Piping Hot Bees with Dr. Thomas D. Seeley (S6, E42)

S6, E42 - Piping Hot Bees with Dr. Thomas D. Seeley

Steve Stinchcombe: I'm Steve Stinchcombe.

Jonah Stinchcombe: I'm Jonah Stinchcombe, and we're from Felicity, Ohio.

Steve and Jonah Stinchcombe: Welcome to  Beekeeping Today Podcast.

Jeff Ott: [laughs] Excellent.

Becky Masterman: That was good.

[music]

Jeff: Welcome to  Beekeeping Today Podcast. Presented by Betterbee, your source for beekeeping news, information, and entertainment. I'm Jeff Ott.

Becky: I'm Becky Masterman.

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Jeff: Hey, a quick shout out to all of our sponsors whose support allows us to bring you this podcast each week without resorting to a fee-based subscription. We don't want that, and we know you don't either. Be sure to check out all of our content on the website. There, you can read up on all of our guests, read our blog on the various aspects and observations about beekeeping, search for, download, and listen to over 250 past episodes, read episode transcripts, leave comments and feedback on each episode, and check on podcast specials from our sponsors. You can find it all at www.beekeepingtodaypodcast.com.

Hey, Steve and Jonah Stinchcombe of Felicity, Ohio. That was a fantastic opening. I remember talking to them, Becky, at the North American Honey Bee Expo, and it was father and son, and they were having a great time. It was a great experience, I'm sure, for Jonah.

Becky: Oh my gosh. I love that opening. That was just such a nice little collaboration between the two of them, and they did a great job.

Jeff: It was good teamwork, so it was really enjoyable. Hey, Becky, did you hear that-- Obviously you didn't hear because I just found out. PBS contacted me and they want to do a  Beekeeping Today Podcast PBS show.

Becky: Oh my gosh.

Jeff: It's like a Nature series, but  Beekeeping Today.

Becky: Wow. Jeff. That is almost unbelievable.

Jeff: Yes.

Becky: I mean, PBS and  Beekeeping Today Podcast, I guess I can see it-

Jeff: Yes.

Becky: - but I'm looking at my calendar.

Jeff: Wait. What? Wait. No. No.

Becky: Yes. I'm looking at my calendar.

Jeff: You don't need to look at that.

Becky: It's April, and it's the first day of April. So, I guess I might need to see the communication in order to continue this conversation.

Jeff: Oh, I can't even get you going for a little bit?

Becky: [laughs]

Jeff: All right. April Fools. Sorry.

Becky: [laughs]

Jeff: I promise, folks, that's almost the last joke we'll do today.

Becky: Oh, almost the last, but it's a holiday. It's a national holiday.

Jeff: [laughs] It's a holiday for some of us.

Becky: Let's keep everybody on their toes.

Jeff: That's right. That's right. Yes. Going to have to listen. What are your bees doing this week?

Becky: The bees this week are doing what they've been doing, honestly, since February, which is collecting pollen and building their brood nest and saying that, "If you don't act quickly and swiftly, we're going to swarm on you." I know swarm season started a lot earlier in other places, but are your bees telling you the same thing?

Jeff: Yes. A couple of weeks ago, we had five days of gorgeous, wonderful blue sky, mid-60s, almost 70 degree weather. The bees were happy. I was happy. It was glorious, and I got a lot of work done in the bee yard, and my allergies were happy, too. Tree pollen was everywhere. I know we're going to have bee pollen bees out of the trees.

Becky: It's not an April Fools joke, is it?

Jeff: No.

Becky: [laughs] It's just the reality this season. It's going to catch a lot of us, so be prepared with that extra equipment, everybody. Have a place to put those bees.

Jeff: Yes. I will say that a couple of weeks ago when I was in the bees for that couple of days, I was doing the post-mortems, the dead outs, and cleaning a couple of those up that I didn't get earlier in the season. That's always depressing, too, but it is fun. You get to play CSI on your beehives and try to figure out what's going on. I could tell there was a lot of Varroa. They died probably because of that, because of the Varroa scat on the undersides of the cells.

There were a couple though, that they had a lot of honey, but I didn't see a lot of sign for Varroa. They had real small clusters or very few bees, and it wasn't even much of a cluster. It makes me wonder whether perhaps they had died out, and were queenless and died out. I don't know. A couple of mysteries there for me.

Becky: Right. Yes. It's always one of those activities that's the least fun to do, but sometimes it's nice to find out things like, okay, well, they didn't die because they starved. That always makes me feel good, if they didn't starve. Then as far as the Varroa is concerned, I think that we just need to keep forgiving ourselves, and just keep trying to get ahead of it, which is so difficult to do. It's not a formula that anybody can follow. If you do it right one year, and try to repeat the next year, it could literally be the wrong kind of Varroa management, because you could have a late influx of those pesky little mites. Just, we get to put it on our to-do list. Let's just keep working at it.

Jeff: That's why they call it the art of beekeeping.

Becky: Right? Exactly.

Jeff: [chuckles] We have a great show lined up today. We have Dr. Tom Seeley, who if you're new to beekeeping, we strongly encourage you to go out and check out several of his books.  Honeybee Democracyis the big one that you would really enjoy reading about bee biology and behavior. Tom's going to be with us just real quick here, about his new book that releases next week. Look forward to having Tom on.

Becky: One of the greats for sure. This is a real treat for listeners, and I think for the two of us to get to talk to Tom.

Jeff: I'm looking forward to it.

Becky: This better not be a joke. [laughs] We better be talking to Tom today. [laughs]

Jeff: This is true. Tom is coming right up. Right after this word from Strong Microbials.

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[music]

Jeff: While you're at the Strong Microbials site, make sure you click on and subscribe to  The Hive. The regular newsletter full of interesting beekeeping facts and product updates. Hey, everybody, welcome back. Sitting across this virtual  Beekeeping Today Podcast table, and no joke, is Dr. Tom Seeley. Tom, welcome back to the podcast.

Dr. Tom Seeley: It's my honor to be back.

Becky: Tom, it's such a pleasure to have you here. We are really honored that you are with us today, and we just can't wait to hear what you have to tell us.

Jeff: Tom, we've invited you here because much to many people's delight, you are releasing a brand new book, it's called  Piping Hot Bees and Boisterous Buzz-Runners. We'll have to get into how you came up with that name here shortly. For our many listeners who may not know who you are, because this may be their first year in the beekeeping, tell us a little bit about yourself, then we'll get into your new book.

Tom: I fell in love with honeybees when I was about 16 years old. When I went away to college, I managed to write almost every term paper on some subject about honeybees. Even though I had started out on the pre-medical track, I realized I should follow my passion. I've been studying honeybees since really, about 1969. For, geez, more than 40 years now, maybe it's 50 years now. That's who I am. This is my passion. I really particularly focus on the behavior of individual worker bees. That's my fascination.

I think you know that most of the beekeeping material is about managing colonies. You don't often focus down on the individual bees, the drone, worker, or queen. That's what I have found the most interesting for me. That's what I have written this new book about.

Jeff: You're right. So many people talk about the superorganism, and the focus is on the colony health and colony behavior. I hadn't noticed that about your writing. It's so obvious it hits you in the face, but you do focus on the individual bee, and that does set it aside.

Tom: I think you need both perspectives to really understand the biology of honeybees. The colony level view gives you the overview, and it shows you what colonies do. It's like looking at how our whole body functions. If you want to understand how our bodies work, you have to know what the organs and the cells within the body are doing, that give the properties to the whole body. That's why I go deeper down into the individual bees' behaviors.

Becky: I would also comment that in order to be able to study those individual bees, you actually have to be a really good beekeeper, because you have to make sure that in your methods, you're setting up the colony so that you're observing their behavior, not their reaction to your management. [chuckles]

Tom: Oh, yes. That's fundamental. You want to be working with a colony that is not disturbed and thus is functioning naturally.

Becky: When I read about your introduction to bees and that black walnut tree, and then I saw a picture of it, I have to know, is it still there?

Tom: The tree is still there. The limb that the bees moved into has been removed by the town of driveway, highway department because they saw that it had died. Alas, that limb is not there.

Becky: So it's no longer a bee tree?

Tom: It's no longer a bee tree, but I know of a lot of other bee trees nearby, still.

[laughter]

Becky: I bet you do. [laughs]

Jeff: Let's talk about your book.  Piping Hot Bees and Boisterous Buzz-Runners. I have a hard time even saying that. I wouldn't want to say it three times fast. Explain the title.

Tom: I'll explain in two ways, Jeff. That was not my title. My title on bee was just two words with the same subtitle, solving 20 mysteries of honeybee behavior. Princeton University Press, in its infinite wisdom, came up with taking out the title of two of the chapters and putting that up front. I see what they're doing. It's eye-catching, even though it's puzzling at the same time.

Jeff: The first thing you think about is, they're mad, but that's not at all what the reference to the title is.

Tom: Yes, that's right. Thanks for pointing that out, Jeff. No, when I write Piping Hot Bees, I'm referring to the nest site scout bees that have gone around in a swarm cluster, producing a signal we call the piping signal, because it sounds like [buzzing] . That's a signal that the nest site scouts are giving to the non-nest site scouts to tell them to warm up their flight muscles in preparation for takeoff. The buzz run is the follow-up signal.

Once the little nest site scouts have sensed that the swarm cluster is warm enough to launch into flight, then they produce this let's go signal called the buzz run, so-called because the bees are running around buzzing their wings, burrowing through the cluster. That's where those two funny parts of the title come from.

Jeff: So much of your research and your prior books focused on the swarm, and the behavior of the individual bees and entire swarm as it's leaving in flight and after it's bivouacked and hanging on a tree somewhere. Other than the fact that it's a great natural act, what fascinates you as a biologist, as a behavioralist, about that swarm?

Tom: It's one of the most vivid examples of what biologists call collective decision making. We're all familiar with individual animals, organisms making decisions, but the honeybees are just wizards at making this very important decision of where will it be their new home collectively. They do so because they're taking advantage of the power of sending out hundreds of scout bees, getting information, pooling the information, and working out, through a debate, which one should be the new home. That's why I spent a lot of my time looking at the whole swarming process, but especially the decision making process to choose the new home.

The other half of the book basically is about the organization of a colony's food collection. We all know that's an extremely complicated process. Way more complicated than I sure understood when I started studying it back in the early 1990s, and fascinatingly so.

Jeff: I would like to talk about the food collection and the waggle dance and identification and all that. I want to go back to the swarm real quick and then we'll come back to the food collection. Oh, there's so much to talk about. I hope you have a couple hours, Tom.

Becky: [laughs]

Tom: My afternoon is wide open.

[laughter]

Becky: I have a feeling that Jeff has to collect a swarm in about 20 minutes, so we might have to wrap this up based upon his level of interest. [laughs]

Jeff: My availability will depend on whether the colonies are swarming this afternoon. What is the first signal that the bees are preparing to swarm? I was surprised, in the book, reading that in many times, in many instances, the scout bees are out before the swarm even leaves and have identified nesting locations. I had not heard that.

Tom: You haven't heard of that, Jeff, because it's not something that's easy to see. I can watch it, because I can take a swarm to an island and put out nest boxes and I can monitor it. On this island, there aren't trees, so the bees have to go to the nest boxes. I create a situation where I can see when the process starts, but in most conditions, you can't see that at all.

Jeff: How many scout bees go out?

Tom: It's about 3% of a swarm. If it's a 10,000 bee swarm, that would be 300 bees functioning as nest site scouts. It's a large number. Sizable a group.

Jeff: Do they all go to different locations, or can multiple of those scouts go to the same nest potential site?

Tom: At the start, they dispatch themselves and search independently. Some find promising sites, most do not. Those that do find a promising site, they will come back and advertise it, and they'll share the information they found with the nest site scouts that did not find something. It's a mixture of the two. Independent searching, then sharing information with the waggle dance.

Jeff: Do the new bees that have been recruited to that new location check it out, or are they just excited because the original bee is like, "Hey, man, this lady's excited. I'm ready to really go after that because if she's excited, I know it's going to be good."

Tom: That's a very important question, Jeff. The answer is very clear. Each bee makes her own personal assessment. You can see the logic of that. It makes sure that you don't have some wacko scout bee over-advertising a moderately favorable nest site. No, it requires for a site to be chosen. It requires approval, excited approval, by probably at least a 100 nest site scouts.

Becky: You're saying that the girls don't trust each other. They need to check it out themselves. [laughs]

Tom: I guess if you look at it that way, that's pretty close.

[laughter]

Tom: I don't know if worker bees work with a concept of trust, but-

Becky: I would agree.

Tom: - they've evolved the ability. Natural selection has favored swarms where you had individuals checking one another. That's for sure.

Becky: It is interesting that they don't interpret that dance as an honest signal. They're not going to just follow it. If they're going to follow the signal to where there's food, they're going to go out and trust that, I assume, or I could be wrong.

Tom: No, that's a really good comparison. I think, as you say, when a bee follows a waggle dance that's being performed by a forager, yes, she goes out and she will trust it, and go and find that site. That's a very different situation than choosing a new home site, because a new home site is a long-term commitment. It's a hugely important matter. It really bears confirmation, independent confirmations by dozens and dozens of the scout bees. I think that's a really interesting question. I didn't really thought of it, made that comparison.

Becky: After swarms, I assume that number of actual scouts and decision makers goes down dramatically?

Tom: Yes, it will. As we know, the after swarms can be much smaller. Probably the same percentage of the worker bees in an after swarm is in a primary swarm, but the numbers will be smaller in an after swarm because the whole swarm is smaller. I'm not sure. Not sure.

Jeff: There's a lot to be considered here. Let's take a quick break and hear from a couple of our sponsors, and we'll be right back.

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Jeff: Tom, we have the foragers going out either from the parent colony or from the bivouac site hanging on my pine tree in the back. What are they looking for in their prime swarm new home? What are the key differentiators, factors?

Tom: As you and I would do when we're checking out a potential home site, it's got a lot of factors. One of the most important, perhaps the two most important, are the height of the entrance off the ground. They have a very strong preference for a high entrance. That's probably to make their nest less conspicuous to predators. Another is they need to have a cavity that's sufficiently large to support a full size nest. It's not as large as a large hive, but it's not like a nuc box. Typically, what they're looking for is something that's like one deep hive body of volume. Then they're looking also for things like the direction that the entrance faces.

If they can find one that's nice and sunny, facing southward, then that's an important variable as well. One thing that we don't know is whether they are able to assess the insulation qualities of the walls around the cavity. We think that's the case. We're not completely sure about that. Of course, they're also looking for things like just whether there's ants or other things already in the cavity, that could make life difficult for them. It's a multi-factor assessment, like when we go checking out an apartment. We look at a lot of different characteristics of the apartment.

Jeff: How much time do they spend assessing the qualities of the hive site?

Tom: Oh, that's an important question, Jeff. An individual scout bee will spend about 30 minutes checking out a site. In other words, she devotes 30 minutes to getting a clear sense of the quality of that site. Only then does she go back to the swarm and advertise it with a waggle dance. Vigorously, if it's a very high quality site. Moderately, if it's a moderate quality site. If it's a poor site, she doesn't mention it at all.

[laughter]

Jeff: No, not going to go there. That's really fascinating, because if you have 300 scout bees going out and looking for a site, how many of those scout bees requires a quorum? If they're each spending about 30 minutes or so scouting it out, measuring it, my swarm takes off pretty quickly from my tree. That seems like there's a lot of things going on. Some quick decisions are being made, I think. Am I wrong?

Tom: You're not wrong in reporting and describing what you've observed. What you may not have known is that this scouting process can start days and days before the swarm leaves the hive. In some cases, when a swarm leaves, the decision has largely been made.

Jeff: That first bivouac site is just to get everyone together.

Tom: Yes. It's also the reason they don't make a straight shot, usually, but I've seen occasionally they do. I think it's because the workers in a colony have to sort out the partitioning. Typically, about 65% of the bees leave in the prime swarm, but they can't have too many go, and they don't want to have too few go either.

That's why I'm pretty sure that's the logic of them going out, making an interim clustering, and then rather than making a straight shot. Because if you watch a swarm leave, it's not so obvious, but you'll see bees coming out of the hive, joining the swarm, and you'll see other bees going back into the hive. I don't know quite how they get the right proportions, but they do. That's very important to a colony.

Becky: Are they making sure the queen went with them? Is that part of it?

Tom: Yes. That's a really important point, Becky. They do make sure the queen is with them. If the queen, for whatever reason, does not get out of the hive, they do not smell her, and they will go back in and make another try. That's because of course like 10,000 worker bees is a dead end without a queen.

Jeff: Definitely.

Becky: That's a bumper sticker, I think.

[laughter]

Becky: Only for beekeepers. [laughs]

Jeff: We can make that a  Beekeeping Today Podcast t-shirt.

[laughter]

Becky: It actually would be a good one. [chuckles]

Jeff: Becky observed early on that the characteristics of the colony finding the new home, much of the communication is the same as the forager in the field. Can we switch gears now and talk about foraging behaviors and how the interaction between the individual forager and the nest mates and all of that in the few minutes we have left? [chuckles] Can we just talk about the details of that behavior?

Tom: I guess one thing I'd like to say about the waggle dance is that it is a very special behavior. In fact, there's only-- When a bee does the waggle dance, she's telling other individuals the distance and direction to an important site without leading them out to the site. There's only one other species on the planet that has that ability to give directions to other individuals in their group, the location of an important site, without taking them or leaving a trail, making a trail out to that site. That other species is us. Honeybees and human beings share this very, very special communication skill. It's remarkable.

Becky: Dr. Seeley, I have a feeling when you're arguing that honeybees are the smartest insects, and you're telling the ant people, and you're making the case for honeybees, I bet you bring that up.

Tom: You're right, Becky.

Becky: Am I right?

[laughter]

Tom: It is an important distinction, but that's not the only one. They just have such a rich medley of communication signals. Mechanical signals as well as the chemical signals, and even some optical signals. When a swarm is flying through the air, for example, the nest site scouts streak through the cloud and they point the way. They make a visual indication of which direction to fly. Yes, these are very sophisticated animals.

If you look inside the brain of a bee compared to other insects, it's like looking into a supercomputer, compared to most other insects. So rich. The neurons are so miniaturized to pack that many into the head capsule, and the head capsule is large compared to the rest of the body.

Jeff: The waggle dance is very important. It's been studied since von Frisch, right? Correct. He was the first to describe the waggle dance.

Tom: Yes.

Jeff: Has there been any recent developments and discoveries about the waggle dance since the early 1900s when he wrote about that?

Tom: Yes. It took him about 30 years to go from thinking that the waggle dance is just an arousal signal to tell other bees there's good food outside somewhere. Then it wasn't for about 30 years later, in the 1940s, that he discovered that they were giving direction and distance information, because that was so, as we've just said, is a very special communication skill. Since then, many other mechanical signals, sound and contact signals, have been deciphered in honeybee colonies. Some we've just talked about, the piping signal and the buzz run. There's a rich and ever increasing list of chemical signals. Those are harder to study because they're invisible.

Jeff: That's for nectar and pollen. Is there any differences in the dances between nectar and pollen?

Tom: The coding of the information, the distance and direction information is the same, whether it's the bees indicating the location of a rich nectar source, a good pollen source, a good resin source for making propolis, or a good water source. All four of those resources are advertised in the same way.

Jeff: My question I was leading up to is, how would a forager bee come back and say, "Well, really, I'm talking about water here. I'm not talking about pollen or nectar. I'm telling you where a great source of water is." The other worker bee is like, "Hey, look, dude, I'm really only interested in pollen today."

Tom: [laughs]

Jeff: How do they make that distinction, when it comes back to the hive and say, "Hey, I found a great source of water. Who's interested in getting water with me?"

Tom: The unemployed bees, on the dance floor, the unemployed forager age bees, it doesn't seem that they are seeking to work and collect a particular material. If the colony needs water, then there will be water dancers in abundance, and that will recruit more water dancers. If the colony is getting into the fall and they're sensing, "Our place needs tightening up," there will be some of the propolis, resin collectors will do their dances, and bees will be recruited to resin, because there are these advertisements to resin sources. I think that to answer your question, the bees are aware or sensitive to the needs of the colony.

If the need for a material is high, like high need for water on a hot day, more of the water collectors will do dances, and then there will be more water collectors. Likewise, if the colony is hungry for pollen, the bees that have collected pollen, they will be very much inclined and produce waggle dances. They adjust the strength of these different kinds of dances for the four different materials according to the colony's need.

Jeff: It's absolutely amazing. If you sit there and open up a hive and you just look at all the activity going on, and to realize that this has been going on for millennia, and they survive and they do well, it's just amazing. It's mind boggling.

Tom: We have fossil honeybees, very good fossil honeybees from some shales in Europe and in North America that go back about 20 million years. The honeybee has been around a long time. Different species, but same genus, same critter, general critter. These superlatives we've talked about of the complexity of the worker bee, honeybees behavior, those are real, and this is a very special kin of insect for sure.

Jeff: Let's talk about this current book. Is this book written for just beekeepers, or can anybody pick this up with any understanding of bees or biology?

Tom: I think anybody can pick it up and understand it. That said, Jeff, I wrote this book for beekeepers. I'm assuming my imaginary reader, when I was writing was, okay, here's a person that has a hive of bees. They know what a worker bee looks like. They're interested, they've seen them, but they haven't had the pleasure of following individual worker bees and observing how well they coordinate their activities through all these nifty signals. Be it in the hive or in a swarm. My target audiences was beekeepers.

This book is not written with fancy scientific language. It's written quite plainly, and it's also very, as I said, personal, because these are all stories, 20 stories of work that I did myself. I can blab on about, so to speak, about what it was like to do the work, and work with the people, and things like that, and how sometimes it went well and sometimes it was a challenge. That's what this book is. It's a summing up of my work as a biologist of honeybees.

Becky: I think the one message that comes through when you read the preface and you read the text is that you are also summarizing how individual scientists come together to study this work, and to come to the knowledge that you are sharing. That message is so-- It comes through so clearly, and there's such a camaraderie and respect and process that you're explaining, that beekeepers and non-beekeepers can really benefit from those, not just the stories you're telling, but the stories of how everything came together. Your love of the process is just there.

Tom: In science, as in many endeavors, it really helps to have a bunch of people with different skills working on sharing a problem or tackling a problem together. That is at a-- As you've said, that's I think a message that I tried to make clear in this book. This is-- I'm the reporter. I'm often the instigator in these studies, but I'm not the sole actor.

Becky: It took a colony to put the book together, but you put it together.

[laughter]

Tom: That's right.

Jeff: So, Tom, you've done a lot of writing, and you've done a lot of research across the Arnot Forest and the Appledore Island, if I got that right. Has any of that really jumped out at you and just really surprised you of what you discovered or observed and just amazed you?

Tom: Yes. I could give you a list, but I'm going to mention just the one that came as the most sudden surprise of understanding or the sudden moment of insight. It has to do with the piping signal. Because people, beekeepers, this is the signal that comes out of swarms, the swarm clusters, and you can hear it. You can put your ear up next to a swarm very easily, but it's hard to see who's producing it, because the bees that are making it are inside. It's hard to know its function, because it's not obvious what's going on. I had the good luck of being able to figure that out because I was sitting by a swarm. I had labeled nest site scouts with paint marks.

On one swarm, I could hear the piping, and I saw a bee doing the piping signal. She runs around, she presses against another bee, vibrates her wings, makes the piping sound, goes on to another and another and another. Eventually, it became clear that she was giving the bees the signal, warm up your flight muscles, get ready to fly to your new home site. That was a very thrilling one, because it would solved a mystery that people had seen for decades. It required just seeing the right little bee doing the right thing that opened the door to understanding that. I'm very proud of that one. I'm delighted with it, too.

Jeff: Definitely would have been a goosebump moment, I think, to really put that all together. It'd be fun to see.

Tom: Yes. It required-- This is a high tech thing. I was working up at my camp in Maine, when I was studying this swarm, and I saw this piping bee. I couldn't tell, couldn't be sure which of the bee-- I could hear the piping, and I could see that bee grabbing another bee while I was hearing the piping. What helped me figure out it was a nest site scout doing this, getting things ready, is I went to the local garage and got a piece of vacuum hose so I could make a sound pipe. I could plug one into an ear and put the other end over the bee, low tech. It was very clear, that was the bee making the piping sound.

Becky: I want that picture.

[laughter]

Tom: I don't think I have a picture of that one, but I have a picture of what the swarm looked like.

[laughter]

Jeff: Last question for you and then we'll let you go. If someone reads your book, or any of your books, and they want to try to observe these behaviors themselves at the individual bee level, do you have any recommendations? Obviously, the first one, of course, is what I do often, is where my wife finds me is sitting in front of the hive, just watching in front of the hive. "What are you doing?" "I'm watching the bees." "No, you're sleeping." "No, I'm really watching the bees." What would be your recommendation?

Tom: My recommendation would be to get an observation hive, a glass-walled observation hive, and put bees in it and watch the bees. An even simpler one, and this is probably a better recommendation, is the next time you have a swarm, a colony casts a swarm, let it settle and watch the activities on the surface of that swarm. You'll see the waggle dance, the scout bees advertising potential nest sites with waggle dances. You'll hear the piping signal that we just heard right before takeoff, and you'll see the buzz runners. Once everybody's warmed up, then the buzz run is the signal. Time to go, or let's go. You can see all of those things. It might cost you a swarm, but I think it might be worth it.

Jeff: You'd see the typical beekeeper just breaking down into a cold sweat, into a puddle, just waiting for them. Half of them would want to be capturing the swarm, the other half of them would want to watch the behavior. It would be quite the internal struggle.

Tom: The beekeeper can, of course, get a spray bottle of cold water and just, if the swarm starts to take off, just spray the bees. They'll cool down, and they have to go back into a cluster.

Jeff: [laughs]

Tom: I guess the thing I'd like to stress, keeping the beekeeper in mind here is, if you go to collect a swarm, and you put your ear up next to that swarm and you hear that piping, [buzzing] you know you've got to get that swarm shaken into a hive fast, because it's going to take off potentially within two or three or four or five minutes.

Jeff: Good notes.

Becky: Good notes and good timing right now.

Tom: A lot of useful stuff comes out of knowing what the signals mean to the bees, so we can eavesdrop on their conversation, so to speak.

Jeff: Tom, it's been just a total treat and pleasure to have you here. I'm glad you were able to join us. You even braved the calendar and joined us on April 1st. I appreciate that.

Tom: Yes, that's right. Yes, I'm a glutton for risk.

[laughter]

Jeff: Well, you are a beekeeper, you do work with bees, so risk is your middle name. [chuckles] Tom, is there anything that we haven't asked you about that you would like to bring up about your book or about anything, really?

Tom: Well, I guess the main thing, if you can stress it, I would be very grateful. This is, even though I'm a scientist, I am a beekeeper, too. I put on my beekeeper hat when I wrote this book. This is meant to be accessible to anybody that's interested in honeybees. Beekeepers, it'll become easiest, because they know what a bee colony is and so forth. Yes, if you could stress that. Some of my previous books were not easily accessible to non-biologists. This one is.

Jeff: I would even say that this would be a great first book, and then from this book, you can go back to the other books to get even more information.

Becky: Right. I think that you can order the book right now, even though it hasn't been released yet. You can read a bit of a sample, too, if you go online. There is a sneak preview. I'm convinced if people open that up and read it, they will absolutely have to keep reading and get the book.

Tom: I sure hope so, Becky, because I just know that we all, as beekeepers, see bees walking around doing things. It's really hard to know what the bee is doing. This book will explain at least 20 of those things that you're seeing the bees do.

Jeff: [laughs]

Becky: It'll make us all better beekeepers to read it. Thank you.

Tom: Oh, yes, definitely. See you guys later.

Jeff: Becky, can you tell that I really enjoyed this discussion with Dr. Tom Seeley?

Becky: Jeff, the listeners could hear it in your voice, but I could see it. What a joy that was, to see you asking these great questions of Tom. I could just tell that you've been a fan, and a follower, and you had a lot of great things that you really were able to do a deep dive with, with Tom, and that was just so much fun.

Jeff: Well, I hope the listeners were enjoying it, too. I felt like I was back in middle school, and I was going to go home and look at my observation hive. I love all of our guests. I enjoy everyone that we have on the show, but there are those that just really, I enjoy. Thank you for putting up with me, and I hope you were able to ask the questions you had in mind. [chuckles]

Becky: I got all of my questions answered, and I had just an excellent time. This has got to be one of the best recordings I think we've had. It was so much fun. Wow. Tom Seeley has an amazing body of work looking into the most difficult questions that I think a scientist can ask of the bees. He's received so many answers from his many experiments, and then he just delivers on explaining them to all of us in just excellent detail. This was a great one.

[music]

Jeff: It is. I encourage everyone to read his books, and if you don't have any of his books, start out with  Piping Hot Bees and Boisterous Buzz-Runners. That about wraps it up for this episode. Before we go, I want to encourage our listeners to follow us and rate us five stars on Apple Podcasts, wherever you download and stream the show. Even better, write a review and let other beekeepers looking for a new podcast know what you like. You can get there directly from our website by clicking on the reviews along the top of any web page.

We want to thank our regular episode sponsors, Betterbee, Global Patties, Strong Microbials, and Northern Bee Books for their generous support. Finally, and most importantly, we want to thank you, the  Beekeeping Today Podcast listener, for joining us on this show. Feel free to leave us questions and comments at the leave a comment section under each episode on the website. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks a lot, everybody.

----- [Please Note: Special Mug Offer has been claimed] -----

Jeff: Becky, you still there?

Becky: I'm here.

Jeff: Do you think anybody else is listening?

Becky: Hopefully, a few.

Jeff: You know this is April Fools' Day.

Becky: It is. What are you thinking?

Jeff: I am thinking, and this is no joke, if you're still listening, the first five people, the first five listeners who email us at questions@beekeepingtodaypodcast.com, and mention you heard this message on our April Fools joke day, we'll send you a  Beekeeping Today Podcast coffee mug. Isn't that exciting? No joke.

Becky: I am a recipient of one of those mugs, and this is an excellent, excellent offer.

Jeff: Oh, so you're donating yours?

Becky: I am not. In fact, I was wondering if I could maybe get another one, but I'll let you just do that. The five. That's great. That's great.

Jeff: Co-hosts are exempt from this offer.

Becky: Oh, darn, the fine print.

[laughter]

Jeff: All right. Happy April Fools' Day, everybody. I hope you enjoyed Tom Seeley, and get in your requests for that mug.

Becky: Thanks for listening. Did you see how I got the last word in?

[00:43:43] [END OF AUDIO]