Plain Talk: The Traveling Beekeeper (253)

Episode 253 – Plain Talk: The Traveling Beekeeper 

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Dr. Jim Tew: Hey, Honey Bee Obscura Podcast listeners. It's Jim. We knew this day would come, didn't we? I'm inside. It's a beautiful day outside as the fall leaves are dropping and the air is brisk and the wind is gently blowing. Why am I sitting in the shop talking to you? Because there's just a furious den of lawnmowers and leaf blowers with everybody trying to fight the leaves immediately. Rather than go out there and try to put windmuffs on the microphones and then apologize for the racket, here I am.

I really had a nice time all last spring, summer, fall. As you know, I didn't do a vast amount with the bees, but I had a great time talking about them and visiting with them. They're still back there, but I guess it's time to begin to look more and more at inside productions. Many years ago, I traveled a lot. I didn't really talk about it all that much. Some beekeepers were antagonized by it, saying, "You want to be at home working with US beekeeping. Why are you off training our competition?" Maybe that was true, maybe it wasn't.

In many cases, in some countries, it wasn't true. Plus, it was hard to talk about because it looked like you were just boasting about all the places you had been and the things you had seen. Those trips and those experiences over time mold and warp and twist you and form you into the beekeeper you become. I'd like to talk about that for the next 20 minutes or so, just give you some of my experiences and see how it goes with that event. I'm Jim Tew here at Honey Bee Obscura, where I come to you about once a week, and I try to talk about something to do with plain talk and beekeeping.

Introduction: Welcome to Honey Bee Obscura, brought to you by Growing Planet Media, the producers of the Beekeeping Today Podcast. Join Jim Tew, your guide through the complexities, the beauty, the fun, and the challenges of managing honeybees. Jim hosts fun and interesting guests who take a deep dive into the intricate world of honeybees. Whether you're a seasoned beekeeper or just getting started, get ready for some plain talk that'll delve into all things honeybees.

Jim: I don't know where all the interest in world of beekeeping came from. I don't know where it all went, but for 10 to 15 years, there were international trips, there were junkets and extravaganzas, and people would go to Belarus and to Romania, Hungary. Beekeeping is everywhere. It's universal, but even though it's everywhere, it's not the same everywhere. It's similar in oh-so-many ways, but in significant ways, it's different.

Then these world travelers would come back, and I'm one of them, and you would be the authority in the room because not many other people have been to Venezuela to specifically look at bees or wherever I'd just been. There was not much to be argued with there. You just showed the pictures, and to those people outside the US, I never once tried to make any other place in the world look anything but good. Out of the traveling that I did, which was significant, but not really extensive, but significant, I can tell you truthfully that I was never one time, not one single time, treated badly by a fellow beekeeper, a brother or sister beekeeper, anywhere in the world.

There were several trips, though, that stand out to me. We knew that Africanized bees were coming. Killer bees. It was one of the darkest times in beekeeping. I don't think anybody, any beekeeper, I don't think anyone even outside of beekeeping knew, during those early years, what was going to happen to beekeeping. It's a little bit like the COVID years. Unless you lived it, you just can't believe it. There were beekeepers who had been trained to train firemen on how to go into people who were under attack from Africanized bees, and the clothes they should have on, and what they should do to protect themselves while they were trying to get in to break up some bee attack, either real or envisioned.

Finally, I had a chance. The bees had come all the way up out of South America, were entering into Central America. The USDA had all kind of research projects going on in Acarigua, Venezuela. I had the good fortune to go to Venezuela many times in the '90s. It's one of those pivotal moments where the first time in my life that I was around these hybrid bees that were known for being hyper-aggressive. It was a very sobering moment for me. I did not see how anybody in the US—not really much more than Mexico or Canada either—would ever want to have anything to do with these bees.

They were just unreasonably aggressive. I want to get to the very end chapter right now and tell you that I don't know what happened to those bees. I should go and talk to ChatGPT or something and see if it can tell me why those bees seem to have calmed down, or did society calm down? Anyway, the worst dreams that we had did not seem to come true. The very first time that I was around those killer bees—as they were lovingly called by the media—I realized, for the first time in my life, that if these bees could get through my protective gear that was just manufactured by local gear producers here--

They had never been field tested against bees of this magnitude and this kind of attack. You'd figure out in a hurry what exactly was going on here. For instance, in the type of pith helmets that you wore with the collapsible bee veil, at the time, I actually had hair, and other beekeepers did too. The bees would attack the vents on those helmets. Even though they could not get through the vents, if they could catch a hair, they would pull the hair out through the vent, and then they would tug on the hair.

If they had 50 or 60 hairs out and they're all tugging on these individual hairs, pull through the ventilation vents in your pith helmet, I'm going to tell you, listeners, it's hard to stay focused on whatever you're trying to think about. I distinctly remember one of the first thoughts I had when those bees came for me and the rest of us. I tried to get right in the middle of my protective gear. I'm not trying to be a tough guy. Those were not good bees to work. They were seriously aggressive. They have modified. They've calmed. I am not qualified to tell you why they did that.

There are still outbreaks occasionally where bees are hyper and aggressive. I was told to not say aggressive. Bees are not aggressive; they're defensive. Anyway, they came for you, defensive or aggressive, no matter which word you use. They don't do that nearly as badly now. When they would crash into the screen on my veil with their stingers out, they would flick little droplets of venom on your face. They weren't doing it on purpose. They were just doing it because they wanted to sting your face. They were coming in hot at the screen, and then it would flick venom on your face.

Then we would look like, back at the facility, that we had measles because of these little spots of venom that had been flicked on our face. That whole experience of going to Venezuela multiple times and of living and experiencing Africanized bees, and then to sit here now quietly in my shop and tell you that they were never like that in the US-- They were like that in places in Mexico, but I don't know what happened to Mexico, listeners.

I guess I'll make the bold statement that I'll make some effort to find out why these bees calmed as much as they seem to have calmed, or did society just-- No, society didn't do that. I was going to say, did society just adapt? Society would not adapt to those bees. You couldn't keep bees anywhere in the country if they had the kind of reaction that they did. I'm being grandiose now. Let me get my wits about me, catch my breath, recalibrate myself while we take a break.

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Jim: I had the privilege, I had the honor, I had the opportunity of traveling to multiple places through the years. There was a time when I just couldn't get enough of it. But even though I would come back exhilarated and with my horizons broadened, I would also come back exhausted with a weight loss. I came back with hepatitis from one trip. I came back with internal bleeding on another trip. It's not because people were evil or bad, it was just hard work.

There were two other events of the places, Venezuela, Mexico, Northern Ireland, England, Australia. I had a good time, listeners, but I'm done with all that. Everywhere, people were really good. Two of the places I went to, one of them was Myanmar. I went to Burma, to Myanmar, for about eight weeks. I stayed with the Burmese military. There were political reasons for that. Honeybees were being initiated by a prominent military official at the time. I don't know what happened to this either. After I trained Myanmarian-- I want to say Burmese because I'm not sure of the correct pronunciation of Myanmar people.

I trained Burmese military officers to be beekeepers. I would tell them, if they were sitting right here in front of me, they were the most regimented and disciplined bee students I ever had. They would study until you told them to stop. They would do whatever you told them to do. They didn't question that they were experienced military officers. Then their responsibility was to go back to Myanmar and to initiate this developmental bee program.

After that, I had about three training programs come through my lab here at Ohio State. It was decided by the Department of State that I should go to Burma. I really didn't see that coming, but I was eager to do it. It was a good trip. It was a very meaningful trip. I was treated like royalty in Burma. That doesn't mean that it's an easy trip. By sheer design, bees are going to be out. They're not going to be right in downtown Bangkok or something. They're going to be out and about.

You would take long trips. We'd take flights on trimotor airplanes to get to some remote airfield and land on a just barely paved gravel strip. There was no airport, just a galvanized tin shed there. Then you'd go look at bees. It was hard travel. I had a chance to go over a good deal of Burma and see things that I never dreamed that I would see or do in my life. It was a good, fulfilling experience that I enjoyed. Enjoyed like you do when you run a long race. It's hard to do, but you're glad you did it, and you feel fulfilled for it.

The trip to Burma was really a blend of discipline and hard work, and incredible sights and visions about beekeeping in other parts of the world. I also had the opportunity to go to China, but I went with a group there. That was not the same experience. We were always kept together and were driven from place to place. At the Great Wall of China, don't you know, one of the main features in the world, there was a large queen producer. By large queen producer, I meant he had 60 or 70 hives right at the base of the Great Wall.

We had the opportunity to tell the bus driver to stop and let us all out. We were crazy to get to see what was going on there. It was a meaningful trip. We kept looking because China is so vast, and the amount of honey coming from China was so vast. We kept looking for the large commercial producers. We kept going to people who had 3 and 5 and 15 colonies of bees. Where's the commercial people? They really didn't have much concept of what we were asking. As the trip progressed, I think we began to figure out that there were no beekeepers that had thousands and thousands of hives. There were just thousands and thousands of beekeepers who had a few hives.

They would all band together. In fact, I got bad photos of trainloads of bees. The interpreter explained that these beekeepers would come together and put their bees on these communal trains and truck them to different honey-producing areas. That was a significant experience that I enjoyed very much. It lasted for close to two weeks. It was helpful to see and understand now, when you hear so much about imported honey, exactly why it comes in and how it comes in. When you get right down to it, the people making that honey were just beekeepers like we are. It's just a different political system, but I guess that's critical at times.

That was also very enjoyable to do. I spent a lot of time in Mexico as the Africanized bees moved up into Mexico. I enjoyed those trips very much with our southern neighbors. I had a chance not just to go see beekeeping, but to also see a lot of the archaeological ruins that were there and see a reflection of how long bees have been going back, and see the occasional references that Mayan peoples made to native bees that were trying to produce small amounts of honey.

I enjoyed that very much. Mexico is a place I may go visit again sometime. It's not so worldwide far away. Australia and New Zealand were just exquisite, brilliant beekeeping operations. It was where I first saw, in Australia, these clamps that would allow you to lay your hive on its back and then take it apart, laying down, instead of trying to take the hive apart sitting up.

I have no idea if the clamps caught on or not, but they were using those there. I'd never seen anything like that. The way I want to finish this rambling discussion, out of all the places I've been and all the things I've done, is personal. It's not really to impress you or anyone else. It just gives you the depth and breadth of beekeeping, and makes you realize that it's not just something happening behind the fence in my backyard. It's happening all over the world by people who have values and concerns and interest the way I do, even though we can't really speak the same language.

Many times we know the bees, and we can both speak the language of bees, and we communicate that way. If you get a chance to travel, I certainly would tell you to do it just to have a good time. I'm not sure what happened to that era of intensive travel that were advertised in the magazines and these trips that came and went, and all that people did to go anywhere else in the world to see beekeeping and then come back and show your Kodak slides to groups just waiting to hear about beekeeping in exotic parts of the world.

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Jim: Thanks for letting me talk to you. I always enjoy talking to you. Can we speak again sometime next week? I'm Jim, telling you, pack your bags and go if you get a chance. Bye-bye.

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