Honey Bee Nutrition with Dr. Priya Basu (309)

309 - Honey Bee Nutrition with Dr. Priya Basu

Sandy: Hello. This is Sandy.

Estelle: Estelle.

Colleen: Colleen.

Noel: Noel.

Kathryn: Kathryn.

Gloria: Gloria.

Julie: And Julie.

Sandy: We are Bee Summit.

Colleen: An all-woman beekeeping club.

Estelle: From someplace in Washington State.

All: Welcome to Beekeeping Today Podcast.

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

Becky Masterman: I'm Becky Masterman.

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Thank you, Bee Summit. Somewhere in the Olympic Peninsula, just northwest of me, Becky. What a great opening.

Becky: I love that opening. All those women, that's fantastic, and they're all listeners. At least I hope they are.

Jeff: They say they are so I'll take them at their word. I have to find out where they meet and get up and meet them sometime. That would be fun to have a group of beekeepers at all these clubs. It's great to hear from them. Appreciate the opening. Thank you, ladies. Becky, it's December. It's about that time of year you start-- Well, I don't know about you, but it's the time of year I start seeing which hives were really weak going in and they succumbed to the eventual end that I knew that would happen, but it's always so hard to see a colony die.

Becky: Yes. There are fall deadouts, there are winter deadouts, and there are those nice, strong, relatively mite-free colonies that are happily making it through this winter. It is hard to see when you lose colonies. It's another opportunity though. If they find a deadout and they've got a stack of honey, that's an opportunity to move that stack to maybe a colony that you thought was a little light. There's the sunshine in the sadness.

Jeff: If you do that, you want to make sure that they didn't necessarily die because they were full of American foulbrood or some other disease.

Becky: Oh, goodness. That is a good thing to bring up, and I certainly hope that's not the case, but if you're going into winter and you lose your bees, a lot of times it's going to be mites. What I would do is I would dig through any boxes, I would pull out any frames that have any brood in them, and also look for the signs of mites. You can see the mite frass on the tops of the cells. It's quite evident. You can see perforated cells, and you will see some patchy brood. You can certainly look for that evidence. If that's the case, I just pull those brood frames out and will replace them with another frame that I'm not worried about.

It does take a little bit of work if you're going to move food from a deadout to a live colony, but it's very doable.

Jeff: I recommend that you do that as soon as you know it's dead and clean out the colony, even if it's just to shake out the dead bees off in the bushes somewhere. It reduces the amount of mold and junk that you have to clean out in the spring. I found that the frames are more salvageable if you do that now as opposed to waiting till April when it's just a green, fuzzy forest of bees and pollen.

Becky: I think your frames might get a little moldier than some of ours based upon the way you're describing it. I've certainly seen moldy frames, but it sounds like it might be a little bit more of a problem where you are than where I am. Also, the mice can jump in, depending upon how you winter your colonies. Boy, they love to make a home in an empty colony. I think that's fantastic.

Yes, protecting them is great. Sometimes, though, depending upon our temperatures, especially if the bees are still tucked down deep, in order for us to tell if they're in there or not, we'd have to crack the boxes. For me, although I really want to know how everybody's doing and what their cluster size is, I need an unusually warm day in order to actually check it out. Otherwise, I just have to look at those colonies and hope for the best.

Jeff: Hope for the best, yes. I usually look for, on those warm days, which colonies are flying.

Becky: That doesn't happen as much as in Minnesota.

[laughter]

Jeff: Good point. Where possible and when possible.

Becky: When I meant warm days, I was like, "30 degrees."

[laughter]

Jeff: Above zero, Jeff, that's a warm day in Minnesota January.

Becky: Yes. If you see girls flying, you've got a good thing. If we see dead bees out in the snow or signs of poop, that's great, but boy, sometimes we have to wait for a while for that to happen.

Jeff: Fair enough. This is a good time of year to just go out there and look at your bees, see if you can see sign of life. Look for the chewed opening of your hive to see if there's perhaps a mouse that's gotten in during the winter or the fall.

Becky: A break-in, yes.

Jeff: Just do a general health and walk around your colonies. It's such a good time to do that.

Becky: If it's cold, don't open them up.

Jeff: Yes, don't do that. Don't do that. Today's guest I'm looking forward to is Dr. Priya Basu on the show to talk to us about honey bee nutrition, which is a good thing to talk about this time of year and get set for the spring and everything that's going to be coming to make the season of 2025 great in the bee yard.

Becky: I actually just saw Priya in person just a couple of weeks ago at the Tennessee Beekeepers Association meeting, which was a great meeting. It was so lovely to be able to catch up with her. I attended as many of her talks as I was able to do, and wow, we are in for a treat here because she's doing some amazing things.

Jeff: I've heard great things about her. Let's talk to her. She's out in the green room, we'll be talking to her real quick right after these words from our sponsors.

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Jeff: Hey, thanks a lot to our sponsors. We really appreciate being here. Hey, everybody, welcome back to the show. Sitting across this great, big virtual Beekeeping Today Podcast table, sitting down at Mississippi State University in, where else? Mississippi and Minnesota and out in Washington State. Dr. Priya Basu, welcome to Beekeeping Today Podcast.

Dr. Priya Basu: Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

Becky: Oh, such a pleasure.

Jeff: I'm excited you're excited. That's fun.

Becky: I know. I like that enthusiasm. Let's make a note of that.

Jeff: Yes.

Becky: When do you want to come back?

[laughter]

Priya: Tell me. How about next week?

Becky: Uh-oh, we got a co-host here.

[laughter]

Jeff: I need a vacation.

Becky: I know. There you go...

Jeff: That works.

Becky: This is great.

Priya: Is this paid or is this free? I need to clarify that before I sign the contract.

[laughter]

Jeff: No. Definitely free.

[laughter]

Priya: Hey, I'm here for all the conversations and the chat so I can keep coming back every week.

Jeff: Excellent.

Becky: [laughs] Awesome.

Jeff: Priya, tell us about yourself and how you got into bees, and then we'll talk about your research and what you're doing these days.

Priya: My PhD is actually from India. I grew up in the tropics and we've always seen bees all around us, but it's just strange that we've never really connected bees to how important they are and all of that just growing up because you look at a bee and you're like, "Okay, it's pretty. It's a bee. It's a butterfly. Oh, the bee stings, but the butterfly doesn't." That's sort of a concept, but they're both pollinators.

I remember when I was halfway through my master's, I read about colony collapse disorder in the newspaper. It had made its way to India too. Just out of curiosity, I started digging through existing literature because I was really curious like, "Hey, they're talking about pesticides. They're talking about mites. What do we know about the Indian honey bees?" Because we have multiple species of honey bees in India.

I really didn't find anything, especially about the impacts of pesticides on wild honey bees in India. When I got into my PhD, I knew what I was going to study. I definitely wanted to at least be that person who could pave that way to understanding more about what's happening to honey bees in India. That's how my PhD project also started. I got into it and I looked at the impacts of pesticides on Apis dorsata and Apis cerana in India. I had gotten a fellowship from UK, so I was also at Newcastle University for a few months and I looked at the impacts of pesticides on bumblebees in England.

Once I wrapped up my PhD, then I moved to Ramesh's lab at Oregon State University and I did my postdoc there before moving to Mississippi. I guess I've worked across three different honey bee species now and bumblebees. I'm still doing a bit of work on bumblebees, looking at the nutritional aspect, but that's how I got into bees.

Becky: Priya, some of our listeners have never heard of Apis dorsata or cerana. Could you just give a little, tiny synopsis of each different species?

Priya: Oh, absolutely. Actually, I don't know if you can see it here, but right here I have a giant picture of an Apis dorsata right here. In India or in Southeast Asia, you're going to come across many different honey bee species. Two of them that I mentioned are Apis dorsata, which is called the giant rock bee or just the giant honey bee, and then you have Apis cerana, which is called the Asian honey bee.

If you're looking at them size-wise, Apis dorsata is definitely much larger in size. If you google, you'll find plenty of pictures where they're comparing the three bees side by side. Even a regular worker of Apis dorsata is pretty big. It's large. No wonder they are called giant bees. Apis cerana, on the other hand, they are slightly smaller than Apis mellifera. When you're comparing them, Apis mellifera fall somewhere in the middle. Now, dorsata is completely wild. It has not been domesticated yet. Ask me. I spent four years.

[laughter]

They definitely have, I would say, this preference of having open nests. Any beehive that you see hanging, say, from a building's edge or from the edge of a cliff or in the mountains, for example, these are typically Apis dorsata nests look like. They have a single wax frame. Apis cerana, on the other hand, they're very similar to Apis mellifera. They like cavity nesting like mellifera does. They do not like the open air, the sun, the wind like dorsata.

Cerana is also found very commonly in the wild in India, but a lot of beekeepers also domesticate cerana. The boxes tend to be smaller than mellifera. Cerana also has a higher, I would say, chance of absconding if you mess up something with the management. Mellifera tends to be a much more resilient type of honey bee when it comes to managing them in bee boxes.

Jeff: This is beyond what we wanted to talk about, but since you're talking about these two different subspecies or Asian honey bees-- I probably got my terminology wrong.

Becky: Species.

Priya: They're-

Jeff: Species.

Priya: -species.

Jeff: Species. Yes. Thank you. I knew I'd be corrected.

[laughter]

Becky: On either side of me, you've got a correction.

[laughter]

Jeff: In stereo, in fact.

[laughter]

Becky: You asked for it, though.

[laughter]

Jeff: You probably have some experience with the Tropilaelaps and the origins of the Varroa, of course. Since you want to come back, we can have you back to talk to us about the Tropilaelaps at some time since that is a scary subject for beekeepers in North America these days.

Priya: You are the second person who asked me that question today.

Jeff: Oh my god.

Priya: Believe me or not, you're the second person. I have a commercial beekeeper in Mississippi. He's one of our collaborators, so we have this large European foulbrood project that we are a part of that actually Ramesh is leading from Oregon State. He was sitting at a Tropilaelaps meeting and he was listening to some stuff and then he said, "Hey, it's found in India," and I said, "I know. It's found in India." He was asking me the same question. Sure, I'll be happy to talk about it.

Actually, I'm doing a beekeeping around the world, like a seminar for Penn State. My talk is in March. I may not delve all about Tropilaelaps and Varroa in Asia compared to anywhere else, but I'll definitely be talking a bit about Indian beekeeping. Just a quick one-sentence summary, yes, we deal with Tropilaelaps and we deal with Varroa mites, but these bees, especially Apis cerana and Apis dorsata, they've evolved with these mites. The same thing, what we were discussing when we were talking about the northern giant hornet, they don't have that balling technique that cerana has, for example.

These bees, they've evolved with Tropilaelaps. They've evolved with Varroa mites. They will always be a problem. With Varroa mites, at least, we know that Apis cerana tends to let them grow in brood cells and they'll clean out the worker cells, so at least they naturally manage mites. They also tend to be better mite biters in general. With any wild or feral colonies, their immune responses, their immunity, is also a little different when you're comparing them with managed bees, I will say. With Apis dorsata, we have very minimal understanding, to be honest, just because of the nature of their biology.

When it comes to managing them in terms of beekeeping, India is a very different scenario than the US when you're looking at US or, say, any other country where beekeeping is a giant industry. In India, it is still a good sizable industry, but it's not on the scale as the US is. Often it's little bits and pockets of mellifera and little bits and pockets of cerana that are grown. Sorry. That are kept. I can't believe I said grown. That are [crosstalk] kept.

[laughter]

Becky: We're bee farmers. We grow bees.

Priya: Yes.

Jeff: The reason we asked you to join us today and this time of year is beekeepers are looking forward to the spring and getting their bees through the late winter, early spring into the spring, and growing season. Honey bee nutrition is becoming more and more important. It's always been important, but we're understanding better the importance of it. It's more than just nectar and honey and pollen, we're starting to understand the micro and macro and all the interplay of everything. Can you give us just a high-level understanding of the importance of honey bee nutrition, where it stands today, without going too deep, and then we'll ask some more in-depth questions?

Priya: Sure. You really did ask me a difficult question and it's going to be very difficult to summarize that as a simple answer, but hear me out. I'm going to try my best.

Jeff: Pretend like you're ChatGPT and give me a summary.

[laughter]

Priya: I'm going to try my best. This is my personal opinion or my summary on honey bee nutrition. For truly decades, we've been focusing a lot on proteins and carbohydrates when it comes to bee nutrition, and quite correctly, because we need the colony to grow. Carbohydrate is energy. Protein is needed for colony growth. The colony, whenever we think about nutrition, of course, flowers are important, but an important part of beekeeping as a management is also nutritionally managing the colonies. When we talk about doing bee nutrition research, we tend to focus on the two major nutrients that can be supplemented to the colony at ease.

Slowly then research has now started delving into major lipids. Also, into, say, fatty acids, into vitamins, into minerals, salts. What we are doing is also phytosterols. When you're looking at the different nutrients that bees need, they need macronutrients. They also need micronutrients. Macronutrients are obviously required in larger amounts, micro in smaller amounts, but they're both equally important.

I think where we are starting to catch up now, labs like ours or a few others, where we are starting to catch up now is we are also focusing on micronutrients, not just on macronutrients. We are looking at all the different aspects of bees' nutritional health. Not just focusing on one particular thing because it's important. We are what we eat and it's the same for bees. The better fed they are, the healthier they will be, the better their immune system. Essentially, by focusing on their nutrition holistically, these are going to be exact the same term that probably a dietician would use for us.

Anybody who's listening to us thinks about what you ate last night or today for lunch. You probably wanted to have a mix of fruits, vegetables, different proteins, healthy fats, and all of it. It's the same for bees.

Jeff: No, no. Cookies, ice cream.

Priya: You sound like my almost two-year-old.

[laughter]

Jeff: There would be some who might agree with you.

[laughter]

This is really interesting because we're talking generally about honey bees, but then once you start looking at a little bit deeper, then there's different requirements for different castes of bees, different stage of development. What are we finding there?

Priya: We are still trying to figure that out. That is actually precisely I think what I started off when I started talking about nutrition in that honey bee guide because it becomes extremely complex, multi-layered, and multifaceted. As you mentioned correctly, Jeff, we are looking at different ages, different castes, different life cycle stages. That just makes it even more complex.

Nurse bees need to have a lot of pollen, workers need to have a lot of energy, queens need a whole different set of nutrition. We are just slowly trying to figure that out, exactly who needs what. I actually heard Jamie Ellis say that, and I may not be able to tell this exactly the way he said it, but essentially this thing has always stuck with me, that if you're feeding cattle, for example, you know how much pound of feed is going to translate into how much pound of meat.

When you're looking at honey bee nutrition from a supplemental nutrition point of view, we really still do not know how much of that feeding is going to translate to a quantifiable measure, I'm going to get 5 frames of brood, I'm going to get a queen who is going to lay 1,000 eggs, I'm going to get a colony who is going to store 3 pounds of honey. I'm just giving random examples. They may not even make sense.

I'm just saying, essentially, when it comes to it, we really have a lot more to figure out and find out. If you look at NASS statistics, National Agricultural Statistical Services, if you look at their most recent reports, just look at the last two, three years, you will see consistently the highest expenditure for US beekeepers is providing supplemental feeding to their colonies. Managing for mites doesn't even come close.

Combined, these are the two most highest expenditures. Just supplementally feeding the colony is a huge expenditure on the US beekeepers. Having, I think, better idea about the habitat, finding ways to support bees by giving them better habitat but also being able to understand all aspects of the macro and micronutrients and how they shape bee health, how they shape colony health, different castes, different ages, different life cycle stages, how it happens can probably come a long way in figuring out how we can also sustain them, manage them nutritionally in times of forage dearth.

Jeff: Let's take this quick break and hear from our sponsors, and we'll be right back.

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Becky: Welcome back, everybody. It's interesting because you mentioned just how expensive it is for beekeepers to feed bees. I remember a commercial beekeeper saying to me, "Flowers, we would just prefer to feed them flowers. It's so much cheaper. If they only saw the $30,000 check I just wrote for feed." It is a cost that they have to to expend in order to keep the bees alive.

You have invested a lot of time in the Honey Bee Health Coalition supplement guide. Can you just give us a summary of what kind of work went into that? We will certainly share a link so that readers can take a look at it. Listeners. Excuse me.

Priya: Thank you for bringing that up. I think going back to you know what you said that beekeepers really spend a lot of money in providing supplemental feeding, for example, that $30,000 check, let's not forget that it is expensive to feed supplements in terms of protein supplements, but also sugar. They're both expensive, both sugars and protein supplements. This was about a year before we published. I would say end of '22.

Project Apis m., Honey Bee Health Coalition, and I, we got together because we truly felt the need, and of course, there were also beekeepers part of that conversation when Project Apis m. and Honey Bee Health Coalition and I we got together because we realized that there is this urgency to bring this information together into one place where beekeepers can go to and find out about honey bee nutrition.

When we just ask somebody, "Hey, what do you know about proteins? What do you know about lipids?" You do a Google search, these are scientific papers that might come up, or different blog posts that might come up. I'm not discounting them. It's great. It's amazing to have all of this information, but we truly felt that it has to be one place for everyone. This could be that one place you could go to. It's going to be accessible freely for anyone, and it's going to be across the board for all types of beekeeping practices.

You could be a hobbyist. You could be a sideliner. You could be a commercial beekeeper. You could have a completely different type of beekeeping practice compared to somebody else. You could go for, say, commercially pollinating a crop. Somebody could be a honey producer. Somebody could just be a queen breeder. No matter where you are on that broad spectrum of beekeeping as a practice or as a profession, what do we know about bee nutrition? This is what we initially anticipated.

As I know you had Ramesh here a few days ago for one of your episodes and he must have spoken about building the pollen nutrition database. That was essentially the whole idea that also kind of seeped into it. If you haven't heard about it don't laugh at me. It's called Fat Bees Skinny Bees by Somerville. [laughter] This, as as hilarious it may sound, it is a treasure trove. You go into Fat Bees Skinny Bees, you're going to know a lot about Australian flora. What's in their pollen? What's in their nectar?

We don't have anything like that in North America, leave alone even just finding out about what goes into those supplemental diets. Essentially this was trickling down into the whole idea that the supplemental feeding guide is going to be the first step towards this, this larger effort of combining all that we know till today about bee nutrition, and we are going to keep on updating it. Every two years or so or more, we would like to continue to keep on updating it and make it much more relevant based on current times, what else do we know? That was the whole thought process that went into it, that there is an urgent need, we recognize the need, and we want to try our best to fill that gap.

Becky: I was going to ask you, but it sounds like they've warned you because the Honey Bee Health Coalition mite management, I think it's on its 8th edition or something like that. Once you commit to it, you are committed to keeping it relevant. [laughs]

Priya: This is the face of over-commitment

[laughter]

Becky: As we know because you've committed to become a co-host.

[laughter]

Priya: Well, that's debatable. More like a sideliner--

Becky: Oh, okay. A sideliner.

Priya: More like a sideliner, chatty part co-guest.

Becky: Regardless, you're part of the family now. You've already committed to that.

Priya: Thank you.

Becky: No, that's great.

Priya: Certainly, it was a lot of work. I won't deny that it was a lot of work. I spent hours just going through internet paper after paper after paper after paper, making sure we put in actual facts that have been verified by peer-reviewed scientific literature so we know what's out there and we know what to expect when it comes to bee nutrition, what are the nutrients that bees need, and how can we provide supplemental feeding.

Jeff: There's different seasonal requirements for bees, whether you're a hobbyist beekeeper, a sideliner, or even a commercial. What are the different nutritional requirements for, say, this time of the year, mid-winter into winter going into spring? What kind of supplements or feed directly should beekeepers be considering for their bees?

Priya: That's a great question. I do go into a lot of that in depth in the supplemental feeding guide from the Honey Bee Health Coalition. Before I answer your question, I just wanted to also point out in relation to this, that if you go to that nutrition guide, towards the very end, you are going to find six case summaries or interviews from real-life commercial beekeepers in the US. They are spread across the US. They have different types of beekeeping practices. If you just read through that, you are going to find that what are the different products they use, what time they feed, and all of that.

As a general summary answer to your question, a lot of that depends on, first, obviously, what your beekeeping needs are. Second, where you are located, do you have any nectar flow? Do you have any pollen flow? Are you migratory? Are you going to move to a region to try and get some nectar flow or pollen flow, or is your holding yard in an area where you know you have no choice but to feed them?

In general, the recommendations usually are, in spring, if you start feeding, do not stop feeding because it might be warm and then the bee start consuming a lot of the sugar syrup that you've started feeding, but then if you stop and you suddenly encounter a frost or the early spring forage dies down and your next flower boost is not going to happen for the next three weeks, now the colony in anticipation has already expanded and you stop feeding, you are obviously causing a nutritional stress. In spring, if you start feeding, do not stop feeding.

We usually feed bees one-to-one syrup for stimulating them. A lot of the beekeepers I've interviewed for this nutrition guide, they've all said the same thing. They feed one-to-one syrup, not only to stimulate but also to split nucs, to build up combs. Essentially you are providing the colony with that energy. Once nectar starts coming in and you know there is a steady flow you can stop feeding.

Summer is also very variable. Depending on if you're in an area where there is a dearth in forage, you have to keep up with feeding them. Fall is when we must be careful that the colony has enough food stores in the hive. That's what is going to last them through the winter months. The overwintering bees that are produced in the colony during late summer/early fall are the longest-living workers because their job is to basically help the queen raise the new batch of brood the following spring.

These overwintering workers, what we call as diutinus bees, they also need enough food reserves stored within their fat body tissues in their bodies to be able to burn off that energy reserve as well. Fall is all about making sure your colony has plenty of food stores and your colony has been fed really well through mid to end of summer because that's when they're building up. Winter, it really varies where you are. Where I am in Mississippi, we do get a brood break. Way far south in Mississippi, you may or may not even see a brood break during a warmer winter. It really depends on how you continue to feed them.

As a side note, we are actually part of a large-scale national brood monitoring effort that Auburn University is coordinating. If you go into Auburn University brood monitoring webpage, you can not only find our data but also data from the other universities who are participating. That will tell you when we see brood break every year in the colonies that we are managing. Coming back to nutritional management, that is when it'll also tell us are the bees actively consuming any of the food stores.

Going back to the same general recommendations, in fall, we usually feed a thicker syrup two to one. If there is first frost, we should immediately stop liquid supplements and we should switch to a fondant or a candy board of some sort. In any case, my personal goal, this is what I tell every beekeeper I talk to, is essentially making sure the colony has enough. We should not be needing to feed the colony midwinter. We should always plan ahead and make sure the colony has enough reserves.

If we don't and we realize that, hey, the colony needs now supplemental sugar feeding, it's probably going to be dry sugar, or it's going to be a candy boat. Even then, it's the stronger colonies who can spare foragers to find water to be able to reliquefy that solid sugar. The weaker colonies are still suffering to some extent. Truly the whole idea is to make sure that what we are leaving is enough.

In that bee nutrition guide, I have given a very general estimate of what we keep in the south versus what we keep in the hives in the middle, the transition zones versus the north, but north could also mean South Canada or North of Canada because this nutrition guide is for North America. A local experienced beekeeper might be a better person to reach out to when it comes to truly figuring out, "Hey, I'm in this region in your local club, how much should I keep in an average year?"

Jeff: We're talking right now, going back to the first part of the conversation, we've been talking mostly about carbohydrates at this point with the sugar one to one, two to one. What about the protein needs and the fat needs? That's typically seen in the pollen. How is pollen used in the colony and when is it used and who uses it? Three questions.

Becky: Oh my gosh.

Jeff: I queued them up for you.

Priya: When is pollen used in the colony? Pollen is usually used for colony growth. In spring there will always be a pollen flow. Generally, there should be a pollen flow. The forager bees, the worker bees who are at least 21 days or older, the older foragers, or the workers in the colony who become foragers, they're the ones who go out. They collect both nectar and pollen. There are mixed foragers who collect both or there are pollen foragers or there are nectar foragers that are available in the landscape.

These foragers that they bring the pollen back in, they pack it tight in the honeycomb cells, the hexagonal cells that nurse bees consume. Nurse bees have these very hyperactive, hypopharyngeal glands in their head regions and mandibular glands in their mouth parts. These two together produce royal jelly that is fed to the queen larvae, whereas the hypopharyngeal glands which are in the head region, that produces brood food that is fed to the regular worker brood.

Of course, a little bit of pollen might also be fed to the different brood, but essentially it's the nurse bees, the young workers in the hive who are consuming that pollen primarily compared to any other caste or any other age group of the workers. That was your first question. This is what basically forms bee bread. Protein is needed for colony growth. It is needed all through spring and summer. If you are in a location where you have access to good pollen forage, you don't have to worry about it, but if you don't, you have to feed them supplemental proteins. There is no way around it.

Of course, as I mentioned towards the very beginning when we started chatting, that pollen has a lot of macro and micronutrients that are not present in an artificial diet, but just because it is not present doesn't mean that the artificial diet can be discounted, colonies need it. If nothing else, they're going to get proteins, some fats, and other minerals from there. The colony needs to sustain. As a beekeeper, we must be willing to nutritionally manage the colonies when that colony needs us the most.

If I give you my example here, I am currently based in Starkville, Mississippi. We have a peculiar dearth in forage, not in mid-summer, but towards the beginning of summer and towards the end of summer. It depends on when the rain is here. We've been seeing a bit of drought in Mississippi for the last two, three years, so the forage has been also gradually shifting when we are seeing more plants blooming, but I have been feeding them supplements during the time because summer is when we run peak experiments and I need them to produce brood. I do feed them supplements in summer to just keep the colonies sustaining themselves.

To get to that, there are two parts to that answer, why pollen is important or how it might be important. There are two parts to that answer, two things that I do personally. In spring, I know a point in time for at least two to three weeks when my colonies in my research apiary they're going to bring in a ton of pollen. What I do is I trap for pollen. I do not starve one particular hive, but I switch that pollen trap around strong hives, which have a lot of brood and they're bringing in a ton of pollen. I collect all of that pollen and I freeze it and I keep it in my chest freezer.

In summer when it's time to feed them, if I have collected enough pollen, I directly make those into little pollen patties. If I haven't collected enough pollen, then I will mix it into artificial diets and I'll give it back to the colonies. That's one way that we can consider feeding it back. There is always a concern of having pesticide residues in commercially purchased pollen or just the sheer price of buying commercially purchased cheap pollen, just the sheer cost of it, it really adds up. This is one way that if you are on a small-scale operation or if you are a hobby beekeeper, you could potentially track for your own pollen. Your bees would've eaten it just two months before you are giving it to them.

I can never stress this enough. The three most important characteristics of a bee's forage habitat should be that the habitat should be diverse, the habitat should be staggered, meaning something or the other is constantly blooming. Of course, the habitat should have abundant forage. We may not always be lucky to have all three, but if we are in a small-scale environment or if we have the ability to move around or predict or plan ahead, we can try and meet all of these three criteria.

For example, for our research apiary, we plan ahead. We have something or the other blooming from the last frost of the year to the first frost of the year. We have built-in pollinator habitats all around our entomology building. My on-campus research apiary basically has access to flowers throughout the year, from the last frost to the first frost of that same year.

Jeff: Lucky bees.

[laughter]

Priya: They eat better than I do, I'm sure.

[laughter]

Becky: It's something that beekeepers haven't had to worry about or don't know that they need to worry about it. It's another one of those calculations, is are you paying attention to the signs? Do you know what it looks like when your bees are on a nectar flow versus if there's a dearth? Same thing with pollen. Are you always looking for that to see whether or not they're bringing it in?

The way I tell if the bees are on a nectar flow or not, I'm just going to say it for anybody who doesn't know. The way I can tell is that I can see the nectar, they're moving up through the brace comb. If I crack a box and that burr comb/brace comb in between is filled with nectar, that's a sign those girls have food coming in, it's a good thing. If it's empty, then that tells me that they don't. I'll just throw that out there.

Jeff: Are the nutritional requirements different for those who are breeding queens per se and developing their DCAs as opposed to beekeepers who are getting ready for a large honey production or a honey flow?

Priya: A lot of it is also seasonal. Sometimes you see queen breeders preferring one season over the other for production of queens, and then there are times when we have queens being produced throughout the year. It truly comes down to the very end that the colony must have enough food in terms of a diversity in diet. If you want the queen larvae to be healthy as a queen producer, you have a ton of queen cells right in those frames.

If you want your nurse bees to feed those queen larvae proper royal jelly, those nurse bees need to be well-fed themselves. If you are a honey producer, you need to have a strong colony. You need enough worker population in your hive to be able to bring in all of that nectar and store it in your honey supers. It truly comes down to this one like a blanket thing that they all need access to better nutrition. The better diversity of flowers that are available in the landscape, the better it is, to be honest.

We actually published a study. I'm trying to remember. It was 2020 or '21. I don't know what happened after my COVID brain. I always get confused, "Wait, did that happen in 2020 or did that happen in '21?" I'm starting to sound like my mother at some point.

[laughter]

I'm like, "Wait, was that 2020, or was that '21?" It's like this whole one block where I don't remember if it happened in 2020 or '21, but we did publish a study. It's David Tarpy's lab with Joe Milone who was his grad student and then it was Ramesh and me on that paper. If you look up with any of us, you're going to find that paper. We fed pesticides to the colony through pollen patties and we actually found the nutritional quality of the royal jelly was drastically different in controlled colonies versus the pesticide-exposed colonies. There were also differences in the amount of royal jelly that was produced.

There was minimal or no transference of the pesticides from the pollen patty to the royal jelly, but all other nutritional aspects of it really changed out. It really tells us that when we are talking about nutrition, it is so integrally connected to the different aspects and the different stressors that are all around it.

Becky: Sublethal effects of pesticides, things that are hard to measure unless there's a scientist out there doing an experiment, right?

Priya: True. There could be so many variations. We tested a few pesticides in combination. We still need to find out individually what happens in a different set of combinations. What happens when you increase the sample size? This is what I like about science, the more we don't know, the more we can be motivated to find out some answers and then find out more questions in the process what we don't know.

Jeff: It really becomes complicated and complex when you start thinking, "Well, not only is it pesticides, but you also have to deal with wetting agents and all of the other additives that go along with the pesticide. Are those having a cumulative effect or a synergistic effect with everything and the adult bee, the larval bee the egg, or the ability of the nurse bees to produce food?" Yikes. I think you have your research cut out for you.

Priya: If I don't die earlier, if I don't retire early, I am in a deep mess [laughter] because I've just asked myself so many questions over the past years and we've barely scratched the surface.

Becky: Also, I know that we're towards the end of the hour and we still haven't talked about some of your big research projects that you have going on. [laughs] You're going to have to come back because I don't know how much time-- I don't want to short the subjects.

Jeff: Yes, Becky, you're absolutely spot on. I was dreading trying to figure out how to stop this because I'm really fascinated by the topic. Maybe we'll have to ask Priya back and do a honey bee nutrition--

Becky: Part two, right?

Priya: I would love to. I would love to talk about research projects.

Becky: Yes.

Jeff: Yes. Priya, I told you early on that we would circle back and say, is there anything that we haven't asked you about that you want to talk about? I'm not even going to open that door because there's so much behind it.

[laughter]

Priya: True.

Becky: We can share the website, your website.

Priya: Absolutely. I will be updating the website. Just an FYI, we've got a lot more projects since we last updated and it's partially my fault. My husband helps us manage the website and he's been asking me for a year and a half for updates and information, and here I'm busy with my questions trying to answer them. Yes, please do share the website.

Jeff: I have to ask you. I saw a presentation you gave and there was some animation. Is that your husband doing the animation?

Priya: Yes.

Jeff: Oh, very nice. Wow. You just keep everybody busy with all your research. That's fantastic.

Priya: I am very lucky to have somebody creative in my life. My husband is incredible. He honestly just selflessly keeps on helping me. Animations, as I said, it's just one part of it. Graphics, animations, and everything. He really helps out. I wasn't blessed that way. I think I was hiding. When God was doling out creativity, [laughter] I was hiding in a deep, dark carve. I can't draw a proper circle.

Becky: Also, in your presentations and I believe on your website I saw it too, you have these lovely videos where you're showing what research looks like really fast and you're showing the actions of some of your projects. Your students are in there doing all the tasks and it's just such a great insight into what goes on in your lab.

Priya: Thank you so much. I truly appreciate that feedback because sometimes it's hard to know how we do it. It might sound easy or it might sound complicated, but when you actually see a person doing it, you know all the effort everybody gives in. I am very lucky to have these amazing students in the lab. My grad students and my undergrads, we function like a hive.

Becky: One thing that we can let you share is you told me how many undergrads and grads are in your lab and it's just astonishing.

Priya: I have five graduate students. One of them recently graduated, so now I'm down to four. I have 3 technicians, a lab research assistant, and then I have anywhere between 12 to 16 undergrads, usually in the lab at any semester.

Jeff: 12 to 16 or 12 to--

Priya: 16. One-six.

Jeff: Okay.

Priya: 12 to 16 undergrads at any point of time. Somebody somewhere gave me the chance. That is my whole principle. Every undergrad who walks into our lab has an opportunity to not only train in apiculture or pollination research but also basic STEM. A lot of them go into grad school, med school, vet school, pharmacy school, or just move on with other entomology research but they have the opportunity to learn and contribute. My undergrads, they present posters, they present talks. One of them is going to ESA this year as well.

Becky: Excellent.

Priya: They lead their own part of that project.

Becky: That's impressive.

Jeff: Last note, I know that we talked about it early on, you have a move coming up?

Priya: I do. I am moving back to the Pacific Northwest. I will be joining as an assistant professor at Washington State University starting in January. I am about to move in a month and a half.

Jeff: I welcome you back to the Pacific Northwest on the other side of the mountains. That's fantastic.

Priya: If only the listeners could see your face right now.

Jeff: No, they're lucky that they don't.

[laughter]

Priya: I lived in the Willamette Valley area. I was at Oregon State. I lived in Corvallis for about four years. The family's excited about this move, I guess.

Jeff: Beautiful part of the country. Priya, it's been totally our pleasure to have you on the show today. Honestly, we'll have you back and we'll pick it up and further our discussion on nutrition and anything else. It sounds like we could have a Priya hour every month [laughter] and we'd be [crosstalk] in good shape.

Priya: One more episode and you'll be like, "Okay, Priya, I don't want to see you in the next three hours."

[laughter]

Becky: I doubt that.

Priya: It was an absolute pleasure being here and chatting with you both today. Thank you so much for having me on your podcast.

Becky: Oh, our pleasure. Our pleasure.

Jeff: All this talk about nutrition, I am hungry and I just ate lunch before we started talking. This is really good. Priya is just a wonderful resource, very knowledgeable. I'm really grateful that she's coming to Washington State University. That's really good.

Becky: I love the knowledge that is in her head. It's amazing. Then again, it's just that ability to translate it to what beekeepers need that's so important. We've got some great scientists out there and she is one of them.

Jeff: Oh, absolutely. I apologize to the unnamed listener out there who's saying, "Doggone it, Jeff, you had a whole hour with Priya and you didn't ask her about--" and you had a list of topics. The list is so long.

Becky: I know.

Jeff: I apologize for any questions we didn't get to. We will have her back and ask her those questions. In fact, to our listeners, if you have any questions for Priya, send them to us. Leave them on our website, and when we have her back, we will have them queued up and ask her about honey bee nutrition.

Becky: We'll do our best because I've got two different projects here I wanted to talk about that we did not get to talk about. Do the listener questions go before those projects or after? I'm just asking.

Jeff: Just yes.

[laughter]

Becky: I'm teasing. It's pretty interesting when we have a whole hour with somebody and we don't get to what we were here to talk about. It's a good sign.

Jeff: Barely touched the surface of it.

Becky: Great.

Jeff: Honey bee nutrition is more than just what I grew up keeping bees-

Becky: Oh, gosh. Right?

Jeff: -learning. Honey bee nutrition way back when, not that I go all that far back, but back in the '80s when I learned how to keep bees, it was one-to-one sugar, spring, summer, late fall, winter, it's two-to-one sugar, and there you go. That's honey bee nutrition.

Becky: No pollen sub?

Jeff: No. I didn't--

Becky: Oh, interesting.

Jeff: We weren't using pollen sub back when. I didn't, at least not in Northern Ohio.

Becky: Oh, I think in Minnesota, the bee professors in the '40s, '50s and '60s, '70s, '80s were always looking at protein because we like to get a patty into those colonies in early March because we know they're raising brood and we know they don't have reliable flowers. Just because of our cooler, potentially very cool springs, I think maybe that's why I learned a little differently from you, but yes, it was much simpler. Oh, there was Fumagilin that we put in that syrup.

Jeff: Oh, yes. Oh, I forgot about that.

Becky: We did that little TM sprinkle-- I don't know if you learned that one too-- in the fall.

[laughter]

Jeff: Back when it was available.

Becky: That was nutrition. [laughs]

Jeff: Go to the feed store and pick up your little packet of TM-25. I'll have to ask Dr. Jimmy Tew on Honey BeeObscura what we did back in the '80s because I learned beekeeping from him originally. He was one of my early mentors. It was great having Dr. Priya Basu on the show. I look forward to having her back.

Becky: Absolutely.

Jeff: 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 or 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 tab along the top of any webpage.

We want to thank Betterbee and our regular longtime sponsors, 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 on our website. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks a lot, everybody.

[00:55:31] [END OF AUDIO]