WEBVTT 00:00:00.640 --> 00:00:04.400 Howdy, this is uh Caleb Jacobson from Fort Worth, Texas. 00:00:04.400 --> 00:00:07.360 Welcome to the Beekeeping Today Podcast. 00:00:07.360 --> 00:00:11.520 Welcome to Beekeeping Today Podcast presented by Betterbee. 00:00:11.040 --> 00:00:14.800 Your source for beekeeping news, information, and entertainment. 00:00:14.800 --> 00:00:15.840 I'm Jeff Ott. 00:00:15.920 --> 00:00:17.440 And I'm Becky Masterman. 00:00:17.440 --> 00:00:22.320 Today's episode is brought to you by the bee nutrition superheroes at Global Patties. 00:00:22.320 --> 00:00:25.680 Family operated and buzzing with passion, Global Patties Crowd. 00:00:26.199 --> 00:00:29.880 Protein-packed patties that'll turn your hives into powerhouse production. 00:00:29.880 --> 00:00:35.640 Picture this: strong colonies, booming brood, and honey flowing like a sweet river. 00:00:35.640 --> 00:00:39.000 It's super protein for your bees and they love it. 00:00:39.000 --> 00:00:40.760 Check out their buffet of patties. 00:00:41.200 --> 00:00:44.640 Tailor-made for your bees in your specific area. 00:00:44.640 --> 00:00:46.720 Head over to www. 00:00:46.960 --> 00:00:48.239 globalpatties. 00:00:48.239 --> 00:00:51.280 com and give your bees the nutrition they deserve. 00:00:51.280 --> 00:00:55.760 Hey, a quick shout out to Betterbee and all of our sponsors who support us. 00:00:56.040 --> 00:01:01.160 Allows us to bring you this podcast each week without resorting to a fee-based subscription. 00:01:01.160 --> 00:01:03.960 We don't want that and we know you don't either. 00:01:03.960 --> 00:01:05.080 Be sure to check out 00:01:05.239 --> 00:01:07.400 all of our content on the website. 00:01:07.400 --> 00:01:19.960 There you can read up on all of our guests, read our blog on the various aspects and observations about beekeeping, search for, download and listen to over 300 past episodes, read episodes transcripts, leave comments, 00:01:20.160 --> 00:01:25.520 Comments and feedback on each episode and check on podcast specials from our sponsors. 00:01:25.520 --> 00:01:28.080 You can find it all at www. 00:01:28.320 --> 00:01:29.840 beekeepingtoday. 00:01:29.840 --> 00:01:30.320 com. 00:01:30.320 --> 00:01:32.640 Thank you, Caleb Jacobson from F 00:01:32.840 --> 00:01:41.240 Fort Worth for that wonderful opening from the floor of the North American Honey Bee Expo last January in Tennessee. 00:01:41.240 --> 00:01:42.360 What a great opener. 00:01:42.360 --> 00:01:43.000 Thank you. 00:01:43.000 --> 00:01:47.320 Yeah, I can't believe that was already so long ago in January. 00:01:47.140 --> 00:01:53.540 Time's flying and we're gonna be talking about getting our colonies ready for winter pretty soon. 00:01:53.540 --> 00:01:55.460 Oh hush, hush. 00:01:55.460 --> 00:01:58.500 We're just barely getting into spring. 00:01:58.540 --> 00:02:06.300 Today is an exciting day, or this episode is an exciting one because we are launching our series of 00:02:06.840 --> 00:02:12.920 episodes focused on queens, queen behavior, and honey bee queens in general. 00:02:12.920 --> 00:02:18.760 I think that it is going to be so valuable for our listeners and and us to 00:02:19.799 --> 00:02:27.959 gather experts from queen health to queen breeding and put it all into one place. 00:02:27.959 --> 00:02:30.680 So I'm really looking forward to this series 00:02:31.020 --> 00:02:34.140 Queens are so essential to our colony health. 00:02:34.220 --> 00:02:40.380 It's fun because so much of what's taught to beginning beekeepers is, well, queen is 00:02:41.120 --> 00:02:44.800 egg-laying machine, or you know, she rules the roost. 00:02:44.800 --> 00:02:46.320 I'm mixing metaphors there. 00:02:46.320 --> 00:02:47.920 She rules the hive. 00:02:47.920 --> 00:02:49.360 She rules the colony. 00:02:49.360 --> 00:02:51.200 And the research indicates that 00:02:51.340 --> 00:02:56.620 that's not really quite all that she does and that's just an oversimplification. 00:02:56.620 --> 00:02:59.260 So this series really should highlight 00:02:59.140 --> 00:03:03.379 the value of queens and all the nuances of the Queen Bee's life. 00:03:03.379 --> 00:03:11.299 And we're gonna hear, I think, a lot about what can go wrong from the people who are looking at the science. 00:03:11.120 --> 00:03:14.720 and the people who are actually raising those queens. 00:03:14.720 --> 00:03:16.960 So it'll it'll be very informative. 00:03:16.960 --> 00:03:21.760 I have never in all my years of beekeeping, I've never focused on raising queens. 00:03:21.360 --> 00:03:29.360 And th I know that's a weakness in my roundedness of a beekeeper as being a beekeeper, I've never gone out and raised my own queens or anything 00:03:29.160 --> 00:03:30.280 And that's okay. 00:03:30.280 --> 00:03:33.160 And maybe one of these days there's still time left. 00:03:33.160 --> 00:03:41.080 But I've always understood the importance of the queen to the health and the viability of my hives that I'm working with in my year's honey production 00:03:41.140 --> 00:03:48.260 And so having a a better understanding of the Queen is gonna be really fun to look into. 00:03:48.260 --> 00:03:50.180 You're giving me a squinty eyed look. 00:03:50.420 --> 00:03:52.980 Have you ever done a walkaway Queen Jeff? 00:03:52.980 --> 00:03:54.099 You have to have. 00:03:54.099 --> 00:03:55.860 Not intentionally. 00:03:55.640 --> 00:03:56.680 Are you serious? 00:03:56.680 --> 00:03:57.879 Yeah, really honest. 00:03:57.879 --> 00:03:58.599 Okay, I'm sorry. 00:03:58.599 --> 00:04:00.200 I don't there's no judgment here. 00:04:00.200 --> 00:04:02.519 I just something it's baby. 00:04:02.840 --> 00:04:03.799 You'd be the first person. 00:04:04.920 --> 00:04:06.120 You would be the first person. 00:04:06.120 --> 00:04:07.640 But oh that's that's interesting. 00:04:07.640 --> 00:04:09.159 Okay, well that has to be a twenty 00:04:09.560 --> 00:04:11.000 twenty-six goal. 00:04:11.000 --> 00:04:12.040 One walk away. 00:04:12.040 --> 00:04:12.680 One walk away. 00:04:12.680 --> 00:04:13.079 All right. 00:04:13.079 --> 00:04:19.400 Although I will say if I lived in Washington, I would not walk away a queen. 00:04:19.320 --> 00:04:20.920 because of your weather. 00:04:20.920 --> 00:04:25.560 They need to fly and meet and you just don't have that predictability, I think. 00:04:25.640 --> 00:04:29.320 Well, yeah, we do in June, July, August. 00:04:29.340 --> 00:04:33.740 you know, in September, but at that point y it's you know, June and July maybe. 00:04:33.740 --> 00:04:37.260 September, of course, no, I don't really want to do that to a colony. 00:04:37.440 --> 00:04:37.920 You're right. 00:04:40.960 --> 00:04:43.360 I mean I judge a little, but I'm not judging. 00:04:45.200 --> 00:04:47.360 And I know none of our listeners are judging. 00:04:47.360 --> 00:04:49.440 That's great, because we have great listeners. 00:04:48.979 --> 00:04:50.180 We do have great listeners. 00:04:50.180 --> 00:04:54.820 And they're not gonna remember that you also did raise bees in Ohio and Colorado. 00:04:54.820 --> 00:04:57.860 And so three states have had that opportunity. 00:04:58.020 --> 00:05:01.460 I've neglected my many opportunities. 00:05:01.539 --> 00:05:12.580 Today's episode will be really fun and a great way to kick off our understanding and study of queens through this series because if you go into any of the research, any of the popular literature 00:05:12.840 --> 00:05:15.480 One name stands out, and that's Dr. 00:05:15.480 --> 00:05:18.200 Dave Tarpey of North Carolina University. 00:05:18.200 --> 00:05:20.760 And he's our first guest to help kick this off 00:05:20.660 --> 00:05:25.220 I'm so looking forward to talking with David and learning everything he knows. 00:05:25.220 --> 00:05:26.180 Okay, not everything. 00:05:26.180 --> 00:05:27.300 We don't have that much time. 00:05:27.700 --> 00:05:30.660 But I'm really looking forward to this conversation. 00:05:30.260 --> 00:05:36.660 Okay, let's listen to David right after these words from our sponsors. 00:05:36.660 --> 00:05:38.500 Swarm season's here. 00:05:38.500 --> 00:05:39.860 Are you ready? 00:05:39.860 --> 00:05:43.540 Get the Colorado B VAC made just for BetterBee. 00:05:43.540 --> 00:05:44.660 The CBV as 00:05:45.260 --> 00:05:49.980 Beekeepers call it, is the top hive relocation vacuum out there. 00:05:49.980 --> 00:05:55.580 It's built to gently collect up to 10 pounds of bees with very little loss. 00:05:55.580 --> 00:05:56.940 Don't miss out. 00:05:56.940 --> 00:05:59.820 Grab your Colorado bee vac today at betterbee. 00:05:59.820 --> 00:06:00.060 com. 00:06:10.660 --> 00:06:14.980 This episode of Beekeeping Today podcast is brought to you in part by Apis. 00:06:15.420 --> 00:06:19.580 Tactical, a beekeeping brand focused on innovation. 00:06:19.580 --> 00:06:25.100 They use new designs, new materials, and new ideas to bring more joy to beekeeping. 00:06:25.100 --> 00:06:29.900 Apis Tactical creates a wide range of gear for beekeepers of all types. 00:06:30.100 --> 00:06:35.540 They use new designs, new materials, and new ideas to bring more joy to beekeeping. 00:06:35.540 --> 00:06:44.340 Their products are built with purpose, and they're already getting attention well beyond the US, with beekeepers in Europe discovering them through this podcast. 00:06:45.420 --> 00:06:49.500 Looking for well-made beekeeping gear from a company that understands the work? 00:06:49.500 --> 00:06:51.580 Take a look at Apis Tactical. 00:06:51.580 --> 00:06:54.940 You can learn more at apis-tactical. 00:06:54.940 --> 00:06:55.900 com. 00:06:56.420 --> 00:06:58.340 Hey everybody, welcome back. 00:06:58.340 --> 00:07:06.340 Sitting around this great big virtual beekeeping today podcast table, stretching coast to coast on the East Coast in North Carolina. 00:07:06.340 --> 00:07:06.900 We have Dr. 00:07:06.900 --> 00:07:08.420 Dave Tarpe. 00:07:08.400 --> 00:07:09.520 And in St. 00:07:09.520 --> 00:07:13.040 Paul, Becky, and I'm in Olympia. 00:07:13.040 --> 00:07:14.800 David, welcome to the show. 00:07:15.040 --> 00:07:19.680 We appreciate you taking the time out of your busy day to join us on Beekeeping Today podcast. 00:07:19.360 --> 00:07:20.160 Yeah, of course. 00:07:20.160 --> 00:07:21.600 Thanks so much for having me. 00:07:21.600 --> 00:07:26.560 You are all over the place as far as Queen Health and Bee Health. 00:07:26.560 --> 00:07:30.160 So you're doing some pretty amazing things. 00:07:30.060 --> 00:07:34.860 Are you collaborating with everybody or just most of those the researchers out there? 00:07:34.860 --> 00:07:36.139 Or subset. 00:07:36.139 --> 00:07:37.740 It's a pretty small field. 00:07:37.740 --> 00:07:38.620 So yeah. 00:07:38.620 --> 00:07:38.940 Um 00:07:39.320 --> 00:07:46.120 The the nice things that we have a really great community of scientists and so it's really easy to find areas of overlap. 00:07:46.120 --> 00:07:47.960 You know, I think one of the 00:07:48.620 --> 00:07:56.780 things looking looking back on my career is that a lot of, you know, smarter, more qualified people have been doing some things in workers. 00:07:56.960 --> 00:08:00.800 And then I often go up and ask them, well, what about queens and drones? 00:08:00.800 --> 00:08:06.319 And then you can do the exact same thing in in the queens and drones, which are often neglected. 00:08:06.420 --> 00:08:14.660 And so you can learn a a lot more, you know, of about the the whole colony biology by by studying all of the castes. 00:08:14.740 --> 00:08:17.540 Before we get going too far, David, can you tell us 00:08:17.840 --> 00:08:22.400 A little bit about yourself, your background, and how you get started in in the whole area of bees. 00:08:22.480 --> 00:08:23.600 Sure, my origin story. 00:08:23.840 --> 00:08:24.560 Your origin story. 00:08:30.740 --> 00:08:39.620 As an undergrad, my junior year abroad at Oxford, and I was in the zoology department there, and I was studying birds, bird behavior, and things like that. 00:08:39.620 --> 00:08:41.620 And I got really turned on to 00:08:42.279 --> 00:08:48.200 this confluence of behavior, evolution, and ecology. 00:08:48.200 --> 00:08:55.959 And so when I did my senior year project, it it dealt with with that and insects and then 00:08:56.100 --> 00:09:00.420 I didn't I knew I wanted to go into grad school, but I didn't really know what or or where. 00:09:00.420 --> 00:09:06.500 And a faculty friend of mine, who turned out to be my my mentor and master's advisor. 00:09:06.440 --> 00:09:08.760 He handed me uh a couple textbooks. 00:09:08.760 --> 00:09:14.040 One was by Mark Winston, nineteen eighty seven, the other was by Tom Seeley, nineteen eighty-four. 00:09:14.040 --> 00:09:18.600 And he said, I think, you know, with your interests, I think you might kind of like this. 00:09:18.600 --> 00:09:18.920 And 00:09:19.160 --> 00:09:27.480 And both of those I read from cover to cover without putting them down and knew that's exactly what I wanted to do. 00:09:27.480 --> 00:09:31.080 Which we don't all have that kind of aha moment, right? 00:09:31.080 --> 00:09:33.960 So I f consider myself very, very lucky. 00:09:33.959 --> 00:09:37.800 to be bitten by the b bug from the biology side, right? 00:09:37.800 --> 00:09:42.200 So at this point I'd never, you know, been into a hive or anything like that. 00:09:42.540 --> 00:09:54.459 And so, you know, I kind of pursued a a master's degree with David Fletcher, my my mentor, and then a PhD out in California, and then uh postdoc at Cornell. 00:09:54.459 --> 00:09:57.100 And I like to tell beekeepers that 00:09:57.339 --> 00:10:07.100 You know, by by getting into honey bee science, I was keeping bees and doing beekeeping for five or six years before I realized, hey, you know what? 00:10:07.100 --> 00:10:09.660 I might want to read a beekeeping book. 00:10:11.240 --> 00:10:21.640 Because all it was one if you if you understand enough about the biology of of the super organism, the rest of it's just kind of putting boxes on top of each other, you know? 00:10:21.640 --> 00:10:22.200 Like it's 00:10:22.440 --> 00:10:33.560 You know, I think a lot of our extension work and everything that we do really focuses on the biology because that gives you the why you're doing the beekeeping, not the how and when. 00:10:34.300 --> 00:10:41.260 And that to me is is really what distinguishes you know a good beekeeper from a great beekeeper. 00:10:41.260 --> 00:10:47.260 So I kind of tell that origin story to to a lot of folks here in North Carolina and and beyond to 00:10:47.540 --> 00:10:57.220 to really underscore why we as scientists are so interested in doing the biology because it does manifest in beekeeping eventually because 00:10:57.300 --> 00:11:05.860 They're so complex and and there's so much more that we still have to learn that eventually does percolate into our management. 00:11:05.860 --> 00:11:06.580 That's really good. 00:11:06.580 --> 00:11:14.500 And that's one of the key points that Becky and I always try to bring back around is that you have to understand the biology and the behavior. 00:11:14.720 --> 00:11:16.880 to effectively manage the honey bee. 00:11:16.880 --> 00:11:18.000 So that's great. 00:11:18.000 --> 00:11:24.800 Well, we invited you here because we have launched this spring our series on queens and queen management and 00:11:25.160 --> 00:11:26.520 Queen biology. 00:11:26.520 --> 00:11:33.640 And when you start looking at the research in Queens and honey bee health and everything, your name comes up consistently. 00:11:33.640 --> 00:11:39.640 You've authored and co-authored so many different papers that are instrumental to our understanding of honey bees. 00:11:39.160 --> 00:11:51.800 For our listeners who are new to honey bees this year, or or maybe into their second year, can you give us a high-level overview of the queen and her role and her position in the colony? 00:11:51.560 --> 00:11:57.960 That's a great question because I think the answer to that can can often come down to a matter of perspective, right? 00:11:57.960 --> 00:12:00.440 I think there's kind of a duality there. 00:12:00.440 --> 00:12:05.560 I think a lot of textbooks and a lot of beekeepers just think of the queen as 00:12:05.660 --> 00:12:10.060 An egg-laying machine, and you know, that's her only purpose and her only role. 00:12:10.060 --> 00:12:11.180 She's very boring. 00:12:11.180 --> 00:12:13.020 There's only one of her, you know 00:12:13.180 --> 00:12:21.500 And that now they everybody agrees and knows that she's very important, but you know, they kind of just look at her as as an egg cow, right? 00:12:21.500 --> 00:12:21.980 To just 00:12:22.060 --> 00:12:25.500 provide the eggs and then everything else goes from there. 00:12:25.500 --> 00:12:30.460 Another way to look at it is that, you know, the queen is 00:12:31.020 --> 00:12:41.500 repressing all of her daughters within the colony with these pheromones, and so she's this dictator and you know, controlling, you know, everything within the colony. 00:12:41.360 --> 00:12:44.080 Both are true, but neither is at the same time, right? 00:12:44.080 --> 00:12:55.200 I think it it really shows that there's this collaboration between the queen and and her worker offspring and they both are are important and needed for proper colony function, right? 00:12:55.200 --> 00:12:55.840 And so 00:12:56.140 --> 00:13:03.900 The Queen's life cycle is, you know, for the most part pretty boring where she is just kind of laying 00:13:03.940 --> 00:13:09.220 Eggs and being tended to by the workers, but it does go beyond more than that. 00:13:09.220 --> 00:13:11.380 When when colonies make new queens 00:13:11.740 --> 00:13:15.500 They raise, you know, one or two dozen naturally, right? 00:13:15.500 --> 00:13:22.620 Not in beekeeping where you graft them and you know raise them on purpose, but naturally when when colonies make new queens 00:13:23.020 --> 00:13:34.140 The mother queen represses the workers from raising new queens, and so either when she gets old um and she can no longer repress them, or when she swarms away. 00:13:34.140 --> 00:13:38.700 the colony left behind they're they're making new new daughter queen cells. 00:13:38.700 --> 00:13:44.540 When the colony makes, you know, a couple dozen queen cells, what ends up happening is 00:13:45.220 --> 00:13:49.620 you know those those queens only can be one successor. 00:13:49.620 --> 00:13:58.580 So what they end up doing, which this is really what got me into queen biology and and my ma it was the basis of my master's degree 00:13:58.459 --> 00:14:05.180 Which is, well, how do these virgin queens then fight to the death to claim the colony, right? 00:14:05.180 --> 00:14:07.100 How do they become the heir? 00:14:07.100 --> 00:14:10.459 And I and I like to make the analogy that 00:14:10.640 --> 00:14:18.480 That kind of episode is like watching the last episode of the Kardashians where they all kill each other off until one takes over the empire, right? 00:14:18.720 --> 00:14:22.080 It's just kind of how it how how it goes. 00:14:21.940 --> 00:14:30.500 And s and then only after she's vanquished all of her rival sisters does that successful mother queen or uh daughter queen 00:14:31.300 --> 00:14:40.100 Fly from the hive and then mate with dozens of drones from all the surrounding colonies, and then comes back to the hive. 00:14:40.100 --> 00:14:42.180 She stores a proportion 00:14:42.720 --> 00:14:45.040 of the sperm from all of her mates. 00:14:45.040 --> 00:14:49.040 So she actually mates with this, you know, very large number of males. 00:14:49.040 --> 00:14:51.440 So all the workers kind of form this genetic 00:14:51.640 --> 00:14:55.720 cosmopolitan population within the colony when she's laying eggs. 00:14:55.720 --> 00:15:03.800 And so that was actually the basis of my PhD work of saying, well why do queens mate so many times when only one male is enough, right? 00:15:03.800 --> 00:15:05.960 So I think there's a lot of that 00:15:06.560 --> 00:15:14.880 fundamental biology of queen life history that goes on within just the first two weeks of her lifetime. 00:15:14.880 --> 00:15:20.960 But then once she starts laying eggs, she, you know, never leaves the hive again. 00:15:20.240 --> 00:15:24.960 She doesn't, you know, really do much other than fertilize and lay the eggs, right? 00:15:24.960 --> 00:15:34.000 But understanding that brief period early in her life can have profound ramifications for the rest of the of her life and her colony's life 00:15:33.660 --> 00:15:36.380 It's key to the success of the colony at that point. 00:15:36.380 --> 00:15:37.020 It is. 00:15:37.020 --> 00:15:46.700 How well mated she is, how well reared she was, all of these things, the quality of the queen goes into her performance. 00:15:46.640 --> 00:15:52.240 within the colony and you know and our work and others have has shown that queen quality varies. 00:15:52.240 --> 00:15:56.880 You know, there are some really good queens and there's some not so great queens. 00:15:57.320 --> 00:16:04.200 And the the quality of the queen kind of forms the ceiling of how good the colony is going to be. 00:16:04.200 --> 00:16:06.280 So if the if the if you have a subpar 00:16:06.820 --> 00:16:10.180 queen, she's smaller, she doesn't mate as many times, so on and so forth. 00:16:10.180 --> 00:16:15.380 They kind of have a lower ceiling of how big the colony's gonna get and how productive it's going to be. 00:16:15.380 --> 00:16:17.540 But if you have a a better queen 00:16:17.839 --> 00:16:21.360 the ceiling is a lot higher and and the colonies can be uh much better off. 00:16:21.680 --> 00:16:29.920 Well that's an interesting question because we often talk about queen quality and and you hear r references to the queens are not as good as they used to be and 00:16:30.420 --> 00:16:36.980 When you, as a researcher, talk about queen quality, what specific traits are you actually measuring? 00:16:36.980 --> 00:16:40.980 How do those traits translate into colony performance? 00:16:40.759 --> 00:16:48.440 Well that's a very important question, Jeff, because I think again there's different ways that beekeepers look and assess 00:16:48.860 --> 00:16:50.780 what they mean by queen quality. 00:16:50.780 --> 00:16:57.580 What I'm referring to in that context is kind of her physical prowess 00:16:57.560 --> 00:17:03.880 That is her body size and other metrics of just how large she is, bigger is better. 00:17:03.880 --> 00:17:06.120 But then also her mating success. 00:17:05.800 --> 00:17:07.960 So how many drones did she mate with? 00:17:07.960 --> 00:17:15.880 How mu how that sperm storage organ that she gets filled up and and stores the sperm from all of those mates, the spermithica. 00:17:15.939 --> 00:17:24.659 you know how how much sperm gets in there and and how viable it is because you know sperm can die and so sperm viability is very important. 00:17:24.659 --> 00:17:28.339 So I'm talking about the queen specifically. 00:17:27.760 --> 00:17:29.520 right of her quality. 00:17:29.520 --> 00:17:33.440 And again that translates to kind of the colony. 00:17:33.440 --> 00:17:35.360 But I think a lot of beekeepers 00:17:35.540 --> 00:17:38.500 assess the queen by looking at the brood pattern. 00:17:38.500 --> 00:17:45.140 So if you have this kind of solid wall of contiguous brood, they're like, ah, that's a great queen, you know, oh, I love that. 00:17:45.140 --> 00:17:47.380 And everybody loves those pictures, right? 00:17:47.380 --> 00:17:49.220 They show up good on Facebook. 00:17:49.720 --> 00:18:00.200 Yeah, and then and then the converse of that is if you have the shot brood where it's good there's a lot of holes in the in the brood and everything, uh, it's a bad brood pattern, it's a bad queen, you know. 00:18:00.200 --> 00:18:00.520 And 00:18:01.419 --> 00:18:11.980 Again, I think there are circumstances and and reasons of why the queen, as an individual, can be blamed for the brute pattern. 00:18:11.980 --> 00:18:12.299 But 00:18:12.440 --> 00:18:21.320 Our research has really shown in the narrative that that that we're really trying to put out there is that, well, the brood is actually a collective trait, right? 00:18:21.320 --> 00:18:23.159 Because the queen laid the eggs, but it's the 00:18:23.700 --> 00:18:25.700 bees that raised them. 00:18:25.700 --> 00:18:33.620 And so there's lots of different reasons why a colony can have a a bad brood pattern, not just because of the queen. 00:18:33.760 --> 00:18:41.919 And so, you know, you can take a queen that has a bad brood pattern, put her in a new colony, and her brood pattern is just fine, right? 00:18:42.679 --> 00:18:52.120 Or, you know, you put a a a good queen in that same colony and the brood pattern doesn't improve because whatever is behind that bad brood pattern is still there. 00:18:52.120 --> 00:18:52.360 Right. 00:18:52.440 --> 00:18:53.000 So there's 00:18:53.160 --> 00:18:56.440 There's many, many reasons why you can have a bad brood pattern. 00:18:56.440 --> 00:19:02.440 And what I like to say is that you need to rule all of the alternatives out before you blame the queen. 00:19:02.440 --> 00:19:06.520 But there's just something built into our beekeeper mentality 00:19:06.820 --> 00:19:10.500 That we just blame the queen when we see a bad brood pattern. 00:19:10.500 --> 00:19:14.260 And we need to be careful about that because we can overlook 00:19:14.780 --> 00:19:24.300 Mites, you know, colony being overrun by mites or AFB for God's sakes, or you know, like you know, like there's lots of different reasons why you can have a bad brood pattern. 00:19:24.060 --> 00:19:29.580 So you need to be very, very introspective and really think about that before you just blame the Queen. 00:19:29.580 --> 00:19:33.100 Dave, I know a lot of commercial beekeeping operations 00:19:33.960 --> 00:19:38.760 who are just every year requeening everybody. 00:19:38.760 --> 00:19:41.720 And so they're they're to the point where 00:19:42.500 --> 00:19:51.620 their access to queens is is affordable because they're they're doing their queen rearing and for them it it makes more sense 00:19:51.840 --> 00:19:55.360 to go ahead and just re queen the operation. 00:19:55.360 --> 00:20:00.480 And that might have been true for summer operations in the past, but not necessarily. 00:20:00.480 --> 00:20:02.880 Do you see that as a sign of 00:20:03.419 --> 00:20:16.620 this is where we are in Queen Health is that that we're safer in in bigger bigger operations to just go ahead and not take that time to say, is it the Queen, is it the colony, but just to go ahead and put a new one in there 00:20:16.540 --> 00:20:21.900 I'll kind of break that down into two parts because there's a lot to unpack unpack there. 00:20:21.900 --> 00:20:30.540 One of the issues is that we don't really have good baseline data of how long Queens used to live. 00:20:30.480 --> 00:20:38.720 You go to the textbooks and it's all, you know, three, four, five years, you know, like and we and we have we have this color coding system, right? 00:20:38.720 --> 00:20:41.600 Where you go through these five different colors. 00:20:41.540 --> 00:20:48.900 Because queens are, you know, expected to live about five years, so you make sure you have five colors to make sure that you know, you know 00:20:49.080 --> 00:20:58.200 And when I first started in in beekeeping, only some of the operations would requeen some of their colonies every other year. 00:20:58.120 --> 00:21:00.680 And then it went to every colony every other year. 00:21:00.680 --> 00:21:02.440 And then it went to every colony every year. 00:21:02.440 --> 00:21:04.920 And some of them are doing it multiple times a year. 00:21:04.920 --> 00:21:10.200 So I think there's anecdotal evidence to suggest that queens are not living as long. 00:21:09.740 --> 00:21:12.860 But we don't have good firm empirical evidence, right? 00:21:12.860 --> 00:21:20.300 And and so some people have accused me of tilting at wind windmills and that it's always been this way, and you know it's but 00:21:20.640 --> 00:21:33.920 You know, on on the other hand, you know, there there's definitely things within the colony environment that influence the colony's decision about whether or not to keep her around. 00:21:34.440 --> 00:21:46.600 And premature supersedure is, I think, definitely a management problem and concern that is, you know, manifests at the colony level of large and small operations. 00:21:46.220 --> 00:22:00.860 Large operations, that's the the the point of them doing that is that it makes economic sense to just raise a whole bunch of queens and just to go through and re-queen all the colonies, whether or not they have good or bad queens. 00:22:00.260 --> 00:22:02.660 And it's just, you know, simpler. 00:22:02.660 --> 00:22:04.740 But they have queens at the ready. 00:22:04.740 --> 00:22:06.020 They can do that, right? 00:22:06.020 --> 00:22:12.500 But but as a biologist, I'm more interested in this collective decision-making process. 00:22:12.640 --> 00:22:18.480 Of how a colony decides one day the queen is good and worth keeping around. 00:22:18.480 --> 00:22:21.040 Then the next day, off with her head. 00:22:20.940 --> 00:22:29.580 What is it that's going through the kind of social physiology of the colony in in in making that determination? 00:22:29.580 --> 00:22:33.580 And so, you know, I spent the first 20 years of my career 00:22:34.019 --> 00:22:38.100 Looking for the silver bullet of, oh, here's this one thing that's wrong with a queen. 00:22:38.100 --> 00:22:43.059 They don't mate enough, or they're too runty, or they're diseased, or you know, here's a pesticide that 00:22:43.300 --> 00:22:50.020 And we haven't ever been able to find a smoking gun and we've been checking off all of these things that it's not, right? 00:22:50.020 --> 00:22:56.340 And then so now I'm kind of flipping the switch and saying, okay, well it's not something with the queen that the 00:22:56.440 --> 00:23:05.799 workers are queuing in on, it's there's something in the environment, or multiple things in the environment, that change the worker's perception of her. 00:23:05.660 --> 00:23:07.580 You know, the queen can be good and bad. 00:23:07.580 --> 00:23:15.020 I've seen really crappy queens not get superseded, and I've seen awesome queens get superseded. 00:23:15.020 --> 00:23:20.460 So clearly that decision, whatever they're making, is not always perfect. 00:23:19.660 --> 00:23:26.860 And so what is it that's going into, you know, that gestalt perception of the queen by the workers? 00:23:26.860 --> 00:23:34.460 And and, you know, others and and we have have done a bunch of studies that I think we're starting to kind of understand. 00:23:34.519 --> 00:23:38.840 Some of the moving m of the many moving parts that's going on. 00:23:38.840 --> 00:23:44.039 One that's really seems to be important is Queens getting infected with virus. 00:23:44.340 --> 00:23:50.899 And what that what tends to happen is that uh shrinks their ovaries, which means they lay less 00:23:51.460 --> 00:23:53.940 Which then decreases brood pheromones. 00:23:53.940 --> 00:24:02.020 So brood larvae produce pheromones that are important signals within the colony about how good the queen is. 00:24:01.919 --> 00:24:09.440 So even if nothing's really changing uh uh of the queen directly, there can be indirect ways that that the colony can figure out 00:24:09.519 --> 00:24:22.720 There are other things too that that there have been some really great papers of uh toxicologists and you know people studying effects of pesticides and and these kind of things, non-lethal effects of pesticides 00:24:22.500 --> 00:24:35.940 And one of the things that certain pesticides do is change the brain chemistry of the workers, which deadens their ability to smell, particularly things like queen and brood pheromone. 00:24:36.100 --> 00:24:50.020 So, you know, there's multiple things going on within the colony that can affect not the queen directly, but the workers' perception of the queen that can change their opinion pole. 00:24:49.640 --> 00:24:53.560 of her and then all of a sudden off with her head, right? 00:24:53.720 --> 00:24:57.640 So it's a very, very complex thing that I think we're on the right track. 00:24:57.640 --> 00:25:00.440 We certainly don't have, you know, solid answers, but 00:25:00.640 --> 00:25:08.400 I I definitely think we've uh kind of crossed a threshold where where we're we're no longer barking up the wrong tree 00:25:08.360 --> 00:25:17.880 That's really interesting because so often or for so long we've heard the implication is the decreasing availability of queen pheromone is the key indicator. 00:25:17.880 --> 00:25:20.200 You're saying that the abundance or the 00:25:20.740 --> 00:25:29.220 the availability of the brood pheromone also contributes as a combined factor or a secondary, if not an additional 00:25:29.440 --> 00:25:33.600 factor in like whether the colony accepts the queen or in fact it's more important. 00:25:33.600 --> 00:25:42.559 You know, people long time ago, once they found queen pheromone, they start throwing queen pheromone into colonies to see if it decreases suit procedure and it doesn't 00:25:42.679 --> 00:25:51.880 So, you know, queen pheromone is kind of is one signal, but I think those secondary fecundity signals of of the brood are probably a lot more important. 00:25:52.160 --> 00:25:56.560 But even more so, it's the worker's perception of it, not just the amount of it, right? 00:25:56.560 --> 00:26:05.040 So I think there's there's that interplay of the signaling from the brood, but then also the receiving of the signal that can change as well 00:26:05.120 --> 00:26:12.080 We can't forget the the receiver end as much as the you know the the sender end, right? 00:26:12.320 --> 00:26:17.280 How much does the drone brood pheromone factor into that as well? 00:26:17.440 --> 00:26:18.159 Good question. 00:26:18.159 --> 00:26:19.279 Don't know that yet. 00:26:19.279 --> 00:26:20.799 Yeah, because drones aren't important. 00:26:20.799 --> 00:26:22.080 They're useless, remember. 00:26:22.080 --> 00:26:24.559 So, you know, nobody nobody studies them. 00:26:24.559 --> 00:26:30.159 No, I th I think you know drones are clearly important for for mating and these other things and how much that 00:26:30.340 --> 00:26:36.660 helps to modulate or regulate those collective decisions is is still unknown, but it's an interesting question. 00:26:36.660 --> 00:26:37.299 Yeah. 00:26:37.380 --> 00:26:39.780 Hey, let's take this opportunity to take a quick break. 00:26:39.780 --> 00:26:42.500 We'll come right back and continue our conversation with Dr. 00:26:42.500 --> 00:26:43.940 Dave Tarpey. 00:26:46.320 --> 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developing high-quality commercial probiotics and nutritional supplements you can trust. 00:28:30.399 --> 00:28:35.200 Learn more about Bee Bites and their full line of bee nutrition at strongmicrobials. 00:28:35.200 --> 00:28:36.159 com. 00:28:37.000 --> 00:28:38.680 Welcome back, everybody. 00:28:38.680 --> 00:28:47.560 David, you mentioned queen quality and you talked about that it it was based upon maybe the nutrition they received when they were being reared. 00:28:47.360 --> 00:28:49.440 or the quality of mating. 00:28:49.440 --> 00:28:58.480 Can you tell us what you think about how the actual handling of queens by people, beekeepers? 00:28:58.419 --> 00:29:05.780 or sending them in the mail or raising them in mass, how does that impact the quality of queens 00:29:06.300 --> 00:29:13.900 Another great question that has a huge impact, you know, as as we transport queens and ship them through the mail, you know, and everything. 00:29:13.900 --> 00:29:15.740 That that does have an impact. 00:29:15.740 --> 00:29:19.020 Now a lot of the carriers and everything take great care 00:29:19.240 --> 00:29:27.800 A lot of the beekeepers that are selling queens make sure that they're well incubated with, you know, attendant bees and everything like that. 00:29:27.800 --> 00:29:28.120 But 00:29:28.419 --> 00:29:35.860 all that makes it all the more important of handling after they're received and before they go into the colony that's really important. 00:29:35.860 --> 00:29:39.220 And and we all know that, you know, if you overheat 00:29:39.540 --> 00:29:41.940 queens and bees, they'll die. 00:29:41.940 --> 00:29:47.780 You know, if they don't get enough water, if they can't, you know, cool off and everything, that can be, you know, detrimental. 00:29:47.780 --> 00:29:52.340 And so as we're shipping packages, we're shipping queens and everything 00:29:52.340 --> 00:29:59.220 we tend to overcompensate and make sure that we ship them cold because they can generate heat, right? 00:29:59.220 --> 00:30:00.419 And so they they're they're m 00:30:00.760 --> 00:30:09.880 they're less susceptible to to dying if they're cool because they can warm themselves up, rather than overheating, which can be harder, you know, to get back to normal. 00:30:09.880 --> 00:30:15.080 The problem is is that yes, if you overheat Queens, non-lethally, right, where 00:30:15.460 --> 00:30:18.580 They they get overheated for a period of time. 00:30:18.580 --> 00:30:27.940 They they might not die, but the sperm in their spermatheca can become sterilized, so they have zero vo or low sperm viability. 00:30:27.860 --> 00:30:30.580 And only live sperm can fertilize eggs. 00:30:30.580 --> 00:30:37.299 So you can have these queens that become premature drone layers or that are superseded early because they're they're not 00:30:37.740 --> 00:30:41.260 doing their function, right, of of laying the eggs. 00:30:41.260 --> 00:30:51.580 The problem is that our research, Jeff Pettis, uh Allie McAfee, who who's in our lab, but she's in Vancouver, Canada, there's a lot of people that are doing some great work and have shown that 00:30:51.840 --> 00:30:58.400 When you chill queens, again, it doesn't kill them, but it can also sterilize the sperm. 00:30:58.400 --> 00:31:00.880 So, you know, if you are 00:31:01.440 --> 00:31:10.240 you know, getting a a batch of queens and you throw them in the refrigerator or something like that to make sure that, you know, they're okay, or if you throw them in the 00:31:10.660 --> 00:31:18.740 you know, the dash of your truck in the direct sunlight or, you know, you're re queening your colonies while you have your winter coat on. 00:31:18.660 --> 00:31:23.380 you know, 'cause you want to get a head start on making your spring splits or something like that. 00:31:23.380 --> 00:31:33.220 These are not good temperatures for prolonged periods of time to, you know, have these queens exposed to, which again, it might not kill them outright, but it can 00:31:33.640 --> 00:31:35.400 decrease their sperm viability. 00:31:35.400 --> 00:31:44.680