 to meet Sidney. She came and approached, you approached us about the, yeah, the B-box. Yeah. And so we have a B-box out there in the garden, which you guys, you can actually see it on the other side of the picnic table. Not with light bees in hand. Not with light bees. Yeah, I should mention it. And so she and our director Rachel Muse, oh I should always introduce myself, I always forget, Judy Byron, Judy, I know who I am. Judy with an eye. Sorry. And I'm the adult program coordinator. I manage adults, no. Programs at the library. And so anyway, Sidney and Rachel were collaborating. We thought, hey, do having a bee program would be wonderful. So this is the first, maybe, we might do another one in the spring. We'll see. And Sidney is a student at UVM. She is in the ecological, agricultural, agriculture and animal science. I have to speak slowly. And she, her experience involves agricultural operations, practices that impact wild populations and natural ecosystems. She's also the head lab and field technician for the Vermont bee labs, diagnostic services and various research projects. And I know you're going to talk about some of those. We'll have time for Q&A at the end, but she focuses on honey bee pests and diseases and we'll talk about some of that tonight. So without further ado, I want to turn it over to you. Thank you so much, Judy. I'm thrilled to be here tonight. Thank you guys so much for coming out. So I'm going to share with you a little bit about the amazing lives of honey bees and beekeeping industry, about the drivers of global pollinator decline as well as what we do in the Vermont bee lab to support the local beekeeping community here in Vermont. So yes, as Judy mentioned, my name is Sidney Miller. I am speaking on behalf of the research professor at the Vermont bee lab, Dr. Samantha Alger. So she's my boss, but I've been the lead technician there since 2021 and managed the day-to-day operations at the lab in our field work as well. Okay, so here we are. Here's me doing some field work with the bees. So the Vermont bee lab is located on UVM campus. We're dedicated to the protection of both wild and managed pollinators, but we focus mostly on pest diseases related to honey bees. So we conduct research, we engage in public outreach events, and we provide educational opportunities as well. It's in the Jeffords building. Yeah, I have a picture later. But first I'll kind of go through like the lives, just give you some context about honey bees and the beekeeping industry and then kind of go into you know the threats of honey bees and then about what we do in the lab. So I'd like to emphasize that while I will be mainly talking about honey bees, there are thousands of other bee species globally that many people don't even recognize, but which serve very important ecological roles in our environment. So a lot of the threats to honey bees also impact these creatures as well, and there have been over 300 species identified just in Vermont. So yes, but I will be focusing mainly on the honey bee, just on the next slide. I know, it's been like you. Okay, okay, so this is the honey bee that we all know and love. You know it's important to emphasize that this is not a native species to the United States. It was imported from Europe around the time of colonization as a livestock animal, and most people don't realize that bees really are a livestock animal, but they do come in direct contact with our plant animal communities in the environment, and they are today's most important crop pollinator. Yes, so I'd like to define just a couple terms that I'll be using frequently throughout the presentation, and that sometimes get mixed up in our day-to-day language. So a colony isn't the super organism of the honey bee, containing all of the honey bees that are all genetically related. The hive is the structure that the colony resides in, and an apiary is a collection of honey bee colonies in their hives. It's also important to note that beekeeping is not a modern practice. Humans have had a relationship with honey bees since the dawn of civilization, and this is just an example of a very ancient cave painting depicting someone robbing feral honey bees for their honey, which was really the main source of sugar in preserved food product, and really was a game changer for humans. So we've been doing this a long time, and while back then they were mostly bee hunting, we have now figured out a way to really build a relationship with these animals and manage them ourselves. So it was around the 1850s when Reverend Langstroth discovered and designed the modern bee hive, which is termed the Langstroth hive appropriately. So this enables the beekeeper to easily access and manipulate the colony without harming the bees or their brood nest. So it's made up of several components. I'll go through how it works. So at the bottom right here is where the bees will enter their hive. Each box on top of the entrance is called a super, and the first super is typically deeper, and that's where the bees will be raising their offspring. Each super above that will typically be shallower, and that's where they will store nectar and convert it into honey for their winter food stores. What's interesting about the Langstroth hive is that it's specifically designed for the honey bee's preference in what's called bee space, and bee space has been found to be exactly three-eighths of an inch, and it's what honey bees build their comb. Even in, this is an example of a feral honey bee colony, and they build all of their corridors at this exact width. So between each frame in a Langstroth hive will be exactly three-eighths of an inch to keep the bees happy. So this has been a game-changer for the beekeeping industry, and is what most modern beekeepers are using today. I know it's gorgeous. It's really good, and every time, I mean, it's incredible. Every time you go into a hive it's just, it's like putting together a puzzle of like what the bees are thinking. It's just really beautiful, yeah. So honey bees go through what's called metamorphosis, similar to many butterflies and other insects. This is composed of four distinct life stages. So the queen bee will lay an egg, which will develop into a larva, which is the second stage of life. Then it will develop into a pupa, where a worker bee will cap the pupa over with wax, and while it pupates, and then it emerges as a young adult bee. Yes, yes, and actually, yeah, I'll go into them more later. Yeah, so each member of the honey bee colony actually has a different developmental cycle. It takes a certain amount of days, and different amounts of days for different members of the colony to develop. So they're composed of three different members, although there are, you know, upwards of 15,000 bees in a colony, although there's only one queen bee per colony. The drones are the male bees, and their sole responsibility is to mate with queens. So once they, and then they die. So once a year, the drones will flee the nest. They get kicked out, yeah, and they congregate in what's called mating flights, somewhere in the woods. And queens from all over, from different colonies, will congregate with the males, and one queen will mate with up to 10 or 10 to 14 drones, which will serve as the only sperm that she uses to lay thousands of eggs a day over the course of her lifetime, which can be, you know, two to three years. So there's only one queen per hive, and the queen's sole responsibility is to produce all of the offspring. So every bee in a colony is all genetically related to the queen. The worker bees are the female bees, and while they are not able to lay eggs, because they're not fully reproductively mature, they are responsible for essentially every other task in the hive, such as cleaning, building honeycomb, foraging for resources, and feeding the developing brood. So what's interesting about a worker bee is that during her adult phase, which only lasts a month, she actually has prescribed tasks at different ages of her adult life. So when she first emerges as a young adult, she will be responsible for feeding the younger brood. She will then her wax glands, which are located underneath her abdomen, will fully mature at around 10 days, and she will then be able to start producing wax and manipulating it with her mandibles to create that quintessential honeybee hexagonal comb arrangement that they build their nest with, and they not only raise brood in those cells, but also store honey in those cells and pollen. So then later in life, she will be responsible for guarding the entrance of her hive against intruders. And then for about the last 10 days of her life, she will take her first flight out of the hive and begin foraging. So the bees that you see flying around are at the end of their life. Yeah. And because it's a dangerous job out there to go forage for food resources, so they don't want to waste the strong young adults. Yeah. Send them off or they do their duties. So what are the beads foraging for? They don't have any ideas. You just call them out, pollen. Yes, I heard pollen. Anything else? Nectar? Yes. Anything else? Go to the next side. That is such a great picture. Yes, so many good bee pictures. So they're foraging for not only nectar and pollen, but also propolis and water. But I will kind of go through all of these things. So nectar is a reward that flowers produce to attract pollinators in order to pollinate them. Unbeknownst to the bee, the flower ends up covering the bee with pollen, which it then transfers to the next flower. But the bee is really looking for the nectar at the center of the flower. And that is what she brings back to the hive to convert into honey, which will serve as their winter food stores. She will also collect pollen. So pollen is the plant's male reproductive cell. It's also packed with nutrients. So they'll actually convert it into this fermented paste called bee bread and feed it to the younger brood, since it has proteins and vitamins and fats super nutritious. And they will also collect propolis, which naturally is excreted from plants from the bark as like plant sap or resin. And this they use for its waterproof capabilities. So bees will actually line the inside the interior of their hive with a thin layer of propolis to keep the water out. And it's also been proven to have antimicrobial properties, which may serve a role in protecting the colony against bacterial or fungal infestations. And lastly, just like us, bees need water to consume, but also to cool their hive during the hot summer days. So why keep bees in the first place? Like what do they provide to humans? Any ideas? Honey. Yes. Anything else? They pollinate. Yes. Absolutely. Any other ideas? All right. Well, we can go to the next slide. So yes, honey, everybody knows that that bees that honey bees produce honey. We can go to the next slide. But how exactly is honey made? And many people don't know exactly how it's made. So honey is made from nectar. The younger the bees will bring the nectar back and they actually, as they collect it, store it in what's called their honey stomach. And they regurgitate it into a honey cell in the top supers. And they will, this time of year, clover flowers in the main source of nectar. So once it's been regurgitated into this cell, she'll go through two separate processes to basically evaporate the water out and increase the sugar content in the nectar, which preserves it. So the active ripening process is where she will blow bubbles into the nectar to increase evaporation, which also incorporates enzymes from her own body, which start to ferment the sugars in the nectar. And then she'll also fan her wings over the nectar, which also increases evaporation. So once it's considered ripe, the worker bee will cap it over, the honey cell over with wax, and then it is fully preserved. And summer honey that they've, you know, converted nectar to honey, it'll last them all the way through winter. And it'll last this year. It's like honey is a very preserved product in the last very long time. It's quite incredible. So this is the way that beekeepers extract honey. So this is what a frame might look like, a honey frame that has been completely capped over by the worker bees. So this is all these cells are containing honey. This is what it looks like once the beekeeper has uncapped those in order to extract the honey from the cells. The honey frames are then placed in what's called an extractor, and this spins and through centrifugal force expels the honey from the cells, which drains the bottom and is strained and then packaged for sale. And that's where you're getting your honey in the stores. So a single colony can produce up to 200 pounds of honey in a year and typically only consume around 40 to 50 pounds throughout the winter. So there's actually a lot of honey left over so that the beekeeper can extract it without harming the bees or stealing their energy reserves. Other products that bees provide to us, beeswax, which I mentioned the bees literally make, which like I had no idea that it was it's incredible. And obviously we use it you know for its waterproof abilities as an oil and for burning. And then bee pollen as well it's just as nutritious to us as it is to developing brood and it's considered a power food you can buy in most supermarkets. Highly suggest you try it. It tastes like chalky floral deliciousness and it's super nutritious. So it's packed with protein, protein and like some vitamins I think I'm not 100% sure. You can put it in smoothies you can put it like on yogurt. Yeah, you can just incorporate it into like yeah. Or you can just yeah or you can just eat it put it on ice cream. Really anything. Yeah. And then of course honey bees their main purpose for humans raising them is for their pollination services contributing 17 billion dollars to the US agricultural system annually. So they're today's most important crop pollinator. And maybe you've seen an image like this. This is what our grocery store looks like with the help of honey bees and then what it might look like without honey bees and you can see that around 75% of the fruits and vegetables that we love would be excluded without the role that honey bees play in pollination. So much of the beekeeping industry is considered migratory. So this means that beekeepers literally truck thousands of colonies across the United States on different routes you know hitting different farms at different times that are growing different crops you know at different times of year for their pollination services. So farmers will hire beekeepers to pollinate their crops and this is a major source of revenue for beekeepers. You would think honey would be but it's not. So honey is a very small part of the revenue that beekeepers make and about half of the commercial bee colonies that are in the US as of now are used in migratory operations and that's we have 2.6 million colonies in the United States. So it's I mean it's a huge industry and most people don't even know you know that that's that's why their vegetables are on the shelf is literally because of bees. They'll literally they'll move them at night so that the bees like are all home. They'll literally close the entrance to the hives load them on a truck and ship them all over it and then they'll and import them you know farmers hire to import their bees and then two weeks later they move on to the next farm after the bloom is over. Yeah yeah I'm gonna I'm gonna talk about it okay so this is what an almond plantation might look like this is kind of like almonds are like a major source of pollination completely reliant on honey bees so while this looks beautiful and abundant while it's in bloom this only lasts for two weeks out of the year in March and you can imagine this being an incredibly harsh environment for any other insect because once all these trees are finished blooming this is essentially a food desert which excludes all wild pollinators that could be assisting in pollination services from helping because the rest of the year they would be starved so you know through intensive agricultural operations we've become solely reliant on this managed livestock animal of the honey bee to provide these pollination services in addition to having like a limited floral resource they're also coming in contact with pesticides that are sprayed on the almonds I'm using almonds as an example but this applies to you know many different operations and there also bees from all over the country are mingling and so transmitting viruses from one another across flowers similar to the way we transmit viruses through doorknobs it works the same way and so you know this is really detrimental to the bees well-being and health overall so now I get into the honey bee pandemic and we've all heard the slogan save the bees and it's true that the honey bees are having a really hard time and it's not because of one issue it's they're succumbing to a combination of stressors so this is just an image of kind of the hotspots in Vermont for colony loss in Vermont alone we're losing upwards of 40% of our colonies every year of from beekeepers of all operation types not just commercial beekeepers and in last year's bee informed partnership survey which surveys about 7% of the entire honey bee population in the country they reported 45.5% colony loss which has been the highest in history so we're continuing on a trajectory of population decline and so something that really needs attention drawn to it yeah and yep they're mostly dying after winter and you know if they have pesticides in you know the nectar that they're collecting that could be a reason why they die they die because of pest diseases that kind of grow exponentially like over the winter and also because of climate but really it's just the bees are stressed and so it's hard for them to survive over winter these are actually the only one of the only insects that stay alive all winter long most insects go through some sort of hibernation period during the winter but bees like literally vibrate cluster around their queen and vibrate to stay warm all winter so they have to be constantly consuming honey throughout the winter so because of this yeah it's hard for them to survive you know I don't have an answer for that honestly you know maybe it's due to like more inexperienced beekeepers maybe there's like more like greater concentration of commercial beekeepers in those areas there definitely are yeah I don't know why Orleans County is really bad I really don't know so like I said bees are coming to a variety of stresses there's many things that are threatening them which which ultimately leads to colony loss and this doesn't solely apply to or concern honey bees but rather you know all species of pollinator that you know could be assisting in our pollination services and for other ecological roles as well so limited floral resources so as more natural woodland and meadow lands are converted into intensive agricultural operations the fewer floral resources and less diversity the bees have access for their food they're also coming in contact with a whole slew of pesticides Vermont is actually in the process of passing the H626 bill which is I believe it's in the Senate as of now and I don't know if it's gonna get passed or not but it's an effort to ban the sale of neonicotinoid pesticides in the state near and maybe you've heard of neonicotinoid pesticides they've been pretty like publicized in the media lately for their harmful effect to bees in particular the problem with neonicotinoids is that they're a systemic pesticide so a seed for example let's say corn a seed is treated with the pesticide before the pest outbreak is even present so they're treated prophylactically once the seed is planted and the plant is sprouted the pesticide will be present in all tissues of the plant and be expressed so not only is it expressed in the foliage or the fruit which the pest may be consuming but it will also be present in the nectar and pollen which the bees are consuming which is very problematic they've also you know are coming in contact with a whole variety of pests and diseases, parasites, pathogens which the Vermont bee lab mainly focuses on so I'll go more into and the pest and disease I'll be mentioning are specific to honeybees this is not too wild pollinators. Okay so maybe you've heard of Varroa mites they have become the most devastating pests in modern beekeeping and most beekeepers are reporting that their leading cause of colony loss is Varroa mites. So this is what Varroa mites look like their full name is Varroa destructure which is quite appropriate they are an ectoparasite which means that they attach themselves to the outside of the bee and consume their internal hemolymph which is essentially their blood and their fat bodies throughout their lifetime while also transmitting lethal viruses similar to the way that ticks transmit Lyme's disease to us although the size difference between a tick and us is quite different than a Varroa mites versus a bee I mean they're a massive in comparison to their host. So it not only suppresses the bees immune system but weakens the bee overall and also inflicts them during development this is an example of deformed wing virus which is transmitted by Varroa mites and the bees will young adult bees will literally emerge looking like that with shriveled up wings unable to participate you know in the functioning of the colony as a whole so it weakens the colony and and leads to colony death. So these are not a native pest nor are honey bees native but they were imported from eastern Asia and first discovered in US honey bee colonies in the 1980s and since then they have caused devastating effects to the industry beekeepers kind of have coined the phrase they're no longer beekeepers but bee replacers. So yeah as of now they are found in every single honey bee colony in the United States and globally maybe except a few in Australia but they will be there soon they are quite a pervasive pest. Yes there is a way but mainly beekeepers have been completely rely on chemical controls and the problem with chemical controls is that resistance ends up developing and there's already been massive amounts of resistance already like being shown in honey bee colonies with Varroa mites so that's part of what the Vermont bee lab does is try to find alternative ways to combat this pest which is kind of the priority for beekeepers as of now and destroying the industry. So the reason why Varroa mites are such such a successful pest is because their life cycle follows that of the honey bee so queen bee will lay her egg this is a worker bee feeding the larva she may have a Varroa mites already on her if a female might a female might will enter a developing larva cell and once the cell is capped over for the larva to begin to pupate she will then lay her offspring in the cell. Her offspring will then attach themselves to the pupa and begin to feed or they will once the adult bee has emerged either with Varroa mites already attached to her or there will be Varroa mites left over that will be free crawling to climb on to another adult bee and you can imagine this happening over thousands of cells in a colony I mean the population just goes exponentially over the course of the bee season. So now a little bit about the Vermont bee lab and what we do to help mitigate these numerous threats to honey bees at least in the Vermont area so we're funded through the Vermont Agency of Agriculture and also in coordination with the Vermont Beekeepers Association. So we're located in the Jeffords building this is just an image of our lab and our main service that we provide to all Vermont beekeepers free of charge for any beekeeper looking to evaluate the health of their colonies is diagnostic work so beekeepers who have either had a dead-out colony you know in the spring they find their colonies have died or may suspect that their colony is being inflicted by a certain disease will send us a sample of their bees which we will then analyze and then report back with a diagnosis which can inform their treatment regimens and their future management practices. It's been around for three years now this is our third season working with yeah and last year so last year was our second season providing diagnostic services and we saw a 50% increase in beekeeper participation which we're trying to continue that you know trajectory this this season we analyzed over a hundred samples last year which represented 34 apiaries across 27 towns so we're really getting a breadth of data which is showing us the distribution of pests and diseases in Vermont and helping us to gauge where best to to focus our efforts and yes so in addition so beekeepers can either ship us their samples or they can drop them off at one of our local drop boxes we've actually increased expanded the number of drop boxes to include almost all counties in the state so we've recently installed one here at the Waterbury Library which is one of the reasons I'm speaking today which is so great and this is for maximum convenience for the beekeeper to deliver samples to our lab so they can drop them off their samples off there and the samples will be delivered to the lab yep and then I'll just describe a few of our other research ongoing research projects that we've been conducting over the past few years one of our most recent studies has been in partnership with Mike Palmer who is a very well-known commercial beekeeper in northern Vermont and he's had a bee breeding program for the past like 50 years but we're partnering with him to leverage our labs diagnostic services in order to monitor his colonies for pests and diseases and to better inform his bee breeding program so we're essentially selecting for disease resistance and also climate adaptability localized to the northeast many bees that are in Vermont currently are actually imported from more southern states so obviously this genetic stock isn't you know our environment here wet cold is just not conducive to those bees so we're really trying to bolster the the genetic stock that's here in Vermont oh no you can keep it thank you so we're also doing I go through all of them so we're actually piloting a program this year where we're testing for hygienic behavior and we're working with three commercial bee breeders in Vermont now hygienic behavior is a treat that some genetic bee stock exhibits and basically the worker bees are able to detect if through odors if a brood is compromised in any way if there's a varroa mite in there if it's diseased and they will physically remove the brood from the hive kind of creating disease resistance and cleanliness overall so this trade obviously desirable and so we've been testing the these beekeepers bees for this trade to also help their breeding program and to kind of target the source of the genetic bee stock that's being disseminated across the state we've also been a proxy for the National Honey Bee Survey here in Vermont this is a nationwide program facilitated by the USDA but we we manage it here in Vermont and similar to our diagnostic services this is testing for diseases and pests present in Vermont apiaries as well as pesticide residues found in the nectar or pollen so this allows us to see a distribution not only in Vermont but on a much broader scale across the country and then lastly we started a honeybee forage project recently these past two seasons where we've been collecting samples from both nectar and pollen and profiling them to genetically identify which plants the bees are collecting at which times of year this is a super exciting project because this hasn't been done since like the 1980s and this really shows like what the bees are preferring at different times of year you know for the beekeepers it's like which plants are most economically important and it's also showing us how exactly the bees are interacting with our native environment so what can you do to support the honey bees and many people think that if you want to save the bees you should get bees and manage bees and while beekeeping is an incredibly rewarding experience and I highly suggest that you do get bees it's crucial to take the proper steps to educate yourself on the complexities and yet to avoid causing more harm than good to the wild populations of bees so what you can do for sure without you know purchasing bees is to you know plant tons of flowering plants in your garden or yard you know avoid using pesticides to get rid of you know unwanted weeds the weeds bees actually love weeds so you know don't mow them and kind of redefine what a beautiful manicured yard looks like in support of bees you can also do a fun project like Bill the Wild Bee hotel with various size hollow reeds which native bees love to nest in yeah and support your local beekeeper you know buy local honey come in contact with them you know shadow them for a day many beekeepers are like so excited to share their love of bees and their experience and inform them of our labs services and you know if you are interested in getting bees one day I highly suggest it they're amazing creatures and there's you know a proper way to beekeep so that you're not spreading pests and diseases so we do offer introductory courses every year which both UVM and non-UVM students can participate in so they're they occur in the spring and the summer so they you know walk you through the basics of beekeeping and the industry and you know management practices so it would be a really great way to like introduce yourself to keeping bees that's a great photo on the yes actually we're like grafting queens and now we're like rearing queens with that so the bees are the bees are making tons of queen cells with that which we can then make new lots of new colonies so once you've taken a class you know maybe you've shattered the beekeeper you feel confident that you're ready to get bees we've actually just published a catalog on our website that has every bee supplier in the state has tons of information about each one of them such as characteristics that they're selecting for you know and when the best timing is to order place your order for bees so definitely check that out if you're ever interested in purchasing your bees and you can also get involved our lab by sending us bee samples or telling your beekeeping friends to send us their samples visit our website we always are hosting events and we have tons of online resources for you to browse we also are fairly active on social media so follow us if you'd like and we try to stay up to date with our field activities throughout the season and as always you can donate to our lab on our website that's all I have for you I think the Waterbury library for having me tonight for questions I'm happy to try to answer them we just put up a bee house yes a bee hotel very small be help be that's great now when I put it up I read the instructions and it said like put it in a place where they would get the morning sun so they warm up and and we have very few places where the Sun hits our house where we can also watch the bees yeah so I put it up just a few days ago I haven't no activity yet yeah I before I put it up I I found that a bee had taken residence in a in a receptacle that I had for a for a grounded plug and they taken this little mason bee had capped over the the grounded section of the plug the little round section of the plug so I was anticipating we start to see that kind of bee which I guess is also a important pollinator honeybee per se and I guess I was wondering it's close to where we enter the house is is that a problem for bees if we have it in an area where there's a little traffic foot traffic I mean if they've chosen to put their nests there then obviously they don't mind mason bees in particular are super docile they are like so unlikely to sting so if you're comfortable with having them there and we're comfortable I had to convince my daughter and if they're comfortable then are you talking about the bee hotel you're talking about where they well I guess you'll just have to experiment with a good place of their seat if you get any action I mean they may not you know like the constant traffic but right you could definitely try it but I don't see any reason why that would be you know harmful to the bee in any way the other question I had was about maintenance what do I do with that in the winter you can I mean if you want to put inside though usually I don't think they live like over winter so you can bring it inside if that's you know if the bees want to use it they'll clean it out themselves and use it so honestly you can just leave it outside you know they're self-sufficient they find you know little nooks and crannies to nest in so honestly you can just leave it outside and and the more permanent it is I bet you know the more willing they would be to know because the honey honey bees are generally since their mason bees have a lot smaller colonies than honey bees honey bees are typically if they're feral honey bee colonies which there are like in our woods and stuff they'll typically look for like an old tree trunk or you know hole and a rock or something something like much bigger than in a little read they also build their nest differently like a lot of native bees will build their cells like if this is the read they'll build their cells like this instead of the honey bees are building a flat surface with lots of cells in it so they'll build like a tunnel instead so it just depends on the bee species but you could also like read up on you know on native bee species around here and yeah just then you'd know what to best provide for them yeah but that's awesome okay I'm like not great about but I can also get back to you if I don't know the answer my Samantha Alger has done lots of research with honey bees or with bumblebees this maybe last month there was a bumblebee on my back porch that is blasted and you know hitting the glass and I tried to coax him to go outside in the evening I saw four bumblebees the next day they were sleeping on the roll up shade they must really like your porch yeah that is very interesting behavior hotel I thought they looked like they were sleeping and do be sleep at night and then when it warms up yeah they wake up yeah which they definitely do yeah that's interesting I have not heard about I've actually recently a lot of people have been emailing the lab like with just range bee behavior and you know I'm wondering like if it has something to do with you know neurological like problems with pesticide exposure or something to that nature it also there are a lot of bees that look like bumblebees and aren't assailants bumblebees are pretty solitary they will a queen bumblebee will build like a very small nest but then she'll overwinter by herself so I'm not sure why 12 bumblebees would be together but I can I'm happy to ask Samantha yeah if you want to like give me your email back she's yeah she's the bee lady at UVM yeah she knows everything these yes Lila oh my gosh the bees go crazy for Lila yeah it's actually been this year has been a super nectar flow like more than many years past and kind of like nectar flow kind of oscillates like different different years so it's interesting this year has been crazy for the beekeepers these are bringing in so much nectar in weight so I mean the the beekeepers will will weigh the supers that the nectar is stored in and so they also have to beekeepers have to add on supers throughout the course of the season especially if they're only extracting honey once a year so because if bees if honey bees feel like they're running out of room in their colony they'll the the it's called swarming the old queen will literally leave with half of the worker bees and then the worker bees that are left over will produce their new queen and this is like natural reproduction of honey bee colonies but obviously for the beekeeper you don't want half your bees like leaving or your like beloved queen so so they are constantly like putting on space you know on it on the hive so they know when there's a huge nectar flow because they're like oh my gosh there's no more space like so soon sure so my vegetable garden you know if I have the bud so last year I went and I got one of the organic sprays and I read because I didn't want to do anything before I read it said to that you shouldn't spray it like on the flowers yeah it would be harmful to bees is it okay to use that on like the leaves yes like the best thing to do especially like just organic pesticides can be almost just as toxic like as chemical pesticides even though they're registered as organic but the best thing to do if you do need to spray pesticides which pesticides are an incredibly useful tool and like need to be used sometimes definitely spray it on the foliage and try to spray it like at night when the bees aren't going to be out foraging and then it'll have some time to kind you know there won't be as much residue when the bees do come and also maybe try to spray when you know it's not in bloom even though it's not always possible but that's the best do the best you can you know yeah do you have bees oh my gosh perfect so yes we have sample collection kits in there sample container for you and then inside there's a submission form which you just put down all the information just fill it out and then their instructions on how to collect them as well and you can just you can take it like while you're here you know as many as you'd like you know bro count should be collected once a month ideally but yeah and then at your convenience just drop it off and we'll have somebody deliver it to the lab yeah and we usually put you can either use a windshield wiper fluid or you have to kill the bees which is unfortunate but it's for science so either so either windshield wiper fluid or like isopropyl alcohol or something you know pour like a little bit in the container and then you just scoop like a half cup of bees into there it sounds like a lot but it's not it's really not in comparison to the thousands and thousands of bees that are in the colony so and you know if it informs your you know if it ends up saving your colonies and that's a good thing so yeah definitely grab some yeah it's so it's on our website I can't remember exactly what the schedule is I can look it up though for you but it's all posted on our website we have under the diagnostic lab we have like an interactive map where you can look at all the different dropboxes around Vermont and it'll show you who the host is of the dropbox and the pick-up schedule stuff yeah so just visit our website you can find out everything yes so exciting it depends like if you suspect that well okay definitely if you've had a dead-out send it send a sample ideally send us a sample of like the cluster not like dead bees at the bottom and we can be able to tell you if it's been you know inflected with nozema or bromide or something if it hasn't been diseased and it just you know the bees were stressed and they died over winter you can absolutely reuse it and leave the honey in there for the next bees you know if you install a nuke you can literally put I mean it will just bolster that colony but you know if it if you do suspect it was disease definitely be aware of that because that wouldn't be great but yeah if not definitely reuse it yeah of course any other questions yeah so my so Samantha Alger I think for her PhD she studied virus spillover from managed honey bees to wild pollinators into wild bees so it absolutely happens many many of the pest and diseases are specific to honey bees but a lot of them can transfer between you know native pollinators and honey bees and so it happens that on a flower you know a bee will land and like has a virus or something and then the next bee it's like touching a door knob like so yes if if the honey bees are disease you know that can negatively impact the wild pollinators which is like so important why you know proper management techniques for beekeeping and and you know disease treatments are so important yes so many questions since our honey bee was from Europe mm-hmm what was here before I don't know if there was a honey bee in particular that was in the United States I'm not a hundred percent sure on that I know that there were there are two yeah I'm gonna get back to you a good question I had read that the bees that are moved around you mean are they more like stationary beekeepers who are here or migratory you know it's I would say it's about half and half there are a lot of migratory beekeepers that will spend the summer in Vermont and then travels usually like Florida and other places like that sounds like a nice life in the winter so there are quite a lot of migratory beekeeping operations in Vermont but they're also quite a lot of stationary beekeeping operations that overwintered through mine just insulate their hives and the bees will yeah they'll make it through winter typically yes yes you absolutely should is there you know is there preventive measures for the like to avoid the parasite bugs and things like that is there a way to avoid it there are ways to avoid it I mean you know it's tough yes preventively there are ways to avoid it at this point there's no way to avoid the introduction of veromites you know a lot of bees you'll buy them and they'll probably have one veromite in there you know even though the beekeeper is going to treat their bees right before they sell them to you it's inevitable so you are going to be faced with these diseases also another disease that is quite common is nozema and it's a spore-forming fungus that inflicts a digestive tract and causes dysentery and things like that so that's just naturally occurring in the environment so the bees will pick it up so these things and it occurs in like moist environments so definitely like where you place your apiary can help you know in like a more dry sunny spot is good but in terms of veromites you know try to get bee stock that has been tested for hygienic behavior you know really like do your research before buying your bees and get like locally adapted veromites yeah but in terms of veromites it's almost impossible to avoid it which is unfortunate yes we're actually starting tonight is the first lecture but yeah like this summer would be a great time to like start educating yourself and then like order bees in the winter you know to place your order in the winter and then you can get all of your equipment ready and then by next summer it would be a great time if you're interested yeah I know they're incredible I know I've been hooked I started working here a year ago and I like I can't stop so fun yes yeah a lot of people have problems this year in particular too a lot of beekeepers be like yeah it's not a stereotype like bears really do eat honey and they love it those are anything and like no electric fence will keep a bear out if the bear wants it it'll get it yeah oh yeah you just bust right through it doesn't like bear doesn't care I want them which is understandable but unfortunate for the beekeepers thank you so much