Transcript
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May I have your attention please?
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The following is not the real Jeff Voxworthy.
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If when you get stung by a bee, you apologize because you did something wrong.
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You might be a beekeeper.
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If you have lost more than five half-tools, and your lawnmower has found two of them,
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you might be a beekeeper.
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If you have replaced the grass on your front lawn with clover, you might love bees.
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Welcome, welcome to the first premiere episode of Bee Love Beekeeping podcast presented by our friends at Man Lake.
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Before we get started, special thanks goes out to the not-real Jeff Voxworthy for that fun intro.
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We'll be hearing more from him in future episodes.
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Hey, we're new and you're new at listening to us, so let me give you an idea of what this show is all about.
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At Bee Love, we're all about honeybees and of course the beekeepers.
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We're going to have conversations with beekeepers from all over the world, from small hobbyists to large commercial operators.
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We'll review new products, try it in true methods and hear horror stories.
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And we're going to have fun.
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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, there's no better way to learn the pros, the cons, the blood, sweat and tears than from real, live beekeepers.
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Bee's beekeepers and fun beekeeping stories, it's all about the love.
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Let's start off today with beekeeping in the news.
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Then we'll go to Florida for a conversation with a beekeeper who can tell us all about how the recent hurricanes in southeastern U.S. have affected bees and their keepers and what we can all do to help.
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And then we'll just wing it from there.
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So, sit back, relax and enjoy and let's get to some news first.
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Hey, who says beekeepers aren't cool?
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This first article comes from Town & Country magazine.
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It's called What's with the Buzz About Beekeeping?
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The latest must-have hobby for the super rich is bringing a whole new meaning to the idea of hive mentality.
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In certain circles, the buzz about bees has become deafening. Take, for example, earlier this year when David Beckham exchanged beekeeping tips with King Charles III.
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Or when the singer, Zayn Malik, gave Kelly Clarkson honey from his farm during an appearance on her talk show.
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Clarkson revealed that she also has bees on her property.
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Should you find yourself in a conversation with Beyonce or Martha Stewart, bring up their backyard hives and you'll surely win some points or a jar of honey.
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Now, this is getting a little long, so to paraphrase, they quote someone here named Richard Christensen, who is a beekeeper in the Hollywood Hills.
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And he has bee hives in the yards of people like LeBron James and Julianne Moore.
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And he likens the process of making honey to making wine.
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There's a real complexity, snobbery and rivalry in the honey world, he says.
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Yao King, who runs a New York City hedge fund, bought a home in Bucks County, Pennsylvania in 2020 and added hives to help keep his small farms ecosystem in balance.
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Quote, it's a nice way to get out of the city and use my brain in a different way, he says.
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Out here is a beekeeper, you're problem solving, like, oh, the bee population in this hive is dwindling, what's causing it?
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Sorry, I didn't write this stuff, I'm just reading it for you.
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The bottom line is beekeeping really is becoming a cool it kind of thing to do.
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You've got Samuel L. Jackson, Martha Stewart, Gwyneth Paltrow, lots of others getting into it.
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Gwyneth Paltrow has even advocated apotherapy treatments to relieve inflammation and bee stings are said to help with everything from Lyme disease to scarring.
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All right, that's quotes from the Town and Country article.
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Now on a more serious note, from environmentalamerica.org, the headline, bees noses are blinded by air pollution.
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New study shows air pollution is making it tough for bees to navigate their surroundings.
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Bees have an acute sense of smell, which they use to scout out the best dinner spots in town and find their way home after a long journey.
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But when air pollution gets involved, bees get lost.
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According to a new report on how air pollution affects bees, air pollution not only crowds bees smell centers, confusing them.
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It also blocks sense from being able to travel as far as they should.
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When air pollution is high, some sense are only able to travel a third as far as they would through clear skies.
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This severely handicaps bees ability to orient themselves, find sources of food and make their way back home.
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Huh.
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So bottom line, keep your bees away from air pollution or keep air pollution away from your bees.
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Either way, not as easy as it sounds.
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I'd like to welcome to the show today Andrew Wagner all the way from Winterhaven, Florida.
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How are you?
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Good, Eric.
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Thanks for having us.
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We're going to be talking about hurricanes like crazy here in just a second, but give everybody an idea of where in Florida Winterhaven is.
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Sure.
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Right now we're at the Man Lake facility in Winterhaven.
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It is in the middle of Polk County, which that county is particularly centralized in the state of Florida.
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So to give people an idea, we're about three and a half hours away from Miami and we're about three and a half hours away from Georgia.
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So we're truly right in the middle.
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And where are you from Orlando?
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About 35 minutes, give or take, depending on the traffic.
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Everybody knows Disney World.
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So we'll that can be the center of our universe here today.
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Absolutely.
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Anyway, let's take these in order.
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I know for you personally and where you are, Milton was a lot bigger deal than Haleen was, but give everybody an idea of what happened with Hurricane Haleen, where it went.
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And then we'll talk about how it affected beekeepers.
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We all know the horrible human tragedy that's happened.
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Anyway, go ahead.
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Tell us about Haleen.
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Sure.
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So let's start.
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That's a good place to start.
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Haleen, it took what seems now is a usual path, but for, you know, decades and decades, that big bend area of steam hatching, that boating community really had been untouched from hurricanes.
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And in the last couple of years, they've had not only Haleen, but Adalia and Debbie as well.
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And so what Haleen did, and you know, the waters in the Gulf are at the warmest they've ever been.
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Okay.
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And that seems to be a reoccurring theme.
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And that feeds the hurricane strength.
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Yes.
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That's like gasoline, right?
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And so that's why you're seeing a lot of these storms initially being looked at as a potential.
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Tropical storm.
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And then, you know, they're jumping up to a cat three cat four Ian was almost a cat five.
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So, and that's because of that, that warm water in the Gulf.
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So what Haleen did was she, as she came up the western coast of Florida, she created a ton of storm surge, right?
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Which we're all familiar with from watching the news up the coast.
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And then as she crashed into that big bend area, she just continued right up through Georgia in South Carolina.
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And of course, you know, the tragedy in North Carolina as well, it's everywhere.
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But Haleen did, we had never seen a storm like Haleen at that time that just had so much widespread damage through, you know, the southeast.
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And so, you know, one of the problems is that as you get out with Florida into areas like southeastern Georgia, the buildings and homes, they're not equipped.
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The roads are not built the same way they are down here.
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So that's why the devastation seems to be a little bit and it's more, quite frankly.
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Yeah.
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So from beekeepers that you have talked to, where was the worst damage?
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Where were people hit the hardest?
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Specifically with Haleen, people were hit the hardest in North Florida, Jacksonville area, as well as it caught up that middle.
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Southeastern Georgia, Black Shear, Homerville, Brockston, Claxton, all of these areas, Jessup, Baxley, these are massive commercial hubs in Georgia for beekeeping.
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And there was just devastation everywhere.
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Well, I even saw a video of a hobby beekeeper that has a little hobby farm in North Carolina, Flash Flood hits, and he's taken videos literally of his hives being washed away in a river of water.
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Absolutely.
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That made it real to me.
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Yeah.
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Because he could do nothing to stop it.
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Right.
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And you know, if they're not being washed away, lids are being blown away if they're not strapped down.
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And then that's going to be catastrophic for that hive.
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Of course, you've got the physical damage of trees going down and falling into yards as well.
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But you know, there's other factors that people don't realize.
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So if you're a beekeeper and you may have bees in three different counties, how do you get to them when there's a gas?
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issue?
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Yeah.
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Yeah, you can't.
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You can't even get out to all your bees.
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People, we forget that, you know, these men and women aren't looking in their backyard to all of their livestock.
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Their livestock is spread throughout based on pollination contracts, honey spots, forage availability, different factors.
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But when you're running on a generator, there's no gas in, you know, in town, you can't get gas in.
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These men and women have problems even getting, you know, getting out to their bees.
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And then you have the issues of roads, roads being closed.
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So it's a another layer because not only are they dealing with horse, the devastation in their family, they may have their personal property damaged.
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They may be without power and situations like that.
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But they've also got to worry about their, their livelihood, which many times they can't get to for a bet.
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So there's nothing that they can do really to help them.
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What about the other thing that I hadn't really thought about that I've been told since is the forage because of the winds and the rain.
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How much of the forage was lost?
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And this is more than just Florida we're talking about.
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Of course, of course.
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So when you think about forage for bees, though, a lot of it is still wild, right?
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And so when you have destruction of trees that are nectar and pollen producing plants, right?
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Fall crops that naturally are coming up that these bees depend on and feed on the storms.
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They just, they take that whole that forage away.
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And they take it away in a couple of ways.
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So the first way is actually physically being broken, right?
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Trees, plants, shrubs ripped out, destroyed.
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That's going to kill the forage.
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But also, you know, you have to consider the fact that those trees that plant those plants and shrubs, those are also living organisms.
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They too get stressed.
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And so it's very common that you'll see forage start to stress bloom.
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That's what they'll call it.
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It's a bloom out, but there's nothing there or they won't bloom at all.
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And when you have a disaster like in nature such as this, like it was back with Ian as well and Milton afterwards, it takes some time for the ecosystem to also recover.
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So you're not talking about immediate impact today.
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You're also got to think about, you know, what does it look like six, seven, eight, nine, 12 months from now?
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Is that crop that was here eight months ago, will it come up and come in the same way eight months from now?
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Right. And those are all kind of wait and see.
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And unfortunately, if those, that doesn't happen, the responsibility, the feed bills are, they can be astronomical.
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Yeah. And we'll talk in a few minutes about ways that people can help.
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I would think just adding on to what you said in a place like North Carolina, you know, you're a little further north, maybe a little higher elevation.
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Yup.
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And beekeepers were probably depending on some kind of a fall nectar flow to get their bees through winter.
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If that's taken away and they've got winter after, yeah, they have to feed or even if they haven't lost bees yet, they're going to lose bees.
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Yes. Yeah. And that's, that's, that's another situation that's, there's that wrinkle that North Carolina has, right, is that there's a good, their winter is going to be very different than a winter in Southeast Georgia or Florida.
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And so those bees got annihilated, to be quite honest, you know, in October at the end of the year where, you know, now these beekeepers have had to prep their hives to be big and full and strong going into winter.
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So that way the bees were able to carry that colony through into spring for the next generation. So it does. It puts another layer on it for, especially for North North Carolina beekeepers to, you know, have to try to prep that hive a little bit more than usual, right?
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It to try to make sure that it gets through.
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Yeah, for sure. Okay. Do you have any idea on numbers on and probably more from commercial beekeepers than others?
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How many hives were actually lost between the two storms?
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Oh, and Holene and Milton, we've got to be at least between 75, maybe 100,000 hives.
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That's in the ballpark of what I've heard as well. I don't know that there's any scientific numbers, but that, I think that's about right.
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Yeah. Well, you have to just look at the data of the number of hives that are in those paths.
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Yeah. I think, right? And you see a lot of that, the follow up with the beekeepers afterwards, lots of drowning. If it wasn't wind and rain, it was water, right?
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And flooding. There's hundreds of thousands of colonies that are maybe not as affected physically by the damage, but they are physically affected by the forage.
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Right. And that's, and so the effects are go far beyond just the direct losses even.
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Yeah. So 75 to 100,000 colonies with direct loss, hundreds of thousands more with forage issues right now.
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Easily.
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And we're going to talk about how to help, but let's talk about Milton next.
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Milton came through because that was more targeted right at where you are. What was that like leading up to that? I mean, forget bees for a minute.
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Yeah.
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Your family, your loved ones, what was going through your head when you saw this thing headed straight for you?
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Yeah. Yeah. Well, I could tell you exactly. I was finishing up at a conference on a Saturday morning, you know, about two Saturdays ago and driving home and we had plans original.
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We had just started putting in the original plans for hurricane relief for Haleen, right? Haleen had just happened.
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And I was driving home and on Sunday morning, I remember waking up and having coffee in the morning, just turning TV on, watching the news.
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And there was tropical storm Milton building in the right off of Mexico in that cold coast. And it was, they were just saying it wasn't very big at the time, but that it was a very unusual storm because it had been something like 100 years since a storm had started in the coast, in the Gulf Coast.
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And because of it, there was nowhere for it to go. It's really except straight across.
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Typically, your hurricanes will start in the Atlantic, come across and come under and over into this, into the Gulf. But for it to start there, it was going to be a direct hit.
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So preparation was a little, a little weird. I mean, originally, where, where we are in my family and I, where we live in Lakeland, Florida, we were right in the line leading up until Milton made landfall.
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At that time, when Milton made landfall, it had dipped south just a little bit. And so we had some damage, of course, you know, some physical damage and property damage, but we were pretty, we were spared for the most part, but five and 10 minutes, the other direction.
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It looked like a totally different world. And the unfortunate thing about a hurricane, Eric, is that you feel fortunate that it missed you, but you know that when it misses you, it didn't miss someone else.
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Yeah. Right. And so it's a, it's a weird feeling. So it's just, yeah.
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Yeah.
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Your blessing is somebody else's curse, almost like a survivor syndrome sort of thing, I would think.
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Yeah. And then after that, we knew immediately because in the whole Tampa, Fort Myers, Naples, that whole Gulf Coast, the then Western coast of Florida at this time of year, because of Brazilian pepper, which is a massive statewide, almost statewide crop,
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or, you know, two thirds of the state from, let's say Orlando down to like Miami, the beekeepers pile in. So at that time of year, you have hundreds of thousands of bees in the state of Florida.
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That's why these hurricanes are becoming so catastrophic because if Florida is the mecca for building bees, because beekeepers, what they do on the commercial level, primarily is they make bees for two reasons for crop production.
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So, you know, fruits and vegetables that they're going to pollinate, or they raise bees to sell them to bigger Midwest operations, right, for other types of contracts that they do.
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And so what people have to understand is that there's about 800,000 hives in the state of Florida during the month of October.
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That is a massive number of bees. They come from Wisconsin, they come from Michigan, New Jersey, New York. They all come down as snowbirds to Florida to winter, and then they go out to California.
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So when hurricane season, being in that September and October, the timing of it, it's just a collision course because you've got hundreds of thousands of bees that are in the state of Florida.
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And then that's not even counting what's in South Georgia. And it's also that storm season as well. So it's really adding another challenge.
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So people, they haven't bounced back yet from Hurricane Ian, and now they're figuring out how to bounce back from Milton.
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Yeah, and then you got the one-two punch.
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Exactly.
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Oh, Helene and Milton. All right. We want to help. How can we help?
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Okay, well, Man Lake has partnered, we are an official partner with Greater Good Charities. Greater Good Charities is an amazing organization who their mission is people, pet, and planet.
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And during Hurricane Ian, we had the amazing opportunity to connect with these people, and they helped fund 500,000 pounds of syrup for affected beekeepers and nearly 50,000 pounds of dry pollen.
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So in light of Hurricane Milton, tomorrow, Saturday, October 19th, Greater Good and Man Lake, Gloria State Beekeepers Association, with the help of Cargill, we will be passing out about 26,000 gallons of syrup to affected beekeepers and another 38,000 pounds of dry pollen.
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And almost all of it is with the help of Greater Good Charities. And so, you know, my recommendation, the work that they do on a human level, the work that they do on a pet level, I mean, they've been evacuating shelter pets out of North Carolina, right?
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And they do a ton of things. And so, if people are interested in how to help, they can check out Greater Good Charities because they can actually donate to specific funds and projects that they are involved in.
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And that's at greatergood.org. We'll stick that in the show notes.
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Oh, that'd be wonderful.
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This is actually coming out after your event.
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Sure.
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This episode will go live on the 24th of October.
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Very cool.
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But this, just because you missed this, or maybe you don't hear this podcast until December or something, this is going to be an ongoing problem for quite a few months.
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So don't feel like you're hearing this too late to help. You can still go make a donation. They will make sure that whatever kind of bee supplies are needed are going to get to the right place.
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Absolutely.
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And I just want to make sure that you're aware that you're not going to be able to help.
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And I'm going to be able to help you out a little bit.
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Man Lake is helping out. You mentioned to me that you have another event coming up in a couple of weeks. So early November.
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Yes.
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And I'm trying to help out as many North Florida beekeepers in southeastern Georgia beekeepers that we can. And there should be another event a little bit down the line in South Carolina as well.
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And recently this week, greater good and Man Lake, we sent 15,000 pounds of dry sugar to North Carolina to the beekeepers Association in North Carolina.
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And they will help facilitate it out to people that way who may be in need of additional feed in order to help their bees get through the winter.
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I would love to put a face to this whole thing. Can you tell me about one specific beekeeper that you know? Tell me their name or they can remain anonymous.
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But I'd love to hear a story about one specific beekeeper. What happened to them? How they're dealing with it? Can you think of someone like that that you could tell us about?
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Yeah, I will. And I will keep their name anonymous.
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Sure.
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Just because it's out of fairness to them.
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One of the first calls that I received after Hurricane Helene, a friend of mine, a beekeeper, commercial beekeeper, they had ordered tanker load of syrup because they knew that they needed feed for their bees.
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About an hour and a half later, they called me and they said, you're going to have to cancel that. I don't even know if we're going to be able to get to our shop for seven days.
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There's trees. They couldn't. There was no gas.
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Meanwhile, their roof was ripped off of their home.
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I mean, he's got small children. You're dealing with just like Armageddon almost. You've got your family and all of the stuff that you've got to have to handle on that side of things.
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You're not able to be there. You're trying to get to bees. And by the time you're getting to them four, five, six, seven days later.
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If there was water and it hadn't receded and you were able to get them up and out, I mean, those hives are all gone.
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And all of those hives, it's so sad because it just affects them.
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I think as humans, we take for granted what we see in the produce section a lot of times.
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And we forget bees, blueberries, cranberries, apples, pumpkins. I mean, you think about all of these things, watermelon.
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Almond milk. Almond. Exactly. I mean, you can go down the line. All of that's done by the honeybee.
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And without these people able to do that, we have a food problem. That's what happens. It becomes bigger than the honeybees.
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Wow. It's kind of scary when you put it that way. How something like this is much more than just affecting a few bees or a few people,
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it could affect actually the food all the way across the country.
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Of course it can. Yeah, that is a little bit scary.
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Because there's a, and I'll wrap it up with this. I mean, there's the ripple effect. If the blueberry farmer needs 200 bees,
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and said beekeeper can only provide 100.
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And by that you mean 200 hives. More than 200 bees.
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And they said beekeeper can only provide 100 hives, right? Yeah. Because they don't have them. They lost them.
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How is the yield for the farmer? Right? Do they have less yield? It may be in half.
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They have less yield than the cost of that food has to go up. And at the end of the day, it trickles up through into the food store.
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So it's a problem and that we've got to help these people and these folks and figure it out and do whatever we can to support them and also the honeybee.
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So by helping out with these donations, we're number one, helping more honeybees survive. Absolutely. You're feeding them.
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Number two, helps families with their livelihood. Sure.
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And number three, helps food for the entire country. That's right. It's a huge deal. This is a place where we can really make a difference.
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Yeah. Yeah. I appreciate it. Thank you.
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All right. A little bit off topic. Let's have a little bit of fun for a second. I didn't warn you of this up front, Andrew, but
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every beekeeper has a funny or embarrassing or painful story that they can think of while beekeeping.
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Can you tell us anything that'll lighten our day that maybe happened to you or somebody around you while beekeeping?
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Oh, man. One of the first things that comes to mind is just how many holes are in the back right pocket of pants that I wear out to, you know, go beekeeping because I always end up, no matter how many times I do it,
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I always put the hive tool right in the back pocket and I'll always forget and I'll always be reminded every time I sit in my truck because I'll sit right on the bevel.
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And I know that there's a lot of beekeepers right now that are listening that will be able to relate exactly to that story. And it never matters how many times you do it. You still do it.
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Can I just add to that? Yeah.
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Bees tend to find any hole that you put in a bee suit.
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They absolutely will. Does that lead to any weird stings?
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They absolutely will. They find their way. How many times I've, you know, you think you don't have a bee inside the veil and it's there, then you think your life flashes before your eyes.
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Isn't that crazy how that works? Even if we've been around bees a lot, how we can panic when there's one inside the veil? Absolutely.
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All right. Lastly, Andrew, tell me, why do you love working with bees?
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Oh, man. Good thing you didn't ask me this question early on because I probably ended up taking up too much time answering it. But I will keep it short.
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It's the people. Honestly, it's the people first. People that are beekeepers, whether they do it for a living or for a hobby,
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have such a unique sense of appreciation. Just for nature, wildlife, they're just some of the best people you'll ever meet.
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When I was getting started years, years ago, never did anyone not lend out a hand for like helpful information, you know, and beekeepers just as a community because that's what it is.
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It's a community. That to me is what I think made me fall in love with everything was just that sense of community and feeling with them.
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And then just how incredible these insects are. They're organized. They've got rules within the hive.
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They're doing all sorts of work in terms of pollinating these crops. And when you don't know anything about them, then you start to learn about them.
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It's like your mind goes, because you just can't even believe it. You never look at a beehive the same way once you know really how important bees are,
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because there's a misconception. Like if you drive by a dairy farm and you see the cows, we know dairy cows and milk and we associate cattle with beef or chicken with eggs and poultry.
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And we think that the honeybee, their purpose is to produce honey. It's not. That's a byproduct. Their purpose is to produce food.
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They're the world's single greatest pollinator. There's nothing even close. So I think when you look at it all, it's just how can you be fascinated by it?
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Very well said. Thank you so much, Andrew, for bringing on with me today.
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Oh, thank you. This was awesome. I really appreciate it. Thank you.
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Let me just take a minute here to thank our presenting sponsor, Man Lake. Years before they became a sponsor, I was buying bees supplies from them.
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While they don't have a store near me, I've had great experiences with their customer service and shipping right to my home.
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They're passionate about bees and dedicated to helping beekeepers. You can tell. American made products with a commitment to quality craftsmanship and innovation.
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From woodenware to feeds, you can trust Man Lake. And maybe the best part, Man Lake is offering a discount to bee love beekeeping listeners.
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Click on the link in the show notes and use the special discount code to get $10 off your purchase of $100 or more.
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Now, it's time for Wild and Crazy Beekeeping Stories and direct from the beautiful state of Oregon. We have Rob on the line.
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Well, Okie dokie, some Rob from the paperclip farm been doing beekeeping for a few years now.
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And one of the little mishaps that was kind of a cascade of mishaps actually was I got a little bit of honey on my bee suit.
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What happens when you store bee suits with a little bit of that residue, you don't get that washed off, especially me since I'm rural.
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You know, I hung it up on the wall. The feet were on the floor, of course, and I had my bee suit here hanging up on the coat rack.
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And it was probably about a month later, I went to go put it on and I don't always use a suit or even a veil when I'm working my bees.
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If they're seeming really nice and docile, especially in the spring or summer, when the flows are hot and heavy, you know, but sometimes you just aggravate them
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and they kind of want to get at you until you get a little bit of smoke going up in the air.
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And between point A and point B, they are trying to get in your suit.
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So what ended up happening is my bee suit had attracted some mice and they had actually made their way onto the suit within the month that I had it hanging up and had eaten holes,
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tiny little holes all over my, mainly the veil and hood of my suit.
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So while I was going and trying to get to my smoker to get a puff of air, you know, because I noticed that the bees were aware that I was there and wanted to fend their nest.
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But unfortunately, the next thing I know, I see something flying around in my peripheral and I can't quite tell if it's in my suit or out of my suit.
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Of course, I didn't know that I had holes all over my suit at this time, but bees were definitely aware of where the holes were in the suit and were coming in.
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Of course, when you have a big clunky suit on and you're a new beekeeper, as I was at this point, you know, I was trying to figure out if there were, if they were actually inside the suit or outside the suit trying to get in.
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And between that time, they definitely started clanging onto my cheeks and my face.
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And one was right at the bridge of my nose. You know, everybody has a plan of what they will do when they get into a situation.
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And unfortunately, my plan at that point went out the window and I went to smash the bee, which when you smash something and it's on your face, it's definitely going to sting you.
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And not only that, but with a bee, you know, you have the actual barb that usually is left in while the muscles and everything keep injecting that venom into you.
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And yeah, so don't smash the bee. Flick, don't smash. Flick, don't smash. And that goes for whatever country that you go into as well.
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So at this point, I probably had three to four bees in my hood and I was comically smacking myself hard enough that I definitely gave myself a little bloody nose after the fact.
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And the only way that I could really describe it was really Ed Norton in Fight Club, where he's trying to exit his office job.
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And since then, I consciously go and, you know, I've had yellow jackets get me the same way.
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They typically will try to go for the face and word of advice, if you unfortunately do get in that situation, I would say just go ahead and try to cover your face and your ears with your hands and just walk away from the situation.
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Because if you do that, you're going to also do a lot less flapping, a lot less moving around violently to anger even more bees.
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So this is going to protect your face. It's going to keep you from smacking your own body and also aggravating even more bees, which is just going to make things worse.
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I wish I had video of this.
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I'm just picturing you and beating yourself up, getting stung, giving yourself a bloody nose. That is so awesome.
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Hey, there's one rule of thumb. As you're looking out through your veil, if you see the bottom of bees, in other words, you're seeing their legs, you know, they're on the outside.
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If you're seeing their back, their wings, you know, they're on the inside and you've got problems.
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I hadn't ever really thought of that. Totally honest.
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I'm sure I will get in that situation again and I would love to hope that I remember that very sound advice.
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But until then, I've got a really awesome partner that is okay with sewing up holes and patches and everything else in my suit.
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And it is something that I try to go through just like any other PPE, just kind of looking over all of your gear.
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Well, that is good advice and so is white duct tape.
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Thanks a lot, Rob. It's been fun talking to you.
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Take care.
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Be loved beekeeping.com. And remember, if you're not just in it for the honey and you're not in it for the money, you're in it for the love.
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See you next week.