Beekeeper Answers Bee Questions From Twitter | Tech Support | WIRED

oh my gosh i never watched these again that's so funny hey y'all i'm erica thompson from texas b works or you might know me as that beekeeper from tiktok i'm here today to answer all of the questions that has twitter buzzing this is b support john edward diver asks question for beekeepers can they be trained to attack specific individuals asking for a friend all right john and john's friend bees can actually be trained to recognize human faces they have actually been shown to remember those faces for up to two days it's extraordinary there's so much we don't know about bees and it's fascinating to think of all the things that we still have yet to discover about bees and as a beekeeper it kind of warms my heart too and to think that they might be able to recognize my face is is just an extraordinary feeling at sweet jess outlander asks how do you come by extra spare queens and if they would have had their own queen what would have happened to the spare this colony would not survive without a queen but luckily i had an extra one on me i could give them it's really the responsible thing to do as a beekeeper to have some extra queens on you and i actually have one on me now this is a queen bee and she is in there with three of her attendant bees those are female worker bees that will take care of her for her trip out to me and to meet her new colony and what's happening inside of this queen cage is we have a little tube and that tube is filled with fondant so it's just candy it's high in sugar and that will provide the bees food inside the cage once i put this box inside the new hive the other bees will chew their way through that piece of candied fondant and they will release the queen when they're ready for her this gives all the bees time to get used to the new queen's pheromones giving them a little bit of extra time by keeping her in this box hopefully means that the new colony will have a higher chance of of accepting their new queen at cameron coral i watched bee movie not sure how accurate that is at be experts help how long do we have um okay hold on can you feel my blood boiling no i am here to tell you that the b movie is incredibly inaccurate the main character is named barry the bee he is a male bee male bees have one job that's to mate with a queen male bees do not forage for food they don't help raise the baby bees they don't defend the hive they don't even have stingers female worker bees are called worker bees for a reason they do all the work for the hive i'm a huge jerry seinfeld fan i love everything he does this was not the best b movie we can make a better b movie if you need my help the bees and i are here however we can to help at ripley mars asks how do bees decide who impregnates the queen do they hold a b olympics in some way yes the strongest fastest drones win and those are the male bees that get to meet with the queen once a male bee does mate with the queen if he's the winner of the b olympics his life is over as soon as a male bee mates with a queen his endophallus rips out of his abdominal cavity and he falls to the ground and that is the life of the winner of the b olympics at micro pipettes asks the bees abandon their hive in our garden and i'm heartbroken why did they have to leave first of all i am so sorry that your bees left i know the feeling it's awful colony loss happens as a beekeeper whether you're the best beekeeper in the world or not the bees are wild creatures they can decide for themselves you know we're not locking them up in the hives or forcing them to stay anywhere as a beekeeper it's our job to give bees the resources they need so they can do the important work they do of course the bees always know best and so if they decide to leave that's their choice and i encourage you to get more bees and try to start over next spring at cipher unnamed asks bees bugs how do beekeepers just scoop up the bees more importantly why well you know there are a lot of different methods for handling bees or doing bee removals and personally i just feel like scooping up the bees is you know one of the easiest most humane ways to get bees from one location to another a lot of the times the bees will let you do that perfectly fine and if they do sting you you know i just stop what i'm doing and i correct either myself or i try to do something different and just always try to listen to the bees at izzod how do beekeepers know what flowers their bees go to how can you be sure it's leatherwood honey bees hashtag honey knowledge one of my favorite things about bees is that they are flower loyal in beekeeping we actually call it flower fidelity what that means is that a bee on a single foraging trip will go to the same plant or flower and forage from that flower exclusively while we don't always know which bees are going to which flowers all the time so for example in california when beekeepers place hives in the almond orchards to pollinate the almond crops there's a pretty good bet that those bees are almost exclusively visiting those almond trees and therefore we get these varietals of honey one of which is leather wood honey at super crispy dj asks hashtag beekeeping question it looks like we have many bees going in and out of a grate in our external cavity wall three ish a minute sorry i just realized that they're timing the rate of the bees going in and out of the wall and i i just think that's great the walls got filled with insulation a while back will bees be safe in there well you know if you see bees entering this wall cavity it means that is a spot that these bees have chosen to live while i try to not give this sort of beekeeping advice from afar without actually seeing the situation the bees and the hive up close you know if the bees are choosing that spot to them it's a good spot for them to live and if they don't bother you you know i would say the best thing to do is to just leave them be but if you want them to be removed or relocated call a professional beekeeper like myself and they can best help you at amir as rule asks how do beekeepers calm bees hashtag random thought well one thing that we do to calm the bees is we use a bee smoker we'll fill the smoke with some natural materials and we'll light the smoker and before we enter a beehive we will give the bees a little bit of smoke and what that's going to do is it's going to mask the alarm pheromones that the guard bees might send out to all the other bees to let them know that there might be an intruder coming into their hive at the hungry rn asks how do bees decide to build a nest like do they just meet and decide to all move out together okay i hope this answer's gonna blow your mind you might think that bees operate as more of a monarchy with the queen in charge making decisions and delegating to the worker bees that's not the case a bee colony is in fact a democracy the worker bees all make decisions for the collective good of the colony so when bees decide that they need a new place to live they will send out scout bees and these scout bees will go forage for the best locations for their new hive so you've heard the term hive mine maybe and that's what we're referring to here a beehive is a super organism it operates as a whole the bees as individuals don't really think for themselves they operate in ways that are good for the survival of the colony and for the species at maxo series art asks are we messing up the bees with eating honey what's up well here's what's up experienced beekeepers can absolutely responsibly harvest honey from beehives we do it all the time you know i was lucky to realize early on in my beekeeping journey that it just wasn't my favorite thing about being a beekeeper and so i've made the choice to to not sell honey each bee in her entire lifetime only makes 1 12 of a teaspoon of honey it's such a small amount they make this honey as a surplus of food for them for them to survive during the winter or when we're in a dearth when there's nothing in bloom and when there's nothing for them to forage from while you certainly can harvest honey responsibly you know and enjoy honey responsibly and one of the best ways to do that is to buy honey from your local beekeeper it's a great way to support your local bees and your local beekeeper at miss lindsey lee asks how do beekeepers get into beekeeping hashtag bee emoji i can tell you my story you know as a kid i spent a lot of time in my backyard collecting bugs and putting them in a jar and trying to keep them as pets or trying to study and observe them and it was really just this lifelong love of bugs that led me to start a beehive in my backyard in central austin and here i am a full-time professional beekeeper 2010 forever says going absolutely nuts for the holidays maybe this local honey will help my allergies well 2010 forever i have some news for you the theory that honey helps with your local allergies because by eating some of this pollen you will therefore be desensitized to it can't be applied here because bees aren't even foraging from the plants that are causing your allergies things like hay ragweed cedar these are not the plants that bees love the most they are going to other plants so you're not even getting a little bit of the pollen that you think you're getting at your good karma says i wonder how often beekeepers get stung i know it's a lot because the bee will sting you for no reason that's not the truth bees will not sting you for no reason they will sting you if they feel threatened or if they are trying to defend their colony as a beekeeper i live and work around bees all the time getting stung is pretty much an occupational hazard at this point people always ask me how many times i've been stung and countless countless numbers of times when you get stung by a bee that stinger sticks in your skin and at the end of that stinger there's a little venom sac and in that venom sac is something that we call melatonin and that melatin is what causes the pain so if you get stung by a bee stay calm don't swat don't flail around but remove that stinger at how do you do that without protection you seem so relaxed and at ease you are clearly in your element and at one with what you are doing it's amazing you should absolutely wear protective beekeeping equipment especially when you're starting out it takes a lot of time to build confidence and everybody should always wear protective equipment around bees this was such a fun removal the bees let me work alongside them on this day without wearing protective equipment and i was so thankful they let me do that because i'm in texas it's hot here it is even hotter in these backyard sheds where i'm always removing bees from so the beekeeping gear it's big and it's bulky and it has to be that's what protects you from getting stung when you're in that gear you also lose a lot of visibility in the veil or dexterity in the gloves the dexterity especially is so important when you're working with such tiny creatures so i absolutely feel you know most comfortable and confident when i'm around a colony of bees i know it sounds crazy but it's it's really almost meditative at jay-z love asks question for beekeepers once i open raw honey do i have to refrigerate it no do not refrigerate your honey think like a bee bees always keep their hive at around 95 degrees store your honey in a dark warm place and it'll be just fine atval juristic asks how much do beekeepers make well there's an old adage among beekeepers and that's there's no money in honey bee keeping is a passion for sure and it's something that people do because they love bees and because they love the work at insomniac asks how do beekeepers find the queen between a million bees so the queen bee is the largest bee in the hive and on top of that you know her body is different but she also has a different job so she's moving differently she's laying eggs and she usually has a circle of attendant bees around her the bees will fan a pheromone out of the back of their abdomen to let all the other bees in the colony know that this is where the queen is this is where you need to go it's extraordinary to see and once you start to see the bees do that you can kind of pinpoint the location of the queen if you don't already have her yet in the case of the washing machine removal you can see a lot of the bees are on the outside of the washing machine there and they were all sending me the signals that the queen was inside the machine still so i first started to spend my time looking there and sure enough you know i found her pretty quickly but i got really lucky with that one at kingdemic asks why are bees so important to the circle of life bees provide an extraordinary service to the planet when they go around to flowers collecting food they're pollinating these plants and they're allowing these plants to reproduce and to survive over 75 percent of plant species on earth depend on bees or other pollinators in some way for survival you know if you've had an apple or an almond or a cup of coffee you have bees to thank for that there are over 20 000 species of bees on the planet as creatures who share the planet and are susceptible to the decisions that humans are making for them they're feeling the effects of things like climate change habitat loss and of course the use of pesticides and agricultural practices at wira bennett asks would wild species substitute effectively in agricultural pollination the story one hears is that bees are particularly needed in that role well that's the story you hear because that's the truth bees are pollinating with a force and on a scale that no other insect or animal is and that is why we use them for these mass agricultural practices for for mass pollination we have designed our food system in a way that we are reliant on bees for the important work they do which is just one of the many reasons that it's so important that we do whatever we can to help bees there are some simple things that anybody can do if they want to help honeybees first and foremost you can plant food for bees so whenever you're choosing anything to plant in your yard or in your garden make sure it's something that bees can forage from don't use pesticides in your own yard or garden support legislation that bans these pesticides and buy honey from your local beekeeper take a class learn about bees do whatever you can to support your local bee population in your local beekeeper so those are all the questions for today i had so much fun talking bees with y'all thanks for watching bee support

Channel: WIRED

Views: 2,027,377

Keywords: bee support, bee tech support, beekeeper answers, beekeeper bees, beekeeper explains, beekeeper explains bees, beekeeper support, bees, bees explained, bees tech support, innovation, ott tech support, science & technology, wired

Id: EobNj9QwVSA

Length: 15min 21sec (921 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 31 2021