144 - Mike Burgett - The “other” honey bees (in English)

Okay well I am so delighted to welcome back to the show. Dr. Brigette welcome back thank you sir pleasure to be here now the last show we had we talked about a historic data set that you've created from 30 years now on honeybee calling rental rates, but your attention in the last few decades is really shifted to Southeast Asia and the apis bees tell us a little bit about how you started to get interest in the other honey bees honey bees that are in Southeast Asia. 

 

Oh when you go to the truck when you go to the tropics, you know, you really encounter heightened. Biological diversity. And well all of us all those living in Europe and Africa and all of North Central and South America the only honeybee species we have is Apis molifera the European honeybee and was brought here by the European colonizers in the 17th century. 

 

But we know now that there are at least nine species of true honey bees meaning belonging to the genus. Apus and that eight of them are native to Southeast, Asia. So in 1981 when I was eligible for my first sabbatical I thought I'd like to go to Asian see some of these other true honey bees so I spent a sabbatical short sabbatical at Chiang Mai University in northern Thailand and experienced the giant honey bees apostosada, the dwarf honey bees apos for people's floria and apes and join a form it's too species of dwarf honey bees. 

 

And what we call the Asian hive bee the closest relative serana, so I got exposure to those and what white chain my of all places, ah. Well I had I went styling because one of my first grad students was tie and he finished a masters with me in a PhD at Cornell and he was back there and I just saw while he's he will be the proper host because he was so he's associated with a very very good university in Thailand. 

 

Cassette. University which literally means agriculture okay, so I spent first month at his campus west of Bangkok and he suggested I might want to go up to Chiang Mai University up in the north, which is much more mountainous and. It was a younger faculty and so I said yeah, it sounds good, so I went up there and they. 

 

In the sense happily said yes, he can you can do his work here, so they gave me lab space off the space and. Front office support and so I worked there and really enjoyed it well a couple years later. I had a chance through the United Nations food and agriculture organization, they responsoring a big meeting on apostrophe keeping in southeast Asia, so I wasn't invited speaker for that meeting. 

 

And then I had another opportunity year after that to go back to Tylenol, another opportunity and just got to the point where I got to know the place rather well and you know, when when you go overseas to study there's a language barriers or cultural. Not barriers but unfamiliar cultural things so I was getting to where I was kind of used to working there, it's like a dear friend of mine had OSU in the botany department said about steelhead fishing if you learn one part of one river under all conditions, you'll catch more fish than those people that run all over the place so I got point to where I was going often enough to thailand that people associated me is an expert whether that's the case is yet to be determined, but they were very very very welcome and welcoming and continue to be so. 

 

And I have a courtesy appointment and also have the ability to mentor graduate students there, you know, maybe this is a good teacher. I want to get into the bees but just the tie be research like there's a there's a lot you've had people come over here to Oregon State but there's a vibrant be research there is chew long corn University in Bangkok one of the oldest and most famous Thai universities. 

 

Has a young man, who did a PhD at University of Kansas in. Looking at. 

 

Well basically taxonomy but he he knows honeybees very well and he has a very very active program there. Chiang Mai University has had a bee person for as long as I've been going there which is now 38 years and they're newest one is a former student of mine. I was the mentor for her PhD there and she finished in 2015 has just recently been offered the the beep position in the department of etymology and plant pathologies, so she's the one I collaborate with now, but there are other net. 

 

National universities that have had. Like kisses our university had two people involved in bees for a while concan universities in the northeast as traditionally had a B person. A lot of bee positions for a small country, yes tears population of Thailand is about 75 million and. Geographically about the size of the Pacific Northwest, so on a per capita basis there are there's quite a nice be program there so our are these are these different apos species spread uniformly through Thailand or they yes, okay, no, they're pretty uniformly spread. 

 

Yeah, I can say that easily because I've I've traveled the entire country and and I've experienced all species of apos there throughout certainly the latitudinal breadth of north to south and then starting in the early 1980s funding by our by the royal project was the introduction of Avis military Thailand and the apis milifera interface one of the first major introductions was a former student of mine came here with a pocket of money. 

 

In an order for a hundred honey bee hives so we went to California picked up a hundred packages of bees and ordered equipment for a hundred colonies all of which was delivered to Seatac Airport and on tie international airways because it was the Royal project it flew back to Thailand with no charge for the freight wow so this is a student of mine but there were other point source introductions of milifera there and that the, The commercial beekeeping industry in Taiwan had a big influence to shipping paper at two Thailand so Thailand now has a apos be industry about the size of California's wow yeah the main thing they're looking at 300 to 400,000 colonies of bees depending upon the season and they've become a major quickly saturated the national market for honey, so they've been involved in honey exporting for 30 years now. 

 

Okay so tell us a little bit let's go from smallest to biggest just give us a little snapshot or vignette of these different be species starting with the smallest one, well, the dwarf honey bees the two species ape is fluorita syndrome formus, they're not under any domestication or cultivation by humans, but they are widely hunted they build but a single comb about the size of a dinner plate really just the size of engineers just one comb yeah, okay and it'll have up to and they layer it with a curtain of adult bees and underneath their Queens laying eggs and they store the honey at The top of the nest and there's seasonal their naturally migratory so as nectar and pollen resources dry out they will move so they just leave a comb behind and they just take yeah they left they let everything hatch out by way of brood they suck up every ounce or carbohydrate that's in the colony which can be I've seen up to. 

 

Two to three pounds of honey and you know two were calling but they're under heavy predation by humans and you go to any most. Regional or municipal markets and you'll find a section of selling insect products and it's not at all unusual to see whole combs they want everything except the adult base and they're relatively so what what what so if you if I want to market in Thailand for a injured a foremost comb, what would I do with it well, it would have the top section would be the honey and you'd love that. 

 

And you would eat the brood how would you eat it haha well actually this last or in 20 2019 when I was there we went to a market and here was a seller and buyers coming up and my student asked them, you know, what are you going to do with the brooding and this one lady said well you eat it like a pizza uncooked and they eat it raw, oh okay so you just like take the wax and everything and you just just jump it right down spit out the wax and swallow the rest of it or swallow the way. 

 

Have you done that notion that with Floria well I haven't but there incredibly incredibly important pollinators there's a very very entitled and I'm including my and Mar and Laos and Cambodia and Vietnam there's a very high level of what I call environmental background pollination because you have these five five to six to seven species of honey bees. 

 

I mean, no one country has all nine species, okay? But Thailand, for example has five species. And including apis moliferous so there's four native species in Thailand and then you add military to the mix okay and the commercial beekeepers there with molifera there's very very little pollination market simply because the background background level is so high yeah so their major products that they market of course are honey and there's a big market for royal jelly from apos which gets exported to primarily to Japan, okay, all right. 

 

Back to these two species, you said they were migratory tell us a little bit about that well in the North Italian where I am starting. To pinch January especially in February in March the colonies this warmth just start coming in and landing and setting up whole and I'm most of my time that I've spent in Thailand which is verging on accumulated seven years now has been spent in the winter.. 

 

January February. 

 

March, so I'm not there. I haven't been there very much during the rainy season when they tend to depart. But they aren't long distance migration we're talking about from what little we know about it that maybe they're going as far as three or four miles and reestablishing a home the giant honey bees on the other hand apostosada, they are known to be long-distance like migration to undertake long distance migrations of ten twenty thirty forty fifty miles, okay, let's get to them in a second so that we can we deal with two species who's the next in size range, that would be a, Therana what they call the Asian hive be and it is a B of commerce though in Thailand it's all small holder activity there's no there are no commercial aposerada if you had ten colonies they post on a you'd have a lot okay, so you go into any village and Thailand is still an agricultural nation you go into any small village you're going to find. 

 

Three four, five six families that are keeping serana generally in a log hive or a plank high format in the south of Thailand there is some movable combat surround beekeeping and I've witnessed that on several occasions but in the north it's just hey, I've got this hot. I'm going to harvest honey from it once a year. 

 

And that should be enough to last my family for the year and especially if you've got a couple hives a good extraction from a ceramic colony would be. 15 pounds, oh wow, yeah once a year but you have to extract it by crushing the cone yeah it's crushing drain crushing crushing drink no pull the cane pulls the combs out throwing nylon sock and crush it and hang it over a bowl yeah there's no there's no centrifugal extraction with serrata but so but so it's the only one that had like our the European reper can be it it lives in a cavity lives in cavity builds multiple parallel combs. 

 

They if undisturbed they will maintain perpetual residents in a colony but when you go into a colony and especially when they're in fixed combi keeping like log hives and planks the result of that honey extraction to beas will usually have gone within a day or two okay, and so you just sitting there hoping that a swarm comes in and re-establishes itself. 

 

There's a village north of Thailand where there's a lot of. Coffee grown and this is a rabbit a type and there are many people in that village they're keeping bees for keeping serana in log hives and plank hives for two reasons one for the honey and they sell it as coffee honey and coffee is a very good honey plant. 

 

Also they they're there for the pollination benefits This other curiosity was coffee honey tastes, like we were trying to. Oh, yes. It doesn't it doesn't taste like Starbucks. Is it like is it a light or dark honey? Oh, it's a medium amber. Today, I'm amber honey. But, you know as most beekeepers realize if you can if you can put a floral label on a jar of honey, you can you can put the price up, right? 

 

Yeah. Whether it's true or not. Okay you so you said log which I can picture about the plank. What's that? Yes, it's the next step in the evolution of beekeeping. Where you just slap four boards together for the sides to top and bottom and put the bees in it and they just anchor the comb on the top plank. 

 

Serana interestingly Serrano does this. They anchor the combs on the top and there's very very little anchorage of combs to the side of the cavity. Oh, so you can just pull it up. Yes. Yeah. Yes. We had a another student of mine there, her master's thesis was looking at the natural nest of Serana and we. 

 

She was a little assistant for me at times when I was there we. We looked at about 25 log hives and it was he was really fun because when you could get the top right off and you can just very carefully lift it out and everything comes out. It's very very nice. 

 

So opposed to molypher, they'd be using birch home to the sides of it. But it all be stuck together. Yes, yeah. Okay, so we've gotten dwarf we've got our cavity nester and who else we got the giant honey bee a pistol, which is how giant are we talking? Well, the workers are the size of an apis molyphere queen easily. 

 

Okay, he's The way and the they too build a single comb. Usually with some degree of elevation. I've seen him up thirty forty fifty feet in trees. They will also. Exhibit a phenomenon we call aggregate nesting so I've the best one I've ever seen there was a beach tree with seventy-five colonies. 

 

I remember I saw a slide of this you were telling me and I think you told me at the same time it was associated with this apocryphal story that Tom Seeley have yellow rain the yellow rain. Yes, tell us the yellow rain story. Well, then we'll get back to the right back during Ronald Reagan years there were accusations from the United States that. 

 

The Russians were using chemical weapons via Cambodia and Laos and Tom Sealy who at the time was. I think Tom was still at Yale for Tom's tenure at Yale was about three or four years before he went to Cornell, but anyway he. He and the guy named Mickelson. I think it was. 

 

Thomas was thinking hey this spotting pattern Tom had been to Thailand and worked with John I appreciate this it sounds more like mass defecation of giant honeybees, so he went over there it went to Chiang Mai I found a temple a beautiful temple that had several trees that were loaded with China honeybees and what the bees do in the afternoon is you have this curtain of beasts. 

 

Over the comb and the bees are just hanging there and they they're there to regulate the temperature of the brewed nest and some humidity control but if you're hanging there cling to your sisters all day long once in a while you have to defecate so they have periods where they in the usually in the afternoons where 90% of the bees will leave the colony go in the air and they all defecate and fly back and recluster and Tom, Went and. 

 

Laid out quite sheets on the ground and these things would happen anyway, they got they got a lot of giant honey bee defecation taking place so they measured this the spots the what was in them and compared this to what little data the State Department had released about this this deadly toxic spotting that was taking place in accusing the Russians of this and they very convincingly showed and it was published in scientific and chemical war no it was not typical accidentally this one. 

 

Tree I witnessed that had 75 nests in it and it was on the on the border with Burma remind more and I went over there in the first afternoon. I saw it. I was just enthralled absolutely enthralled and I'm just taking photograph after photograph after photograph and all of a sudden I noticed one of the colonies all the bees were coming off and they're pretty soon all the bees came off all the colonies and they were just this huge cloud of half a million bees in the air and they were all defecating and I think they were using me as their target. 

 

I was wearing a white shirt that day and it turned out very brown okay, so so why do you have any sense of why is it predation pressure why would be want to be close to its neighbor? I think they'd have to compete for resource, ah, good question good question and I don't know that I have a reasonable answer for it if you look at aposada in the Philippines, they don't aggregate nest, oh, But there's some suggestion that this is a third species of giant honey bee or certainly a subspecies of vapoursada but throughout its southeast Asian range it's it's known to be an aggregate master. 

 

I've seen them I had a project in Bangladesh where there was a building and I think I counted 35 colonies of bees on this one building and you would think that question wow, why are they aggregating so close well it would appear that this happens when there's a real floral? 

 

I have a building on the Chiang Mai University campus right next to the one. I'm in that has a fourth floor cornice overhang on it and it gets giant honey bee calories every year. And I think the maximum we've ever experienced there was six colonies at a time, but I've seen them to wear their. 

 

Couple years ago, we had three colonies one two three and they were each within a foot of one another bizarre but and they're not it's not mother-daughter things either these are these are separate units oh so they're not related so it's not as though they're inclusive fitness factors and yes no no fact mark, no not Marc Winston the guy out of Australia. 

 

Did did some work on that did some genetic analysis of it and found it the. The two queens and adjacent colonies are an old word been alright yeah that they are not genetically you're related. I mean, it's not a mother daughter thing or sister thing, okay, but you also said life glory and adreniformis they migrate yes, they do well there's some places in the world where the migration patterns are known much better than in Thailand. 

 

I'm trying to work that out in time but in Sri Lanka, it's been well studied in parts of unprovince in southern China, it's been well studied and it's what? I've observed in northern. Thailand is starting in December's swarm starts showing up and this the swarm arrival season is starting in December January, you'll see in February is the most new you'll see the most numerous forms in February and extending into March and then in. 

 

The late part of the rainy season. August September October they leave. And one of the projects we have ongoing is how long is a colony stay and there's tremendous variability in that we have a colony right now that has been in place for 15 months, which is wow really surprising but it's in an urban environment. 

 

And urban environments tend to have much greater floral diversity, so there seems to be triggered by resources that's what the hypothesis is, not onset of rain as much as like or so say yeah, yeah. But there are. Right now if I look at the we have about 35 really good data points to where we saw the swarm arrive, we saw the colony ups gone, we know set up. 

 

Build comb very very quickly and the biggest dorsatic home. I've ever seen was six feet across in five feet deep, and that's big. With probably 70,000 bees in it. Numbers are banners around about how many bees are in a colony of this and there's no hard data, okay, we have a small project going on right now where we're looking at this but to collect an entire colony. 

 

Is a challenge I can imagine yes it's not just a matter of like walking up and opening the lid what we did last. December was we hired a father-son team of professional giant honey bee hunters professional giant honey bee hug yeah, yeah that's a measure very very well experienced and what we did was make a huge a very large net so they had to climb the tree get the net around the bees the entire colony and then haul up a small tank of co2. 

 

Oh what a good idea thing. I want to sleep yeah and actually it wasn't a net it was a large plastic bag a huge place they all dropped into they all draft dropped in the bag yeah we just they the bringing the co2 cylinder up that high must have been well, it's pretty it's pretty small and it's not one of these organic. 

 

We hope to continue this work too because I've have a series of papers on it started here at OSU on essentially saying how many honey bees live in a square inch of coal how densely will be pack and so I did that with ate this molar and at that well, I'll be fun to do it with these other Asian species so we had a recent paper came out two years ago looking at apus the two species of dwarfing bees and of course, they pack they're much more heavily packed in English because there's a single comb. 

 

And there's this curtain of these and a I'm a tour ape Florida colony will have up to 10 to 12,000 bees on it on a side we didn't play yeah, so they really packaged it, you know, it raises this question on and maybe after this we'll take a break and come back to some of your current research, but it raises a question that I often wonder because I've had this transition in my career from honey bees to native bees and there is a kind of perspective you gain in stepping outside, but you've had this one. 

 

Wonderful perspective of looking at different apus species how is it really changed your perspective of honey bees the you know, the manage honey bee is it giving you any insight okay you talk about the packing and I imagine there's other kind of things where you look back on apos molypher in your life huh well in terms of how this relates to moly from my earliest work in Thailand was looking at. 

 

And then looking the giant baby giant IV also has a brood light, which is the genus AAA labs. And which will readily shift to a personalifra. Alright, okay. So if you're a A+ move for a V keeper in Southeast, Asia Varroa doesn't present much of a problem because the brood might triple. 

 

A lapse of the vagina honeybee is much worse. It has a shorter egg to adult cycle and it'll kill and calling before varroa really gets established. That's scary. So in 1988, I went over and I took actually took a stand with me. I want to see how well a stand works. 

 

Oh one of the earlier sides, right? Yeah, one see how well it worked. Against Tripoli Labs because Triple A let's inhibiology is somewhat simpler similar to Varroa. You know, I figured it would be a pretty good compound to use and indeed it was. Okay, good. But. Thai ate the smaller for a beekeepers have been battling these two brood mites for ever since they started the industry in the early 1980s and they they started out with mixture of sulfur sulfur powder and sprinkling it on the bee sprinkling and on the bottom board and having the mites crawl through it and they have they used a lot of flu validate quickly developed the lights quickly developed resistance to it. 

 

So they've been whoa past 10 years heavily rely on amateurs. Oh really And if you do not if you do not treat an aphasm look for a colony for mice in Southeast. Asia that colony has a very very limited lifespan. So would you say so there is that insight you've seen the same parasites from different species. 

 

It's given you an appreciation and I know for example aphis the USDA monitoring they're looking for AAA laps and they've developed tests we really don't want that might to ever come to the North America but is there other perspectives you've had, you know, you're looking at these different species like oh, I can just do what I sit here talking to you and I think about upsconding for example, which occasionally happens in honey bees but not nearly to the extent that these are kind of there's some kind of similarity. 

 

Well, the door funny be in the giant IDs those three species? It's all predation by humans. There's no management. There's no beekeeping. All right with Malefic with serana there is but in Thailand it's never advanced much beyond. Five highs in the backyard. So as I said earlier to find a quote-unquote commercials, I don't even know that they exist. 

 

Isn't it? I've been told that there are some individuals in the south of Thailand. And if you excuse me, if you go to Thailand from north to south which is about the same as from Portland to Los Angeles. You find a higher density of Serrano the further south you go the more tropical you become I see and there's more. 

 

Serena beekeeping down there in terms of I think individuals involved and they have gone to at least some beekeepers using moveable colonized. 

 

But it's I don't know of anyone that would say no one opens 500 to a thousand to 2,000 colonies nobody one of the reasons is of course is because the yield per colony is much lower than molifera and when military was first introduced to Thailand in the early eighties surround a week, if you'd looked at this this foreign honeybee and saw that under the right conditions they could they could get 150 pounds honey from wow, why am I keeping? 

 

On here's this animal okay well as I say surround is a in Thailand at least one is a backyard being whereas the commercial beekeeping is for and you're fighting all kinds of problems with molecular, but they do it as they say the the size of their do they have two. 

 

Nationalifing organizations in Thailand producing a great deal of honey most of it for export and then the Royal jelly part. But the thing that's missing compared to North American commercial beekeeping operation is there's there's no rental bees for pollination purposes. Well, let's take a quick break and then we'll come back and you will I will the quiz you because you've got some great new papers that came out just this last year for some really interesting finding so let's take a quick break. 

 

Here's getting warm. So I know when the break is oh, okay, all right, we're back. There's a little song that goes there that so we didn't really take a long break we typically we have like I've known Mike for since like got here well even before yeah. I yeah so I it was I've known you for a while so we don't need a long break we're just great at her again, right? 

 

So I guess the thing that I you but you've had through we've had a number of great papers come out this year, which is you know, I guess you're not really retired because you're also teaching and doing all sorts of things. But the one paper you were talking about honey production before you were looking at the moisture content of the honey, that's produced variation. 

 

Why is that an important question anyways and what what let's start what's the moisture content in honey bees. Well USDA. Recommendations. No regulation. But from a biological perspective, you need to have your more half percent. If not you. Have the possibility of your honey fermenting on it right now you'd hear stories in the old days of people who just didn't really get that or lids would pop off yes yes yes, so I have I had a project was consulting on a project in Bangladesh. 

 

Three years and they're a major source of money for them as a giant. I mean it for 99 years go into the mangrove skeletons at the river and the government was complaining this honey is very very wet so down there or the times. I was there there's three times and one of the route with a honey others and when they would collect the comb I got cap honey so it by the way giant honey bee. 

 

Six inches deep six inches what it means six inches deep the top of the coal before they store the honey oh and they they the the honeycombed is much wider, oh root come so it's not second today the reason I thought this is like honeybee comb is all uniform yes you're saying in dorsada it gets thicker and thicker packing more and more right nectar right and the deepest sales ever saw with we're sixes, yeah, it was in great. 

 

I mean, it was a foot across. That the honeycomb was a foot wide it's big long column of nectar they're putting in there yes gotcha so I had a handheld refractometer with me so it just sat out there in the honey hunters boat and opened up individual cells and measured the honey content but then moisture content so they'd already been caps so they presumably the bees had already. 

 

Puts the cap on honey yeah, they're not worried about it for me, okay, all right, they finished it off so you were uncapping these sucking it out and then looking the moisture content using this tool okay and it worked out where the moisture content was averaging toilet three percent, whoa wow what way higher yeah giant honey bees are really packing what we call wet honey capping what we call wet interesting and they don't seem to be experiencing fermentation problem. 

 

Ah, so then I had a another former student of mine in Thailand she was looking for a little project for one of her graduate students and I said well, you know, I have this unpublished data on China moisture and no one's ever looked at foria and formers and there are a few papers on serrano so why don't why don't we why don't you have your student look at how many moistures that's great so she and I and students sat down and we discussed methodologies in terms of. 

 

Where you're going to get your honey and then we went over you know, how how you how you do this so anyway the student. Wouldn't collect it a lot samples. If the surrounding and two species of door funny B and then we use molypher as a standard and it was interesting. 

 

And this was all in the Chiang Mai region. So we're all in all these hunties are collected from one geography. Oh, okay great. And what we found was that the driest honey was more. The two dwarf honey bee species, there was no statistical difference between them but they were up in the neighborhood of. 

 

20% moisture. I'll be darned and then durstada was right up there at about 22 or 23%, so are these beefal bees. Yeah or tapping. That seems to intuitive. Yeah, I would think the bees that came these are bees that originating from Europe where it's dry outside could go a little wetter and then the tropics were things spoiled quicker, they'd be drier and so this is completely counterintuitive. 

 

Well, what's going on? 

 

Southeast, Asia. I've never been several times. Scientists have looked at this the genetics and they're a mix of Italian honey bees carnelas Caucasians, but the point is they're all European yeah, so they're all temperate in origin. Yeah, so when you take a temperate animal species and stick in the tropics you expect to see some difference. 

 

Yeah, there's this residual. Well, we still want to have honey as dry as we can. Yeah, and the question is in and in that environment of higher humidities and higher temperatures how. Dry can bees make honey. Yeah, I had one apiser on a sample. This was aside from the study talking about that had capped tapestry on honey at 16% moisture. 

 

Wow, so they can do it and it it strikes me once you've got the cap on it's waterproof right and so then not you know, it's set. So if you can get it dry and cap it you're good. Okay, all right. So there have been no. Series of papers published in the Pakistan wherever on. 

 

The honey moisture kind of torsional. I'd like to imagine 16% honey is like eating dust. Sorry. Anyways, you go keep going. But I thought well, it's let's do let's do this and get these from one region. Well, the honey is we're collected you expect some seasonal variation and the honey's work elected throughout the year. 

 

Dollars not to dry season we didn't have enough sampling to say dry season versus wet season, okay, all right, yeah. 

 

We thought if we take the honey to sample from under the cell cap under the wax cap that it's as dry as the bees are gonna make it. So you know, I I have a I have my own theory about this because bumble bee honey is as runny as you can make it and I was like because they're not meant to store for very long exactly. 

 

I'm trying to think who it was I looked at bumble bee. Yeah, oh did you did yeah looking for the glucose oxidase mechanism and is there oh, I'll be darned it's there, okay, but in bumblebee colonies that are examined. I would find lots of very dry honey really yeah not often but you'd find some pot of very dry. 

 

Was it like right at the bottom they forgot about it or something well squirrels? And then. Most common was like you said you'd find quite runny honey. I mean quite wet yeah but this was honey that was being consumed right now yeah so well, I was just thinking you were telling the migratory patterns and these bees aren't gonna although you didn't mention 15 months the same spot but by in the typical pattern is they're gonna have to card it off at some point. 

 

I'm glad you brought that up the the 15 months is a real outlier yeah real outlier right now we're looking at roughly six months they move in they're there six months they move out they come back in six months no reason to put three coats of paint on that exactly and they do not reuse old combs. 

 

Rock, whatever that's crazy now last year. A lot of work twenty twenty twenty eighteen. I had a colony it was there and often with dorsada they'll be there a month and then just leave maybe run through one brood cycle and just leave wow and we still don't understand that there were for some reason they were unhappy. 

 

I think it's with the microclimate of the immediate location. But there was a colony that sat abandoned for 50 days and another swarm came in and took over that empty cone but it's very rare very rare very rare, okay, so you also did some work on male investments male investment with all about that with giant honey bees giant honey bees are a unique and there's just one cell size. 

 

One for yeah for brewed well as opposed to honeybees with the rails are in bigger so right okay dwarf honey bees apostomy or the Asian hive bee and apos for a produce a larger cell to rear drones, okay giant honey bees don't huh so if you're in a maleficone you can see a clean truck chugging along and we know that she actually measures the width of herself with her front legs. 

 

And depending upon it with as a cell cues her whether to fertilize the egg or not fertilized egg. So worker or drone. So I said to myself well with giant eye bees how does the queen know to produce a drone if there's no difference in the cell size? Now, there is a small difference. 

 

The cells run from 5.1 to 6.1 millimeters. And there's a Vietnamese researcher who published to paper that said that they produced drones only in cells that are 5.5 to 6 millimeters wide in. A smaller cells or workers only. Well what I've noticed is they'll produce workers. In any size cell and drones tend to be restricted to the wider of the cells, but they're not they're not being built. 

 

This is going to be a drone cell. I think. But our question was what I did not address, hey what cues the queen but the question was how many drones does a giant honey bee colony produce? And there's been a lot quite a few papers on molifera drone production, including the great markets had some really nice work on that. 

 

So what we did was to collect colonies, we would smoke smoke the bees off the comb and cut down the brood comb we'd bring the brood comb back to the laboratory put it on a table and we would start. At the bottom row of cells row one cell one and we examine every cell and with an Excel software we just say empty or egg or larvae or pupi or pollen or nectar. 

 

Okay, and we just counted every cell in those colonies. Okay, so sometimes we're looking at twelve thousand colonies or twelve thousand cells twelve thousand cells on the colon, so wow is a lot of work. 

 

But what happens with torsada is they move in. And they build their comb and they start producing brood and they don't start producing males until about after the third month of residents. So one of our problems was we did not have exact ages on these colonies, you know, hey January 1st is when this colony flew in here. 

 

But we knew from size of colonies in state of the brew that okay just was this was an older colony versus a very young colony. But anyway. One of the things that China honeybees do for a drone cell is if you look at let's go back to European honeybee the cap on a drone of European honeybee is quite raised. 

 

It's it's easily recognizable. That's right, but with torsada in the research, you read the research papers and people say, oh you can't tell the difference. Well, actually you can. She get them at the right angle to. Drone cells are maybe a millimeter higher. Okay, you know work yourself. But anyway, we went through and our question that what we the data we collected was if there are five thousand pupi in the colony how many are drones. 

 

Because just to put for the listeners a drone does not do work and so they you know, they are expensive. There is that they are not going to help the colony or accept pass their gametes on right? They are so you don't want it you can imagine there's a pressure on a calling not to have to. 

 

Many of these exactly few you don't pass your jeans, exactly. Okay, right. So what we found was some pretty good variation depending on the age of the colony, but. 

 

I think it came out to. Florida, I can't remember the figure now what the average was. It was lower than anything that had been recorded from a lift for a. Or. Serana, okay or flurry or darshada or up and inform us that two dwarf honey pieces big one these big giant hyphies have less investment in the males. 

 

It appears so the the colony that I remember the colony that we had that had the most males per worker pupi. Was 13% of the brood nest the pupil bees. You can't sex them in the egg stage you can't sex them in the larval stage. You have to wait till they cap it. 

 

Oh, of course, right? And so when you pull off the cap those huge eyes of the drone, all right, they're looking at you. So to guarantee we had the right gender of these things we are we examined the the pupil we call the pupil cohort. So, 

 

I think the average kid was in the neighborhood of eight percent. Now Tom Seeley in a really long in a classic paper, he wrote where he looked at the natural nest of vape in New York. He found that if you look at the comb and say, okay worker comb or drone comb that the the average worked out about 13 percent of the comb is drones. 

 

I mean the larger cells. Yeah, and the student of mine who looked at a persona she did the same thing and it worked out to about 15 percent. So Serrano and Melissa are very very close together with Florida, there's a lot more variation in there, but they can have an appreciable number of of comb available it's drones. 

 

And so, With vagina if you can't look at an empty comb and say, oh look at those who drone cells right, they're all the same size. So ours is the first was the first attempt to say well, okay, this is what they're producing, you know. What's queuing them to produce these drones is a good question. 

 

So that but that was fun that was a lot of fun in the field work you know collect collecting a giant honey bee colony is a challenge and we as former student of mine she really developed a good system so we'd go in there with the team and get to smokers going and we could be we could be in and out in 30 minutes and have the of the comb with us, you know, and leaving thousands of babies in the air. 

 

I guess the last thing I just wanted to quickly touch base with you on is you have another paper that came out that is not honey bees but the other social bees that you have in in Thailand the stainless piece tell us about this observation that you made. Well if you look at bees as a group. 

 

There are maybe 20,000 species worldwide and if you look at social bees. The biggest group would meaning the most number of species are what we call stingless peace and they're all tropical there's something like 550 described species thus far, they're what we call pantropical equatorial all over the world. 

 

Africa, southeast, Asia northern Australia, Central, America, Central America. South northern South America went by the way, the South America or Central and South America has the greatest diversity of species something like 400 species. Yeah Southeast Asia has 90 species of described stainless peas yes stingless bees pretty good common name, they don't sting because the workers have a vestigial stinger they can sting but they do bite but they're high biology is very similar to honeybees, there's single reproductive female the queen. 

 

There are the majority of members are worker bees the daughters of the queen there's a small population of males that is seasonal and appearance they make instead of using comb to store their honey and pollen in they literally make pots and are sometimes called pot bees these are little miniature pots while it depends upon the species, you know, I was on a Canadian national radio thing and somebody asked why are wires comb hexagonal and the answer was well because that's you know, The most efficient way they're like but the answer I gave was like but most of the bee species in the world, don't it use hexagons correct correct correct paper was to do in their nests yeah and all honey bees species do but they're a lot that don't okay so with 80 or almost 90 species. 

 

I'm sure they're 90 in southeast. Asia Thailand has a recorded 34 species of stainless basin and some of them it's relatively new phenomenon. Some of them have been commercialized by humans. There are some species that are amenable to living in a human-made box. And there's one colleague of mine. 

 

Okay, good friend of mine. I known him for a long long time 40 almost 40 years now. He devised a system where you could split a colony. You could make a division. A lot from an existing colony and that was really a spark to get a quote-unquote commercial industry going. 

 

I met two years ago, I met the biggest stainless beekeeper in Thailand and he was running 300 colonies. Wow, which was wow mostly it's. People with 20 to 20 to 50 to 60 70 colonies for on a commercial level. I say commercial because A colony if you could lump them all together and make an average a colony produces one pound of honey a year. 

 

Mmm. Okay, so there's not a huge amount of honey there. But for that reason the honey is very very expensive. We were equated to the US dollar you're looking at I've seen it go for as high as 50 dollars a pound. I have to say you were kind enough to bring me some but it's pretty funky honey. 

 

It is. It's quite wet. Usually 25. I call it prickly. Yes in your mouth. Not at all in common to be 30% moisture, but the average is probably about 25% and it's more acidic. It really grabs you. It's but historically it has an ethnomedical application. It's all my. Little curious disease. 

 

It's not used as a general sweetener or a food ad right okay, it's got its own. Especially uses. Okay, so they've got a resources in there so that they've got a defendant so tell us a little bit about your observation because it's pretty remarkable, right? For any social insect only defense isn't an important factor. 

 

You've got inside economy, you have a high concentration of calories and there are creatures out there that want that. So you have to defend economy. There is was first described into. South America about three species of stingless bees that utilize flying guard base where the bee the guard bees fly out and they hover in front of the colony under to attack any non-estimate. 

 

So this is kind of like it's kind of like, you know, I imagine the Air Force for bomber defense put these planes up in the air and they hover around and then they go home again. Okay gotcha. And just the most steady species in South America where the German who came out and said, hey, these are actually, He did a bunch of more phonetic measurements and said, they're a separate cast. 

 

Oh be dark. They have a they have a guard be cast. Okay, so these are like specialized tasks yes, okay, all right, so with all my tips Thailand I've noticed there's this one species that has this beautiful new tetragonal apocalypse, oh that's nice. I think it has a cadre of flying garbies. 

 

So. They are not kept by humans, they are not amenable to be thrown in a box with dentists three times now and. Transfer cone is into extinguishably boxes and they'll well the best one we are at lasted here and then just peed it out but the thing I remember about the if one of the I saw your slideshow they have these remarkable trumpet like entrances yes and that's another defense strategy by stainless piece, many many many species distinguished, they make these elaborate nests entrance tubes that. 

 

Make it easier for them to defend out of depends this be that where we published it's largely almost pure resin, oh wow and the bees are huge huge collectors of problems huge. 

 

Yeah, I've seen these nests where the nest entrance it looks like a trumpet that you ran over with a car a flattened trumpet bell so they collected all this resin made this flattened trumpet bell and they're these bees hovering out in front of the color in front of it okay and we found that oh we had a colony it was nesting in a an armoire in the dormitory at Chiang Mai University on the second floor and for some reason they threw the armoire. 

 

Off the. Off the balcony just threw it on the ground well the the this actually is a faculty dormitory, so one of the faculty members saw this and called my colleague so we were ran over there and oh wow, so we went over there with a b-box and we recovered the goalie and we got him into the beatbox and brought him let him sit in we let them sit there for a week to where the bees could be they're the same place but oh something's a little different but they accepted the colony and we moved it over to our outside our laboratory so we could study it, but I would. 

 

Always curious these beads fly out and some this beautiful slow-moving cloud of bees they're just visually so appealing so how long are you doing that you know, you've got this job of defending the colony flying on how long you're doing it, so we we put a weed monitor camera and set up a camera and we've monitored this hive. 

 

Oh we didn't do it every day, but we had three months of observations. It thinks something like 25 days that we looked at it eight hours a day. Then we just brought the film back into the lab and one of the reasons we have graduate students as you set them down to monitor. 

 

So I did a bunch of the monitoring too. Anyway, we would just this colleague was because we'd rehived it their initial cadre of guard bees was one to two to three bees. Okay, so I mean when there's a cloud at 25 B's there to see one be come out and try to follow that one be. 

 

Oh my almost impossible. So here we add an opportunity with a small number of guard bees to where we could. You know, the film had the time stamp on it. So we can say hey, okay just became out at 9:20 in the morning and and we could just follow our visually in the film until she went back in and okay. 

 

With a flying for like a minute or two or so and then the average was 16 minutes 16 minute or about 60 and a half minutes something we went out and they flew. That's a lot of yeah hovering a lot of energy and it's a small bee. It's not a large beef. 

 

Though the ones that were the one species in South America. I kind of questioned the strength of the database, but they came out with a figure of over 30 minutes for those pace. But our longest be on record, she was out there for an hour and 20 minutes. Wow, seeing the constant hover, you know, they move slowly but they're about two to three to four inches if a predator comes up to them. 

 

This is amazing. 

 

We had a total of something like 30 hours of watching the bees of a film. We never saw a predatory attack. And this colony was in an apiary that had four other species colonies with four other species of stainless beads. Once in a while you'd see another species come flying up and then out are gone immediately just cheap the the other B was in and out not into the nest entrance but into the vicinity of this entrance and this oops and then out. 

 

So, it's a formidable defense eh. Well, the thing is I never saw a flying I never saw a flying guard be go after one but we didn't we had very not very many instances of. This happening. So it's the you're expending a lot of energy by sending out a group of bees to guard and these colonies. 

 

Oh, no, it's done yet and I hope to do it but I'm guessing a big colony would have five to six thousand B's in it if that many if that many and it may be much closer to a thousand. That you're setting out 25 B's, hey your turn go out there and is it is it related to the age of the bee? 

 

We don't know yeah so there's lots more work to do on it but I'd seen this before I knew other animals. I know other animals in time and said, oh yeah that'd be always does that so I go into the literature to find out where it's first been about first been noted to hey this this species of single speed has flying guards never found the paper on it. 

 

I'll be hard and when wow, so when we first submitted the manuscript, we had given it a little different tone and one of the reviewers said you need to strengthen the fact that this is the first published observation of this behavior, okay? We'll do that fantastic yeah well thanks for taking us a little tour of a tropical social beads this has been fascinating and I can't wait to see what the next episode he's gonna be about yeah. 

 

Well, I hope it's not me being stung at this place yeah, absolutely.