Speaker 1 00:00:37 And you're tuned to disability and progress. We bring you insights into ideas about and discussions on disability topics. My name is Sam. I'm the host of this show. Charlene dolls, my research woman, special. Thanks to Amber Johnson who helped arrange this particular show. Tonight, we are going to be speaking with Ariel Gilbert and Ariel is a beekeeper who happens to be blind. Good evening, Ariel.
Speaker 2 00:01:08 Hi, thanks for inviting me. Well,
Speaker 1 00:01:10 Thank you so much for coming on. Um, I thought it would hear like an overwhelming amount of buzzing in the background, but I don't hear any, so you must be fine. So I want to talk a little bit about, well, a lot about beekeeping, but first, can you just talk a little bit about how you lost your disability? Cause this does play in a little bit because you weren't always blind and you did the beekeeping before you lost your vision.
Speaker 2 00:01:40 Correct? I, I lost my vision when I was 34, which was 1988 technical holiday. And, um, I, it was due to over the counter eyedrops drops, which I didn't know were tampered with and they had lie on them instead of eyedrops. It was about the same time as the Tylenol tampering.
Speaker 1 00:02:06 I do remember. Yes. Wow. Yeah, that must have been very scary. Um,
Speaker 2 00:02:14 Yes,
Speaker 1 00:02:15 Abrupt change for anybody. Um, well I'm glad you're you're with us and that, that that's all you lost was your vision. Um, certainly people move on from there. So yeah, the, excuse me, the beekeeping is just not new to you. You did it. And before you lost your vision, so can you at least tell us how in the world did you decide that you were able to do this with no vision?
Speaker 2 00:02:53 I think some of it has to know. I have to go back in time to what spurred my interest in bees and the first time, which was when I was, when I was 10, there was a swarm of bees that landed in our backyard. My grandfather knew a beekeeper and in town and he came and I watched him remove the hive at and uh, take it home. And that sparked my interest in bees. And then when I was a junior in high school, I was reading through the Sears and Roebuck catalog and found that I could purchase the equipment and the bees through Sears. So that's what I did. That's how I got started because at that time there weren't a lot of beekeepers around it. Wasn't a very popular thing to do. Um, and so it was, you know, it was a little bit seat of the pants or in a lot of books, there wasn't a lot of information, but there also weren't a lot of the health concerns and issues that we're dealing with now.
Speaker 2 00:04:06 But when I, from the time I was in high school to the time I lost my sight, the number of bees that I kept, kept expanding it. One point I've had 10 hives and, and manage those. And, you know, just was always fascinated with the biology and the, you know, the products of the hive and, you know, the bee behavior. So when I lost my sight, it, it was really one of the things that was really hard for me to let go of, or my bees, but I needed to move them on because I didn't think at that point it was something that I'd be able to do because it takes some visual information and visual feedback about what's happening, what you're seeing, what's going on inside the hive in order to make decisions on, on what you do with it. And so I, I, rehomed my hives.
Speaker 2 00:05:07 And then, you know, continually blissfully on for like 22, 23 years before it kind of dawned on me again and what, what, what actually spurred it was a friend asked whether she could keep, uh, one of her hives on my property. And I thought, wow, that's perfect. I have bees around me again. And, but somebody else would manage them. And, and that fell through. And that happening, having that fall through, I realized how disappointed I was and how much I wanted these back in my life. And so then I was on a quest to find a way to make that happen. You know, it was, that was the, that was sort of a tipping point for me of, yeah, I've got to, I've got to get back into B's.
Speaker 1 00:06:02 So then you decided that you would try it. What were the concerns you had going into it with no visions?
Speaker 2 00:06:14 Um, well, biggest concern is visually what's going on. Second biggest concern is, um, you know, it's happening environmentally with the bees and, you know, it's very different now managing a hive of bees than it was, you know, 40 years ago. And, and what I mean by that is, you know, Queens would live five or six years. Uh, you didn't have deaths from things like and other, you know, diseases that have been a problem and an issue with, with these colony collapse disorder, which is like combination of a cluster of things affecting the bees. So, you know, I was worried about it, but I, I found out that in my county, we have one of those most organized group of beekeepers in the entire country. And it turned out that in my own little town, there were about 60 beekeepers that were, it's a nice organized group.
Speaker 2 00:07:25 And I went to the first meeting and they weren't intimidated in the least that I was there. It was shocking. I've never experienced it. And one of, one of the old time beekeepers came up to me and she said, have you ever read the book called the beekeepers pupil? I said, uh, no. And it's about blind beekeeper from the late 17th, early 18th century in France who made observations, which are valid today that people didn't understand about BB behavior. So it wasn't, if it didn't turn out to be something that scared people away. And one of one person who's very experienced said, Hey, how about if I'm your eyes? And we, we worked together. So that, that's how I manage my hives. If I do all the work, I physically manage my, my hives. But when I'm pulling out a frame, she can look at it and say, yeah, I see, I see cells with, you know, two, three day old eggs in them, or here are the number of eggs, or this is the pattern of the eggs, you know, so that, you know, I have better concept of, you know, w what I want to do and how I want to manage the space.
Speaker 2 00:08:45 Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:08:46 Do you keep your hives and how many do you have?
Speaker 2 00:08:51 I keep them in my backyard and they're about, you know, maybe 40 feet from our house. And yeah. Then I have two hives right now. This is, this is early spring for, or, yeah, we're getting an early spring here. So I might expand it to a third hive, but probably we'll keep it at two. And I'm lucky this year that I have two hives that wintered over, uh, in our area, there's been about 70% loss of hives because of all the fires we've had for the past three years.
Speaker 1 00:09:30 How many bees generally live in a hive?
Speaker 2 00:09:36 It's very easy. It can be, you know, 10 to 30 to 50,000 bees depends on the time of year. Great. Now things are, are building up because it's spraying. Um, and it depends on, you know, how big the, the hive is itself. I've got one hive that's on the smaller side and one high that's pretty big. And, and so, you know, that that number will vary.
Speaker 1 00:10:08 Do they kind of keep themselves separated? Do they know that I belong to this hive? Not that one, they must be aware that there are other hives around them.
Speaker 2 00:10:19 Oh yeah. They know they're high. They know they're high by smell. They know their hive by location visually. Uh, they orient themselves as baby. You know, when they're first learning how to fly, they orient theirself themselves to their particular hive. And, um, once they've taken this orientation flight, they'll always come back to their own hive.
Speaker 1 00:10:45 Ariel, can you talk to me about the hierarchy of bees when you see a hive, what do we expect? How does this work?
Speaker 2 00:10:56 When you say bees 99.9, 9% of the time you're seeing female, uh, the worker bees, and those are females. Um, but they're, they're not fertile. Um, there's only one queen that lays eggs and, and I'm talking generally, they're always a little exceptions. Bees are always a big surprise, but, um, yeah. So w these that you see out and about those, those are the female worker bees. There are male bees. They're not very big and number, uh, they, you start seeing them around spring time. And, um, they're big they're, they're about half again, the size of a worker bee. They got great big eyes and no stinger. There's no sting are out to see a drone. You don't have to. That's what they're called. The boys were called drones that they have no stinger at all. Uh, they, their only purpose in life is, uh, to go outside their own hive, to there's a designated area called the there's a drone congregation area where the female Queens will fly to, to get for life. And so, and it's never with the drones from their own hive.
Speaker 1 00:12:27 So that's the drones only purpose. Wow. I can say a lot about that one, but,
Speaker 2 00:12:34 Well, the other bad part is the worker bees have to take care of them. They have to feed them for them and do all this stuff. And then they, they get, you know, there's a little bit of payback in the fall when they're done with a drones. And by the way, they'd be taken up too much energy. They push them out of the hive and die outside. So that's sort of the end of the boys. And then, then as far as the queen goes, um, she is a little different than the worker bees, which are also female in that. Um, they have to decide if they're going to make new Queens by the time maybe their eggs are either one to three days old. They can't make a queen. They know it. They just know they're amazing. This was, was, you know, the thing about these that fascinates me is the more I know, the more I realize, I don't know.
Speaker 1 00:13:44 And does it matter how old the queen is?
Speaker 2 00:13:50 You mean as she ages and as being part of the hype? Yeah, it does make a difference. Sometimes you'll start seeing an irregular Lang pattern. If you have an older queen, um, where she may start shooting blanks and they'll do the rest of the hive will decide that they need to create a new queen. So then they'll, they'll take one of these eggs that are less than three, less than four days old and start feeding it continually Royal jelly. And then that they make a special little cell for them, which is much bigger than a regular cell. Now, the hexagonal cells that you find in the regular calm, and they also have a pretty short gestation periods, so only 14 days. So, whereas the other, other views it's a little longer. So, um, generally they'll make multiple Queens and first queen out, she goes over and quilt kills the other ones. And the little have your first year, your new queen. And generally what happens when a hive swarms, which is how a hive reproduce is, um, in the spring, they'll double in size and half the high will stay with the new queen. And half the high will leave with the old queen and look for a new resonance.
Speaker 1 00:15:22 Yeah. So at least the old queen doesn't get killed.
Speaker 2 00:15:27 No, even if the old queen is in the hive, sometimes you'll find her and they'll still take care of her, but, you know, they have a new queen and they sort of keep her off in the corner.
Speaker 1 00:15:39 I see. Well, good to, good to that. They, they take care of her for all that she's done. I suppose, if you want to look at it that way, what kind, how many different kinds of bees are there?
Speaker 2 00:15:56 Well, actually there's thousands of co of native bees and, but most of them are solitary. What's unique about the honeybee is that they live in a colony. And, um, so they, they live as a group and a social group, um, is how they survive. Whereas most other bees either live in the ground or they make mud mess or, um, yeah, they're starting to get popular to get, uh, native bee houses. And they, they look like they ha they're full of little tubes and the native bees use those most of the time. It's like Mason bees and leafcutter bees. So
Speaker 1 00:16:42 Are the native bees dangerous for the honeybees?
Speaker 2 00:16:46 No. No, they aren't. They, they don't really have much to do with each other and they actually forage usually different plants.
Speaker 1 00:16:56 Ah, okay. Do the native bees create or make anything that is useful for humans or are they just pollinating?
Speaker 2 00:17:08 They're pretty much just pollinators. Um, as far as the effect on us, uh, yeah, they pollinate plants really well. Uh, but they don't because they don't live in groups. They're solitary. Uh, they're, they're not producing comb and saving nectar and pollen. Um, so there aren't any products of the hive that you would find with honeybees.
Speaker 1 00:17:38 Can you talk about what Royal jelly is? Something I hear about and what it's useful for,
Speaker 2 00:17:47 Um, Royal jelly is what's said to all these, uh, when all, all the eggs that are produced at least up for the first three days after that, then they're, the worker bees are fed nectar and pollen. Um, Royal jelly is produced, uh, by the young bees that have recently hatched. They called nurse bees and that's a product that they can only produce four. I think it's about seven to 10 days. And, and so that, that, I'm not exactly sure of the exact contents of Royal jelly. I know there's protein in there and sugars, but I'm not exactly sure, you know, everything that's in there. Um, but yeah, the, the really young nurse bees, that's the first job that bees have when the, after they're born, um, is to be produced this Royal jelly and put that in all those cells with the eggs.
Speaker 1 00:19:01 Okay. Well, that's always good to know. So then the next thing that I'm curious of is like, how, how do you interact with the bees and what kind of things do you have to do to take care of them?
Speaker 2 00:19:19 Well, first thing I do is I always plan my, my strategy of what I'm going to do, have all the equipment available to me. And, uh, and I don't, I don't bother the bees unless I need to. Um, and when I decided to get back into beekeeping, I, I knew that wearing gloves was going to be like wearing a blindfold and I wouldn't have enough information. So I made the decision that I was going to always going to manage my bees bare handed. And I knew that I was going to get stung, right. It's going to get Stein. Well, if you're a beekeeper, you, which I got, it was an advantage for me before was you do get stung. It's just part of beekeeping. It, it happens not frequently, but if it happens, so, you know, you kind of get used to the concept that it hurts, like crazy for about five minutes, and then it's over and you move on, you know what I mean?
Speaker 2 00:20:26 You just, you know, what to expect. So I made that choice because I needed to be able to feel what I'm doing. Otherwise, it, it wasn't enough information. And, um, so I started that way. Also made a few, you know, I've learned, you know, after it's the hard way of, I would, I accidentally kept my fingers separated when I was going into pole frames out and work with the bees and discovered that, you know, just that slightest pressure re you might squish a bee that's between your fingers and get stung, which I did, and then learn, okay, new technique, keep your fingers together. So I, I do that. I, I wear a veil, but I don't wear a suit. And so, and I am comfortable with that. Everybody has to work with our bees the way they're comfortable and I'm comfortable making sure my face and my head is protected, but I'm, I spend enough time with my bees and I'm really not worried about having contact with them.
Speaker 2 00:21:34 And, um, it, depending on the time of year, it depends on what you're doing with your bees, but like things building, they are producing wax. Now they're saving pollen and nectar and really on the bill. And so right now I am having to go in and evaluate how much space they have. Do they have enough room to grow? Are they going to get too crazy? And so I add frames where I need to add frames, um, and make sure that they, they have enough stores to eat and, and then pretty much close it back up and leave them alone. And then I'll go back in probably every seven to 10 days now until August,
Speaker 1 00:22:24 I'm going to stop you a minute. What's the frame.
Speaker 2 00:22:28 Okay. Yep. That's, that's a real fair question. Um, I use whatever they're called Langstroth hives, which is what most people use. It's the big white boxes that you see that have different sections on them. So those sections are called super so each box that has, um, that stacked on each other inside that box has, um, between eight and 10, what are called frames, which are, uh, like a wooden frame for a painting that has, um, usually just wire that goes across. And sometimes they have what's called foundation, which can be made out of wax or, or plastic. And then that gives the bees something to build their honeycomb in, and then you're able to go in and, um, uh, manipulate those frames, uh, depending on, on what they need.
Speaker 1 00:23:30 What do you feed your bees?
Speaker 2 00:23:34 I don't feed my bees, the bees, uh, collect their own honey and pollen. And it does in the fall when I'm ready to close my hives down for the winter, I make sure that they have enough of the honey that they've produced, that we'll get some through the winter so that they, I don't need to feed them anything because I can't produce food that replicates what they've created from nature, giving them sugar water is like, give it, which is what some bee keepers do. They remove all honey, because they want that it's highly prized valuable, but then they give them sugar water to eat. And that that's like giving us a diet of Coke and, you know, Kool-Aid no nutrition, it has nothing in it. And so, you know, my, I feel like my job is even if I don't collect any honey for myself in a year, I don't care. All I care about is that they have the 20 to 30 pounds, depending on the size of the hive that they need in order to get through the winter. And that, that's my goal.
Speaker 1 00:24:54 How much, how do you do your bees usually produce? Does it vary?
Speaker 2 00:24:59 It really varies a lot. Depends on, you know, what our weather's like and how much forage is created. A springtime for us. I'm on the west coast, I'm in California. And so spring time for us is our big forage season. We get a lot of flowers till about June, but then we dry up and get a dearth, which means dry season, um, till about September. And then we got another little section of rain, which will give us some more forage for the, for the bees. Um, but we, we like live in a desert in the summer. So I have to make sure that whatever they collect now till about June, we'll get to him through the summer. It sometimes there's so much, there's just a plethora of, uh, honey that they produce. It's far more than they need. Um, and I'll remove that and leave them what they need. And same within the winter. You, you know, even if they produce 60, 80 pounds in one hive, all bring it down to 20 to 30, depending on the hive and remove the rest of that honey, because that just becomes like a cold sink in the winter where all that cold honey is just sitting there above the brood chamber, which is the chamber where the bees are living. Theoretically,
Speaker 1 00:26:28 We, then you can sell that, honey. That's extra.
Speaker 2 00:26:33 If I, I tend to give it as gifts and use it myself, but I do a lot of it as gifts. Cause it's really nice to give people, honey, that, you know, comes from it's local, nothing's been done to it. Hasn't been heated. It hasn't been filtered, nothing. It's just pure honey.
Speaker 1 00:26:53 You taste the difference with honey of bees that are fed as opposed to ones that are not.
Speaker 2 00:27:01 Yeah, you really can. Uh, that's one of the joys I have with being a beekeeper is honey tasting it. It's like wine. It's so subtle and nuanced with a different, uh, what they call phenols. The different aromas that are created from the nectars that the bees collect last spring was just fascinating to me because two hives right next to each other collected completely different. Honey. One honey was ended up crystallizing very quickly. It just means that it was a higher percentage of glucose than over fructose it's normal. And then the other was completely clear and never crystallized one tasted like Anna. I mean just really strong and a Sklaver and the other was Jasmine. I mean, it was clearly Jasmine and they were the two hives weren't even three feet apart from each other
Speaker 1 00:28:11 That that was dependent on like what they were getting from the flowers or what do you. Okay.
Speaker 2 00:28:22 Yeah. And it's interesting because these have preferences, um, you know, like we have preferences about food and what we like and smells that we enjoy, these have the same thing and they get drawn to particular, um, flowers and, and want to stay with that. You know, they'll go to all these different bushes of the same type of flower and bring it back, not go to random, different bushes and taste different things and bring it back. Can you
Speaker 1 00:28:57 A little bit about the process of how bees produce honey?
Speaker 2 00:29:03 Um, yeah. Yeah. It's, it's really interesting that they bring the nectar back from the flowers that they collect and they have a second stomach and it, it's kind of kind of a misnomer to call it a stomach it's labeled that way, but there's no digestive juices that are part of that. It's more like a holding tank, let's call it a holding tank. Um, so they bring the nectar back in this little holding tank that they have, and then they put it in particular cells in the frame, in the hive and the moisture content when they bring it back to the hive is about, about 80% there's water compared to other ingredients that are in the nectar. And so they have to dehydrate that honey to get it to 17, to 18%, um, uh, moisture content. And they do that by fanning their wings and they do it by sucking it back into there that, that holding tank and regurgitating it back in. So that, that process of in and out dehydrates, uh, um, the nectar and, and, and when it gets down to that, you know, 16 to 18% moisture content, the cap it off that's the, that they won't cap it before. It's dehydrated that far.
Speaker 1 00:30:52 I'm curious to know, you know, you hear a lot about bees being endangered, are they? And why?
Speaker 2 00:31:01 Well they do. They're having, uh, uh, they're being affected by a lot of different, um, environmental factors. And I think they're kind of like the Canary in the coal mine where they're, they're being affected before we're seeing it other places. Um, so things like the pesticides, uh, especially the Neo Neo necks, um, are, you know, things like Roundup are bad for bees and the other pollinators as well. And as well as, you know, there was an introduction of the Varroa mite and, um, other bacterial and fungal issues that have, that can affect bees. And of course everybody's heard about colony collapse disorder. And I think that what, you know, what you're seeing with colony collapses is that it, isn't one thing that's bothering the bees, you'd get a multitude of things that affect them and we can, um, and that's, that's, what's harming bees, um, uh, for the most part. Yeah. I mean, I've tried to distill it down
Speaker 1 00:32:31 Where you hear sometimes about bees that straight from their hive and just kind of don't go back or they can't find it.
Speaker 2 00:32:41 Yeah. That's an, that's another disease, you know, the zombie bees. Yeah. And I think that, I think they think that's a, um, bacterial problem of bacterial infection. So yeah, you get, if the bees are weak, then they're more susceptible to these bacterial viral and ROA mites and other things. And, um, that, those environmental factors in, in like for us in our area, we've had three years in a row in the fall with major fires and really bad smoky air for weeks at a time. And, and that smoke, you know, affects the bees either. They decide we need the plea, there's a fire or, um, or they hunker down and the, you know, it affects them as well. So there's all these environmental factors are making the bees weaker and it's harder on them.
Speaker 1 00:33:47 I'm wondering how you tell if there are threatening things that have gotten to the hive or if any bees are sick, is that something that you would actually need vision for, or are there other ways that you can tell that
Speaker 2 00:34:03 That's a really good point? Cause I really, I forgotten, I wanted to talk about my other senses and how those come into play. There are a lot of things that I can hear in the hive, um, when I have it open. And also I, I use, uh, a microphone that I put in the inside on the bottom of the hive. So I can hear what's going on. Even in the winter, I don't have to open the hive and subject the bees to anything cool. And there are a lot of sounds and information that, that feedback that would let me know that either they're healthy or something's wrong or something's invaded the hive and they're angry. And, um, other my other sense that can give me a sense of something being right or wrong is my sense of smell. Um, the smell of the hive, each hive is, has a unique smell. I know my hives are the way they're supposed to smell and if something's changed, I know that, and then I can use my bee buddy to visually help me figure out, you know, like how can we narrow this down and figure out what's going on?
Speaker 1 00:35:15 So what does it UN quote, normal, stable SA hive sound like,
Speaker 2 00:35:22 Um, a sound you can hear a home, but it's not, uh, like real high pitch or it's just this real kind of quiet, continuous humming inside the hive. Eh, they don't sound agitated. Um, I know if I've been in the hive too long, they let me know by the sound
Speaker 1 00:35:47 I see. And so theoretically, the, the angry sound would be like a lot of, uh, different outages, louder
Speaker 2 00:35:58 And higher. Yeah. Um, you know, and that they've had enough. Um, I, one of the ways you can keep your bees calm if the get agitated is doing, what's called smoking them, which is not, not something you, you know, light it, what you're doing is you're taking, um, uh, like leaves or, you know, canvas or something else. And you put it in this little funnel that has a bellows on the back and you can blow the smoke into the hive. And that would absolutely calm them down. It also is like, then sticking them blindfolds on them for about 24 hours. So I don't like to smoke my, my bees unless I need to. And I, but I keep a smoker ready in case I need to. So I always have a smoker running, but I don't smoke my bees unless I absolutely have to,
Speaker 1 00:36:59 Well, I guess this isn't something that somebody does. If they're allergic to bees,
Speaker 2 00:37:05 I have friends who are beekeepers, who are allergic, but they always keep an epi pen on them. And, uh, but if you, you know, if you're wildly allergic or you're wildly scared, they also know when you're scared of them. It wouldn't be something to get into if you're really afraid of it. Um, that it, it, it wouldn't, you wouldn't necessarily have to completely rule it out. If you were allergic,
Speaker 1 00:37:32 How much area does the hive need?
Speaker 2 00:37:38 Um, not a lot of space. A lot of people in cities have them on the roof of their building. It's not an uncommon, like in Paris, San Francisco, New York, lot of beekeepers have these on, uh, on top of buildings and no problem at all. They don't need a lot of space. They need forage. So if you're in an area that's a real desert, it makes it much harder for them, but not, not a big need for space. So you do need to kind of pay attention if there are a lot of beekeepers in your area and everybody's competing for forage, that could be a problem.
Speaker 1 00:38:17 Doobie, sting, each other,
Speaker 2 00:38:22 Uh, bees from other hives, trying to get into your head. Yes. Yeah. There are one of the jobs that, uh, these have is called the guard bee and those bees are at the entrance to the hive and they will protect the hive, uh, from intruders, which could be yellow jackets, Hornets, sometimes bees from other hives. Um, if they're starving, if they're hungry, like, ah, globally, we have a problem sometimes with commercial bees where they take, they strip all the honey and they feed them sugar water during the winter. And those bees would much rather have honey. So they will dull and Veda a hive and, and kill all the bees inside and steal the honey. So, yeah. Yeah. It's serious stuff.
Speaker 1 00:39:05 So coming from somebody who would like to get honey from someone who, um, doesn't feed their bees, then apparently what do I do? Do I just ask, like, do you feed your bees or do you let them eat their own honey? How do you make sure that you're getting, uh, what I would think might be a better kind of honey,
Speaker 2 00:39:29 If you know, a local beekeeper that would be your best way to get honey, um, and, and ask, yeah, I would ask if, you know, do you feed your bees? What do you feed them? And, uh, stay away from buying honey in regular stores. Like, you know, you know, those honey, the honey that comes in a bear and those kinds of things that isn't honey, that's mostly rice syrup, corn syrup filtered, and highly heated. So any of the value that was in honey, which has all those beautiful pollens and, you know, all the, the natural phenols and everything that's in it, it's all destroyed and it's, it's only diluted. So yeah, if you can find local beekeepers, like at farmer's markets, a really good way to, to find local beekeepers and online there, you know, you can find good sources for honey, but, um, yeah. I'd stay away from your regular grocery store, honey.
Speaker 1 00:40:39 Um, can you talk a little bit about bees wax? How do they make that? And presumably it's the same beeswax that's used that you'll see sometimes products with bees wax.
Speaker 2 00:40:57 Yeah. Um, well, when it, during the spring, through the fall, the bees produce the wax and they produce it on these little plates on their abdomen where there's like, they, they create little, uh, little round flick of wax and then they take those flakes and, you know, basically kind of to them up and move, you know, put them in a little ball and then that's what they use to create the cells for the honeycomb. And, um, they produce those only during honey flow time. So during the winter, the winter bees can't produce wax. And then, so the way I, you know, people collect that wax, whether it's the, cappings from the top of the honey comb, if you spin the honey out of the column, or if you just remove the whole honey comb and the laughs together and separate them, you beekeepers collect that and then you melt it down and putting in a little mold and, you know, so you've got little bricks of, of beeswax and, um, yeah, it can be used for all, all sorts of things. Candles, beeswax candles are highly sought after. Um, the, and you know, like I make lip balm with wine every year. Um, uh, lately I've been making like, I'll take a cloth and use an iron input, beeswax wax on there with little, uh, pine pitch. And those make really great, uh, seals for food to put in the refrigerator and things.
Speaker 1 00:42:54 Okay. So theoretically you can harvest the wax and that's really not taking anything away from the bees necessarily.
Speaker 2 00:43:04 Is it a leftover product?
Speaker 1 00:43:07 Is it therapeutic? I mean, is it healthy? Like people try to make it seem like it is, or is it just a, just a nice non-harmful thing?
Speaker 2 00:43:19 Um, that's not the thing you eat, but it's, non-harmful, you know, it's, it's a
Speaker 1 00:43:27 Petroleum
Speaker 2 00:43:28 Distillates for, you know, like w you would put on, in a lot of products to go on your lips, you know, and in cosmetic, you know, the beeswax like lanolin, or, or it's just a wax that is very clean and, um, non-toxic yeah.
Speaker 1 00:43:48 Do you feel like there's
Speaker 2 00:43:49 Another product
Speaker 1 00:43:51 That's okay. Do you feel like this is therapeutic for you?
Speaker 2 00:43:56 Yeah, I, I do. There's, there's so much about keeping the bees. I felt like the whole process from the time that I spend just sitting and listening to them, smelling the hive, just being in their presence to the work that I do with them and the products that they produce and what I learned from them. It, I can't see my life now without having bees in it.
Speaker 1 00:44:26 How do bees actually know like their handler, you know, like theoretically your, the master of their hives, would they know the difference if someone else came in?
Speaker 2 00:44:38 Absolutely. Yeah. They, they, they've proven that the bees can identify faces. They know differences of faces and they're they're that their eyes are that good. And so they know me. I said, I sit with them every day. I, I handled them and I've had a couple of people come and go in the hives with me that were scared. And it was obvious. I mean, the bees know that they can smell it. They feel it. And, um, yeah, they, they, they know their beekeepers.
Speaker 1 00:45:15 I want to know Ariel, what kind of person does this? I am curious to know. I was like, what would you tell someone to say, who says, I want to do it? Cause it does kind of sound exciting, although I'm allergic. So I don't think I'd go do it. But if, um, if somebody thought it sounded really cool to do, because it's unusual for a blind person to do it, uh, what would you tell them? Like, what do they need to know? And, and what kind of person does it take to, to really keep up on it?
Speaker 2 00:45:49 Well, I would tell somebody who was able-bodied cited. No. What, whoever was interested in beekeeping that get some knowledge first. It, it's not, it's, there's a learning curve that, that one needs, um, to feel comfortable managing the bees. And, um, it's so starting in your own county, seeing if there's a beekeeping association, most counties throughout the United States have a beekeeping association, and that's had a group of people in your county that are all being nerds and love beekeeping, and, um, love helping, uh, you, I think you can scare yourself right out of the whole thing and spend a lot of money, buying the equipment, getting the bees, and then, um, ended up having it fail. And, you know, you, it kind of, he gets showered on it after a couple of years, if, if that, if that happens. So doing it with other people really makes a difference and learning.
Speaker 2 00:47:05 There's lots of great books. There's, you know, your county beekeeping association, you know, get the word out, see if there's somebody else in the area that, you know, might be a beekeeper and get, get some foundation first. So you can make decisions in a good way and have a good experience and also go into it, knowing you probably will have loss. I mean, I'd be surprised if you didn't and that, you know, and, and what that means now to be a beekeeper, um, and make decisions about how you want to be a beekeeper. So, and what I mean by that is, uh, I'm somebody who prefers, you know, I, I won't feed my bees. I won't strip my bees of all their honey. Um, I'm in it for them, not for what I can get out of it. And it, you know, there are other people who are in it for the commercial angle or for the products that they produce. And so they, they, there's lots of decisions that you, you need to make. And it's just like getting a dog or any other animal requires maintenance and work. So you gotta be ready to make that kind of a commitment.
Speaker 1 00:48:20 Do you have other animals? And if so, do the bees kind of leave them alone.
Speaker 2 00:48:26 I do have other animals. I have a guide dog. And, um, I, I, I'm comfortable with my dogs being out around the hives because I've introduced her to it. Uh, she knows not to stand in front of the entrance.
Speaker 1 00:48:43 She does.
Speaker 2 00:48:45 Yeah. He gets done once you really, you really get the punch. So I didn't really want her to go through that. So, you know, I've, I've taught her not to, you know, move in front of the hives. And none of my bees, my, none of my dogs who've ever been stung by the bees. And, you know, I think a lot of interest they're used, the bees are used to seeing them too, but that's, that's the only pets that I have.
Speaker 1 00:49:11 How many times did you have a loss before you had, I guess how long did it take you before you felt like you had a real successful hive?
Speaker 2 00:49:25 Oh, um, since I was blind or since, I mean the whole time I've been beekeeping,
Speaker 1 00:49:31 Well, tell me both, tell me the first time, you know, and then tell me when you lost your vision.
Speaker 2 00:49:38 I just got so lucky in the beginning, you know, in the beginning, back in the seventies when I was doing this, because, you know, I didn't have all these external factors that were, you know, like killing bees, like they are now. And so, you know, I made a lot of mistakes. You know, the equipment then came with what was called a queen excluder, which kept the queen from going up into other parts of the hive, just kept her in the, in the bottom of your hive, which it is a really horrible thing. It's not good for the clean. It's not good for the hive. It's not good for longevity, nothing. And so, you know, I, I did, I made all these mistakes in the beginning and I didn't know about, you know, what worked, what didn't work. And, and somehow I bumbled through and they always lived and I didn't have a problem, except when I had a couple bears that found my hives and just them, you know, that's beyond my control.
Speaker 2 00:50:41 And then I would say after I lost my sight, um, I had losses and it had nothing to do with technique or what I was doing. Um, it, it, it all had to do with, you know, uh, not being lucky, you know, and smoke in the air and, you know, just, um, conditions like, you know, I'm sure neighbors use Roundup that, you know, that made my bees weak and they didn't make it through winter. Winter is always really hard. Sort of the acid test is, you know, are they going to make it is getting through winter?
Speaker 1 00:51:22 I see.
Speaker 2 00:51:23 But yeah. So I just feel really lucky this year. I have two for two, I've got two strong hives coming out of winter.
Speaker 1 00:51:31 Yes. Well that is very lucky actually. Um, Ariel, thank you so much. Is there anything else you'd like to leave us with? I, I guess it sounds like it's kind of, it's on the borderline sorta difficult, starting out with be raising, um, now because of all the complications that can happen.
Speaker 2 00:51:52 Yeah. That's true. But at the same time, there's many, many, many more people doing it. So find somebody who's a beekeeper and let them learn from them before you do it yourself, you know, go out and see if they'll let you go in the hive with them, their hives with them and start learning about it. And then you'll, you know, I can guarantee you, if you get the bug, the bee get bitten by the bee bug, you'll get so excited and entrenched in who they are, that it will really light the fire.
Speaker 1 00:52:27 Well, thank you so, so much for being on. We really appreciate it and I wish you good luck. I know there's tends to be a lot of fires there. Um, I wish you good luck for the future of our bees.
Speaker 2 00:52:42 Thank you.
Speaker 1 00:52:44 Thank you so much. This is KFC 90.3, FM Minneapolis, and KFA dot O R G. My name is Sam. If you'd like to be on our email list, you may email
[email protected]. That's disability and
[email protected]. Thanks again, thanks to Amber Johnson for setting up this program and thanks to Charlene doll, who has been my trustee research person for a long time. Good research. People are hard to find. So thank you, Charlene. Um, I guess that's all we have for tonight
Speaker 0 00:53:26 And everyone take care and stay well. .
