've done it many, many times, you start the season, it all kicks off and it's, you just can't keep up, especially as your number of colonies grows.
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Yeah. Okay, before I let you go, Gino, and I didn't forewarn you of this, I apologize, but I ask everybody this that comes on the show.
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Every beekeeper has some kind of a wild, crazy or painful or embarrassing or something story. I would love for you to share one that really stands out in your mind.
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I think one of the strangest things I've ever seen, and this is when I was a beginner, it's never repeated. So we have a, you could say like a driving license test in Scotland and in the England as well in Ireland,
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it's called the basic beekeeper. And it's where an experienced beekeeper, a master beekeeper will come to your apiary and will effectively examine you on basic bee knowledge, bee hive knowledge, and ask you about things in the hive and, you know, how you keep your bees, blah, blah, blah.
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So we were doing this and we discovered a queen cell. And just as I picked the frame up, the actual capping of the queen cell very suddenly just burst like a champagne bottle.
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And the Virgin Queen just just kind of like flew out at high speed into a basket in the corner of the garden. And it was such a shock that ever the three of us that were there, we just couldn't believe it.
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It was like they'd never seen this before either. And then we managed to gather up and put it into a hive. Since then, I've never seen this again.
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It's always a case of the Virgin Queen very softly nibbling its way out and it's never the champagne bottle effect.
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What do you think caused that? That is really strange.
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I don't know. I, what I imagine what might have happened is either it got really frightened and the workers or the Virgin itself had already nibbled the capping off.
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And so it was loose and it just kind of burst out. But it appeared to us as if it would, you know, it went from zero to here with one go. No idea.
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That is really different. Hey, Gino, thank you so much for being with me today. Appreciate it.
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Anytime. It's been an absolute pleasure, Eric.
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And now in the news, something that probably won't surprise a lot of us and the headline reads global honey crisis, testing technology and local sourcing sores amid fraud and tampering concerns.
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The world beekeeping awards will not grant a prize for honey next year due to the quote inability to thoroughly test honey for adulteration.
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The announcement comes amid the rise of honey fraud in the EU, where a 2023 investigation found that 46% of 147 honey samples tested were likely contaminated with low cost plant syrups.
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At Bimonida, the International Federation of Beekeepers Associations organizes the event at its Congress, whose 49th edition will be held in Copenhagen, Denmark in September 2025.
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The conference brings together beekeepers, scientists and other stakeholders. This will be the first time no awards will be presented for honey at the event.
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Now, on a more positive note, scientists have just discovered a new bee in Texas and it's blue.
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Now, if you haven't seen the story on this, you can look it up. It looks like it's in the Journal of Ecology and Evolution.
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They have named this bee Andrina androphobia.
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The interesting thing to me is that it seems like most native bees, they don't look like honeybees.
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This one looks a lot like a honeybee, but it's blue. It is very cool. Go ahead and look it up.
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Thank you so much for joining us here on Bee Love Beekeeping presented by Man Lake.
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Please, right now, hit those follow or subscribe buttons 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.
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Thank you.
