transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] This episode is sponsored in part by LinkedIn. Running a small business means every hire matters. A bad hire can cost you time, money, and momentum. A good hire that can help you grow your business, this gives me flashbacks to a nightmare hire in my previous company that really stunted the business. And even talking about it now makes my blood pressure go up. But the right hire is the exact opposite, somebody who takes ownership, solves problems, and helps the business grow faster. And when you're small, that kind of impact is massive. But finding great talent isn't easy, especially when you don't have the time or resources to sift through piles of resumes to find the right fit. That's why LinkedIn built Hiring Pro, your new hiring partner that screens candidates for you so instead of sorting through applications, you spend your time talking to candidates who are actually a good fit. With Hiring Pro, you can hire with confidence, knowing you're getting the best talent for your business. In fact, those hiring with LinkedIn are 24% less likely to need to reopen a role within 12 months compared to the leading competitor.

Speaker 2:
[00:51] Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at linkedin.com/harbinger. Terms and conditions apply.

Speaker 1:
[01:00] Mom, can you tell me a story?

Speaker 3:
[01:02] Sure.

Speaker 2:
[01:02] Once upon a time, a mom needed a new car. Was she brave?

Speaker 3:
[01:05] She was tired, mostly.

Speaker 2:
[01:07] But she went to carvana.com and found a great car at a great price.

Speaker 3:
[01:10] No secret treasure map required.

Speaker 2:
[01:12] Did you have to find a dragon? Nope. She bought it 100% online from her bed, actually. Was it scary? Honey, it was as unscary as car buying could be.

Speaker 1:
[01:20] Did the car have a sunroof?

Speaker 3:
[01:22] It did, actually.

Speaker 2:
[01:23] Okay.

Speaker 3:
[01:23] Good story.

Speaker 2:
[01:24] Car buying you'll want to tell stories about.

Speaker 3:
[01:26] Buy your car today on Carvana.

Speaker 2:
[01:29] Delivery fees may apply.

Speaker 1:
[01:30] This episode is brought to you by Lufthansa. Lufthansa Allegris is an innovative, elevated travel experience across all classes, focusing on each person with their own individual and situational needs. Look forward to your own feel-good moment above the clouds. Visit lufthansa.com and search for Allegris to learn more. Lufthansa Allegris. All it takes is a yes. Welcome to Skeptical Sunday. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. Today I'm here with Skeptical Sunday co-host, writer and researcher, Jessica Wynn. On The Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Our mission is to help you become a better-informed, more critical thinker. During the week, we have long-form conversations with a variety of amazing folks, from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers, performers. On Sundays, though, it's Skeptical Sunday, where a rotating guest co-host and I break down a topic you may have never thought about and debunk common misconceptions about that topic, such as diet supplements, the lottery, reiki healing, ear-candling, crystal healing, diet pills, energy drinks, and more. And if you're new to the show or you're looking for a handy way to tell your friends about it, I suggest our episode starter packs. These are collections of our favorite episodes on persuasion, negotiation, psychology, disinformation, junk science, crime and cults, and more that will help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show. Just visit jordanharbinger.com/start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. Today, we're flying into the topic of bees. You know them, small, yellow, mildly threatening. They make honey, they sting you, and every few years the internet tells us that if they disappear, civilization collapses. So what's going on? Are they just backyard annoyances or the tiny workforce secretly holding up the entire global food supply? Because that sounds like a lot of responsibility for something that I will swat out of my car window. Joining me to see what all the buzz is about is writer and researcher Jessica Wynn. So here's what I know about bees, Jess. Honey, stingers, flowers, there's bees, there's wasps, which seems like they're just bees that have chosen violence, and the internet keeps telling me all the bees are going extinct and we'll all be dead soon as a result. What am I missing?

Speaker 3:
[03:36] Well, that's actually not a terrible start, but we need to dramatically expand your bee universe. So there are over 20,000 species of bees on this planet.

Speaker 1:
[03:48] Wow, 20,000. I thought there were like, I don't know, 10 bumblebees, killer bees, murder hornets and wasps.

Speaker 3:
[03:55] So wasps are not bees at all. They're totally different family, different ancestry, different biology. In fact, wasps go after bee colonies. They raid nests, steal food, kill larvae, even attack and kill honeybees.

Speaker 1:
[04:11] Wow, that's like an insect crime syndicate. So not even other bees or bee-type insects like wasps. They're just universally reviled. Got it.

Speaker 3:
[04:19] Yeah, everybody hates wasps. Although in fairness, honeybees, they raid each other too.

Speaker 1:
[04:24] That's true.

Speaker 3:
[04:25] That's true.

Speaker 1:
[04:26] You know what? I saw the other day a guy removing a hornet's nest, and he basically had vacuumed all of them up out of this hole, dug up the nest, and then he fed the nest to a squirrel. Did you know squirrels eat hornet's nests? I did not know that.

Speaker 3:
[04:41] I bet they're delicious.

Speaker 1:
[04:42] Yeah, maybe. I mean, it looked pretty gnarly, like this squirrel just going to town, eating this nest, but I guess it totally makes sense. Anyway, good on squirrels. They're cute, and they eat wasp nests or hornet's nest, whatever this thing was. Yeah, so, okay, so these, they're kind of like insect crime syndicates raiding each other and stealing and...

Speaker 3:
[05:00] Yeah, and then every 10 years, the news is like, also, killer bees are coming, which we've been hearing since like the Reagan administration. But when you hear Africanized honey bees, know that they're just more defensive honey bees. They're not deadly. They mostly just really hate it when you're near their hive.

Speaker 1:
[05:21] Yeah, I've heard they will chase you further and they'll sting you more or something like that. But it's like, okay, so if you're not getting stung by regular bees, you're probably not going to have to worry about Africanized killer bees. Right. Bees with boundaries. What about murder hornets? Remember those headlines? And they would show like this huge wasp that you probably can't even find anywhere outside of China that's the size of your hand. And it's like, oh, these are going to kill everyone.

Speaker 3:
[05:45] It was also like the season finale of 2020, right? It's a big, scary, terrible name.

Speaker 1:
[05:52] It's a fake name, I bet. I bet the journalists made that name and real bee researchers are like, yeah, these are just called whatever hornets.

Speaker 3:
[05:58] Insect PR, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[06:00] Yes.

Speaker 3:
[06:01] But they did show up briefly in the Pacific Northwest and were pretty immediately eradicated. They weren't hunting people. They were attacking other insects.

Speaker 1:
[06:11] Yeah, so don't judge a bee by its murderous name, I suppose.

Speaker 3:
[06:14] Right. And something else most people don't realize is that over 90% of bee species don't even live in hives. They're solitary. They don't make honey. There's no queen. They just live alone, nesting in the ground or in hollow wood, pollinating flowers and just minding their business, never bothering anyone.

Speaker 1:
[06:35] So they're kind of the introverts of the insect world. And yeah, it's the equivalent of the old guy living out in a cabin in the middle of nowhere.

Speaker 3:
[06:41] Got it. Exactly. There's mason bees, leaf cutter bees, mining bees. They're just all out there doing essential pollination work without any of the social drama that we associate with bees. When Americans say bees, we usually mean honeybees.

Speaker 1:
[06:59] Right. The ones that live in the little set of drawers, high looking thing.

Speaker 3:
[07:03] Yeah. And those aren't even native to the United States. So our honeybees are basically livestock. They were imported from Europe in the 1600s. Mostly the European honeybee, Apis mellifera. So beekeepers treat them like tiny cattle with wings.

Speaker 1:
[07:21] I didn't realize that they were bee immigrants. I just figured they were here for a million years. That's crazy.

Speaker 3:
[07:27] Yeah, and meanwhile, the truly native bees, which are the solitary ones, they're losing habitat because we've paved everything over. There's no more dead trees like there used to be. There's no bare soil, no nesting spots. We've basically bulldozed native bees' homes.

Speaker 1:
[07:43] We just seem to be obsessed with honeybees specifically. Why is that? I mean, my wife was a beekeeper for a while and she didn't have to deliberate what kind of bee she wanted. You know, you just get honeybees.

Speaker 3:
[07:54] Right, because they're useful to us. And honeybees can pollinate more than 130 different crops. Apples, cherries, almonds, pumpkins, you name it. And crucially, they're mobile. You can move entire hives around like equipment.

Speaker 1:
[08:10] Yeah, well, they're mobile, they have wings. What do you mean? You're moving the hives around?

Speaker 3:
[08:14] Yeah, not just flying, I mean portable. So in the 1850s, this Ohio clergyman named Lorenzo Langstroth figured out something called bee space.

Speaker 1:
[08:25] That sounds fake. What is that?

Speaker 3:
[08:27] It's actually super precise. So bees naturally leave a gap of about 3 eighths of an inch, roughly 6 to 9 millimeters, between combs so they can walk through. And if the gap is smaller than that, they glue it shut with propolis. Bigger than that, they build more comb and then seal it up.

Speaker 1:
[08:47] I see. So they're tiny architects with very strong opinions about hallway width.

Speaker 3:
[08:52] Yeah, exactly. And it makes sense it was a minister who did this because back then ministers traveled all the time. They were setting up churches with land and gardens. So beekeeping was kind of the perfect clergy hobby. It was quiet, contemplative. Plus honey and beeswax actually paid the bills. Churches needed candles, sugar was expensive. So keeping bees was like the 19th century version of a side hustle.

Speaker 1:
[09:21] Yeah, that's right. They're called Langstroth hives, right? The drawer looking thing. Because before that, it kind of looked like this. The Winnie the Pooh bee hive, right? That little swirly basket looking thing. That's pre Langstroth. I don't know what those things are called.

Speaker 3:
[09:34] That was pre Langstroth. I don't know what they were called either, but they weren't as sustainable. So he developed the modular hives.

Speaker 1:
[09:45] So cool. So it's a side hustle for ministers. Sermons on Sunday, honey on Monday, and you just sell it or use it to make your candles or whatever.

Speaker 3:
[09:53] Right. And Langstroth realized if you design a hive that keeps every gap in that sweet spot, the bees won't cement everything together, which means you can slide those frames in and out.

Speaker 1:
[10:06] I see. Right.

Speaker 3:
[10:07] So before that, if you wanted honey, you basically smashed those baskets and destroyed the hive and you had to start all over. So his design was the wooden box with removable frames, and it meant you could move entire colonies around without killing them. And once hives became modular boxes, you could stack them, load them onto trucks, ship entire colonies across the country. So we're talking billions of bees shipped every year for pollination because of Langstroth.

Speaker 1:
[10:38] Right. Yeah. We used to have bees here, like I said, my wife and I had a bee suit and stuff because I had gotten help. You'd open it up. Yeah, I know. Yeah, hot too, literally. You'd open up the hive and you have to open it up like every week or so or every few days. I can't remember. And the reason is because those frames, they don't just like neatly and nicely build inside the frame. They do. But then they're trying to glue the frame to the side. They're trying to glue the frames together or maybe something drips or falls. And then they submit that up. So you have to scrape all that off and sort of maintain it. And then you take all that wax and you can just chew it. It's delicious. It is. And you take the propolis or whatever that other stuff is. And you can, I don't know, there's a million things you can do with bee products. It's like you can use everything. So all right. So honeybees, what makes them so special physically besides the fact that they somehow convinced humans to eat their vomit and call it a delicacy?

Speaker 3:
[11:29] I mean, I guess you're not entirely wrong there, but it's not exactly barf. Right. Honey never hits their actual digestive stomach. So they've got a separate little storage pouch, basically a honey tummy, just for nectar.

Speaker 1:
[11:44] Okay. So not puke, more like a lunchbox.

Speaker 3:
[11:47] Right. They collect nectar, stash it in their extra stomach, fly it home and pass it to other bees. Then enzymes and evaporation turn it into honey. It's food processing, not vomiting.

Speaker 1:
[12:01] Yeah, that is slightly less disgusting. I mean, it's still a little odd, I suppose. I don't know. We're just thinking about food too much because you're doing that agriculture stuff. But they do really have a, I don't know, bees are quite amazing. Jen would never kind of get over that when she was a beekeeper. It was like her favorite thing ever.

Speaker 3:
[12:17] Yeah, they're incredible. And they have this incredible anatomy. So for starters, they have five eyes.

Speaker 1:
[12:24] Five eyes. I guess I knew they had fly-like traits. But when I imagine a bee, I just see two big black eyes in my head.

Speaker 3:
[12:31] Yeah, most of us do. But they have five. There's two large compound eyes on the sides of their heads. But they're made up of thousands of tiny lenses. Plus, they have three smaller, simple eyes on top. They detect light levels and help them navigate.

Speaker 1:
[12:48] I see. So they have sensors as well as eyes. That's crazy. So, yeah, I guess you don't want glasses as a bee. You're in trouble.

Speaker 3:
[12:55] I mean, there might be a cool design there. But with those eyes, they can't see the color red, which is interesting. So red looks black to them, which is why beekeepers would never paint hives red.

Speaker 1:
[13:08] So to a bee, a beautiful red rose is just another black flower.

Speaker 3:
[13:12] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[13:12] So goth somehow.

Speaker 3:
[13:13] Yeah, they're gothy. But here's where it gets cool. So they can see ultraviolet light, which creates patterns on flowers that are completely invisible to humans. So a lot of flowers have these UV landing strips that guide bees directly to the nectar. They're like runway lights at an airport.

Speaker 1:
[13:34] So flowers are nature's invisible bee airports. That's cool.

Speaker 3:
[13:39] And there's even a color called bees purple, which is a combination of yellow and ultraviolet light that only bees can see. It just doesn't exist for humans. So some beekeepers paint their many hives the same color, but draw a unique symbol on each hive with an ultraviolet pen so bees can differentiate the hives.

Speaker 1:
[14:00] So bees have access to exclusive colors that I'll never experience in my lifetime.

Speaker 3:
[14:05] Right. And bees have three types of photoreceptors giving them this trichromatic vision. So it's similar to humans, but we see in red, green and blue. Bees see in ultraviolet, blue and green from their compound eyes. So they just can't process red. It's crazy.

Speaker 1:
[14:24] That is crazy. I can't imagine life without the color red. I guess they probably think the same about whatever purple UV colors they're seeing. That is cool. It's kind of jealous. They can see colors that I can't. That must be kind of interesting.

Speaker 3:
[14:37] I know. Well, don't be jealous. You have opposable thumbs and they don't.

Speaker 1:
[14:40] That is true. And a lifespan of more than, I don't know, 48 hours or whatever some of these things have. So how does the honey transferring work? Is this the dance I've read where bees communicate via dance or is that a weird myth?

Speaker 3:
[14:52] No, the dance is very real and it's also very complicated. It's so sophisticated that an Austrian scientist named Karl von Frisch, he won the Nobel Prize in 1973 just for figuring out what it meant.

Speaker 1:
[15:07] Somebody won a Nobel Prize for learning the bee dance? I guess that makes sense.

Speaker 3:
[15:11] Because it revolutionized our understanding of insect intelligence and communication. He proved bees use a symbolic language.

Speaker 1:
[15:20] Okay, but who's dancing? The queen bee is dancing or who's?

Speaker 3:
[15:23] No, no, it's the workers.

Speaker 1:
[15:25] Okay.

Speaker 3:
[15:25] And worker bees are all female. So basically every bee you see doing active labor is a girl. The males mostly just hang around waiting to mate and then immediately die. Zero choreography for them.

Speaker 1:
[15:39] Right, so it's a girl boss situation.

Speaker 3:
[15:41] Yeah, full matriarchy. When a forager bee finds a really good nectar source, she flies back to the hive and performs a very specific dance for other foragers.

Speaker 1:
[15:52] So she literally dances?

Speaker 3:
[15:54] Yeah, it's incredible and weirdly precise. So she waggles back and forth while moving in a straight line, then circles around to repeat the pattern. The length of the waggle run tells the other bees how far away the food source is. The angle of the dance tells them which direction to fly relative to the sun.

Speaker 1:
[16:17] That's crazy. So bees are doing trigonometry through interpretive dance and they understand each other. That's nuts.

Speaker 3:
[16:23] It's like GPS, but also kind of like bee Broadway.

Speaker 1:
[16:27] Yeah. I mean, think about it. You miss a turn on Google Maps. Meanwhile, bees are over here communicating pretty precise GPS coordinates through choreography, literally. It's amazing.

Speaker 3:
[16:37] Yeah. And they've had millions of years to perfect it. So there's a documentary that takes a bee out of the hive to somewhere new and tracks it, finding its way back to the hive. So it's this cool navigation experiment showing how in tune bees are with where they need to go.

Speaker 1:
[16:54] Yeah. And we've had social media for 15 years and somehow we've made communication worse over time.

Speaker 3:
[16:59] I know. I know. You also love this. In 2023, it was discovered that the waggle dance is learned. It's not purely instinctual. So it's culturally passed from bee to bee.

Speaker 1:
[17:12] So there's Bee Dance School, which is probably more fun than hauling nectar and pollen. But then again, I guess that's the job.

Speaker 3:
[17:19] Right. Young bees learn the waggle dance from older mentor bees. And each bee develops their own individual dance style. It's like their dialect. And scientists published this in Science Magazine. So it's like a huge deal.

Speaker 1:
[17:35] Bees have dialects. Wow. That's, I mean, this is amazing.

Speaker 3:
[17:38] Yeah, in a way they do. Bee cultures are shaped by local environments. So some colonies, they're better at dancing than others because they had better teachers.

Speaker 1:
[17:48] Wow. And I wonder if that allows them to find food more easily. I don't know. So this is blowing my mind. So if an old bee is a bad teacher, the young bees just learn the dance wrong and maybe it's a little bit less accurate.

Speaker 3:
[18:00] Yeah. And the scary part is that some of the pesticides being used, they harm bee cognition and could disrupt their ability to learn the dance properly. So we might be literally scrambling their cultural transmission.

Speaker 1:
[18:14] Ooh, that's yikes. That's worse than I thought. You're not just killing a few bees, you're making it so they can't find food and screwing up generational knowledge or something like that.

Speaker 3:
[18:23] And it gets weirder. Scientists are now building robots that can infiltrate hives and perform the waggle dance to command real bees. So they're trying to teach robots these local bee dialects so they can waggle dance and direct real bees to specific locations, because instead of not using pesticides...

Speaker 1:
[18:45] Yeah, right. We could stop using these chemicals that kill them. No, no, no. We're going to build... Get me... Hear me out. We're going to build tiny bee robots that just do the dance so that when we kill the dance teachers, we can replace them.

Speaker 3:
[18:56] I'm for it.

Speaker 1:
[18:56] With something mechanical. Yeah. But wait, why do they want to direct bees to specific locations again with robots?

Speaker 3:
[19:04] So first of all, they kind of look like these tiny pencil sharpeners with wings.

Speaker 1:
[19:08] The robo bees. Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[19:09] The robo bees. And they were developed at Harvard. They're basically insect size flying robots that have artificial muscles that flap their wings about 120 times a second. Wow. They can hover and steer and make simple decisions with onboard sensors. And they're one of the smallest flying robots. And they're just really detailed. So they're used for artificial pollination, search and rescue, and environmental monitoring.

Speaker 1:
[19:38] Yeah, I kind of want one. How do they use these in search and rescue? What's a bee robot going to do if someone's trapped in a well?

Speaker 3:
[19:45] Well, they're not lifting anybody out like a tiny EMT. Think more like a flying GoPro.

Speaker 1:
[19:52] I see.

Speaker 3:
[19:52] So they can slip through cracks in collapsed buildings, think what's needed after a big earthquake. They can map these tight spaces, detect heat or carbon dioxide from breathing, maybe find survivors where humans or drones can't fit.

Speaker 1:
[20:08] Okay, so they're not rescuing you. They're judging you and reporting your location.

Speaker 2:
[20:12] Right.

Speaker 3:
[20:13] And they send messages like, human located, still in well, seems dramatic.

Speaker 1:
[20:18] Yeah, needs to calm down. Yeah, okay, that makes way more sense.

Speaker 2:
[20:21] Right.

Speaker 3:
[20:22] Now, they're mostly prototypes. There have been greenhouse pollination experiments, environmental monitoring, that kind of thing. But the idea is swarms of robot bees that will go places nothing else can. But it'll cost you if you really do want one. The ones used for greenhouses run about ten grand each.

Speaker 1:
[20:43] Wow.

Speaker 3:
[20:43] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[20:43] Wow. Okay. Is it a good idea to build robots that can speak bee and command them? Because this is sort of like Planet of the Apes slash Black Mirror.

Speaker 3:
[20:51] I know. I mean, I don't think the bees are planning an uprising, but...

Speaker 1:
[20:55] Yet.

Speaker 3:
[20:56] Yet. But be nice to them in case, I guess. Because bees can recognize human faces.

Speaker 1:
[21:03] What?

Speaker 3:
[21:04] Yeah. They use the same configurable processing that humans use, recognizing the spatial relationship between facial features. They can distinguish between different people and remember them.

Speaker 1:
[21:17] Man. So if you've ever been stung by a bee, maybe you didn't do anything. He just thought you were ugly.

Speaker 3:
[21:22] Right. It's just ugly.

Speaker 1:
[21:25] So if I swatted a bee, it might remember my face and potentially hold a grudge.

Speaker 3:
[21:31] Yeah, it might. And it might communicate that to other bees.

Speaker 1:
[21:34] Cool. So yeah, you're on like a sting list, right? Somebody goes back into the waggle dance and is like, get that guy with the crappy, fascist haircut. Go sting that guy.

Speaker 3:
[21:45] I mean, I think we're all probably on that list, but that's actually why beekeepers use smoke. So it scrambles their alarm pheromones so the hive can't smell intruders. Otherwise, every time you open the hive, they remember you and they'll get progressively more aggressive. But it's thought though over time that this stresses the bees out too.

Speaker 1:
[22:08] Not using smoke or using smoke?

Speaker 3:
[22:10] Using smoke.

Speaker 1:
[22:11] If you think your workplace is toxic, just remember bees literally murder underperforming leadership. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Revolve. You know when something sneaks onto your calendar, a wedding, work thing, vacation, even just a dinner and suddenly you realize you need to look put together without making a whole project out of it? You gotta get your fit from Revolve Men. It's unique in that everything feels curated. You're not buried under endless pages of random stuff. Everything is styled so you can see how a full look comes together. You find a piece you like and the site helps you build from there. I also like they're constantly bringing in new brands, something like 50 to 60 a year, so it always feels current. They're really on the forefront of trends and getting fresh brands in front of people before everybody else is wearing them. And it works for all the different stuff you actually shop for. Work, workouts, weddings, vacations, spring break, summer plans, all of it. It's elevated without being too much. Plus, free two-day shipping is huge when you need something fast, and the 30-day returns are genuinely easy. They even include the return label in the box.

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Speaker 1:
[24:17] Don't forget about our newsletter, Wee Bit Wiser, two-minute read every Wednesday, something practical you can apply right away, right out of the box. It is a great companion to the show, a little bit of wisdom from the show, a little bit of wisdom from our daily lives. Something I promise you will not regret taking the time to read, Jordan harbinger.com/news is where you can find it. Now, back to Skeptical Sunday. Yeah, there's definitely been times where, I mean, we used to use smoke in the beehives. You basically have this little tea kettle with like a trigger and you squeeze it and smoke comes out and they just go about their business while you rip huge parts of their hive out and scrape wax off or like take honey out or take honeycomb out. But yeah, I mean, I didn't know that they would remember it. I kind of, that's, wow.

Speaker 3:
[24:59] Yeah, they're smarter than you think.

Speaker 1:
[25:01] Yeah, I imagine bees kind of gossiping with their little dance, you know? It's just sort of like, hey, that guy's got a copy of Cat Fancy and he's not afraid to use it. I mean, who would think insects have memory at all? That's insane to me.

Speaker 3:
[25:13] Yeah, I mean, and something that might make you feel a little safer is that only female bees can sting. So male bees, which are called drones, they don't even have stingers. Their only job is to mate with a queen. That's it. And then they die immediately.

Speaker 1:
[25:29] Wow, death by sex, immediate death by sex.

Speaker 3:
[25:32] Yes, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[25:33] Lame.

Speaker 3:
[25:33] During mating, the reproductive organ tears away when they detach from the queen. So they basically just fall out of the sky.

Speaker 1:
[25:41] Oh my god, think about that. Just think about that, guys. They just detach. You put it in, but you can't take it out.

Speaker 3:
[25:47] The power of women. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[25:48] Yeah, wow, that's horrifying. Nature does not do subtle, does it?

Speaker 3:
[25:53] Right. And the drones who don't get to mate, they don't forage, they don't build, they don't defend the hive, they don't clean. They just live in bachelor pads outside the hive, just kind of hanging around, eating honey, waiting for their shot.

Speaker 1:
[26:09] Literally. So it's a frat house. Celebit, but no chores.

Speaker 3:
[26:12] Right. But only until fall, the season. So then the worker bees kick them out of the hive to die in the cold, to conserve food during winter. So you'll see dead drone bees around the hives when autumn comes.

Speaker 1:
[26:26] That's right. Yeah. They're actually all over my driveway. And I have to kind of be careful when I'm working out, because if you're doing burpees, there's just dead bees everywhere, and they can still sting after they're dead. That's sort of a mechanical process. So let me get this straight. Male bees either die during sex, or they spend their entire life eating honey and contributing absolutely nothing until they're left to freeze to death.

Speaker 3:
[26:47] That's the deal. Yeah. And bees don't mess around, man. The workers, meanwhile, run the whole place. People say they have an age-based career ladder. So when a bee is born, she starts as a janitor, pretty much, cleaning cells in the hive. Then after a few days gets promoted to Nurse Bee, feeding larvae, then she becomes a processor, making honey. Then she'll handle climate control and defense. And finally, when she's older, which is around three weeks, she becomes a forager, flying out to collect nectar and pollen.

Speaker 1:
[27:20] So bees have kind of like a corporate structure where you basically start in the mailroom and you work your way up to senior management. That's, I did not know that either.

Speaker 3:
[27:28] Yeah, basically, but it's flexible. What's really wild is when older bees have to take on jobs, usually done by younger bees. Like if the hive loses a bunch of young workers, for whatever reason, their brains stop aging. So the mental stimulation of learning new tasks keeps their old bee brains young. Scientists are literally studying bees for dementia research because of this.

Speaker 1:
[27:55] That does make sense though, right? Because if everybody aged out and you lost all your young workers, there goes the whole hive. So this is an evolutionary pressure.

Speaker 3:
[28:02] Right, exactly.

Speaker 1:
[28:03] It's incredible. So when I'm 80, get on the equivalent of TikTok, keep learning, I don't know, learn a new language and start dating a 30-year-old. Got it. Okay.

Speaker 3:
[28:12] I like your confidence, Jordan, that a 30-year-old will want you when you're 80.

Speaker 1:
[28:16] Well, it's amazing how much just a few million dollars can overcome the widest of age gaps. Love and a giant Swiss bank account really conquers all.

Speaker 3:
[28:26] So romantic and kind of gross. Yep, that too. Think less of a midlife crisis and more brain gym. So when older bees switch jobs, they have to learn these new skills, their memory and learning ability improves. It's like cognitive physical therapy.

Speaker 1:
[28:44] So all those in a midlife crisis, listen up, don't buy a motorcycle, learn some Chinese or something like that. Duolingo over Tinder.

Speaker 3:
[28:52] Yeah, that's much healthier advice, I think at any age, but a lot more research is needed. But the takeaway is that learning new things and staying mentally active can literally reverse aspects of brain aging.

Speaker 1:
[29:06] How long does an average bee live?

Speaker 3:
[29:07] I mean, it really varies. So for honeybees, a queen can live one to up to five years actually. So think of it like an odometer, not really a calendar. Worker bees live about 30 days in the summer, but they'll live one to 200 days in the winter because they're not working as hard. But male bumblebees, they can live as short as a week.

Speaker 1:
[29:31] The life of a male bumblebee is rough. So once these bees graduate, leave, they go pollinate, what is their life like then?

Speaker 3:
[29:38] Well, bumblebees can do what's called buzz pollinate. So some flowers like tomatoes and blueberries, they hold their pollen really tight in structures that don't just open up. So bumblebees grab onto the flower, detach their wings from their flight muscles, and then they vibrate their entire body at high frequency to shake the pollen loose.

Speaker 1:
[30:02] Wow. So bumblebees twerk pollen out of flowers.

Speaker 3:
[30:05] Yeah, pretty much.

Speaker 1:
[30:06] Bumblebees are out here grinding on flowers to get the goods. And make it rain pollen afterwards. Do other bees throw nectar at them?

Speaker 3:
[30:18] No. They just move on to the next flower. And to do that, they use their credible sense of smell that is processed through receptors on their antenna. So this sense allows them to locate nectar for miles around.

Speaker 1:
[30:33] Oh, so they smell through their antenna. I didn't know that either.

Speaker 3:
[30:36] Yeah. And the ability is used by scientists to detect explosives. So they have 170 odorant receptors, which makes them way more sensitive than dogs. So scientists have trained honeybees to detect bombs and landmines by associating scent with sugar water rewards.

Speaker 1:
[30:57] So let me understand this. We have weaponized bees to de-weaponize bombs. That's awesome. That's really cool.

Speaker 3:
[31:04] Yeah, it's so awesome.

Speaker 1:
[31:05] That is the most human thing I've ever heard. These creatures are dying in mass. Ecosystems are collapsing. But first, can they help us with our wars somehow? Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[31:13] And it turns out they're really good at it.

Speaker 1:
[31:15] Yeah, I don't doubt that. I'm just sort of questioning our priorities here. We're building tiny war drones and they're trying to keep the house warm. I don't know. These are amazing creatures, really.

Speaker 3:
[31:25] Yeah. And in winter, some worker bees, they become heater bees. So they vibrate their flight muscles to generate heat without flying, maintaining the hive temperature at an incredible 95 degrees Fahrenheit, even if it's freezing outside. They can do this for months because they rotate shifts, so no single bee has to do it the entire time.

Speaker 1:
[31:47] That sounds like the bee equivalent of a union. I know they kept their hive warm. I just forgot about how they do it.

Speaker 3:
[31:53] Yeah, it's incredible. And actually, the whole hive operates collectively. So bees figured out collective bargaining way before humans. They're really organized. And bumblebees leave scent markers on flowers they've already visited, and they can distinguish between their own scent marks and those left by other bees to avoid wasting time on depleted flowers.

Speaker 1:
[32:16] So they can tell the difference between their own scent and the scent of other bees on a flower that they've already went to. That's cool.

Speaker 3:
[32:22] Right. Yeah. So they don't waste energy revisiting flowers that they know are empty.

Speaker 1:
[32:27] I see.

Speaker 3:
[32:28] And their brains are just the size of poppy seeds. So which is incredible when we see the things they can be taught, like playing football.

Speaker 1:
[32:37] You mean like soccer? So are they like golden retrievers? How do they play football? I don't get this.

Speaker 3:
[32:42] Yeah. To study their cognitive abilities, scientists taught bumblebees to roll tiny balls into goals in exchange for sugar water rewards. I mean, it's documented. You can look it up. They learned the game. They played a little bee version of football.

Speaker 1:
[32:58] That's adorable and fascinating that they can learn tasks that are completely unnatural to them, right? It's not a different dance or a different way of flying or something. It's an actual game.

Speaker 3:
[33:06] It's a game, right?

Speaker 1:
[33:07] Wow. So what else are they doing? Are they writing young adult fiction? Are there bee podcasts?

Speaker 3:
[33:13] Not that I know of, but maybe in another million years, we'll get some of those.

Speaker 1:
[33:18] All right. Tell me about the Queen Bee, because I feel like this word we're always taught, she's the Beyonce of the Hive, whatever, running things with an iron fist or an iron wing or whatever. But I don't know. A lot of the things I feel like I thought I knew about bees are just totally not true.

Speaker 3:
[33:31] Yeah. The Queen Bee, I mean, there's a lot of common misconceptions. The Queen doesn't rule anything. She doesn't give any orders. There's no strategy meetings. Her only job, literally her only job is laying eggs.

Speaker 1:
[33:47] So the Queen is just like a baby factory.

Speaker 3:
[33:50] Yeah, mostly, but she's not useless. She controls the hive chemically. So she releases pheromones that keep everyone organized. Who works, who reproduces, when the hive stays calm, she just kind of sets the tone for the hive.

Speaker 1:
[34:06] So less Queen ruler, authoritarian, more sort of vibe, more DJ, more vibe manager.

Speaker 3:
[34:12] I have a friend who works at his kids elementary school as the literally it's called the vibe manager. He just hangs out in the hallway.

Speaker 1:
[34:20] That's weird.

Speaker 3:
[34:22] So it exists. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[34:23] Okay.

Speaker 3:
[34:24] But so the Queen sets the mood. If her pheromones weaken, the workers go, we're going to need a new CEO here.

Speaker 1:
[34:31] So we've been calling it a monarchy when it's actually more like a democracy.

Speaker 3:
[34:35] Yeah. It's more like a collective decision-making system. So the workers decide where to build, when to swarm, and whether or not to replace the Queen.

Speaker 1:
[34:45] So it's actually be communism. They can just replace her.

Speaker 3:
[34:48] Got it. Yeah. If the Queen isn't performing well, like she's not laying enough eggs, getting old, sick, whatever might be making her underperform, the workers will just raise a new Queen and kill the old one.

Speaker 1:
[35:01] Totally on brand for communism, by the way. Yeah. Time to get executed.

Speaker 3:
[35:05] They don't only make new Queens when something's wrong. They also do it when they want to swarm. So that's when half the hive leaves with the old Queen to start a new colony. The remaining bees raise a brand new Queen. It's like bee franchising.

Speaker 1:
[35:21] So if the Queen doesn't run things, what makes her special? Just laying eggs and reproduction.

Speaker 3:
[35:26] Yeah. And her diet. Any female larva could be Queen. It's the same genes. The workers just feed one larva nothing but royal jelly. So biologically, she's the only female bee in the hive whose reproductive organs fully develop. She can lay fertilized eggs that become female workers, or unfertilized eggs that become male drones, just off a steady diet of royal jelly.

Speaker 1:
[35:52] Okay. What is that exactly? It sounds like, I'm going to go ahead and guess people pay insane amounts of money to buy and put on their feet or something. But what is it for the bees?

Speaker 3:
[36:00] You do see it in some cosmetics, but.

Speaker 1:
[36:02] I'm sure.

Speaker 3:
[36:03] It's this protein rich substance secreted by young worker bees. Oh!

Speaker 1:
[36:09] All right, I'm done.

Speaker 3:
[36:11] If a larva gets fed exclusively royal jelly instead of the regular bee food, it develops into a queen instead of a worker.

Speaker 1:
[36:20] The workers choose who becomes a queen by deciding who gets the good food, I guess. So the queen is just chosen. I thought there was a fight or it was some kind of birthright or something. No.

Speaker 3:
[36:28] Yeah, it gets better. When a new queen is about to hatch from her cell, she makes a sound called tooting. Not quite that. She toots. It's a high-frequency vibration. And the other unhatched queens, because the workers usually raise several queens as backups, the ones that are still in their cells respond with quacking sounds.

Speaker 1:
[36:54] That's hilarious. What's the quacking about? Why do they quack?

Speaker 3:
[36:57] Yeah, bee quacking. It's the sound made by virgin queens that are still inside their cells, responding to the tooting sound of a newly emerged queen. So it's a form of communication with the worker bees that signals the queen is ready to emerge. And the first queen to hatch goes around and stings the other queens to death through their cells before they can hatch. Or sometimes two queens might hatch at the same time, and then they fight to the death.

Speaker 1:
[37:26] Imagine being born, and they're like, all right, you have to fight another baby to the death.

Speaker 3:
[37:31] I think I would have won.

Speaker 1:
[37:32] Yeah, you would have won. I knew there was a fight to the death. So toot, quack, kill. What a twist on the old classic.

Speaker 3:
[37:38] And remember, the workers are watching this whole thing happen. They allow it to happen. They could intervene, but they don't.

Speaker 1:
[37:46] Well, watching two queens fight might be pretty entertaining. Do they do it in the royal jelly?

Speaker 3:
[37:53] That would be amazing. But settle down. What happens next is not that sexy. So whichever bee becomes queen gets right to laying eggs. The workers are still making all the decisions. And if she's not performing well, she's out of there, replaced, like pretty much immediately.

Speaker 1:
[38:11] Wow. So she wins the Battle Royale fight to the death, and her prize is a job with no decision-making power that she can be fired from at any time by getting murdered.

Speaker 3:
[38:19] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[38:21] Hard pass. That sucks.

Speaker 3:
[38:22] Yeah. And then she's continued to be fed a strict diet of royal jelly, and she's just expected to lay eggs, eggs, eggs constantly, thousands a day.

Speaker 1:
[38:33] Wow. What a prize for winning the Queen title. I feel like we're pretty aggressive as humans about taking stuff from bees. So the royal jelly, you said it's for sale at the store. Yeah. It's something we also steal from them.

Speaker 3:
[38:45] It is. You can buy it. Humans are very thorough when stealing from the hive. We take honey, wax, pollen and that royal jelly.

Speaker 1:
[38:54] Right. Yeah. I was mentioning before you can pretty much use everything. I forgot about the royal jelly. So bee pollen, that's also crunchy health food stuff. You can get it in your bougie smoothie granola bowl or whatever at Erewan.

Speaker 3:
[39:03] Right. Exactly.

Speaker 1:
[39:04] By the way, how is bee pollen different from just pollen? Is it not just pollen?

Speaker 3:
[39:08] Well, it's different after the bees bring it back to the hive. It's basically their protein storage. It's super nutrient-dense and bees collect pollen from flowers, but then they mix it with a little nectar and their bee saliva, then they store it in the comb. So it's packed with protein, amino acids, vitamins, and humans eat it as a supplement. So as we're saying, we can eat the entire honeycomb, the wax, everything, which I've done too with a beekeeper friend of mine, and it's hot and sweet and delicious. And then when you chew on that wax after the flavor's gone, it's like the best gum, right?

Speaker 1:
[39:46] I have eaten many a hive. We used to keep bees before we had kids, as I mentioned, we got rid of them, but there's so much in there that at some point you're taking it and it's actually for their own good, right? Because they can-

Speaker 3:
[39:57] Right.

Speaker 1:
[39:58] And you can take so much of this stuff out. And the pollen's actually really cool, it's beautiful. It's like this sort of multi-color, light pastel mix of stuff and you can put it on the ice cream and it looks gorgeous. It's really interesting.

Speaker 3:
[40:09] Yeah, the colors are beautiful.

Speaker 1:
[40:12] I agree, yeah.

Speaker 3:
[40:12] It's kinda like eating their architecture, but yeah, sometimes it's necessary. I recently met a honey sommelier, which I did not know existed. That's a thing, huh? So there's definitely a lot of flavors and notes to pay attention to. And the royal jelly, that's also protein-rich substance that worker bees make to feed the queen. And then people harvest that and eat it too.

Speaker 1:
[40:35] What does it taste like? I've never stolen my bee's royal jelly.

Speaker 3:
[40:38] It's kind of tart, it's slightly bitter, it's like a weird greenish color. But some people think it has health benefits, anti-aging properties, but the science doesn't really back that up. It does have antioxidants, so the wellness community makes the leap that it has these anti-aging benefits, but I'm not actually convinced on that.

Speaker 1:
[40:59] There's a lot of honey scams and stuff like that, and nonsense out there. In fact, this is not super related, but I went to, I think it was in Australia, went to a farmer's market, and this guy had all these different buckets of honey, air quotes honey, and I went with Jen, and she was a beekeeper at the time, right? And this guy's like, yeah, I have honey where the bees have only fed on raspberries and honey where the bees have only fed on coconuts or pineapple, and it just tasted like, each one tasted like candy. Jen told me in Chinese, she's like, this guy's cheating people, this is just corn syrup, this flavor.

Speaker 3:
[41:29] What are you going to say? It's just all high fructose, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[41:32] Yeah. First of all, the consistency was off, but it was like too clean, right? Honey's kind of dirty looking, like real honey, it's not clean, especially when it's not filtered. And it's like, you can't just get bright red raspberry flavored honey. You can't tell bees until we get those bee drone robots that tell them where to go. You can't just tell bees, hey, only feed on raspberries. That's not-

Speaker 3:
[41:53] That's impossible.

Speaker 1:
[41:53] You can't do that. No, they're not just going to go get pineapple. That's not possible. They're going to go get a bunch of different stuff from thousands of different flowers, millions all over the place. So it's just totally ridiculous.

Speaker 3:
[42:04] What a jerk.

Speaker 1:
[42:05] Yeah, I know. It's not that hard to get real honey. Just get real honey. But I guess if you're just a scammer, who cares, right? Order some corn syrup and put flavor in there. So we're eating hives thinking it'll make us immortal. What else are we stealing?

Speaker 3:
[42:18] So the propolis, which is the sticky resinous mixture that bees make from tree sap and beeswax. So that's what they use to seal cracks in the hive and they disinfect everything. It has these anti-microbial properties, like honey does too, but the propolis is like hive caulk meets medicine.

Speaker 1:
[42:39] Why are we eating that?

Speaker 3:
[42:40] So we mostly use it in tinctures and health supplements. It's very sticky, so you wouldn't just eat it straight.

Speaker 1:
[42:48] Okay, we're at least we're not eating the bees themselves, although I do feel like I've also seen that on those documentaries about like wild China where some guy goes and gets a hornet the size of your hand from a tree and grills it.

Speaker 3:
[43:00] Yeah, I mean, actually in some cultures, particularly Southeast Asia, people do eat bee larvae and pupae. They're high in protein.

Speaker 1:
[43:08] Yeah, so we're eating their children's savage.

Speaker 3:
[43:10] I know, but they're considered a delicacy and they're often grilled or boiled.

Speaker 1:
[43:15] Okay, so we take their honey, their honeycomb, their pollen, their royal jelly, their medicine and their offspring. Is there anything we don't take from them?

Speaker 3:
[43:24] Nothing comes to mind, especially when we force their migration. So every year between January and February, California experiences one of the largest animal migrations in the world. About 2.7 million beehives, which contains about 54 billion bees, they're trucked into California's Central Valley.

Speaker 1:
[43:47] Okay, so 54 billion bees. Imagine, you don't want to drive those trucks. Imagine, oh my gosh. What do you do? You just pull over to get gas and you have bees everywhere? And are they sealed? I guess they must be.

Speaker 3:
[43:59] I think they're contained in the boxes. Yeah, they're not just flying around, but it's essential agriculture. So California produces about 80% of the world's almonds, and almonds are entirely dependent on bee pollination. So there's about 1.5 million acres of almond trees in the state of California. So we transport about 90% of commercial hives in.

Speaker 1:
[44:24] That can't be sustainable. I know we've done whole shows on almonds and how they're supposedly horrendous for the environment here in California, over water use and droughts, and now we're throwing billions of bees into the mix.

Speaker 3:
[44:35] Yeah, well, it's a little more complicated than just almonds bad. So I would like to fact check those episodes because there's actually a lot of misinformation out there around almonds, and most of it is pushed by the dairy industry running this anti-almond propaganda.

Speaker 1:
[44:52] Huh, okay.

Speaker 3:
[44:53] So almonds use a lot of water, sure, but so does every crop, and dairy uses more water per calorie and way more water per gram of protein. But all agriculture in California is really water intensive.

Speaker 1:
[45:08] I see. So it's not, hey, don't farm almonds here. It's, hey, don't farm anywhere in this area of California. Nobody's arguing that, right? It's just farmers arguing over what should be grown where.

Speaker 3:
[45:18] I mean, you know, when you drive up the five, you see all those signs on farms about the water and everything. You know, it's a big political topic.

Speaker 1:
[45:27] Yeah, the dust bowl. Don't vote for the dust bowl. And then you're like, I gotta roll up my windows because it smells like cow crap for the next 50 miles.

Speaker 3:
[45:34] And that's not what the dairy industry cares about. What they care about is how popular alternative milks have come.

Speaker 1:
[45:42] Oh, that's what it's about. Almond milk. Look at that. That's interesting. OK, so almonds just have bad PR, basically.

Speaker 3:
[45:51] Yeah, right. And the bigger issue for bees isn't almond specifically. It's the monoculture. So a million acres of one crop blooming at the exact same time. That's what forces us to truck in millions of hives all at once. Like, that's the stressor.

Speaker 1:
[46:07] OK, so the problem is not almonds. It's that we've turned nature into one giant Amazon warehouse for whatever product, whatever crop.

Speaker 3:
[46:15] Yeah, kind of. I mean, almond season is the biggest payday of the year for beekeepers because they can charge up to $225 per hive just for almond pollination. Wow. So they bring their bees from all over the country. Mostly they come from Montana, North Dakota, Florida and Texas.

Speaker 1:
[46:36] So bee Coachella, basically.

Speaker 3:
[46:38] Yeah, right. If Coachella involved loading billions of insects onto 18 wheelers and driving them across state lines, then yes.

Speaker 1:
[46:46] OK, so what could go wrong, man? Snakes on a plane? No, it's bees at a truck stop now.

Speaker 3:
[46:52] I would watch that movie.

Speaker 1:
[46:53] Yeah, you would for sure.

Speaker 3:
[46:55] But the bees are trucked long distances, which stresses them out. So the vibrations and the fumes can harm them. And they arrive in January and February when they're at the weakest point in their life cycle. So they're supposed to be dormant, but instead they're being forced to wake up and work. It's crazy, beekeepers have to feed them supplements and stimulants to get them active enough to pollinate. I mean, many beekeepers feed their bees supplements regardless of travel, but it's absolutely necessary for the bees that are being moved around.

Speaker 1:
[47:27] Okay, I'm doubling down on bees at a truck stop now, because if we're giving bees stimulants, cocaine bees sounds like a solid Netflix runner. Wow.

Speaker 3:
[47:36] Oh, maybe it could be a mashup with like the next Sharknado movie or something.

Speaker 1:
[47:39] That's right. Cocaine bear? No, cocaine bees.

Speaker 3:
[47:42] It's mostly sugar water and pollen supplements, but yeah, little bee cocaine. And then there's the issue that almonds bloom all at once. So you have billions of bees in one concentrated area, feeding on one type of food for weeks, which is just nutritionally terrible for them. It's like if you ate nothing but rice for a month.

Speaker 1:
[48:06] Yeah, that sounds like my trip to Laos. But okay, so this happens every year, every single year?

Speaker 3:
[48:11] Every year. And after almond season, many beekeepers truck their bees to pollinate other crops. So blueberries in Maine, cucumbers in North Carolina, cherries in Washington state. You know, these bees spend half the year on trucks.

Speaker 1:
[48:28] Oh man, so it's like hives full of slave labor. And beekeepers are okay with this because they need the money, right?

Speaker 3:
[48:33] Yeah, I mean, they don't have much choice. One beekeeper told researchers he loses about 10% of his bees every time he sends them to California. But the money is too good to refuse. And here's where it gets worse.

Speaker 1:
[48:46] Of course it does.

Speaker 3:
[48:48] The security around these hives is almost non-existent. So they're dropped off in orchards or holding lots that aren't fenced or guarded. And they're visible from the road a lot of times. And a hive renting for $225 is worth a lot to thieves.

Speaker 1:
[49:06] Oh, yeah. You're going to talk about bee heists?

Speaker 3:
[49:09] Absolutely. So in 2024, nearly 2,000 hives were stolen in just California's Central Valley. The year before, it was over 2,300 hives.

Speaker 1:
[49:20] So 2,000 hives. How do you steal 2,000 bee hives? You just take the whole truck, right?

Speaker 3:
[49:25] I mean, with forklifts, trucks and usually under the cover of darkness, right? So sometimes hundreds of hives at once. In January 2024, almost 500 hives were stolen in a single night from a beekeeper from Montana.

Speaker 1:
[49:42] Wow.

Speaker 3:
[49:42] That's worth over $400,000 for bees. Yeah. And that's just the rental value. The replacement cost, it's even higher because you lose the established colonies.

Speaker 1:
[49:54] Right.

Speaker 3:
[49:55] And beekeepers do often invest their whole lives into these bees, you know, their livestock. So there is this emotional, professional toll.

Speaker 1:
[50:05] Yeah. I would imagine. So what do the thieves do with them? Just rent them out? Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[50:10] I mean, they spray paint over the owner's markings and sell them to almond growers who either don't know they're stolen or just don't care enough to ask questions.

Speaker 1:
[50:19] Bees die during sex, starve in retirement, and work themselves to death. So quit your complaining. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Whatnot. If you've been hearing about Whatnot and you've been thinking, what is Whatnot? Why is everybody talking about it? Here's the deal. Live shopping on Whatnot is absolutely blowing up right now. It's popping up on shows. It's got incredible app rankings. And I've seen the seller numbers. People are building real businesses on this thing. If you've ever sold online, you know the usual pain. You put up a listing, maybe somebody finds it, maybe they don't, maybe they buy, maybe they bounce. Whatnot is different because you're live, in real time, showing people what you got, answering questions, building rapport, making sales right there on the spot. That's the magic of it. It's not just a marketplace. It's a relationship-driven platform. And buyers are not casually poking around for 30 seconds. They're in there for more than an hour a day. They're bidding, they buy, they hang out, they come back. So whether you're selling collectibles, electronics, beauty, luxury, fashion, even cookies, there's a real audience there. Sellers on Whatnot move way more product than on traditional marketplaces because they're not just listing items. They are creating trust and connection. The number of sellers making over a million dollars a year on Whatnot has doubled. For a limited time, Whatnot will match your first 150 bucks sold in the first month. Visit whatnot.com/sell to start selling. That's whatnot.com/sell. whatnot.com/sell. This episode is brought to you in part by Lufthansa. When people talk about travel, they usually focus on the destination, the hotel, the restaurants, all the stuff that happens after you land. But the flight is part of the experience too. Just like a great hotel can shape an entire trip, so can a great flight. That's exactly what Lufthansa Allegris is built around. On a long haul route, comfort matters more than people realize. If you're cramped, tired and can't relax, you feel it the second you land. But when a flight is comfortable, you can actually stretch out, rest, work or just enjoy the ride. It changes the whole trip. I was thinking about that on my recent Intercontinental Lufthansa flight. I got so comfortable, I honestly didn't want the flight to end, which is not something you say very often after a long international trip. That's why Lufthansa Allegris stands out. It's built around the idea that people travel differently. Lufthansa Allegris' business class has five seat options. You've got the suite, the privacy seat and the extra long bed, the extra space seat and the classic seat, so you can choose what works for you. And that's what I like most. It feels elevated but still practical. More privacy, more comfort, more thoughtful design for the way people actually travel now. Visit lufthansa.com and search for Allegris to learn more. Lufthansa Allegris, all it takes is a yes. Limited availability on select routes. More routes coming soon. Thank you for listening to and supporting the show. All the deals, discount codes and ways to support the podcast are searchable and clickable on the website at jordanharbinger.com/deals. Now, for the rest of Skeptical Sunday. So there's a black market for bees, at least in California.

Speaker 3:
[52:54] Oh, yeah. And here's the other thing. There's basically one law enforcement officer in California working these cases full time.

Speaker 1:
[53:04] Okay. One guy is going to stop this?

Speaker 3:
[53:06] Yeah. And I love him. His name is Deputy Rowdy Freeman of Butte County.

Speaker 1:
[53:11] His name is Rowdy Freeman.

Speaker 3:
[53:13] Yeah. He rules. And he's completely overwhelmed. California has state task forces for horse theft and cattle rustling, but nothing for bees. And Rowdy Freeman has documented clear evidence that stolen hives are being transported across state lines. But the federal government won't get involved. The FBI won't comment on if they're even investigating.

Speaker 1:
[53:38] Probably not that high of a priority for them, but my god, interstate bee trafficking. And nobody cares other than Rowdy Freeman.

Speaker 3:
[53:46] Yeah, right. Which is why beekeepers are now installing GPS trackers in the hives, setting up hidden cameras. And even then, thieves are a step ahead. In 2018, Freeman found what he calls a chop shop for bees.

Speaker 1:
[54:03] A chop shop. What does that mean?

Speaker 3:
[54:05] Over 2,500 stolen hives worth nearly a million dollars were found. And the thieves were breaking apart hives. They were mixing equipment from different beekeepers and reselling them. It was organized.

Speaker 1:
[54:19] So, Rowdy Freeman is out there alone fighting bee crime. And all of this is happening because we need billions of bees to pollinate the almonds in California for like two weeks a year.

Speaker 3:
[54:29] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[54:29] That is insane. This entire system is crazy.

Speaker 3:
[54:32] And it gets worse because this all leads to colony collapse disorder.

Speaker 1:
[54:36] I feel like I've heard about this.

Speaker 3:
[54:38] Yeah, it's when worker bees, they just mysteriously disappear from a hive, like just vanish. So I don't know if anybody saw that movie Weapons, but all the kids disappear. That's what happened to the bees.

Speaker 1:
[54:51] Right.

Speaker 3:
[54:51] And the queen is still there. There's food. There are some nurse bees taking care of larvae. But all the foragers just abandon ship and never come back. And they don't just leave. They disappear without a trace. There's no bodies. There's no corpses piled up outside the hive. They fly away and never return.

Speaker 1:
[55:12] So it's the bee rapture. This is straight out of some M. Night Shia Laman flick.

Speaker 3:
[55:17] I know, kind of. Nobody knows where they go. They just don't come back to the hive.

Speaker 1:
[55:21] Yeah, that's horrifying. And this is a result from moving the hives all over the place.

Speaker 3:
[55:25] I mean, it's inconclusive, but that is one theory. So it peaked in 2006 and 2007. Some beekeepers lost up to 90 percent of their hives. They just walked out to their epiaries and found them almost empty. Queens sitting there with a handful of bees, surrounded by full stores of honey, but no workers. It was devastating. They did actually call it the Bee Apocalypse. And here's what made it even more mysterious. It was clearly different from pesticide kills.

Speaker 1:
[55:56] So bee unsolved mysteries. So how can you... I hate that I'm doing this. How can you be sure it's not from pesticides?

Speaker 3:
[56:05] Can you hear that?

Speaker 1:
[56:06] What, the unsolved mysteries soundtrack? Yes, I can.

Speaker 3:
[56:09] I'm sorry, I didn't... It just went on for a long time.

Speaker 1:
[56:12] Yeah, I couldn't find the fade out button.

Speaker 3:
[56:15] When pesticides kill a hive though, you find piles of dead bees in the hive, outside the entrance. They're all scattered around, like it's obvious. But with colony collapse disorder, there are no bodies. The bees just weren't there anymore. So scientists scrambled to figure out why. Was it pesticides, parasites, disease, stress, malnutrition? Nobody knows.

Speaker 1:
[56:40] But it's a mystery. How have they not figured this out yet?

Speaker 3:
[56:43] I mean, the leading theory is that it's a combination of factors. So Varroa mites weaken the bees, pesticides, especially neonicotinoids affecting their navigation and cognition, poor nutrition for monoculture diets, diseases, and the stress of being trucked around the country. And the mites alone are a nightmare. You know, they're huge parasites that feed on bee larvae, causing deformities and they spread viruses. They can wipe out entire colonies if left untreated. They transformed beekeeping so much that people talk about pre-Varroa times.

Speaker 1:
[57:23] But pesticides can't be good for them either, right?

Speaker 3:
[57:25] No. And these neonicotinoids are particularly bad. There are these neurotoxins that affect bees' ability to navigate, learn and remember, including learning that waggle dance. So bees exposed to these pesticides, they might fly out to forage and then literally forget how to get home.

Speaker 1:
[57:45] Oof. Okay, so we're giving bees dementia with pesticides. That's sad.

Speaker 3:
[57:49] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[57:49] Is colony collapse disorder, is that still going on? Is that still happening?

Speaker 3:
[57:53] I mean, cases declined after 2015, but bee losses overall have continued at about 30 to 40% every winter. So the mysterious vanishing isn't happening as much, but bees are still dying at alarming rates. Beekeepers have to constantly rebuild their colonies just to stay in business. It's become normalized though, but it's definitely not sustainable.

Speaker 1:
[58:17] So what are we doing about this? How can they fix that?

Speaker 3:
[58:19] There are efforts to breed disease-resistant bees, develop better treatments for varroa mites, restrict certain pesticides, plant more wildflower habitat. But the fundamental problem is that we've built an agricultural system that's completely dependent on mass producing and transporting billions of bees to pollinate monoculture crops. And that system is killing them.

Speaker 1:
[58:44] So we need the bees to pollinate the crops, but pollinating the crops is killing the bees.

Speaker 3:
[58:48] Correct. It's a nightmare.

Speaker 1:
[58:50] Okay. So we talked all about honey bees. You mentioned there's 20,000 other species, or 19,999 other species. What about the other kinds of bees?

Speaker 3:
[58:58] Well, honey bees get all the attention because they're economically valuable. They make the honey. They're managed by humans. They pollinate our crops. But wild bees are in much worse shape. So the American bumblebee has declined 89 percent in the past two decades and completely disappeared from eight states.

Speaker 1:
[59:17] Wow, declined 89 percent.

Speaker 3:
[59:19] Yeah, and it's not just bumblebees. Nearly 35 percent of all invertebrate pollinators worldwide face extinction. And wild bees are often better pollinators than honey bees for certain crops. You know, bumblebees, for example, they're better at pollinating tomatoes, blueberries, cranberries, anything that needs that buzz pollination.

Speaker 1:
[59:41] Right, the twerking.

Speaker 3:
[59:43] Right, the twerking. But we've poured all our resources into honey bees because they're the ones we can truck around and rent out. Meanwhile, wild bee populations are crashing and barely anyone's paying attention.

Speaker 1:
[59:57] I see memes that say, bees die, the world's over. What's going to happen if honey bees disappear?

Speaker 3:
[60:02] Well, wild bees could pick up some of the slack, but not nearly enough. We'd see massive crop failures. Food prices would skyrocket. Some crops would basically disappear. Almonds, for example, would be gone. Apples, cherries, blueberries, they would all massively be reduced. So bee pollination adds about $18 billion annually to US agriculture. Globally, it's in the hundreds of billions. I mean, losing that would be catastrophic.

Speaker 1:
[60:33] So what's the solution? Are scientists working on alternatives? Where do we go from here?

Speaker 3:
[60:37] I mean, they're trying. There's research into self-pollinating almond trees, genetically engineered bees that are more disease resistant, even those robotic bees. But they're nowhere near efficient enough. So a real bee can visit hundreds of flowers in a day. The best those robot bees we have can do is maybe a dozen. And they're expensive, and they break constantly. So the real solutions are pretty straightforward. I mean, stop using harmful pesticides. Plant diverse native flowers to provide better nutrition. Stop plowing up every bit of wild habitat. Reduce our carbon emissions to slow climate change. And stop forcing bees to work in these massive monoculture systems.

Speaker 1:
[61:23] Well, who's the communist now, Jessica? So basically, stop doing all the things that make industrial agriculture profitable slash possible. That is very unlikely to happen. So we're just going to keep doing this until the whole system collapses.

Speaker 3:
[61:36] Yeah, unless we change course. But there are things individuals can do, like planting native flowers and stop using pesticides at your home. And you can support local beekeepers who aren't trucking their bees across the country. Buy organic when possible. Vote for politicians who support environmental protections. You know, create bee-friendly habitats if you can.

Speaker 1:
[61:59] So it's the classic systemic problem that requires systemic solutions. But here are some individual actions that might help marginally a tiny bit maybe. So it's like recycling all over again.

Speaker 3:
[62:09] Yeah, unfortunately.

Speaker 1:
[62:10] Is there any good news about bees that you can share?

Speaker 3:
[62:13] Well, in Australia, when it gets too hot, nectar and some flowers ferments into alcohol, which is cool.

Speaker 1:
[62:20] That is cool.

Speaker 3:
[62:21] And bees drink it, they get drunk, and they stumble around. And then there are bouncer bees at the hive entrance who won't let the drunk bees back in until they sober up.

Speaker 1:
[62:33] Bees have bouncers? Why? Why can't you go home drunk? I thought this was a free country, man!

Speaker 3:
[62:38] No, remember, this is communism. They're very strict about it. No drunk bees allowed in the hive. And bees are extremely clean. So they leave the hive specifically to poop on these cleansing flights because they refuse to mess up their home. I mean, they'll hold it in for months during winter rather than poop inside.

Speaker 1:
[62:59] Well, I could never be a bee, how's that? They have a lot more self-control than I do. I've been known to go home from the mall just to come back and relax on the old home throne. Sorry, Jen. TMI, everyone. All right. Please say something, Jessica. Anything.

Speaker 3:
[63:15] Well, keep going, Jordan. Something to think about when you're eating honey is that a single worker bee only produces about one-twelfth of a teaspoon of honey in her entire lifetime. So every time you pour honey on your toast, you're consuming the life's work of hundreds of bees.

Speaker 1:
[63:35] Wow. Well, I'm fine with it. I mean, we're monsters, but I'm fine with it.

Speaker 3:
[63:40] I mean, it's delicious. But we need to realize just how fascinating bees are. Honeycombs are hexagons because it's mathematically the most efficient shape to hold the most honey while using the least amount of wax. A Roman scholar proposed this in 36 BCE, but it wasn't mathematically proven until 1999.

Speaker 1:
[64:02] So bees were doing advanced geometry for millions of years before humans could even prove why it worked. That's crazy. Meanwhile, I can barely do my taxes. That's really incredible that they sort of evolved to figure this out.

Speaker 3:
[64:12] They're so cool. Another wild thing is that honey never goes bad. So archaeologists found 3000-year-old honey in Egyptian tombs. One of them was in King Tut's tomb, and it was still good. So presumably, if we wanted to, we could eat 3000-year-old King Tut honey. Wow. Archaeologists apparently tasted it. They said it tasted just like honey.

Speaker 1:
[64:36] There you go.

Speaker 3:
[64:37] So if your honey has an expiration date, there's a lot of stuff that's not honey in there.

Speaker 1:
[64:42] The bees will inherit the earth, but at least they'll have honey.

Speaker 3:
[64:45] Yeah, definitely. Bee venom contains something called mellodon, which scientists think might help prevent HIV and treat rheumatoid arthritis. Wow. It's early research, but mellodon can destroy the protective envelope around HIV, potentially preventing infection.

Speaker 1:
[65:07] What? We need to get the funding for this research. I do remember people getting bee stings or voluntarily trying to get bee stings on knees and elbows for pain relief. Is that the same thing?

Speaker 3:
[65:15] Yeah. It's getting intentionally stung is called apotherapy. And the idea is that the bee venom's anti-inflammatory properties might reduce arthritis pain. So the science is promising, but the whole just sting yourself thing, that's not exactly FDA approved.

Speaker 1:
[65:33] Yeah. It doesn't feel like great health care, I suppose, but bees do seem to have a lot of power we can unlock. That's amazing.

Speaker 3:
[65:40] I mean, yeah, they're overachievers for sure. And we don't think of them this way, but bees, they can and do sleep. So forager bees need rest. And when they do, their antenna droop, their body temperature drops, and they become unresponsive. Photos of it are actually kind of adorable. They look dead, but they're just napping. And if you need to wake them up, you can use the shaking signal, which is basically just vibrating near them.

Speaker 1:
[66:09] That's really funny. So bees have a snooze button. That's why we can steal from them so easily. They're just sleeping on the job. How long have humans been stealing parts of the hive? Do we know how long humans have been interacting with bees besides getting stung?

Speaker 3:
[66:19] People have been gathering honey from wild bees for eight to 10,000 years at least, based on cave paintings. And beekeeping, like actively managing colonies, has been around for at least 4,000 years. We have Egyptian tomb paintings showing people pouring honey into jars and removing it from hives.

Speaker 1:
[66:40] So the Egyptians were also beekeepers.

Speaker 3:
[66:42] Very advanced beekeepers. They had pottery hives arranged in orderly rows, which is amazing. Beekeeping was considered a highly skilled profession. Now it's a dying profession, unfortunately. Between the losses, the costs, the theft, the stress, a lot of beekeepers are getting out of the business. Although backyard beekeeping, I guess what you and Jen were doing, for personal use, that does seem to be growing.

Speaker 1:
[67:09] Yeah, a lost craft, and it's definitely kind of one of those hipster things. We went to some beekeeping classes and it was all like, guys who make their own kombucha and bread and infuse their own alcohol. And I was the only guy that didn't have a mustache that had wax in it. But like I said, we stopped beekeeping when we had kids because no time and toddler. Well, toddlers plus beehives on a 10,000 square foot lot is a bit tight. And Jen was getting stung here and there, even though she decided she didn't need the bee suit anymore. Guess what? Still needed the bee suit. So I was like, you know, can we get rid of these things?

Speaker 3:
[67:42] The confidence.

Speaker 1:
[67:43] I know. Well, a lot of beekeepers, they're kind of like, nah, I'm just going to go do this with no bee suit. And they either don't get stung or they ignore it. I don't really get it. I didn't get that far. I kept my bee suit.

Speaker 3:
[67:54] Remember, they do recognize you. So if they like you, I guess it's possible.

Speaker 1:
[67:58] Yeah. I don't know if they like the guy who's in there scraping wax off the frame and stuff. But who knows? Yeah, maybe.

Speaker 3:
[68:04] I mean, it is a high stakes combo for kids. Don't touch the stove is hard enough. Don't antagonize 40,000 stinging insects out back. That would be like next level parenting. But people have been doing it forever. In ancient Greece, beekeeping was called an agricultural art and was discussed extensively by Aristotle. In China, there are ancient texts describing bee management. It's considered the second oldest profession.

Speaker 1:
[68:33] The second oldest after?

Speaker 3:
[68:35] Use your imagination.

Speaker 1:
[68:36] Okay. So humans have been keeping bees as long as, almost as long as humans have been having sex for money.

Speaker 3:
[68:42] Yeah, basically.

Speaker 1:
[68:43] Okay. Wow. Well, I'm realizing that bees are running a more sophisticated operation than most governments. They're smarter than I am. We've built an entire agricultural system that is simultaneously dependent on them while also killing them. And we've been robbing them for 10,000 years and we're potentially also losing them entirely.

Speaker 3:
[69:00] Yeah, it's a lot. And remember that it's not just about honeybees, it's about all pollinators. So support policies that protect wild habitats and restrict harmful pesticides. A great way to help bees just in your community is not buying plants at a big box store because that limits the foreign pesticides and things you would introduce. So individual actions do matter, but we also need big policy changes. Without them, we're looking at a future with a lot less food, much higher prices, and ecosystems that are fundamentally broken.

Speaker 1:
[69:37] Great, no pressure. Well, thank you for teaching us that bees quack, get wasted, have bouncers, twerk flowers, might cure HIV, and are better at math than most of us. This has been enlightening and terrifying in equal measure.

Speaker 3:
[69:50] Yeah, and remember, don't make enemies with bees. They know what you look like.

Speaker 1:
[69:54] Too late, way too late, but I'll try to make amends by planting some flowers. Thanks, Jess. This episode is, I hate myself, sure to create a lot of buzz. And thank you all for listening. Topic suggestions for future episodes of Skeptical Sunday, directly to me, Jordan at jordanharbinger.com. Advertisers, deals, discounts, ways to support the show at jordanharbinger.com/deals. I'm at jordanharbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. You can find Jessica on her sub-stacks, Between the Lines and Where Shadows Linger, and we'll link to those in the show notes. My work is also on Instagram, at never met jessicas, that's plural. This show is created in association with Podcast One. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Tata Sidlowskas, Robert Fogarty, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Our advice and opinions are our own. Yeah, I'm a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer. Also, we of course try to get these as right as we can. Not everything is gospel, even if it's fact-checked. So consult a qualified professional before applying anything you hear on the show, especially if it's about your health and well-being. Remember, we rise by lifting others, share the show with those you love, and if you found the episode useful, please share it with somebody else who could use a good dose of the skepticism and knowledge that we doled out today. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show, so you can live what you learn, and we'll see you next time. You're about to hear a preview that may completely reframe how you think about nuclear power. What if the energy source we've been taught to fear is actually one of the safest and cleanest tools we have?

Speaker 4:
[71:19] We're very familiar with electricity. You get home, you turn on the lights, you charge your phone, charge your computer, do all the things that we do without thinking twice about electricity, right? But electricity is a secondary source of energy. The primary sources of energy that we use are coal, oil, methane gas, solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, and nuclear. Nuclear is actually the largest source of clean energy in the United States. It's the second largest source of clean energy in the world. What I mean by that is that whenever we make electricity with nuclear, we're not releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere or even particulate matter. There are no emissions that happen whenever you're creating electricity with nuclear. It's just to say, everything that's related to nuclear accidents in Chernobyl is completely overblown. Because we will tend to think generally like everybody died and it became this wasteland and nobody can go in. It's interesting that we have all these weird fears about nuclear when the facts and the reality just points to it being actually extremely safe. The biggest energy disaster in history was actually a hydropower dam collapse. So entire villages were swept away. It's estimated that 200,000 people died. He would need like at least 200 Chernobles happening every single year for nuclear to be as dangerous as fossil fuels. What about the four million premature deaths from burning fossil fuels? Why are people so afraid of nuclear?

Speaker 1:
[72:48] Hear the science behind the stigma with Isabel Bumke on episode 1277 of The Jordan Harbinger Show.