Podcast Family Holiday Gathering (S6, E28)

S6, E28 - Podcast Family Holiday Gathering

Listener Open: Ho, ho, ho. I bet you didn't know I listen to  Beekeeping Today Podcast. Ho, ho, ho. Yes, we do have bees in the North Pole, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho. Well, now on with our show. Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho.

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

Becky Masterman: I'm Becky Masterman.

Kim Flottum: I'm Kim Flottum.

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Jeff: Thank you, Sherry. A quick shout-out to all of our sponsors whose support allows us to bring you this podcast each week without resorting to a fee-based subscription. We don't want that, and we know you don't either. Be sure to check out all of our content on our website. There you can read up on all our guests, read our blog on the various aspects and observations about beekeeping, search for, download, and listen to over 200 past episodes, read episode transcripts, leave comments and feedback on each show, and check on podcast specials from our sponsors. You can find it all at www.beekeepingtodaypodcast.com.

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Jeff: Hey everybody, welcome to the show. For those of you who celebrate Christmas, today is Christmas Day if you're listening to it on our release day, and we're here to celebrate it with you. Hopefully, you're listening on a new pair of earbuds or on a new player of some sort. Christmas is a time for family gatherings, and we have our podcast family sitting around this virtual  Beekeeping Today Podcast table. Sitting across around is Dr. Becky Masterman from  Beekeeping Today Podcast.

Becky: Merry Christmas, everybody. I hope you had a wonderful Christmas morning, or if you're listening to it the day after Christmas or even a week after Christmas, I hope your Christmas memories are great and you had a great holiday season.

Jeff: Want to reintroduce to our listeners, Dr. Kirsten Traynor, who is the host of  2 Million Blossoms. Kirsten, welcome.

Kirsten Traynor: Jeff, thank you so much. Happy holidays to everyone. I'm super excited to be back, and I'm looking forward to relaunching  2 Million Blossoms the podcast in 2024.

Jeff: Fantastic. Looking forward to that too. Sitting here to my virtual left is Dr. Jim Tew. Jim from  Honey Bee Obscura, Merry Christmas.

Jim: Well, Merry Christmas to everyone here and to everyone listening. I wish that you could see my new socks. I'm wearing them already. I don't save anything. I love getting socks for Christmas, but is a lot of activity. You know how it goes. I'm actually glad to take a few minutes off to come talk to the listeners just to let the Bedlam subside inside my home.

Jeff: I'm glad we gave you a reason to leave the commotion and all the gift wrapping.

Jim: It will still be there when I go back in. You know what the garbage looks like the few days after Christmas when everybody puts their trash at the street. That's what I've got to do yet. [laughter]

Kirsten: Jim, the real question is, are they bee socks and do they have substantial buzz?

Jim: They are not and they don't. They were gift socks and you can't look a gift sock-- where? In the mouth, in the foot. Where do you look a gift sock?

Becky: In the toe.

Kirsten: In the heel.

Jim: They are just heavy-duty socks. The question is for a man my age, do they keep your feet warm or not? Yes, they do. They're good socks.

Jeff: [laughs] Do they match? I guess, ultimately down the road. I did want to mention that a member of our family isn't here, and that's Kim Flottum who help start the  Beekeeping Today Podcast. Kim passed away earlier this month and our thoughts remain with Kathy and his family. This will be the last episode of 2023. There isn't another  Beekeeping Today Podcast in 2023 after this one. Let's look back at 2023. Since this is Christmas morning, keep it on the positive side what went well, and I'll just throw it open to everybody here. What went well in the bee yard in 2023? Or with bees-- or I'll even open up, what went well in 2023? What do you want to share with our listeners?

Jim: Well, in 2023 for me, the thing I want to put right out there is that there were no real surprises. Varroa was varroa. The usual effects were there. There were no special storms this year that destroyed my bee yard. I'm happy to say that this was a normal year and that consequently I am normally happy. It was a good year for me.

Kirsten: That's always good. I'm in Baden-Württemberg German which is Stuttgart would probably be the city that people know in the state of Baden-Württemberg. We have a large amount of black forest in this state. This year was a really, really good year for black forest honey. The beekeepers were super excited. Our beekeeper who just retired in November, was able to migrate out with about 60 of our colonies and produced some forest honey for his last season of working for us, which was I think a big excitement for him.

Jeff: What does black forest honey taste like?

Kirsten: It's a Honey Do Honey. It's not made from nectar, but it's made from aphid secretions. It's a very earthy, multi-rich honey, very complex and flavor. I quite like it.

Jeff: Is it dark?

Kirsten: It's a dark honey that stays liquid.

Jeff: None of that darn crystallization stuff. We're keeping it positive today on Christmas day. [laughter] That's good. What about you Becky?

Becky: Well, I know we're supposed to keep it positive, so I have a good ending to the story. 2023 was the year of my first bear attack in an apiary. The good news was is that I had moved all but one colony out of the apiary the previous year. The bear just got one colony and then I ended up pulling what was left of that attacked colony out. I went back to grab some equipment a few weeks later and I had two swarms move in. So I lost one but I got two swarms out of the deal. Happy ending.

Jim: That is a happy ending for a bear attack, it is.

Kirsten: I'm glad I'm no longer dealing with bears. In Maryland, they are pesky little buggers and beautiful, but they know just when your electric fence goes out. They just sense it.

Becky: This, honestly, both Wisconsin, they started a bear committee for their honey producers, and Minnesota started one this year too. Bears are now-- it's a balance between keeping the bear population or growing the bear population and then keeping and protecting beekeepers' apiaries. It's going to be a topic this year. It was a topic last year and we're going to keep talking about it in 2024.

Jeff: The Washington State Beekeepers Association has been dealing with the idea of the reintroduction of grizzly bears in the rural parts of Washington State and whether that's going to pose an issue for beekeepers. Yes, it's not only black bears and little fuzzy, little cute bears, and it's also people are concerned about grizzly bears. It's an interesting problem. Kirsten, I do need to say when you're talking about the bears have a funny way of knowing when the fence goes out, instantly I thought of a Gary Larson far-side cartoon. I can just see the bear standing around pulling the plug in the other-- anyways, the visuals. [laughter] I'm very visually oriented.

Jim: Post that on the webpage for us all to enjoy.

Jeff: Yes, well, we'll see if we can get that drawn up. Hey, let's take this quick break and hear from our great sponsor for 2023. Betterbee: Beekeeping Supplies.

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[music]

Kirsten: 2023 was a really awesome year for me. We found out in October, we had been invited to the Carl Zeiss Foundation Wildcard grant application. They invited 11 different groups to present their research. We presented our project called Bee Vision, where we are trying to develop an automated artificial intelligence system that can automatically detect the flight patterns of different pollinators and identify them. We presented and pitched on that day and of the 11 projects, they founded five of them, and we are one of them. We are getting €750,000 for two years of research with our two project partners.

Jim: Congratulations.

Becky: Congratulations, Kirsten.

Jim: Congratulations.

Kirsten: Thank you. We're super excited.

Jeff: Explain a little bit at this 10,000-foot level. What does that do for anybody?

Kirsten: Biodiversity is, of course, a huge issue. That's one of the things we talk about a lot on the  2 Million Blossoms podcast. Part of the problem is we don't know what the base populations are for a lot of pollinators. We know honey bees, we know bumble bees. They're easy to see, they're easy to count. We know how they're doing. For a lot of other pollinator species, we know very, very little. Traditionally, what you do is you go out into a flower-rich meadow and you cart off a one-by-one square meter plot, and you observe flowers and how many pollinators actually show up on those flowers.

This is very, very time-consuming and it requires entomologists who are well-versed and can identify the difference between a honey bee, a bumblebee, and an Osmia, and a butterfly. We are hoping with this new system to automate that so that the flight patterns, since bumblebees and honey bees and butterflies and hoverflies move through a landscape differently, That we can automatically recognize their flight patterns and have an artificial intelligence system automatically identify what pollinators are there.

This would be really, really important in the future for when we introduce new measures to improve biodiversity. Are those measures actually working? Well, you'd need to take measurements before and you'd need to take measurements after. Or when you introduce a new pesticide, is that having unexpected impact on pollinators? It would really allow us to have much more detailed information on who is visiting flower field.

Jeff: We have to be back for a full episode. Is that a visual-based, camera-based, or is it like a Lidar type?

Kirsten: It is a camera-based system, but it's not a traditional camera. We're working with an image expert from the Hochschule Niederrhein which is right in the area where the Krefeld, the large study came out in 2017 that talked about insect massive losses of 75%. She works in that area and she's an image expert and they are using a camera system. They're called dynamic vision sensors. Instead of picking up your traditional color movement or movement and recording the whole image, which is very memory intensive.

This type of camera system just picks up differences in color queue. If it goes lighter or darker, it just picks up the movement pattern. When an insect flies through a meadow, that pattern of dark cutting through a lit area would be picked up and just the movement is recorded over time. You have a time loop for it, which is pretty fascinating. It doesn't take a lot of space. You can compress this information very detailed. They actually discovered this accidentally.

They were using these dynamic vision sensors to record activity on a playground, and they realized that their camera system was picking up lots and lots of insects and they could see the insect recordings. Now we're trying to de-evolve and develop artificial intelligence to actually identify the movement of insects away from background noise and then identify them and roughly group them into different pollinator categories.

Jeff: That's really cool.

Becky: It's fascinating and such a needed tool.

Kirsten: We're super excited. It's a bit bizarre. It would allow for a lot of research in pollinator diversity and biodiversity, and how we can change our agricultural lands to make them more pollinator-friendly.

Jeff: We've had a couple episodes, as you know, on the impact of the honey bee on native pollinators. Using a tool such as that would be a really interesting and a novel way of really testing that impact in any given area. That's cool. I look forward to hearing the results of that.

Kirsten: I'm sure I will keep you guys updated as funding gets running and we get our legs under us, so to say.

Jeff: There's got to be something about using that camera system on a playground, probably tracking kids, but coming up with insects. There's probably a relationship there, but I can't--

Jim: Yes, I was thinking that.

Jeff: Is it the candy on the ground? I don't know.

Becky: I was going to say, is this another cartoon, Jeff? Are you going to have a series? [laughter]

Kirsten: Speaking of cartoons, what was really interesting is when we made it into the second round, we had to actually hand in a comic strip representing our research plan. That was part of the evaluation process. Cartoons were involved.

Becky: Maybe that's the theme for 2024. [laughter]

Jeff: That's ... .

Jim: An interesting way to deliver it.

Becky: My favorite cartoons are on  Honey Bee Obscura. I'll say that. I look forward to every week seeing just how Jim and his guests are going to be portrayed.

Jeff: Let's talk about 2024 and let's lead with that. For our listeners who are not familiar with  Honey Bee Obscura, this last year we started working, collaborating with a cartoonist, John Martin. He's out of Medina, Ohio, coincidentally. He does the cartoon in  Bee Culture. He started doing the cover art for  Honey Bee Obscura. Each week it changes based on the guest and/or the topic, so we have quite a few out there. I think there's about 16 or 17 or 18 different cartoon cover arts that are entertaining, so hope our listeners can go out there and take a look at them.

Jim: I really enjoy his work for an odd reason. The cartoons look better in cartoon format than I do in real life. It's an improvement over an actual shot of Jim compared to his cartoon version of me. Nicely done.

Jeff: I like that he got your hat, the fold of your hat brim, just perfect.

Becky: It is perfect. [laughs]

Jim: Look at that. I can keep the hat on or you can show this. This is my Santa look, but it's not working yet. I was going to grow a white beard. That's a skin cancer thing. I struggle with that a lot. I'm supposed to keep a hat on, and I ended up just wearing a hat all the time. I don't know why. This is not a trademark. This is not a John Skinner kind if trademark. It's just a hat I like, and it's diversified.

Jeff: But it's being immortalized on the cover art of  Honey Bee Obscura as the Jim Tew look.

Jim: Everybody wants one. It's a Tilley, the J3, the old version. It's not ventilated.

Jeff: We'll send a bill to J. Tilley.

Jim: That's a good point. I wonder if I can turn in a clothing allowance to  Honey Bee Obscura to keep a fresh hat all the time.

Jeff: What else are we looking forward to in 2024?

Jim: I'm reluctant to say anything after hearing Kirsten's dramatic research project coming up. As a retired guy who's just keeping himself busy, I'm intrigued to find out just to-- actually undergo some reverse technology. I'd like to know what's involved in keeping smaller colonies. I've been pondering this for 10 years. Beehives come in one size, extra-large. If I'm in an urban situation and got close neighbors as I do, I really don't want 60 and 70,000 bees in that hive. There's no way to brood prune or to do anything that I know of. I was born to tanker trying to keep bees smaller, more puppy-like instead of more bulldog-like.

Just so I can enjoy beekeeping, I enjoy photography, so I don't want to go out and open these big hives and move 100 pounds of honey to get to a shootable frame. I just want to see if I can simplify and downsize my bee keeping project. Some to avoid the weight, the work, and the headache of big colonies. Isn't that an odd thing to say? You just cannot please beekeepers, can you? You just cannot please beekeepers. My bees are too big they make too much honey and they're too successful. I just can't have that. I've got to change it.

Kirsten: I swear, when I first met you, you were the one advocating overwintering nucs. You've been after smaller hives from the very get-go.

Jim: That is a fact. I wanted to overwinter nucs because I usually had an abundance of queens in the fall that I didn't know what to do with. These queens are all dying. We were raising queens at the time, so I wanted to make splits. Others have done it much better. The Canadians are good at it. I don't have the resources, the temperature control facilities. I was trying to winter outdoors and communal efforts and whatever. It's a personal thing.

I noticed years ago, even when I was much younger, when I went into an apiary, I was just drawn to that single deep, that's sitting off to one side. I was not drawn to the one in three deeps and three supers and 60,000 bees. It was so much easier to get my bee fix and to get out. I'm taking up too much of the time here this morning. I want to continue to explore appropriate bee keeping for a man of my age, I guess, is what I'm interested in for 2024.

Becky: Jim, I want to find out your address and then sell it to a local beekeeper so they can collect swarms from your apiary this year. Because if you are trying to keep those bees down, my guess--

Jim: When a man's down, you just move right in and you kick him, don't you? You knew that this was going to have some issues because the same neighbor who's up under me is going to have swarms hanging in her yard now. I've made a bad situation worse. I really appreciate you bringing that up and pointing it out to everybody who happens to be listening on Christmas day instead of ripping into gifts.

Becky: I was looking to make it a revenue generator if we could just because swarms are so valuable. If you're trying really hard to keep them small, we know that the girls don't like to do that at certain times of the year. I'm just saying we could really maybe make some money.

Jim: You probably could.

Becky: Even if it's 25 bucks for a new hat.

Jim: I don't know that that's going to be the kind of money we're talking. I'm thinking it'll be a lawsuit kind of money more than new hat kind of money. No, I've got a restrict for brood production some way, and by restricting brood production I'm going to encourage supersedure. I think it'll keep me busy. Kirsten's right, I've been tinkering with this for decades.

Kirsten: Maybe you need to take a tip from the Italians and start doing brood breaks where you cage your queen in the summer.

Jim: Would love to go into it, but this is not that kind of discussion. That would be one of the things I would try to do. Every one of these things now involves handling queens, moving queens, catching queens, marking queens, finding queens.

Kirsten: How good are you at spotting queens?

Jim: There is that, "Where's Waldo" kind of thing? I can't find the queen again. I need to let someone else talk. That's my agenda. Subject to change for 2024.

Jeff: Kirsten, you have your research? Well, you've been in Germany for the last two years. You moved in during COVID as I recall.

Kirsten: I moved during COVID. Originally I moved in 2021. I was originally in the northern part of Germany and now I'm in the southwestern part of Germany. After a year I switched jobs. I'm now director of the State Institute for Bee Research at the University of Hohenheim, which is just outside of Stuttgart. We have a lot going on. We're active in many different areas. Our number of PhD students is rapidly expanding. I hope I can keep that all under one hat. We have one student who's looking at developing a new naturally occurring mushroom, a Metarhizium, that exists here in the area as a varroa treatment. It works very, very well in the lab.

We're going to try and develop it and select it. It's really, really good at killing varroa and not good at all, at killing bees. That's our plan. Then we have a student who just started, she's going to be looking at varroa mite reproduction to try and see if that has changed over time. We also want to look at how brood breaks impact varroa populations and colonies. We're doing a combined combination of applied research and some basic ground research to try and improve our understanding of varroa. Then we're also looking at the sub-lethal impacts of pesticides on honeybee behavior, learning memory, things like that.

Jeff: Fantastic.  2 Million Blossoms will be out on a regular basis.

Kirsten: That is the plan.  2 Million Blossoms as of January. I look forward to lining up a bunch of different speakers to have as guests. I hope to give a little bit of a European perspective and then also touch base with some amazing scientists and individuals doing cool work in the United States as well.

Jeff: We look forward to it.

Becky: That's a great holiday gift.

Kirsten: I will be in the US. I'm going to be attending the American Beekeeping Federation and the American Bee Research Conference in New Orleans in January. I'm really looking forward. I'm coming over with two of my PhD students. One of them has been working with lithium chloride as a varroa treatment, and the other one has been looking at the dispersal phase of varroa mites to see how necessary it is for reproduction.

Jeff: Oh, interesting. Lithium chloride, is that an antidepressant too for the bees, isn't it?

Kirsten: Well, for humans, yes, it's used as a treatment for bipolar disorder. We give it in very small amounts. We are feeding it in a mixed into a sugar syrup when queens are caged so that the colonies are brood free and it has an efficacy of about 98%. It's highly effective, very easy. It's not weather-dependent. Germany is trying to-- there's a company, our project partners who are trying to develop it so that is actually allowed as a veterinary treatment against varroa in Europe.

Jeff: I look forward to hearing more about that. Becky.

Becky: My beekeeping career is a lot of side gigs. I was super excited to join as a co-host on  Beekeeping Today podcast. I also am continuing to co-write a monthly column for Bee Culture, Minding Your Bees and Cues. One of the things I've been doing is supporting Dr. Katie Lee at the University of Minnesota, Extension. She's the Extension Apiculture Educator. January is going to see the release of a project that we've been working on since mid-last year. We've been redoing the Beekeeping In Northern Climates Manual.

This manual was-- originally Dr. Furgala passed it on to Dr. Marla Spivak, and when Dr. Spivak came to the university in '92, she took it on, revised it. There have been a few revisions throughout the years, but this is a big, big revision. We have been putting our hearts and souls into it, staying up late and editing, finding the right pictures. January sees the release of this and we're really excited about that. Then in February, the students get to take their first class with the new manual. I'm looking forward to that, definitely.

Jeff: We got the screens up here and we can see everybody. I'm suddenly realizing that of the four of us, three of you have PhDs in Entomology. I am honored to be and work with all three of you on these podcasts in 2023 before that. Looking forward to 2024, it's an exciting time. I think working together we can provide our listeners with great up-to-date information, the latest events in beekeeping, and in the research, and personalities, and even techniques. I'm honored to be working with you guys in 2024 and thank you for 2023.

Jim: Well, so long as we're passing out sunshine here, I'd like to thank you for-

Jeff: Passing out sunshine.

Jeff: -cleaning up my audio artifacts and improving my accent, and taking out my verbal clicks so that they're not so distracting when the occasional listener happens to tune in to  Honey Bee Obscura. Thank you for all that you've done to make us look better than we are-- and the cartoons, even the cartoons were an improvement of me. Thank you.

Jeff: [laughs] I do nothing for your accent. Your accent's perfect.

Becky: We are very grateful, Jeff, that you make this happen. The work that you put into these podcasts is-- well, it's evident-

Jeff: It's a team effort

Becky: -to listeners. Those of us who get to see the behind-the-scenes effort, it is impressive.

Kirsten: I don't think any of these podcasts would exist without you Jeff.

Jeff: Well, thank you. Again, it's for the listeners and I'm happy to help share the information and all the beekeeping background and data that you'll provide our listeners. Merry Christmas to every one of you. I'm looking forward to 2024. To our listeners especially and our sponsors, thank you for a wonderful 2023 and Merry Christmas to everybody.

[music]

Jim: Same to you. Thanks a lot for setting this up today, Jeff. Making it happen across multiple time zones.

Becky: Looking forward to the new year.

Kirsten: Me too. It should be a blast.

Jeff: That about wraps it up for this episode. Before we go, I want to encourage our listeners to 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 along the top of any webpage.

We want to thank our regular episode sponsors, Global Patties, Strong Microbials, and especially Betterbee for their longtime support of this podcast. Thanks to 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 or comments at leave a comment section under each episode on the website. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks a lot, everybody.

Special Closing: Ho, ho, ho, Merry Christmas, and to everyone a happy 2024. Ho, ho, ho. Come on Dasher, come on Dancer, let's get this sleigh home. I'm tired.

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