Beekeeper Answers Bee Questions From Twitter

Oh my gosh, I never watch these again.

That's so funny.

Hey y'all, I'm Erika Thompson from Texas Beeworks.

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 Bee Support.

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@Johnedwarddiver 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 just an extraordinary feeling.

@SwietjesOutlander asks,

how do you come by extra spare queens?

And if they would have had their own queen,

what would've 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 candy fondant.

And they will release the queen when they're ready for her.

This gives all the bees time

to get used to their 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 accepting their new queen.

@kamryn_correll, I watched Bee Movie,

not sure how accurate that is.

@beeexperts, help.

How long do we have?

Okay, hold on.

Can you feel my blood boiling, no.

I am here to tell you that the Bee 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 bee movie,

we can make a better bee movie.

If you need my help, the bees and I are here

however we can to help.

@RipleyMars asks, how to bees decide

who impregnates the queen?

Do they hold a Beelympics?

In some way, yes.

The strongest, fastest drones win.

And those are the male bees that get to mate with the queen.

Once a male bee does mate with the queen,

if he's the winner of the Beelympics, his life is over.

As soon as a male bee mates with the 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 Beelympics.

@micropipettes asks, the bees abandoned 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.

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.

@cypher_unamed 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, 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.

@izo_d, how do beekeepers know

what flowers their bees go to?

How can you be sure it's leatherwood honey?

#bees, #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 leatherwood honey.

@superkrispydj asks, #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.

[laughing] Sorry.

I just realized that they're timing

the rate of the bees going in and out of the wall.

And I just think that's great.

The walls got filled with insulation a while back,

will bees be safe in there?

Well, 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.

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,

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.

@ameierazrul asks, how do beekeepers calm bees?

#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.

@thehungryRN 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 mind 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.

@maxosiriscrypto 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 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,

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.

@miss_lindseylee asks,

how do you beekeepers get into beekeeping?

#beeemoji.

I can tell you my story.

As a kid, I spent a lot of time in my backyard

collecting bugs, and putting 'em 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.

@YourGoodKarma says,

I wonder how often beekeepers get stung.

I know it's a lot

because a 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 sack.

And in that venom sack is something that we call melittin.

And that melittin 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.

@grayo asks, 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 most comfortable

and confident when I'm around a colony of bees.

I know it sounds crazy, but it's really almost meditative.

@JZelop 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.

@valgeristik asks, how much do beekeepers make?

Well, there's an old adage among beekeepers.

And that's, there's no money in honey.

Beekeeping is a passion for sure.

And it's something that people do because they love bees,

and because they love the work.

@insomniuss 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, 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 of

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, I found her pretty quickly.

But I got really lucky with that one.

@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% 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.

@wirabennett asks, would wild species

substitute effectively in agricultural pollination?

The story one hears is that honey 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 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

and 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.

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