Melanie Margarita Kirby joined the Peace Corps. While filling out the application she checked YES in the box for “will work with stinging insects.” In this part 1 episode Melanie provides information on honey bees and the history of the species. She also shares her own journey in Paraguay to becoming a conscientious and sustainable beekeeper.

Conscientious beekeeping, sustainable beekeeping.

These are important words for guest Melanie Margarita Kirby member of Tortugas Pueblo in New Mexico.

Melanie has been all over the world, studying wildlife, especially honey bees.

Her studies landed her with Washington state university, where she is

finishing her studies in entomology.

Continuing her studies in sustainable beekeeping and honey bee research

she was awarded a Fulbright National Geographic scholarship where her research took her to Spain.

But unfortunately COVID changed her research trajectory and she had to return to the states.

Melanie is committed to having a hand in maintaining the world's honey bee population

through her research and conscientious queen bee

rearing.

Melanie Margarita Kirby it is so good to have you on the show.

Welcome.

Thank you so nice to be here.

It's so wonderful to

meet you and you are in New Mexico first of all, if you could just tell us where your Pueblo

is

for the listeners.

Sure.

So my pueblo is actually located in Southern New Mexico, very close to the Texas Mexico border.

And we are cousins to Isleta del Sur and Taos pueblos.

So as history has it a lot of the pueblos, especially in the Northern end of the, of

the region would migrate down, uh, for winter because it's very cold up in the Rocky mountains.

And so a lot of the older folks and some of the infirm and some of the youth would

would travel down and made a settlement in Southern New Mexico area and ended up staying.

And so that's, that's my pueblo., we are not federally recognized, which has gone back

and forth between tribal politics for some time, but we are still very much active.

We were recognized by the state and we do practice our feast daysand our cultural traditions.

So what do you mean by not federally recognized?

Does that mean you don't receive funding from the

federal government?

Exactly.

So I don't have, what some federal federally recognized tribes have are what they call a certificate of,

of Indian birth, a CIB, which then entitles them to Indian health services and other programs.

Federal federally funded programs.

And since my particular tribe is not federally recognized, we don't have access to that.

Some of that has to deal with blood, quantum and others it's just a political nature.

Or I want to say bureaucratic probably more better put and, and it's unfortunate to a

certain degree because, the fact that there are many tribes, over 500 plus tribes across

what we call Turtle Island or north America.

Those are just the ones that are recognized, but there are many more than that, that,

that still exists that still practice their traditions, but they're not federally recognized.

So I'm, I'm one of those tribes that is not federally recognized, but we'll see if that changes.

Wow, thank you for that information.

I appreciate it.

Well now we're here to talk about

Pretty much your lifelong study of wildlife because you were at first in Marine biology

and then you moved and discovered honey bees.

Let's first start with your absolute love for wildlife and this dream that you had to study wildlife.

Yeah.

So, growing up in the land of enchantment, which is our state motto here we have such stark and drastic

Landscapes, and this, this area is known for not only the tri cultural traditions between the indigenous

peoples, the Spanish that came in and then additional Europeans, but it's also where the desert and

the Plains and the Rocky mountains come together.

So we have a very, what you call crenellated landscape, which means it's, it's, very interesting

because we have everything from desert to Tundra and you can drive through most of it

within, a day's drive or even just a few hours.

So having grown up in Southern New Mexico which is very much desert it's considered

lower elevation as, as compared to the higher elevation Northern end of our state.

But Las Cruces sits at about, I think, 3,500 foot elevation.

So it would still, pretty high above sea level.

So it's high desert.

And I just really liked that the serenity that the desert landscape

provides, I used to see lots of turtles.

I really liked turtles.

So we'd see lots of little desert turtles around and lizards, horny toads.

And I really just was quite fascinated with all the little creatures that had adapted

to living in such such a stark environment.

Right.

We tend to think that the desert is dead, but it's actually very much alive.

Animals are very smart and the plants are extremely intelligent because they've

adapted to this particular landscape.

I knew that when I went to college that I wanted to do something in the sciences.

My, my heritage is, as a mestiza individual, meaning I'm mixed.

So I've got not only my indigenous heritage.

I've also got some Hispanic heritage, but in addition to that, as my last name suggests is a Scottish Irish.

And my father is actually from the French Grenadines in the Caribbean.

I've always had this fascination between not only the desert, but then also

The ocean, and that craving for, yes.

I feel that too.

water.

Right..

So, when I graduated from high school, I had gotten a scholarship to go to university of Miami in Florida.

And of course I was just ecstatic to be going to the beach.

And so I chose Marine biology fisheries with, a, with a minor in ceramics because I really

that's my, my other first love is ceramics.

I really like working with clay and with pottery.

So I embarked on that journey and it was extremely fun to be in a beach town.

But the school itself was the size of my hometown.

And so my first couple of years there, I started to really kind of get lost in that shuffle and

I Had also really gotten into this was sort of the Dawn of EDM or electronic dance music.

So I had started to get into raving and deejaying and that sort of thing.

My classes sort of fell to the wayside, but I would still show up and take the tests and I was getting Bs.

But having come from, a single parent household, my mother was a public school teacher for 34 years

Rosemary, Kirby,Rosamaria kirby.

She really valued education.

And I just always remembered, it's like these little voices you hear, value your education.

And one of the things that she told me early on when I was young, that I still remember today was just that

education will set you free, gives you more options.

Right.

And so I had this realization after hurricane Andrew, which was in the early nineties, because that was

my first time being in sort of a cataclysmic event.

Just the search for water, for fuel for, basic necessities was, it was the first time in my life

that I realized that, wow, we are not above nature, nature really can throw us some curve balls.

And I just started to reevaluate things and I realized that, I, I did want to value my education

more because even though I was passing and getting Bs, I wasn't really learning the content.

And I just felt that, that wasn't in tune with my own personal philosophy and my own

upbringing, which is to, to be grateful for what you have and to show reverence for that.

And to also pay it back to the community.

So I decided to return to New Mexico after a couple of years and graduated with my undergraduate degree.

And I'd like to tell people that that degree was in philosophy, which is awesome to, to think about great

conversations, but doesn't necessarily pay the bills.

Right.

So I knew that I would have to do some some additional training or education.

And my mother had actually been enlisted in the United States peace Corps when it had originally started.

I recall, her every once in a while saying that peace Corps was the greatest experience she had ever had.

I wanted to enlist in the peace Corps and, to be of service to the world at large and

got stationed in Paraguay in south America.

My assignment was beekeeping and I knew nothing about it beforehand, but that's what

brought me to bees was, it was by assignment.

That is such an incredible journey so how long you were in the

peace Corps for what you served your two

years?

Yes, it's a two year, three month commitment.

, I was initially stationed in a little town called Aregua which was our training community.

I was in the AG sector.

And then also within that AG sector, they had crop extensionist and beekeeping extensionist.

And so I was in the beekeeping extensionist program and there were five of us who were, I guess, brave

enough to check the little box that said we didn't mind working with stinging insects, which is really funny

because I remember that question on the application and in my mind, I remember thinking, well, I just

want to appear as flexible as possible, so sure.

I didn't even think twice about it.

And then, come to find out, I guess a lot of people think twice about it before they mark that box.

That's how I ended up getting that, that assignment.

So after my training, there was predominantly inexperiential learning techniques because they knew

we were going to be in communities where we were going to have to be serving as not only cultural

ambassadors, but also technical ambassadors to communities that had requested technical assistance.

And so we had language training because in Paraguay, in particular, they do speak Spanish or what they

call Castilian, but it's not, it's not true Castilian.

They also speak an indigenous language called Guarani.

And so, I had some training in Guarani and then cultural traditions, because Paraguay,

like Bolivia they're the only two countries within south America that are landlocked.

So their access to, uh, progressive modern situations is, is pretty behind the times.

It takes a while for, for new things to, to reach them.

So it really was like stepping back in time, all the women worked from home,

very few women worked out of the home.

They were all what you call amas de las casas, , Housewives.

And the men worked in the fields.

And so my actual community where I was stationed after training was called Calle Mil and the particular zone

I was in was actually called Colonia Independencia.

And a lot of ex I should say, ex Nazis moved to that area after WWII to hide out.

It was a little bit of a wine growing region.

Unfortunately, there was a lot of deforestation for sugar cane production.

So that's how this community had had, uh, asked for a beekeeping technician actually,

after they had had several agroforestry technicians there that were with the peace Corps.

And so our efforts were to try and help them diversify their farming efforts.

Not so much to steer completely away from sugar cane, but to diversify it such that then, deforestation

wouldn't occur at such a rapid rate and to help them generate a new income, uh, revenue or income stream.

So because they're, uh, Culturally, they're still very I want to say rather subdued or quiet

because they had lived under a dictatorship for so long, even though by the time I was there,

they were already 30 years into democracy

they were still very nervous to speak their minds and use their voice.

So a lot of them kind of went along with, the norm, nobody really ever stuck out.

When you go to the capital city, though, it was a whole other story.

People would be on skateboards with colored hair.

It seems like any other sort of metropolis, but I was five hours from the capital

city at least a five hour, uh, Bus ride.

There's not a lot of infrastructure.

Once you get out of the capital city, it turns into, dirt roads and my community in

particular, we didn't even have bus service.

So I would get dropped off on the side of the road and then have to hike in five kilometers.

Once you got out of that Capitol city, everything became very, very rural very quickly.

I inherited a little house or bought it off of the previous volunteer.

And a dog, I inherited a dog named joy joy, and we didn't have running water, so I would have

to go, a couple doors down to the school, which had a well to get my drinking water.

And I did have one light bulb and one outlet.

So I did have electricity, but we didn't have bus service in that community.

Wow.

That is just so interesting and the experience that you had was my gosh, quadruple fold, as you learn,

not just about the honey bees, but you learned, the culture, the people, the past, the history, the, the

problems, the issues, the sustainability, or not.

Yeah.

They'd have a lot of, sort of enterprises move in.

The cash crop at the time, uh, that was being promoted in general across the country was what they called

ka'a he 'ê which means sweet herbs, which is Stevia.

And so at the time though, I hadn't even, have been heard about here in the states, but

Paraguay was one of those initial countries that started growing it for exportation.

Now we hear Stevia all the time.

You can go to any place, you can find it in a grocery store, and so it's interesting

how a lot of these countries that do have, Paraguay itself as a sub tropical country

so they have, a lot of growth, they have a lot of moisture.

And so it's a good place to grow things.

When I left the U S to go enlist in the peace Corps, I was also in my early twenties, but I

was kind of thinking like, oh, the U S w we've got things, but we, We have a lot to learn.

We're we're really not that great.

And then I went to this country where I saw where their, basic infrastructure was lacking.

Women weren't really allowed nor expected to speak their minds.

And it was a real wake up call for me because I realized then just how lucky I was to have been born

and raised in a country where I can exercise my rights.

And so I came back a very much big, bigger Patriot than I had been prior to going at least feeling

more grateful for the opportunities that I had had, but also recognizing that, our influence,

our quote unquote,US American influence in other countries is pretty It's pretty deep, because

in the capital city, they, a McDonald's had showed up, there were Coca-Cola signs everywhere.

They'd gotten a movie theater, things like that.

And on the one hand, while it was disturbing to see that sort of influence taking hold, to

those companies, they're probably thinking, well, we're expanding, we're globalizing.

This is great.

But on the other hand, they were changing that landscape, that, that local landscape and from the

mom and pop restaurants and stuff like that, however, those companies going in were providing a lot of jobs.

And so now you have the opportunity, the youth who had more job opportunities, they were able to earn money.

They could then go to school, they could go to technical college, they could go to university.

I got to see both sides of the coin and it really gave me a perspective that's kind of right in the middle.

I feel that there's, especially in this quest for sustainability, technology, if we just think

of technology and we think of the most, sort of intense version of it, it may seem so far

removed from us and seemed really inappropriate.

But if we, if we scale it back and really match it more with what I liked to really

promote with just biomimicry which is utilizing nature's natural processes and forms to better

support, life and regenerative aspects of life, then I think we can see technology, , in

such a way that we can use it responsibly.

Right.

So, the peace Corps gave me this perspective that.

You can't necessarily keep the world one way or the other that it's constantly influx and

our interactions, especially societaly will be changing over time, but how can we reconcile

our differences and how can we find a common ground or a reconciliation, a compromise that is

beneficial for everybody, not just the corporations and not just the politicians and, not just

The people or what have you, that it's something that can work for everybody and includes

biodiversity, which includes animals and wildlife, kind of getting back to that topic.

, while I was there, I got to see some great things got to see a lot of snakes, some really

cool spiders beautiful birds, monkeys and,

I was able to travel to neighboring countries on occasion.

Got to go to the Pantanal in Brazil, which is the world's largest wetlands.

And that's just fantastic.

I got to fish for Paranas and then cook them for dinner, which was pretty yummy.

And yeah, I got to see big waterfalls in Argentina and of course the beaches and go through Uruguay

i, and so I, I really enjoyed that time, especially in my early twenties as I was coming of age.

It really expanded my worldview, above and beyond, my own education or book smarts.

I feel like I started to gain, world intellect at that point.

And I decided after

doing beekeeping there because I ended up working with a lot of the women because , in

that particular culture, it was inappropriate for me to just work alone with a man, right.

Any time I'd have to go either visit a farmer

either the wife came or a child came, you always had a chaperone, which was fine.

I didn't mind it, but it was just that type of culture was still very shy in those

regards or very conservative in those regards.

And so I ended up doing beekeeping a lot with the women.

And it made perfect sense because, the men are out in the fields doing the farming.

And the women were the ones taking care of the pigs, the chickens, the kids, and now the bees.

And it was just really awesome because, we, we had to build everything from scratch.

They didn't have power tools, nonetheless credit cards to buy things, so.

We made our own beehive boxes.

We would do what's called tras siego, which is actual, uh, finding a wild

swarm and, and relocating it into a box.

And these women, it was great.

They would, start with one hive, maybe get up to two or three and harvest the honey.

We, we were able to start a, uh, an additional women's comité, a women's group,

and do sewing projects and home gardens.

And we started a little farmer's market in the nearby town.

And with the money that these women earned, they were then able to buy their children

shoes notebooks, pens, and pay for school because they didn't have public school.

Elementary was still, for a fee.

And so a lot of these kids would end up going, but just for a few years, and then start working in the field.

So now that their mothers were able to generate a little bit of income, that was the first thing the

mothers wanted to do was to keep their child in school.

So now they could pay for that and buy the supplies that the children needed to attend school.

And that was that was really impactful for me, because again, as I mentioned, coming from a country where we

have a lot of these things provided, but not realizing that's a gift that doesn't happen everywhere.

Right.

And of course, schools, aren't all the same state side.

Some have more funding and some don't than others and things aren't always fair.

But the fact that we at least have something I think is is pretty significant.

And yeah, so I ended up doing bees with the women there.

I also did a stingless bee project with the kids.

What's called Melipona culture, which are stingless bees.

And so they're little subtropical bees that instead of hanging their comb vertically, they actually stack

it like little pancakes and they make these little wax, I want to call them like thimbles or gourds

that you could pop off and, and drink the honey.

The honey is very I want to say almost sour kind of fermented, but the honey from the from what they called

(inaudible) from these little stingless bees was was highly prized and, and considered extremely medicinal.

And so they could sell it for a much higher price than even, (inaudible) or honey bee, honey.

But just for a little historical context, honey bees in the Americas, they're

considered an introduced species, right?

So, as settlers came and as colonizers came, they brought honey bees and within

south America itself, the, in the 1950s, there was a gentleman by the name of Dr.

Kerr.

He's a Brazilian scientist.

I know that a geneticist and he wanted to sort of breed a better bee because the European

bees that had been brought over, they did.

Okay.

But they weren't overly prolific.

And he thought, well, if he could bring some from Africa where he had done some research and he saw

how productive they were, he thought, well, maybe I can make a, sort of a, a cross between the two

and, and we'll have really productive bees here.

Well, the research hives he had, the story goes, either somebody removed the reduced entrance or, took it off.

These bees escaped.

And so then they became known as Africanized or killer bees, and that was in the fifties.

So then it took until the eighties for them to reach the Southwest of the U S and now

you'll find them in varying states, along the Southeast and south Southwest of the U S.

In New Mexico

we're, we're lucky in that we have the Rocky mountains coming down, right.

So, as a subtropical bee, these bees kind of hit those mountains and then they go

east and west, they can't really go north.

So in particular, I have my farm and how I ended up in Northern New Mexico

and Taos was partially related to that.

I'm mentioning that because, we tend to think of honey bees as being an introduced

species or, or an exotic species.

And over time, because they're a generalist pollinator, they really have been exploited.

As a species.

They've become exploited, especially with the, the rise of industrialized agriculture.

And and that's really unfortunate because we've put so much sort of emphasis on this

one creature that they really have become the backbone of American agriculture.

And so, they say, one out of every three bites you take is dependent on honey bees pollination.

I actually think it's a little bit more than that because even when you look at say milk, for

instance, you wouldn't think, well, bees make milk.

No, they don't, but they do pollinate the alfalfa, which feeds the cows, which then make the milk.

Right.

So what's kind of, I want to say my, my newer mission is to, it really sort of set the record

straight on that sort of scenario because there have been fossils found in the American

Southwest in Nevada in particular of ,Apis Mellifera Ne Arctica which is actually a honey bee

and that existed, close to 14 million years ago.

So like horses, they were actually here on this continent.

But then an ice age occurred a cataclysmic event and we didn't see them.

So I like to think of bees as well as horses, honey bees, and horses as being a re-introduced species.

But they were here before, or cousins to them were here before on this continent.

And so my approach to beekeeping, especially as one who has her, I have my own small

farm now is really approaching it from this perspective of re-introductions or in a sense

that it's I'm not trying to maximize, I'm not trying to get as much honey as possible.

I'm not trying to have as many bees as possible.

In fact, I'm a pretty small operator in comparison to what we do have here in the states, I have

anywhere between 200 to 300 hives, depending on the year and the season, and there are operators

who have 10,000, even 80,000 colonies of beehives.

So I'm very small potatoes in comparison, but it is a large part of my livelihood.

And I see it as, my contribution to supporting not only local pollination

needs, but to supporting biodiversity.

So within my own beekeeping, I am very mindful of the other 4,000 different kinds of

solitary bees that we have on this continent.

So I try not to oversaturate any area because that's how the exploitation, is, is pronounced

and is furthered, is if we get too many hives in one area and it, then out-competes all these

other species that also need pollen and nectar.

And some of those other pollinator species are what we call specialists, right?

So if honey bees are generalists, meaning that they, they eat a variety of things,

some of the other pollinators that are specialists only rely on one particular flower.

And so if that flower is already pollinated and the Nectar's already sucked up,

then they don't get the food they need.

And so that really impacts that, that broader web of biodiversity.

So I try to be really mindful about it.

And I also consider, my approach to it too, and mentioning the biomimicry factor is that nature

has figured out Mother Nature and Father Time have figured out, how to develop these processes, what

we call these ecological services that have kept so many different organisms and landscapes alive.

And so for us to think, we can just come in there and change it and do what we want and we're in

charge is pretty arrogant, but there's a lot we can learn from just natural processes and how can

we mimic that or replicate it in such a way that it's being managed by us as humans as, mankind,

but it's more in tune with just the natural laws.

So I see that with my beekeeping in my Brea breeding in particular, I consider myself to be a seed

saver where the bees themselves are the seeds.

Not all bees are the same.

Within the honey bees species, there's actually close to 30 subspecies of honey bees.

And so one of the cool things, as I mentioned about, the kind of bees that they had in Paraguay,

but what took me on my recent storytelling fellowship through Fulbright national geographic

to Spain, was looking at various what we call eco types or sub species of honey bees.

And so in Spain, in particular, they have their own endemic strain of honey bees.

It's called Apis mellifera iberiensis.

There's Apis mellifera sahariensis, there's Apis mellifera ligustica

which we also considered to be what we call Italian bees Apis Mellifera caucastica, which

is I'm a Caucasian bee, and that's actually from the caucus mountains in Eastern Europe.

And they're actually a very dark bee.

So there's over, close to 30 kinds of these subspecies or eco types and they're all

related, so they can intermate with each other.

And it's just, to put it in In terms of, it might be easier to understand.

It's just like humans, right?

We're all human, but we have different races of humans.

But as humans settled in different parts of the world, they became really adapted and

attuned to those particular environments.

And so the same goes for these different honey bee strains.

And so I, I was, working for the beekeepers for a period of eight years before I finally got the courage

to start my own small farm with a farm partner.

And he's, he's actually from upper Michigan.

And so he needed bees that could really do well in the cold.

Right?

Actually after peace Corps, I had gone to work in Hawaii for about five years where

I started learning about queen rearing.

And that's when I really got to see, wow, beekeeping is a as a skill or what I like to call an artistic

science or scientific art can take you around the world, but it's also very distinct as can be

site-specific depending on what kind of bee is there and depending on what kind of landscape, whether

you're in a tropical climate or a desert climate, or a mountain climate, it really can can be quite distinct.

And that just became quite fascinating for me because I, I then wanted to see all these different kinds of

bees and in their own elements and how, how they work.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

And really kind of pull it together as to, okay, well, here I am, in this particular part of the US where

we have the deserts, we have the plains, we have the mountains; what kind of bee works good for us here.

So I try and find those bees as a, as sort of a seed saver, finding these different seeds or these different

bees that do well in our particular fluctuating climate and then try to respectfully reproduce them

following the natural calendar, their own biological cycles, and then share those with other beekeepers.

It was kind of an impromptu thing.

I don't know if I really formalized it; these observations kind of

built on each other over the years.

I've had plenty of mentors and I still have, new mentors that I'm always tapping into.

And one of them in particular had told me, anybody can have bees, but in

order to breed them, it takes a career.

It's taken years and years and in the states in particular, because we don't have these established

eco types such as they do in Africa and Europe and the middle east and Asia bees were reintroduced here.

The bees, started to adapt and migrate and really then become mixed.

So we don't have any real pure strain or pure eco types here in the states.

And as industrialized agriculture really took hold and expanded The same thing that's happened

with our food crops has happened with our livestock, which bees are a form of livestock.

And when I say livestock, I don't mean like, put a tag in it and give it a number

it's more that it's alive and it has value.

Right.

And so, what we see is that, yeah, when you go into the store, you see maybe what,

three, four different kinds of potatoes, but there's actually over 200 varieties worldwide.

Right.

And so, the same with our bees.

We started to see just a few kinds that were really reproduced over and over again.

And, a handful of larger producers really kind of running that, that system.

So industrialized agriculture has really, uh, even affected the beekeeping industry.

There's not very many Commercial producers and the ones that are large scale tend

to produce the same things over and over.

And so the diversity, the genetic diversity of our American bees has really started to dwindle and so

much so that there are some, some researchers who feel that there's a real genetic bottle-necking.

So when you get a genetic bottleneck, then you can start to get inbreeding, right?

And when you start to get inbreeding the bees don't have the natural ability , to

really perform as well as they could.

Then you add on pesticides, loss of habitat.

Compromised agricultural practices, all these different things and so it's a lot of different whammies,

especially on this one, critter that's been exploited and become the backbone of American agriculture.

So my efforts have really been to show an alternative to that approach, which is, we can

have bees, but we can have bees responsibly.

We can also promote all these other various species of bees, which there's over 20,000 worldwide, but

there's, over 4,000 here in north America that we have, whether that's bumblebees or sweat bees or what

we call or alkaline bees, we have blue orchard bees.

We have so many different kinds of bees.

And I just barely, mentioned a few, but we have over 4,000 kinds, so honey bees have really broadened my

world , to the larger world of pollinators and my peace Corps experience also really broadened my mind to just

global food systems and the real importance of what I call place and purpose, in pollinator conservation.

So I've, I try to approach things, not only from my, my, studies that I've done in various places, but a

lot of it is very much rooted in my indigenous heritage and in my indigenous worldview, which is that we are

all connected and that we are all relatives to each other, even us and the animals, we are relatives.

And so we have a responsibility.

When I talk about the importance of place and, and purpose, there's also power, right?

But that power is responsibility in how we steward our, our planet.

This is incredibly educational . I am learning so much.

And I'm so thankful for your expertise in the studies you've done.

Why is it that the honey bee

is the chosen one.

You were talking about the specialized pollinators.

I want the butterfly to sustain itself.

I want those little, and I don't know what they're called, but the little colorful, beautiful

moths,

. The hummingbirds.

I would like the hummingbirds

to sustain themselves as well.

They're not an insect, obviously.

. We do need the honey bees.

What do you see as a researcher out there with

other people

you've talked to who might be researching the butterflies or

the hummingbirds and not losing them?

That's a really good point.

I like this question because , we do have to ask ourselves.

If we want these various organisms to sustain themselves and to survive, then what is it that we need

to do or should be doing in order to allow for that to happen and especially for it to happen naturally.

Right.

And unfortunately, the Anthropocene era, which is us, this man sort of dominated

era era has really altered a lot of things.

We've altered the landscape, we've built dams.

We put in roads, we've blown up mountains.

We've made lakes.

We've really changed the landscape.

And then in how we've stewarded, it we've changed it.

So we really have affected these other organisms that have used these various lands, just like us to survive.

And so how can we undo that?

Well, we can't fully undo it, right.

We still need to drive from here to there.

I'm sitting in a vehicle, right.

So obviously I drive.

But how can we find a way so that it's symbiotic and that that we can coexist, right.

And really support a quality of life that's, that's positive for all these organisms.

So what's really interesting is that there are a lot of efforts.

There's a research efforts looking at various other kinds of pollinator

species to help with pollination needs.

The blue orchard bees leafcutter bees there's a few of these, uh, What we call Mason or carpenter bees.

So they live in wood or even in mud but they make tubes out of it.

There are some efforts to, to manage those meaning, to to start to keep those kinds of bees and to be

able to share them for agriculture, one of the reasons honey bees have been exploited though, is because

the management of them is actually quite forgiving.

They can live in a variety of different conditions, in a variety of different, even a boat.

Right.

And so they're more manageable than some of these other species that say live

in the ground or live, uh, in reeds.

So it's really hard to manage those that you can't, find in a tree trunk and you keep the tree trunk.

Over time, there's over 200 patented hive designs, but again, there's only a couple or few of them

that have really become more popular over, over time, even though there's so many and people can

create new ones, as long as they respect, what's called bee space, which is the very critical spacing

between the Combs of the bees like to follow.

And so interestingly, I think one of the reasons that honey bees have become so exploited is

for several reasons, but one of the main reasons is that they produce food for us

above and beyond their pollination services.

Right.

They're producing honey, which a lot of these other solitary species of bees, they make a little

bit of honey, but just for themselves and for their young for the, for the next generation.

Honey bees on the other hand, because they're generalist pollinators so

they can visit a variety of crops.

But the fact that they can grow in their own hive numbers means that they have a lot of

workforce, so they can collect a lot of honey.

And they can collect if it's a good area, they can collect more than what they need.

So then as a beekeeper, we can go and harvest what is extra, right?

So there used to be, well, there still is.

There's three kinds of, of bee people.

There's bee killers, bee Havers, and then bee keepers.

Right.

I don't think I like the first one, bee killers were kind of these Well, let's go

back pretty far back in history, right?

Where, uh, a wild swarm was found and, you would just cut down the comb and take

what you could and you'd destroy the nest.

Right?

You would just take it bee Havers, where people who will we have them but we don't really manage them.

If a piece of comb drops and we can get it and keep it, we will, but we're not gonna

necessarily go in there and destroy the nest.

Right.

A beekeeper on the other hand is somebody who is actively managing and working with with the creature.

So whether that's, chickens, horses, goats lizards, frogs, there's frog, farm, I think

in Brazil or bees, you're interacting with them and you're providing what they need.

You're making sure they have, , all their necessities taken care of, or at

least you're trying to manage for that.

Trying to make sure they don't get sick.

And you're also bringing them into your place or just specific places that you're choosing to have them.

Right.

So it's one thing if a bee came, a colony came, a swarm, moved into a tree in your backyard.

You can't necessarily go in there and manage them, right?

So you have them, but you're not keeping them.

But if say you live in the city and you decide, I want to have a hive in my backyard, I'm going to order one.

I'm going to order a package of bees and I'm going to buy some; when and where to

put them in the, now you are specifically choosing to bring them into that space.

And that is a big responsibility.

And I think sometimes people forget that because we think, oh, well, they're

just insects and nature provides.

And you just put bugs in a box and let them do their own thing.

Well, that would've been great and all had we not changed the landscape, but we've changed the landscape.

We've built cities, we've put in sidewalks.

We've been very strategic about what plants are planted, even on medians or what have you.

So, I think it's, it's something to be noted that when people decide they want to have bees, that

they really do their own research into having them.

And that's what actually kept me from having my own for so long.

I worked for other people for a period of eight years as a beekeeper, but not having my own hives.

And I was learning so much.

And I, and I thought, gosh, there's so much to learn.

I'm never going to be ready to have them.

But then I hit a point where I was like, I'm always going to be learning with them.

Every season is different and every hive has their own personality.

And so I finally decided, okay, I am ready to have my own and to try to do right by them as best I can.

Which I don't, some years I lose hives.

They, they die, whether it's due to viruses or not enough food or what have you.

So my management choices are to try, like I said, to mimic what nature in her ideal

state can provide for them within reason.

Right?

So my bees, if they're going to be hungry, say there's a drought.

I can either leave them in my, in the apiary, which is where they reside and

bring them food or let them starve.

Right?

So I'd have to make a choice.

If there's a drought, do I bring them food or can I take them to new pasture or do I just let them, starve?

And so I make the choice.

If I have another place to take them, I will burn the fossil fuels to put them on a truck and drive them

there because I'd much rather they have natural forage than anything that I could make that may sustain them.

But that isn't healthy in the long run.

However, if it's drought conditions everywhere and there's no, I can't

find another place to take them then.

Yeah.

I'm definitely gonna make what I call a tea.

And I try and make it as, as close to nectar as I can.

I mean, it's sugar water, but I add a bunch of different herbs to it in tea bags

to kind of infuse it with these herbal essences, which is what bees normally eat

is nectar and pollens from, from plants in nature.

So, there's, there's different ways of beekeeping.

And I think as people figure out what their own philosophy is, what their community has, and what their

community can support, meaning the landscape then they can determine if that's a good fit for them or not.

And what I like to really encourage people to do similar to your guests, you mentioned from

Norway is that bees are, are needed and more beekeepers are needed, but not all in the same spot.

And it really starts first and foremost with habitat.

So we really need to build up and support and keep our Wildlands and our wild landscapes and even

our urban landscapes diverse and have a variety of blooms so that it can feed all the various

organisms that deserve to be on this planet

along with us.

Now I want to talk about your queen bees

your positive imprint.