The Honey Bee and Climate Change with Dr. Gloria DeGrandi-Hoffman (406)

The Honey Bee and Climate Change with Dr. Gloria DeGrandi-Hoffman (406)

 

John Rose

Hi, this is John and Corey Rose from Columbus, Ohio. Welcome to the Beekeeping Podcast.

Cory Rose

Beekeeping Today podcast.

John Rose

What she said.

Jeff Ott

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

Becky Masterman

And I'm Becky Masterman.

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Jeff Ott

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Thank you, John and Corey, for that wonderful opening from the North American Honey Bee Expo. John Corey from Columbus, Ohio. That's a nice area, Becky.

Becky Masterman

It is lovely. I did some of my research for my graduate school. work at the Ohio State University. So I was at the Rothenbuhler Bee Lab way back in the Wayback Machine. But it was lovely then.

Jeff Ott

Was it still a Bee Lab then?

Becky Masterman

It was 100% a bee lab then.

Jeff Ott

Jim has said it's no longer dedicated to bees. It still has the name, but it's not dedicated to bees.

Becky Masterman

Yeah, yeah. Oh, for sure it was a bee lab then. It had a bee Lab professor and graduate students and postdocs. It was it was very functional.

Jeff Ott

It's teaming with bee people.

Becky Masterman

Teaming with Bees and bee people. So

Jeff Ott

wonderful.

Becky Masterman

Yes

Jeff Ott

I can't believe we're sitting in October. It seems like we were just, well, John and Corey are sitting there in January. We're sitting here in October. This year is zooming by.

Becky Masterman

It is zooming by. The honey's pulled. It's being bottled as we speak, right?

Jeff Ott

Yeah. Yeah.

Becky Masterman

And we're planning for next year already.

Jeff Ott

How was your honey production this year?

Becky Masterman

Well honey production was great. Bees were great. I don't have a final number on anything.

But I have a lot of honey, so it's it surpassed the year before, which is good. I can't really say on recorded lines how much honey I have, but I do have a lot. I'm in no danger of running out of honey.

There are I'm not quite going to barrels yet, but boy do I have buckets. And Boy am I ready to go to space.

Jeff Ott

How's your kitchen looking these days?

Becky Masterman

Oh, luckily we have a shed for them.

Jeff Ott

Oh very good.

Becky Masterman

And I've got the lovely I love I've got the lovely bucket or the honey incubator from Hillco. This is not a paid segment, but it's so nice to be able to let my buckets crystallize and then to be able to liquefy them using that incubator.

Jeff Ott

How long have you found that it takes to liquefy semi-granular honey or

Becky Masterman

It's a few days. So yeah, I think I'm not I'm not running it hot enough to get super fast results, but It's just lovely. It's uh it's part of my kitchen and so I'm able to bottle I use to have to be really careful about bottling like gallon jugs or three pound jugs.

And so now I can do that and if they start to granulate, I just I can put them in there and set it and not forget it, but just let it do its job. I think I might use it more than my stove. I don't know what that means.

Jeff Ott

Well it's certain times of the year perhaps. I started long ago, years ago, I used to use the band heaters on the five gallon Buckets. And I found out that you can melt buckets with those bands. So it's

Becky Masterman

sugar.

Jeff Ott

So just

Becky Masterman

not a good luck.

Jeff Ott

Use them with caution.

Becky Masterman

I like how precise the incubator is. I just it and the sizing of the fact that a bucket fits in that. When I saw that I knew that it was on my wish list and I'm not regretting that purchase one bit.

Jeff Ott

Very good. John at Hilco, we'll be sending you a bill for that advertisement.

Becky Masterman

I paid full price too. No. But that's the thing, is like there are things out there, Jeff, that you buy and they just they're life changers as far as how much I mean, I have a we could do a whole episode I think on them But it's just there are there are just pieces of equipment that just make beekeeping a little bit more manageable when you're when you're doing uh multiple tasks and you need I don't know. I just I yeah, I can name a few hey, I think that's gonna be my next B Culture article, so we can't talk about it.

'Cause I just I just thought of like five things in my head of things that I love. So I bet I could get five more. Anyway.

Jeff Ott

You can read ahead. In a couple months, Becky's next issue in Bee Culture magazine, which is a fantastic magazine that you write for.

Becky Masterman

Oh, isn't it perfect? Because it's going to be oh this is this is all working out perfectly for my for my writing career.

Jeff Ott

A sneak peek to future articles. Well speaking of warmth and heat and honey That leads us right to today's question from a listener for our Hive IQ tool question of the week.

Becky Masterman

It is John Jensen. So thank you, John, for the question. John 's a newer beekeeper, or he says fairly new, that could mean a lot of things, right?

But newer beekeeper and he was wondering if we knew anything about the Varroa mite treatment that's called a Bee Sauna And or if we could point him to anything. Oh, John, I'm gonna lecture. It I'll keep it brief.

Maybe Jeff, you're nicer than I am. Maybe do you want to start this one out and then I'll just follow with a stern recommendation.

Jeff Ott

If you've listened to the show enough, you know I like technology and I like gadgets. I'm always on the bleeding edge of things, but I would say that until there is more research into the use of the heating devices as claimed by the Bee Sauna, then I would You know, use it at your own risk and I would be hesitant. I'd put my money into something else before I'd put money into that.

Becky Masterman

Okay, well maybe I don't have to be the heavy on this one, really, Jeff. No, I'm kidding.

Jeff Ott

Please go.

Becky Masterman

Uh we really do point to the Honey Bee Health Coalition for Varroa guidance for treatments. I think the concern is you don't want to hurt your bees. And there are two things that could impact your bees.

You if there's not a peer reviewed study on a technique, even though I understand heating of the bees is something that beekeepers have been working on for quite a long time. I know that at the University of Minnesota they were working on it. They did to get the Varroa down.

They didn't quite get there. I'm worried about it hurting the bees or hurting the bees because you're putting a mitigation method out there that isn't effective. And so I just think we need to be careful.

Sometimes we don't understand. Remember our conversation with our USDA team and Tucson where they were talking about the impacts of nutrition, you could follow it two months down the road. You have to or you have to go back two months to understand what impact nutrition had on the colony.

Same thing for some of these treatments, is that the reason why or an actual study is really nice that follows a colony longitudinally to see what the impact is, is because it could impact a physiology of the nurse bees and you could end up with worker bees who might not be as robust as you need in order to get through a winter. I don't know that's true and but that's part of the problem is that if you don't know that it's a hundred percent safe, not just right away, but long term. I think exercising caution is a good idea.

Jeff Ott

And when you say longitudinal study, what does that mean? Over a period of time?

Becky Masterman

So you're going over a period of time. So a lot of a lot of studies will look at colonies and you might look at a treatment but then follow it for a while and f and see what the long term impacts were of that treatment.

Jeff Ott

And one last thing I'd say about this is that the time it takes to treat a colony If you had multiple colonies, it is just time prohibitive. It's just it'd take too long to do a c a yard of bees, uh heating them up like that. So

Becky Masterman

And I'm just gonna say one more thing. If there's a study out there or they're going to do a study, fantastic. We need more ways to mitigate mite levels. So So I'm all for it being effective and maybe they're right now looking at a SARE grant for funding to study it, but so I'm all about looking at those methods because we need fewer chemicals in the colony too, but it's a little confusing to know what to do.

Jeff Ott

Thank you, John, for that question. Sorry we didn't have a glowing answer and sorry, Bee Sauna folks, for the non supporting answer, but um you know, I think it's important to realize the limitations of some new things that come out in the market.

Becky Masterman

And thanks for trying and I'm hoping that there's some good data coming out soon But get on to the Honey Bee Health Coalition's Varroa Management Guide if you want to look at the different kinds of controls out there and then their efficacy levels.

Jeff Ott

I probably have Honey Bee Health Coalition tattooed on my forehead because I t I refer to it all the time.

Becky Masterman

The nutrition guide, the Varroa Management Guide, I feel like we really are. We're really we're repping them.

Jeff Ott

Well, we're fortunate that there that work is out there and available freely available. So uh folks and Honey Bee Health Coalition. Speaking of research, and you mentioned Tucson a couple weeks ago we had the Tucson lab on. We have the former research director for the Tucson lab. Up next is a guest, Dr. Gloria DeGrandi-Hoffman. We're going to talk about her new book, Climate Change and honey bees

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Jeff Ott

Hey everybody, welcome back. Sitting around this great big virtual beekeeping today podcast table. We have Dr. Gloria DeGrandi-Hoffman in Tucson, Arizona.

Becky's in St. Paul, Minnesota. I'm here in Olympia. Gloria, welcome back to the podcast.

Dr. Gloria DeGrandi-Hoffman

Thank you for asking me to come back.

Becky Masterman

Oh, you have so much great information to share. So we are delighted. Hopefully this you'll it well we won't have such a big gap in between visits this Between this time and the next.

Jeff Ott

Yeah, last time you were on it was back in September of 2021. We're just were we still in COVID then? I don't know.

The things were really just everything was all over the place. You were still at the bee Lab. Tucson Bee Lab.

For our listeners who don't know you and don't recognize your name, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got started with bees and what led you to today? All in two minutes.

Becky Masterman

I was gonna cover

Dr. Gloria DeGrandi-Hoffman

I'll give you the elevator talk of my life. That's not a problem. I w I was uh born in uh outside of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania So I'm an East Coast transplant out here to the west.

Like everyone in my family and actually, you know, my husband's as well. We're all Penn Stater. So I went to Penn State and majored in biology and you know even as a as a you know little kid, I li I really liked insects.

My parents moved when I was little to uh out of the city and into the suburbs that were actually farm area back in those days. And they were breaking them up and building subdivisions. This is in the sixties, you know.

A lot of that was going on So there are fields everywhere and insects everywhere and uh I like to be outdoors and uh you know love the insects, watching them. So I went to Penn State, majored in biology and then got a master's there in entomology, got a PhD in um entomology from Michigan State afterwards. And so very fortunate to, you know, be educated at land grant universities, pioneer land grant universities.

Uh which matched my, you know, passion for agriculture and got great education at both places, had tremendous advisors, uh Claire Collison over at Penn State and uh Roger Hooping Gardner at Michigan State So from uh there, uh when I went, you know, back to get my masters and PhD and everything I got interested in honey bees and just, you know, have never lost my fascination. I love all insects. I think all of them are fascinating.

But honey bees are just, you know, amazing and so And it would and it enabled me to fuse also another interest I have in mathematics. I like uh to uh build mathematical models to explain things. Uh I'm not a reductionist, I'm kinda holistic.

I want to see the whole system and figure out how it works. And so Bees and colonies really lend themselves to that. You can you know you can do a lot of fun math with them.

So anyway, I got this job over at the Tucson Bee Lab Which was a dream job for me and spent my entire career there, thirty-nine years, at the Tucson B Lap. Loved it. Absolutely loved being a you know, a public servant and federal employee and working with the beekeeping community, agricultural community, and some of the best scientists on the planet Especially working with bees at ARS labs.

Jeff Ott

We've definitely enjoyed the staff at the Bee Lab this year with Dr. Vanessa Corby-Harris and Mark and Kirk. We've done a full Bee Lab

Becky Masterman

As we should.

Jeff Ott

It's been a long time since you've been on. It's been several years. But what Brought me to your attention was the announcement that you have a new book coming out.

And I said, Well, gee many Christmas we have. It's been so long since we've talked to Gloria It's a good excuse to have you back. So tell us a little bit about the book you wrote.

It's titled The honey bee and Climate Change. And that's such a intriguing title. So why did you choose that?

Dr. Gloria DeGrandi-Hoffman

Towards the end of my time at the uh Tucson bee lab, I became increasingly alarmed at how climate change was really undermining the success of beekeepers and the survival of colonies. The more I looked into it, the more I could see that this was affecting every aspect of beekeeping, some directly, some indirectly. And uh the my you know, awakening started one uh winter day when uh actually it was Christmas and I was talking to my sister who lives in Pennsylvania You know, she said, Oh, I'm sitting out here on the porch.

It's beautiful outside here today. This was Christmas Day. And she and her husband live on a farm.

They have bees. And so I said, really? I said, well how are your bees?

You know, oh they're right up here on the porch with me, you know, drinking water and such. And it was like, oh man, they shouldn't be on the porch Celebrating Christmas with you. Uh

Jeff Ott

opening presentation.

Dr. Gloria DeGrandi-Hoffman

Anyhow. And it you know, I mean So what I did is, you know, I build models, I build population dynamic models, honey bee colonies, and such like that. And I thought Gee, I wonder what these temperatures do to colony population dynamics when you have, you know, winter days like this.

So I pulled up the model and I, you know, put in some weather that uh where it was like it was in Pennsylvania and then ran it out. into the spring. You know where I had bees flying in December and everything.

And those colonies, when they went through spring dwindling, they crashed. And it was like, oh my God, you know, and I went back and did some other things with it. And it was, it didn't matter if they had mites, if they had Fed well, uh just that flying and that change in the age structure that foraging causes it yet going into winter was enough to crash a colony So I thought, well, you know, and at that time too, I was also working on Varroa and looking at, you know, migration of Varroa into colonies, which was occurring a lot in the fall.

I thought if we have these warm falls, that extends the time that Varroa can be migrating into these colonies. And infesting them before they go into winter. So there's two things going on here.

There's corrupting the age structure of a colony because bees are flying longer, and then also infesting them with Varroa. No wonder we can't overwinter colonies.

Becky Masterman

I've cited that paper so many times when talking to beekeepers. So just so you know, and I think I've written about it in bee culture, it is such valuable work because We now know so much about Varroa because of some work that you've done on the migration and then also coupling that with climate. So Thank you. Thank you so much.

Dr. Gloria DeGrandi-Hoffman

You're welcome. I mean it just was well what el what else is going wrong here because of climate change? And so, you know, I started you know, first of all I started reading more about climate change, you know, how I mean that the planet is heating up.

And it is causing increased frequencies of heat waves and droughts and such and just started looking into, you know, work on how this was affecting the nutrients in nectar and pollen, how it's affected flowering. Because that landscape in the spring and summer is really a foundation for overwintering success. You need a lot of nutrients coming into your colony so your populations can build.

And to do that you need this supply of nectar and pollen that has the full complement of nutrients in it. And high heat and water stress compromises the nutrients in pollen and nectar. it also reduces them in that plants don't flower very well when they're under heat and water stress.

The other, you know part about it is that colonies not only need to grow and to get into winter, they need to grow big enough to make drones. And i if colonies are just limping by and not making drones, if a colony replaces its queen and has to open mate. It's gonna have a hard time doing that.

So it sort of hits a c hits the colonies kind of coming and going in that you know your colony's limping along and it's not strong enough to make drones If it loses its queen and makes a new one, the queen may not mate very well. And so putting all these things together, it's like, why aren't we talking about this? all the time, every day, and why don't we do something, you know, uh about this?

And so when Elsevier approached me and said, you know, would you be interested in writing a book like this? I said, you know, can I can I do it on honey bees and climate change, they said yeah, sure that sounds good and that's

Jeff Ott

When you were on with Kim and me five years ago It was the first time I think I heard and perhaps I might have heard it before, but it's the first time it really stuck with me that the nutritional composition of fall pollen is different from the spring pollen because We as beekeepers learn pollen is pollen and yes it's part of bee bread, bees need it an important nutritional component of their diet But to actually learn, well, yes, but you might want to store your fall pollen separate from your spring pollen and feed it at that time of year because of the nutritional component makeup of that. It's like I remember that was just a like a lightning bolt moment. And how does that I mean that obviously has to play into what you're saying on if the climate is changing as different areas experience the climate change differently and things are flowering or not flowering.

Do you have any insight into that? I mean it's because it's so regional, right? That's so local, what may be blooming Mid-change.

Dr. Gloria DeGrandi-Hoffman

What's changing probably the most noticeable is when these fall flowers are blooming. They're blooming earlier and bees are putting away this all pollen at a time when they're still rearing brood and they're you know still foraging. So they're using that pollen that should be stored in the colony to keep the colony active during these warm falls.

So they're not putting away the pollen and the and the honey that they need to get through the winter. That's because they're flying too late into the year and using those nutrients as fuel. That's sort of the first thing.

The second thing is if you get these warm, hot winters or summers like we've been getting, that affects the germination and growth of fall plants. And so the landscapes may in years subsequently warm, dry years, may not have large stands of fall flowers. And that again puts the nutritional stress on a colony that 's trying to become as fit as possible to get through the winter.

You know, and this and this is something that's you know affecting all kinds of animals that hibernate or go into diapause or, you know, overwinter like honey bees, is that the landscapes that had normally sustained them, supported those sort of overwintering strategies. have become less predictable. Some years they work great, but other years they don't work so great.

And those years when they don't work so great are increasing in frequency.

Becky Masterman

Who was your audience when you were writing? It seems like something that's going to be taught in college classes, but also a beekeeper is going to appreciate the information that you shared.

Dr. Gloria DeGrandi-Hoffman

Yeah, I wrote it for everybody. I hope that, you know, it will, you know, help people understand, first of all, you know, beekeepers, just what they're up against. And it's not like we have bad beekeepers.

These beekeepers, you know, have been in many cases family operations You know, a and at that's one of the things that's actually I think very unique and endearing about the beekeeping industry is that these are passed down through generations and there's a history in them. And they have been successful and now they're they can't you be consistently successful And what's changed is that, you know, beekeeping the practices and also selection of bees were made at a time when the when we had greater stability in climate and in environment and now this generation of beekeepers is facing a different situation. So I for in terms of beekeepers, you know, th the book I hope articulates the situation that they are facing and the changes that they're going to need to make.

to try and keep their colonies alive because tried and true methods aren't going to work so well or so consistently anymore. But also the public in general to you know raise their you know consciousness about Climate change and also about honey bees. Everybody likes honey bees.

Everybody wants to buy honey, but need to know that climate change in addition to its effects on uh you know other animals to honey bees and pollinators in general. And they need to know that. I hope policymakers too that realize that, you know, this natural resource that we have of honey bees and pollinators that's essential for agriculture is in peril because of climate change and we need to talk about this and find solutions for this sooner rather than later.

Jeff Ott

Seems like it's complicated more by the fact that we have less habitat now too. So not only is it changing, there's less of it available at the same time it's changing. So you have this That's why the mathematical model probably works because it's so complicated. It's not a single we're always looking for a single cause and effect, but it's not. It's just a avalanche of problems facing the industry or facing beekeepers and honey bees and all pollinators, as you point out.

Dr. Gloria DeGrandi-Hoffman

and predict which way a colony is going months before it you know either grows or before it crashes, you know. And what you say about, you know, landscapes I mean that's I think key to our success in helping the beekeeping industry is to open more lands and it to honey bee colonies and you know, places where beekeepers can put their colonies, safe places where they're, you know, not going to be exposed to pesticides and where there's, you know, flowering plants. that go from spring until the fall and uh you know have a commitment to preparing those lance and they say opening them up to beekeepers

Jeff Ott

Hey, let's take this opportunity to take a quick break and we'll be right back after these words from our sponsors.

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Becky Masterman

Welcome back, everybody. Gloria, part of what you're talking about is potentially a change in how beekeeping the beekeeping industry manages colonies across the country and specifically commercial beekeepers. Have you had conversations or do you have insights into how the current system might need to shift?

Dr. Gloria DeGrandi-Hoffman

The area that I that I know the most about is overwintering and I've done most of my research in My research was focused on how bees prepare for winter, you know, the formation of winter bees, and then cold storage of colonies in colonies. I arrived at the, you know, recommendation that if colonies are summering in temperate areas, which many of them are in northern Great Plains and you know up in uh the uh eastern part of the country, northeastern part of the country, Midwest and such That putting those colonies in cold storage for the winter is probably a good way of taking them out of an environment that seems to be growing increasingly dangerous to them, you know, with this with these warm falls and the mites migrating and so forth. So the first thing that we did was, I mean, is this economically feasible?

So we did uh some studies with uh Beekeeper, the Verhoax uh up in uh North Dakota They were kind enough to let us do this study on their colonies where we put them in cold storage. We took other ones and you know, moved them uh out to uh Texas and overwintered there and Anyway, what we found was that yeah, it's economically feasible to put your colonies in cold storage. And our later experiments, as we, you know, did some other studies with mites and getting mite populations under control, that the survival w rate of colonies put into cold storage can be quite a bit higher.

than if you leave them out. And also it's less expensive. There's less labor.

They're not feeding colonies, you know, all winter long. Anyway, uh Those were the conversations that I had the most with beekeepers. And I've I realized first of all, it's a it's a big change.

So, you know, some beekeepers who had been used to moving their colonies to California for the winter, or maybe down in the southern states, you know, from North Dakota and the northern Great Plains down into those areas. Maybe they should think about, you know, going west and put in, you know, into Idaho and such and North Dakota itself. and put it in put them in cold storage.

So this is really a beekeeper's choice. All I ever did was, you know, and all I still ever do, I just provide information. I mean these are really hard decisions for these you know, for the beekeepers who really are, you know, th they're the ones the rubber hits the road with them and th it's their businesses and it's my job to give them the best information and then, you know, that I've got, share that and then let them make decisions.

I never tell anybody what to do. You know how useless that is.

Becky Masterman

I love that but it's funny because the conversations sometimes people with operations, it's so dire because they're being hit so hard with so many threats that, you know, sometimes they'll You know, they'll be like, Well, what should I do? And I'm like, probably not ask me first of all. I have eighty colonies, you've got two thousand.

So you know, but at the same time, it makes sense to look to the science and to go to the basics, like what do those bees need in order to make it through the winter? And a lot of people's guts are saying, they're flying too much. They're too they're too warm.

And so you kind of bring the science to that to confirm it and also to provide additional evidence that it is hel healthful for them.

Jeff Ott

So for our listeners who are new, this might be their first season, what's the difference in nutritional needs for a honey bee in the fall versus the spring versus the winter?

Becky Masterman

And the difference between winter and summer bees would be great.

Jeff Ott

'Cause we kinda glossed over that, but it that is so critical to the discussion.

Dr. Gloria DeGrandi-Hoffman

Honey bee colonies have an annual cycle. And if we l start the cycle Let's say i in um late winter when the when the bees are just starting to rear brood again. I mean they still may be confined in the colony.

But that queen starts laying again, you know, sometime in late January, early February. They're rear and brood, and though all that brood is the replacement. to the bees that have formed that winter cluster that have overwintered.

And so the longer that they stay in the colony You know, the better the more brood they can rear and the more replacements are waiting in the wings when the colony starts to forage again and starts losing these older bees as they forage. So ideally in the spring, let's say it starts to warm up, you know, March you get some hours of flight every day, April a little more, May a little more. These pollens that are coming in are usually abundant.

Spring pollens are you know, a lot of them have to do with, you know, fruit trees and blooming shrubs. And so there's this abundant pollen with nutrients that bees can use to rear brood. you know, their protein and uh lipids uh in them as well as other nutrients, vitamins and such, bees can bring in tremendous amounts of pollen and grow.

And because they're turning that pollen into bees. Uh so that your population grows, they make drones, they can even swarm and you know if you if you I know beekeepers try to discourage swarming. But you can make splits and grow your colonies.

And so those spring and summer pollens, the nutrients that they provide, plus the abundance of them that they provide. enable that colony to take off and as it's and as it's growing, i it's on a projection to get large enough to overwinter. Okay, so you know your chances of overwintering are really set in May and June, you know So anyway, y your colony then goes through the summer and you're trying to now maintain that population.

So you have summer, you know, colon or summer pollens and ideally they're coming in and You know, bees are can continue to grow and then you hit the fall and day as days are starting to get shorter. Okay, now that brood rearing is going down. And the bees are putting away more of the pollen.

They're putting it away in the cells in the colony. They're eating it and you know, foraging is ideally foraging is on the decline too because it's getting colder, days are getting shorter, there's less brood. Finally, you know, it gets to the point where days are short and there's too cold to forage.

And now the bees have this storage of pollen that is usually lipid-rich because they're using lipids at this time of year. There's a lot more calories in lipids than there are, for example, in you know honey simple sugars and such. Although they use those sugars to uh warm the hive to you know to what 's they shiver and you know are thermi thermoregulating the colony through their shivering they're generating heat That occurs from the honey that's in the colony, from the glucose in the honey.

But the lipids that are in the bees and in the fat body can get broken down into glucose and uh and also serve as an energy source. a very concentrated energy source. And so, you know, and then winter goes by and warming the hive and then we start the cycle again where those nutrients that they put away in fall pollens that There's protein in them, there's a lot of lipid in them.

They're using those now to rear that brood again while they're still in the colony. And so, you know, bees evolved in a landscape and in a time where that kind of environmental stability existed. And they, you know, they matched right up with the environment and were able in more years than not to thrive.

And now the environment's not that stable anymore. There's years when it's more difficult to keep colonies alive, that's for sure.

Becky Masterman

It's also we try to supplement our bees with nutrition when they need it, but that foul pollen is a very there's not a great fix for that. We it because my understanding is you if you're feeding a pollen substitute, at least in a northern climate you could very well start simulating brood, which you're not you don't want to do. So so what do you recommend to beekeepers as far as that fall pollen if they think that they don't have enough of it?

Dr. Gloria DeGrandi-Hoffman

That's really that's really hard to pull them through, you know. You know, I don't know. I mean, you know, you need po fall pollen coming in and I don't know if just having some fall pollen coming in i is enough.

I know we did a study with supplemental feeding where we had a group of colonies that just got some natural pollen. And those colonies did as well as colonies that we didn't feed pollen supplements to and fed real pollen to the whole time. So just that little bit of pollen made a difference.

I don't know if that's true with fall pollens, but boy, I would hope so, because you know it's just having some fall pollen coming in. You know, one thing that we did I too when we were working with MegaBee, and this may be helpful, was that when we fed MegaBee, the bees ate it and stored the pollen that they were bringing in So whether they would do that with fall pollen, that'd be worth looking into. I never did that.

I don't have any data for it, but I but It had worked with uh spring and summer.

Becky Masterman

Okay, okay. I think a lot of the information out there is that a lot of pollen supplements aren't being stored, so

Dr. Gloria DeGrandi-Hoffman

Oh yeah, they th they don't store those.

Becky Masterman

They do some good, but there's not a lot of storage. Oh that's interesting. Thank you for sharing that.

Jeff Ott

For the beekeeper who is perhaps doing a public speaking or going to the local library and talking about honey bees and the discussion about climate change comes up. There's gonna be somebody in the audience who will say climate change is not what everyone says it is, and it's just the earth doing its earth thing. And the environments will change, the bees will get used to the new flowers that'll be adapting to that area's new growing season and new temperature range. So everybody calm down. Is that a viable argument and or how does a beekeeper respond To that at their local library or their local rotary club where they're having a question posed to 'em.

Dr. Gloria DeGrandi-Hoffman

You know, I think When it c when it you know comes to climate change, I mean clearly not everyone is sold on whether it's actually a thing, you know. And so y you know, you need you need to look at, you know, the information that is available. I mean what's clear is that the planet's been warming since the you know nineteen fifties.

If we just start with the nineteen fifties. The planet has been, you know, temperatures have been increasing at a faster rate than any time that we were we've been recording temperatures. And the you know each year as we go by seems to be, you know, record breaking warm years.

And if you know look at well, you know, why is this happening? All you need to look at is ocean temperatures. And what the ocean temperatures are and how they've been warming, and they haven't been warming, we would still have a lot more icebergs out there, right?

and a lot more uh glacier that are you know still out there on the uh on the coasts and in the northern part of the Atlantic and the Pacific. So, I mean clearly the oceans are warming, and oceans are what drive the whole planet's weather. And the warming of the ocean, because you know, water holds a lot of heat.

And so as the atmosphere gets warm, the oceans pull in that heat, and the oceans get warm, and that drives our temperatures. So w you know, the it's hard to argue against that the planet isn't getting warmer. But, you know, okay, the you know, bees will adjust and they'll evolve and so forth.

And you know, that's kind of a hopeful thing to say, and one thing is that you know the planet, the weather thing is changing faster than these organisms evolve. They're not bacteria. You know?

And the other thing is that yeah, they are evolving. We're watching selection here. And it's called 60% of my colonies died this year.

And so when you're running a beekeeper in operation, you don't want to see that kind of natural selection. And yeah, in terms of feral populations, sure, there'll be selection on them and they'll be moving into the northern areas in it in higher elevations. So there'll be landscapes that we'll really be lacking pollinators because be lacking flowering plants and you know pollinators just can't get established there.

So there'll be all these shifts and Things evolving and things selecting, but they may not occur in ways that we really want them to, you know, or hope them to.

Jeff Ott

Is there anything a individual beekeeper can do along these lines to prepare their themselves and their honey bees or their operations for the climate change and things that we're experiencing.

Dr. Gloria DeGrandi-Hoffman

I think that you need to find places to put your colonies for the through the spring and the summer. especially when they get done pollinating, you know, those spring crops, if you pollinate almonds or, you know, the other orchard crops, where they can at least get some natural pollen coming in. And this is where I believe beekeepers really need help from the public and also from the government having a sustained commitment to its pollinating populations.

and pollinators as a natural resource where these areas become available to beekeepers, they are uh supported, they you know, are planted into pollinator plantings, that there's just a commitment that we're gonna, you know, do the things that we need to do in public lands and in you know open areas to support pollinator populations. so that all pollinators have some pollen, natural pollen coming in throughout the year. Okay, now that's going to build our nutritional base.

to keep pollinators healthy. And you know, pollinators, uh honey bees that have natural pollen coming in, have greater resistance to diseases, and can grow populations that have a chance of getting them through the winter. Then, you know, Varroa control.

And that gets expensive, you know, because you need to be monitoring more often. And you need to be rotating miticides and there are you know mite-resistant lines of bees that can be very effective. Put a plug in for the Baton Rouge lab here.

They've got great lines of bees. The Tucson Lab is doing an area-wide study with the Baton Rouge Lab on some of their selections of their mite-resistant lines. And they really keep mite levels low without mites.

That's terrific, you know? So keeping the mite levels down is key. And then how are you going to overwinter?

And that becomes the beekeeper's choice. Whether they want to put them into cold storage. Or, you know, they want to take them and leave them in the fields and you know take their chances there.

That's up to the beekeeper. But the climate, even under the best of situations. can still wreak havoc and you know, until you know we find places to put bees and you know have those years I'm really concerned about California this year with the predictions we're getting about the El Niño and the amount of rain that's gonna be in California.

I don't know you can do much about that. I the ocean is at record temperatures. for this time of year, the Pacific.

So, I mean Hawaii is getting hit, you know, already with we've had two hurricanes. So Like I said, I mean we d we need to be talking about climate change and doing things, you know, to help mitigate it Not just for us, but for, you know, all those folks who are who are following us. You know, all our kids and our grandkids and other people's kids and grandkids.

You know, we need to have that kind of long view.

Becky Masterman

I think one of the problems out there is that Varroa have just they've really muddled everything because beekeepers aren't able to understand the impact of different weather conditions on their colonies sometimes because it's very possible that their bees are already sick with viruses or the mite load is too high. And so it's just I preached, I think, but I want mite mitigation to be so so extreme that they can at least see what their bees are supposed to look like before they start trying to figure out other ways to keep bees and keep bees healthy. It is interesting because you're a healthy colony, they can stand some kind of other pressure.

But if you if you take that away from them, you know, no wonder our levels of colony collapse are so high every year. But I don't know if you can do that through mathematical modeling or if you can go in a time machine to when you started your career and see what the impact of these conditions are on the bees. But it is hard because it's what we have now, but it's really confusing.

Dr. Gloria DeGrandi-Hoffman

Yeah, actually a project that I'm working on with some uh colleagues at Arizona State University. That's what I'm kind of working out of now i is looking at exactly those things, you know, the different situations that occur throughout the year and how that affects your chances of a colony either growing and doing well and overwintering. or being lost over the wintertime.

And it does lend itself to mathematics, no question about it, because it will capture that series of unfortunate events that ultimately cause a colony to die over the winter or survive, you know, positive events. So yeah, I mean it can work out that way. But what you what you say a hundred percent you know agree that Varroa is either makes or breaks a colony and it's, you know, difficult to control and you just have to be on it all the time and Yeah, I was telling you we did that uh one study where you know we were looking at the economics and we were keeping um bees from uh the minute that uh or the time that they split, they made the splits in Texas in the spring and moved 'em up into North Dakota and, you know, with transportation costs and mice.

The costs of a miticide application are just like I mean, not just for the material, but for the labor and the transportation just like oh my god and you gotta do this you know for how many times a year but shucks if you don't And it might get away from you. Well, okay, now you got that.

Becky Masterman

Gloria, thank you so much for sharing all this information, but more importantly People need to read this book. So so how do they get a copy of your book?

Dr. Gloria DeGrandi-Hoffman

They sell it on Amazon. Just like we get everything else, right? You know, and uh you know you can buy uh um a hard copy, you can buy an electronic copy of it. Yeah, thanks for asking.

Becky Masterman

Excellent. And we'll make sure there's a link to the book in our show notes.

Jeff Ott

I hate to be the bad guy in this, but we're gonna have to bring this to an end. Gloria, this is such a broad topic and we could obviously talk about this for a long time. I promise you I'm not gonna wait five years to invite you back. I'd want to explore different areas on this and the honey bee nutrition You know, what comes first, a healthy bee or the Varroa I all those discussions I think are things that we can talk about and I would enjoy talking those with you. So I hope you accept our invitation next time we invite you back.

Dr. Gloria DeGrandi-Hoffman

Always. Yeah. Thank you for asking me. I appreciate it.

Becky Masterman

Oh, thank you so much.

Jeff Ott

I'm glad we invited Gloria to the show. Climate change, nutrition, varroa. honey bees, what a mixture.

Becky Masterman

Well, it's thirty-nine year career at the USDA plus to graduate degrees, there's a lot that Gloria has to share. I mean that perspective and that perspective that spans such change in the industry, including climate change impacting how beekeeping colonies manage their resources. It's pretty priceless.

Jeff Ott

She talked about her mathematical model and going back to that and making changes and looking at the life of a colony through the year, wouldn't that be a great app?

Becky Masterman

Well maybe or maybe not, because I always have hope for every colony regardless. So I don't know. I don't I don't think I want that out. But I always just smiled with d with um going back and modeling it because I've read these papers before, the modeling papers and They're so important, but it's a special group of people who have that in their head and can get it out into actual applicable work.

Jeff Ott

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